tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-198750342024-03-07T22:03:19.212-05:00The Grande EnchiladaRanting and Raving Since 2005Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.comBlogger1764125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-76902269676235590112017-04-12T16:49:00.000-04:002017-04-12T16:55:10.414-04:00The Pepsi Generation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My answer to a commenter in the New York Times who was offended that Black people were offended by this ad and could not for the life of him understand why:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The problem with this ad is that there is total cognitive dissonance between the situation it depicts, some sort of defanged political protest, with the product it shills, which is sugary brown water with bubbles. So even if you cannot possibly conceive how some people may think that this idiotic ad trivializes history, the ad is a disaster because a Pepsi cannot ever do what the ad claims it can. A Pepsi cannot have a starring role in a political protest unless it's a molotov cocktail...</blockquote>
The ad is completely divorced from reality. It's the idiotic trivialization of our moment in time, in which people are compelled to protest about seriously important issues. Its inappropriate borrowing of civil rights imagery also trivializes a very serious fight for justice that still continues.<br />
This tweet from the daughter of Martin Luther King about sums it up:<br />
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<br />
Yet the marketing geniuses at Pepsi, in their world of consumer research and data points and whatnot, decided to use the moment to tell the wrong story. This is what I think went down:<br />
<br />
Marketing person 1: Our research shows millennials are independent and they like to protest.<br />
Marketing person 2: Celebrities have always worked for Pepsi.<br />
Marketing person 3: Kendall Jenner is a millennial and a celebrity.<br />
Marketing team: Bingo!<br />
<br />
A Frankenstein is born.<br />
<br />
I define advertising as the translation of marketing into human terms. The problem with marketing is that it thinks it is about people but it isn't. It's about consumers, people who are categorized exclusively by what they buy. Marketing puts consumers into social, economic and educational brackets. There could have been diverse people in the team responsible for this disastrous ad but apparently unlike this SNL spoof, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn8pwoNWseM">nobody thought to check with a real human</a>. Professional focus group goers don't count. They get $50 bucks and an endless supply of soda, M&Ms and mini-pretzels, and for this reason, everything they say comes out of their ass. That companies don't yet realize this never ceases to amaze me.<br />
<br />
As for the execution, the ad is a parade of wrongness. From frame one, everything is wrong. Starting with this anemic Kardashian taking off a blonde wig and smearing her lipstick away before she confronts the police. This is wrong on so many levels, I think I need someone in the order of Slavoj Zizek to explain it to me. Wrong spokesperson, wrong gesture, wrong situation, starring a beverage that was not really designed to either bring about world peace or neutralize the police.<br />
We have stonewashed denim circa 1980, because someone thinks this is cool. If you notice, everyone is wearing blue, Pepsi's brand color. I would not be surprised if the color red was verboten on set, because that is the color of you-know-who.<br />
Then we have the fake Muslim female photographer, the faux-edgy Black guy with the cornrows, the Asian cello player, the inane protest signs that read "join the conversation". Everybody looks like they've come out from an audition for the Mickey Mouse Club (for people of color). They are so scrubbed of personality, they must be representing the working class of Stepford, Connecticut. Don't get me started with the police, who seem to be armed to the gills with walkie talkies.<br />
<br />
There are always people who feel superior to the people who like to discuss tone deaf commercials or movies, like that commenter in the New York Times and sundry self-appointed Cassandras on social media. These people always claim that "it is only a movie" or "only a commercial". They like to point out how superficial we are by reminding us that there are worse atrocities in the world that, according to them, no one talks about. Well, they are wrong. We all know that the world is full of suffering, and we are all dismayed. I don't see them joining the White Helmets. But this doesn't make it less important for people to discuss pop culture phenomena, particularly when it generates such a vociferous response. Why shush the debate? Just because it comes from entertainment? Entertainment can be a pretty ruthless mirror to ourselves. The outcry is important because it shows us who we are and what is going on in our society. We don't all have to agree, but it's good to talk about it. People who pooh-pooh these discussions by flaunting their moral superiority actually undermine what the debate is all about.<br />
<br />
<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-39075476634879589272017-03-15T15:01:00.000-04:002017-04-12T15:04:56.388-04:00Identity Politics Are Not For Me<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The idea of identity politics is to give a voice and a presence to the historically disenfranchised, which is good and necessary. For many people, identifying themselves as part of a group or community is empowering and it gives them a sense of self, belonging and purpose. This helps them become a more visible, cohesive and accepted part of society. However, what often ends up happening in the cacophony of conflicting identity politics currently being broadcast at an alarming volume by social media, is absurd (college cafeterias that serve sushi are accused of cultural appropriation), divisive (pitting men against women, gay against straight, liberals against conservatives, black against white, etc.), and overly simplistic.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I have always had an aversion to clubs, even those I can conceivably belong to. In that respect, I'm with the Marx who would not belong to a club that would have him as a member. And I'm even more averse to identifying myself by some willfully chosen slice of my complex makeup. I am from Mexico, born and raised there in a Jewish family, with an atheist dad and an observant mom. This is complicated enough, if not downright exotic. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The other day I was ranting about white<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>people when someone interrupted to remind me that I am white. This stopped me in my<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>tracks<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>because I don't see myself that way, being Mexican and Jewish and all. Indeed, I am pale, have blondish hair and green/gray eyes, and according to everyone, I am swimming in great vats of privilege (another overused word currently in vogue to make certain people feel guilty for existing). <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Having grown up well-fed, clad, educated and traveled in a country where children beg for food on the street, I have been aware of my privilege and my enormous luck since I was a toddler. In Mexico, the color of you skin may very well inform your station in life, with whites mostly on top. Still, I find that making people feel bad because they were born rich, male, white or lucky by accusing them of "privilege" is spurious. Privilege is not a choice. I am an accident of history. I find it a precious privilege that both sides of my family had the presence of mind to escape Eastern Europe long before the nazis came to get them, and that, having had less than zero privilege as Jews in the shtetl, for circumstantial reasons they chose Mexico, where it turned out I could be born free of persecution, into privilege.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was straight for about 40 years and then fell in love with the woman who is now my partner. However, I like to say that if Michael Fassbender shows up, she'll be toast in a New York minute. I have been accused by gay friends of being in denial about my own sexuality when I have protested that I don't consider myself a lesbian. I had a gay male friend who, upon hearing me confess I had a girlfriend, exclaimed, "I always knew you were a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>dyke!" Well, isn't that rich? Because<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>didn't know, and not because of some closet I have yet to come out of. The problem with identity politics is that there is usually someone expecting you to be what they think you are. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was invited to join Pantsuit Nation, a group of Hillary supporters on Facebook. A man was banned from the page because he had the temerity to put forth his views, which were<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in agreement with the liberal tenor of the group, albeit in a way which some women considered offensive. In truth, his post had an admonishing tone. But was this a reason to ban him? The responses to his post and subsequent deportation from the page went from puerile put-downs to women sensibly if timidly chiming in that banning him was a bit extreme. In fact, it was appalling. The guy was not disrespectful, just full of himself. He did not say anything offensive. He was contributing something of value. Do we expect all of us to think alike and agree on everything and sound exactly the same? In a democracy? <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The current climate of polarization separates all of us into rarefied niches that end up floating away into their own select, put-upon bubbles. Recently, some of these bubbles have burst into attacks by legions of offended people, such as the reprehensible student behavior at </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/opinion/understanding-the-angry-mob-that-gave-me-a-concussion.html"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Charles Murray's lecture at Middlebury College,</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> or t</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/arts/design/painting-of-emmett-till-at-whitney-biennial-draws-protests.html"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">he brouhaha over a painting of Emmett Till</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> created by a white artist at the Whitney Biennial, that devolved into some people demanding that the painting<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>be<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>burned. I was compelled to write on a Facebook post:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -0.25pt;">You may criticize the aesthetic and conceptual shortcomings of the painting all you want, but saying that a white person cannot make art about a topic that is judged unrelated to their ethnic background is absurd and a noxious kind of censorship. Does this mean that I as a woman writer can only write about women or women like me?<span class="textexposedshow"> If I want to write a story about Japanese internment camps am I not allowed? Till's</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="textexposedshow">is a story that shocks, saddens and outrages many Americans who are not Black. Is it possible that the artist feels the same? Attacks like this are a threat not only to freedom of thought and expression but they are against</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="textexposedshow">art,</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="textexposedshow">since according to this logic no one can create anything that is not directly related to their own personal history. Identity politics is reductive and instead of liberating people, it categorizes them into one-dimensional stereotypes, which is ironically what it is supposed to protect them from.</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This tiresome cacophony of grievance, in my view, is related to seeing everything through the prism of one's identity -- it leads to the escalation, exaggeration, and distortion of alleged offenses against whatever labels define you as a person. I'm not saying that we should deny who we are, quite the contrary. The more people are antisemites, the more Jewish I'll be. The more anti-Mexican, the more proudly Mexican. All I'm saying is that we are greater than the sum of our parts.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Our enhanced sensitivity on behalf of ourselves and others is preventing us from fighting real evil. Accusing students of racism because they put a sombrero on a bottle of tequila for a Cinco de Mayo party, or firing a college teacher for defending the right to wear offensive costumes on Halloween doesn't help against the real forces of darkness, it actually abets them. In fact, the forces of darkness are rolling on the floor with glee at the crypto fascist excesses of the politically correct "left". <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Identity politics affect people on both sides of the divide: the rabid conservatives with their bizarre sore winning and brutal contempt for the whining liberals, and the whining liberals with their p.c. concepts like cultural appropriation, microaggressions and triggering, which increasingly<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>feel<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>like censorship. Social media amplifies the abuse of terms like oppression, privilege, safe space, and has made them into overbearing clichés that weaken the actual meaning of those words and ultimately threaten the free exchange of ideas, which is the cornerstone of progress. If everything is offensive, then nothing is offensive. If everyone is a racist, then no one is a racist. Skirmishes about identity politics leave everyone exhausted and none the wiser. Everybody loses.<o:p></o:p></span>Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-53031308239478981072017-03-01T14:49:00.000-05:002017-04-13T15:29:41.041-04:00Two CircusesI watched the Academy Awards and Trump's address to Congress in their entirety.<br />
For the first time in years, if ever, something unexpected happened at the Academy Awards last Sunday. As everybody who doesn't live under a rock knows, the wrong Best Picture award was given to <i>La La Land </i>when it was actually destined for <i>Moonlight</i>. It took forever to right the wrong on stage, but in the end, <i>Moonlight</i> won Best Picture. It was all the more bizarre because since Trump became president we seem to be living in a particularly sadistic episode of <i>The Twilight Zone</i>, in which we are all starting to question our mental sanity and if Trump and Bannon have their druthers, reality itself.<br />
Which leads me to the second circus: Trump's first address to the Joint Session of Congress. He has heretofore been so inappropriate and embarrassing, that we could not believe our eyes and ears as he managed to read from the teleprompter for an hour without losing his marbles. Everybody was shocked and relieved that he finally behaved like a president and not like a 5-year old brat. But what is important about his speech yesterday is not that he was able to read from the prompter, which should not be considered a heroic feat, but the content of what he read. If you listen closely to that speech, he is still not behaving like the President of the United States. He thinks he is the Sun King.<br />
I assume linguistic scholars are hard at work on the thoroughly terrifying Trump rhetoric. By terrifying I mean not only the content: but also the way in which the order of his words and his usage mess with people's minds. It's like being tossed about by a raging storm at sea. There are calm passages of reassurance followed by hateful, paranoid exaggerations. Do not expect this guy's speechwriters to inspire anything but arrogance in his followers and dread in his opposition. It's horrible language.<br />
In the case of NATO, for instance, Trump started paying his respects to our partnership with Europe, and the free world, yada yada, so much so that Chuck Schumer stood up and clapped. Once Schumer sat down, however, Trump tore the NATO allies a new one. In the case of immigration reform, not only did he not assuage a single fear for the millions of families who stand to be separated or deported, but he made them all sound like they are to blame for all the troubles in the United States. This strategy of demonizing immigrants, painting them all like criminals, drug dealers, and murderers should chill the blood of every American citizen. It's scapegoating, pure and simple, and already scores of decent people are suffering all kinds of abuses. Not only undocumented brown people; totally innocuous visitors with legal papers are mistreated and abused because the people at ICE are feeling emboldened to treat foreigners like shit. So is the case with a famous 70-year-old Australian children books' author, a French Holocaust scholar, a Nigerian engineer, an American citizen of Puerto Rican descent in Chicago, and countless more we don't even hear about. It is the systematic dehumanization of an entire group of people for nefarious political purposes. Nazism 101.<br />
Trump only wants immigrants with money to come here. It is still not clear what will happen to the crops, and all the shitty jobs Americans won't take, but I guess we will find out soon. I think criminals should be deported, but ICE considers criminals the kind of people who got a speeding ticket 15 years ago. They took a Salvadoran woman who was waiting for emergency surgery for a brain tumor out of a hospital and into handcuffs. Will this really make America great?<br />
This ugly side of the United States is not new. It's as old as the Mayflower and has been here since Native Americans were betrayed and killed en masse. It has made itself known through years of slavery and state-sponsored racism, antisemitism, the Japanese internment camps, the Joe McCarthy trials, Abu Ghraib, the abuse of undocumented workers, etc. This xenophobic, racist side of America has always lived side by side with the visionary, democratic, generous, expansive side we all like to believe the US still represents in the world: a land of progress, of justice, of equal opportunity, of personal freedom. <br />
Until now, the hateful side was relatively in the fringes, growing stronger thanks to Fox News and talk radio and shit media like Breitbart. Now it's out with a vengeance, legitimized and enabled not only by Trump, but by most of the Republican party. I have been here for 25 years and this is the first time I can remember a spate of antisemitic vandalism, bomb threats and violence.<br />
Now we have the most reactionary government this country has seen in centuries; an administration that uses propaganda and hateful rhetoric straight from the playbooks of tyrants. And which came through power through extremely sinister means.<br />
The Republican cheering that accompanied Trump's every bombastic, unrealistic promise is repugnant. The fact that they are doing everything in their power to obstruct the investigation of Russia's involvement brands them all traitors. There is no decency left in this Congress, and except for a few glaring Democrats, that goes for both sides of the aisle.<br />
I was looking forward to the Democratic response, only to be baffled and deflated by the ridiculous, pandering, toothless, inauthentic choice of having the ex-governor of Kentucky sit in a charmless diner where no food seems to be served, surrounded by a cast out of the Lawrence Welk show.<br />
What on God's green Earth are the Democrats thinking? How can I unregister from this stupid party?*<br />
I know what they are thinking. That somehow with this ersatz display of down-home heartland bullshit they are going to win votes in 2018. They're not fooling anyone.<br />
Bernie Sanders, who gave his own impassioned and eloquent response, should have been the one to respond to Trump. He is his direct opposite, and an equal rock star to his base, which the party insists on ignoring, and he talks about the issues that affect everybody living in this crazy country.<br />
<br />
*Serious question. I want out.Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-71358467018174807772017-02-15T19:00:00.001-05:002017-02-15T19:00:50.159-05:00An Inner Circle of Losers<i>NOTE: The Trump administration's shitshow is on such a roll that by the time one finishes putting two thoughts together, 80 new clusterfucks have happened. Here are some thoughts of mine about Trump's cabinet of creeps:</i><br />
<br />
When I see Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon, and Stephen Miller, I feel that I know people like them. We've all run across them in high school, or college, or work. They are people with a huge, poisonous chip of resentment lodged deep inside their balls. They are not legion, but once in a while you run into one. A boss who sows chaos by ruling with contempt, people who thrive on division and disorder, backstabbers; in short, toxic human beings. In an unprecedented achievement, Donald Trump has recruited most of them for his Administration.<br />
<br />
Take Kellyanne Conway. Her default mode is being on the defensive. Like her boss, she is the epitome of a sore winner. There is really nothing more base and disgraceful than a sore winner who cannot lead with poise and dignity, but who feels so insecure that they need to rub it in, even though they won. Conway deploys deliberate outrageousness so well, that she makes the newscasters who laugh at her ridiculous statements look bad. That's how insidious she is. Why not focus on the times Trump doesn't lie? she asks, treating journalists and the public as if we are morons. She has not shown a single moment of politeness, empathy, grace, or truth, for that matter. That absurd military/patriotic coat she wore to the inauguration tells us all we need to know about her: always be rubbing it in. Conway is dangerous precisely because people may not take her equivocations seriously. She fake smiles and does the girly thing to deflect the fact that she is lying. Woe to anyone who doesn't realize that she is very deliberately making our heads explode with "alternative facts".<br />
So far, if the idea is to exhaust the American people, it may be working. As an effective communications strategy for an administration, however, it's way off the mark. Instead of bringing the media to their side, Conway and Sean Spicer are in a fight to the death with the media and currently suffering from a torrent of leaks and mediatic insurrection, not to mention general mockery. They don't seem to understand that the role of the media is not to fawn and parrot the party line, but to question and ascertain. They may be in power, but they don't know how to wield it, and they act like losers. All we know is that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/upheaval-is-now-standard-operating-procedure-inside-the-white-house/2017/02/13/d65dee58-f213-11e6-a9b0-ecee7ce475fc_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-banner-main_whitehouse-0719pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.f861a8d35931">there is a constant shitshow brewing in the White House</a>.<br />
It's gotten so bad lately, it looks like keeping up with K.A.O.S. is taking its toll:<br />
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I found myself reminiscing almost fondly about back in the day when Dick Cheney was Satan and Donald Rumsfeld was Mephistopheles. But the difference between Cheney and Rumsfeld and Trump's advisors is that Cheney and Rumsfeld were never losers. They were alpha males who wielded power with supreme ease. They were not mysteriously resentful men with painful hidden complexes who are out for revenge on the world. They were insiders who belonged squarely in the corridors of power and, for better or for worse, spent their lives in public service. What we have now is a bunch of bitterly resentful outsiders running the show with mind-boggling incompetence.<br />
The feeling I get when I read about <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/steve-bannon-wants-to-start-world-war-iii/">Steve Bannon's worldview</a>, and his mediocre agitprop movies -- a bunch of defeatist "Judeo-Christian" mumbo jumbo about how the world is coming to an inevitable clash of civilizations -- is that he's a deranged fanboy. Wasn't there a quote from a comic book villain in the "American carnage" inaugural speech, a speech so hideous only a delusional loser could have written it? They say Bannon reads a lot. Well, too much literature is bad for you if what you're reading are obscure Italian fascists and the writings of Charles Lindbergh.<br />
It's like when people say Hitler was very intelligent. Sowing chaos, destruction and the murder of millions of people, including your own citizenry because of an ideological brain fart doesn't strike me as smart. Quite the contrary, it strikes me as the apex of human stupidity. People like Steve Bannon or Hitler are not intelligent: they do nothing of any real usefulness with their depraved thoughts.<br />
Bannon is clearly out of his depth, a third-rate alt-media (all alt-media is third-rate) operative who has no clue of how government and the law are supposed to function. He may have done a good job convincing a bunch of ignorant yahoos and self-serving conservatives to vote for Trump, but that's not the same as running a country. If he's truly smart, he'll learn to use the system to his advantage, not make it explode in his face; if he thinks that he has anything to learn, that is. To judge from his past pronouncements about emulating Lenin and blowing up the world, he doesn't strike me as the sort who resorts to humility when the shit hits the fan. He may borrow from Charles Lindbergh, but Bannon is no Charles Lindbergh. He's a schlub.<br />
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People who harbor a passionate conviction for kooky theories, be they antisemitic, racist, or of world domination by others, tend to be a particular kind of loser. They may be right-wing nutjobs, or left-wing dogmatists who feel there is a Zionist Jew behind every conspiracy; in the end, they're all the same. They thirst for a power they feel is eternally out of their grasp and being hogged or abused by someone else (the media, the Jews, liberals, the government, George Soros, Wall Street, immigrants, Blacks, Muslims, feminists, etc). These people suffer from arrested development and do not have the emotional maturity to deal with reality, which requires the recognition of nuance, complexity, and compromise. They also have a misplaced sense of entitlement -- someone is always taking something away from them. They are small-minded, miserable haters.<br />
Most of these people tend to hide among us, nourishing their hatreds in secret. Once in a while, like in the case of Hitler or other totalitarian obsessives, they reach a position of power. But the cancerous chip on their balls remains firmly in place and metastasizes. All those impressive Nazi rallies were designed to hide the fact that Hitler was a non-Aryan-looking ugly little creep with a ridiculous mustache, greasy hair and boundless reserves of self-hatred. The rest of the nazis just hitched their wagon to his thirst for power; some adoringly, some resentfully, some cynically, some spinelessly, much like most of the members of the Republican party today. It's a good thing our nazis can't even muster half a crowd for their inauguration.<br />
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We all harbor prejudices. It is human and inevitable. But people who spend their energy being racist have a sickness. Sane people do not allow these ideas to become obsessions. We hide our racist thoughts in the back of our minds and feel a little queasy when we catch ourselves forming them. If we are self-aware, we may even get to question them, find them untrue and ditch them. The United States is the most racially aware country on Earth. If you are a card-carrying racist in the US, you choose to be purposefully so.<br />
Stephen Miller seems to be <a href="http://www.univision.com/univision-news/politics/how-white-house-advisor-stephen-miller-went-from-pestering-hispanic-students-to-designing-trumps-immigration-policy">a garden variety racist with a penchant for grandiosity</a>. Even in high school, he was hateful enough to object to Cinco de Mayo celebrations and such manifestations of inclusiveness. I can understand people who have no patience for political correctness, because quite frankly neither do I, but someone who chooses to lecture his fellow classmates on Americanism <i>in his high-school yearbook</i> seems like they are under the grip of a disturbing obsession. Fast-forward to the same guy, now advisor to President Trump, speaking on national TV last week:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">"Our opponents, the media, and the whole world will soon see, as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned."</span><br />
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Miller was blathering on network TV about how the judiciary usurped power from the president! Who does he think he is? Goebbels? Here he is, a 31-year-old, way in over his head, who reminds me of the Charles Atlas ads in the back of comic books. His performance at the news show circuit made him sound as if he was delivering a radio address in nazi Germany. He also is associated with the cruel and incompetent executive order banning travel from seven Muslim countries for refugees and people with valid visas and green cards. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/stephen-miller-a-key-engineer-for-trumps-america-first-agenda/2017/02/11/a70cb3f0-e809-11e6-bf6f-301b6b443624_story.html">Miller really seems like a throwback</a> to the glorious days of assholes like J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, and Roy Cohn. Make America Great Again, indeed!<br />
I don't understand Nazi Jews. I don't understand when fear of persecution turns to hate and aggression and you forget that there but for the grace of God, or a humane and coherent immigration policy, go you.<br />
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Which leads us to Jared Kushner. The media pronounced that this handsome cipher might bring a semblance of moderation and professionalism to the White House and somehow save the day. Perhaps Kushner thought so too, in his ambitious naivete. There are reports, however, that he loves what Bannon is doing. So who knows? We're still waiting.<br />
Kushner saw it fit to invoke his family who perished in the Shoah when his campaigning father-in-law was cozying up to antisemites, but Kushner uttered not a peep, let alone raised holy hell, when the Trump administration not only deliberately left Jews out of the Holocaust Remembrance Day presidential statement, but then mockingly gloated about it, appallingly, under the pretext of inclusiveness. "A lot of people were killed in the Holocaust", explained Reince Priebus.<br />
Was Stephen Miller the author of such a revolting statement and its nauseating explanation? Was Bannon? Priebus? Kushner may not have been born a loser, but hitching his wagon to the Trumps has turned him into one.<br />
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As for the biggest loser of them all, the truth about Donald Trump is that our current nightmare may be the summit of a lifetime of accumulating slights and grudges from a guy who became president thanks to all kinds of suspect foreign machinations. That is, he is not legitimate and will never be. The approval he craves will always elude him. He will never be as rich as the truly capable billionaires of America, he will never be accepted into any of the elite inner sanctums he lusts after, be they social, political or showbiz, and he's always going to be the crass barbarian, conman, clown, and spoiled brat from Queens (no offense to the hardworking citizens of that fine borough). He may have convinced a segment of the population that feels forgotten and entitled to more by dint of being white by bullying everybody else, but we all know Donald Trump is nothing but a tool. A convenient puppet for Putin, for Bannon, for the Republican Party. We're all waiting to see when this bunch of cowards and traitors have enough of this dangerous farce.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">President Steve Bannon and Donald Trump in the Oval Office</td></tr>
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Meanwhile, we must do all we can to take our country back from this cabal of deranged losers. <a href="http://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/2/11/14577834/garry-kasparov-putin-trump">Resist, protest, demand accountability and vanquish</a> the Republican party in 2018.<br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-77850981374513672962017-01-26T13:09:00.000-05:002017-01-26T19:02:31.462-05:00When Do We Cry Uncle? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Until when are we allowing this dangerous charade?<br />
Asking for a friend.<br />
We're six days into the Trump presidency and it is clear to anyone with a shred of common sense that we have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/26/in-his-first-major-tv-interview-as-president-trump-is-endlessly-obsessed-about-his-popularity/">a delusional maniac sitting in the White House</a>, abetted by a bunch of irresponsible Republican flunkies and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/business/media/stephen-bannon-trump-news-media.html">paranoid, resentful extremists</a> like Steve Bannon. Trump rules by division, not unification, which means he is single-handedly waging war against the United States, its democracy, and its constitution. He has antagonized the C.I.A., the intelligence community, Mexico, the media, sanctuary cities, the EPA, The National Parks Service, all of science, immigrants, and even the very democratic process that got him elected.<br />
He won yet he is still picking fights about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/arts/television/for-trump-everything-is-a-rating.html">crowds and popularity</a>. He is obsessed with the fact that he lost the popular vote by a considerable margin. Every single executive he signs seems to be the result of a personal vendetta. He signed the abortion gag rule the day after millions of American women marched to assert their rights.<br />
Anybody who watched his TV interview, or any of his public appearances for that matter, can plainly see he is mentally incompetent. This condition will be exacerbated by the power he is already allowed to wield and by the public resistance that chips away at his massive insecurity, a resistance which needs to be relentless.<br />
My question is to the Republicans who are acting as if this is a normal state of affairs. How much damage to the fabric of our system are we expected to endure? How much indignity and disrespect? How long are you prepared to look away while Trump puts this country in grave danger?<br />
The fracas with Mexico is a serious issue. Mexico stands to be destabilized by the absurd insistence that it should pay for the stupid wall. When the Mexican economy suffers, more people cross the border. There are already walls, fences, and systems in place at the border, but Trump can only enact asinine symbolic gestures like the wall. It is not in the best interest of the US to have an unstable, economically weakened and defensive Mexico.<br />
It is not in the best interest of the US to reopen black sites and reinstate torture. It is not in the best interest of the US to deny climate change or affordable healthcare for millions of people. I understand that Trump is only interested in feeding his own sick ego and in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/politics/mar-a-lago-membership-donald-trump.html">gaming the system</a> as he always has. What I cannot understand is the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/us/politics/republicans-in-congress-tread-lightly-in-trumps-early-days.html">suicidal insistence of Republicans </a>on acting against the interests of the citizenry. Their indifference to the welfare of the American people is chilling.<br />
<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-8838385684080671862017-01-20T12:32:00.000-05:002017-01-20T14:21:51.261-05:00Unpresidented<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Today, the United States inaugurates the most unqualified, incompetent and dangerous person ever to be "elected" to the presidency. I say "elected" because he lost the popular vote by 3 million votes.<br />
Many people will want to watch his absurd inauguration, like gawkers at a gruesome accident. I do not judge. It is a historic event of tragic proportions. But I refuse to tune in, because all that the <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/trump-biographers-presidency-legitimate-214655">emotionally stunted and deeply mentally impaired Donald Trump </a>cares about are ratings and public attention, and I for one, am not going to give it to him today.<br />
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Yesterday, I attended an anti-Trump rally. Speaker after speaker invoked love. At some point, I felt I was lost in a giant liberal Hallmark card. Love is nice, but it does not work for me. Love is an overused cliché. Respect, however, is something that I could fathom mustering because I don't need Republicans and people who hate liberals to love me, but I demand they respect me, and I assume it goes both ways.<br />
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The Betsy DeVos confirmation hearing was a perfect example of the Republican disrespect for the American citizenry. It was a sideshow in which the Republican senators kissed DeVos's ass with fawning non-questions and prevented the Democrats from probing. But the greatest disrespect was shown by DeVos herself, in her refusal to answer questions, in her idiotic evasions, her use of euphemisms (deferring to the states, parental choice, and opportunity, all which mean privatization) and worse, in showing up without even having bothered to prepare. She is to be confirmed as Secretary of Education and she did not do her homework. Her conduct at the hearing was a slap in the face to the American public. This is what the next four years are going to be like and it is going to take a lot more than love to withstand the onslaught.<br />
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Bullying is an equal opportunity activity. Kids get bullied for being smart, for being dumb, for being too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, too dark, too pale. That is how Trump operates. He bullies everyone: Obama, the media, women, comedians, veterans, Mexicans, Muslims, the intelligence community, the disabled. Political bullies (nazis, Stalinists, Maoists, etc) know that humiliation makes people afraid. With Trump everyone is fair game, except the bigger bully: his friend and enabler, Vladimir Putin.<br />
And so when I hear my fellow liberals talk about love, I get frustrated. Because love will not trump hate. Love only trumps hate in fantasyland. Love will not guarantee or protect our basic human rights. Love will do nothing to stem the utter contempt, distrust, and disrespect for reason, science, culture, the arts, the press, thought, and agnosticism both religious and ideological; love is a very weak weapon against the virulence of the American anti-intellectual strain. This strain can be swiftly transformed into destructive policies, from laws that oppress women and deny healthcare and education to people, to the plundering of the environment, and counterproductive foreign policy. Stupid people in power are very dangerous, not least because they make the stupid feel powerful and encourage the arrogance of the willfully ignorant. That is why Trump is where he is today.<br />
Love won't do squat against the forces of regression that threaten our planet with extinction and our country with a return to its ugliest racism, xenophobia, ignorance and intolerance.<br />
What we need are brains, and the courage to use them.<br />
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After today, we will find out if our democratic institutions can withstand abuse, or if they are just empty shells sustained by rapacious capitalism. We will confirm whether the Democratic party is as ineffectual and hobbled by corruption and inertia as we suspect it is, or if it is ready to grow a pair of truly progressive cojones and fight every second of every day for the next four years. We will find out if indeed we live in a democracy or not. But to find out we need to act and the only way to find out is to resist.<br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-26066583013482372702016-11-11T13:55:00.000-05:002016-11-11T15:22:44.580-05:00Liberal KitschI've been spending a lot of time on Facebook and reading newspapers online trying to adjust to our new reality. I am petrified about everything: Trump's cabinet, a Republican government, Giuliani (the worst of the worst, and then some), nuclear codes, global warming, the alt-right, racist violence, school bullying, spineless Democrats, etc.<br />
Though I don't have any, I'm very worried about the children. Imagine the powerlessness of children who witness such results and are supposed to continue trusting and obeying the adults who make such terrible decisions.<br />
I am also suffering from echo chamber fatigue. It is amazing to me how social media (Facebook, Twitter) amplifies and distorts our sense that we are among like-minded citizens, all clamoring for the same thing and no one else can hear us. I think I know one person who may be a Trump sympathizer, and he hides it. One person among 800 "friends" on Facebook.<br />
And I am also disturbed and deeply annoyed by some reactions on the liberal side.<br />
As always happens in moments of crisis, the easiest shorthand for expressing ourselves tends to come wrapped in pat, sentimental empty gestures. Instant sainthood is bestowed (to yourself, by yourself) by changing your avatar or wearing some sort of symbol of solidarity with the nightmare du jour. This is (still) a free country and knock yourselves out, but this does not work for me. I don't take well to sentimentality.<br />
I hope I do not offend my well-meaning friends who feel the same way I do about Trump, but choose to express themselves differently. Calls for togetherness, prayer and compassion may be what is needed; they don't do much for me. I find some of the most impassioned exhortations for solidarity easy to preach from the comfort of our devices, but not as easy to follow through. And their capital sin: they're corny.<br />
It's liberal kitsch.<br />
For instance, that safety pin symbol. Nice sentiment; by all means wear it, but I am not going to wear a safety pin in order to demonstrate my self-serving, self-righteous moral superiority. Instead, and I sure hope it doesn't come to pass, I will try to intervene if I see bigoted attacks in action. In fact, I shared a useful primer on how to do that on, where else, Facebook.<br />
I have been on the receiving end of people saying idiotic and hateful things about Jews, and sometimes Mexicans more than once. It always feels like a kick in the gut, sucks the air right out of you, makes your knees go weak. I used to kind of let it go, or deflate it with a joke, or be too rattled to put a stop to it. Sometimes I politely disagreed. But ever since a Mexican student told me after 9/11 that Jews who worked at the Twin Towers had called each other the night before in order to save their own skin, I decided that I will not tolerate politely this kind of bullshit anymore. This applies to all hateful rhetoric.<br />
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I am happy to march against Trump. I am happy to do whatever it takes to pressure this new government to respect human dignity and not destroy the world, but when people say #notmypresident, I have to part company with them. Imagine for a second if Hillary had won and Trump supporters came up with #notmypresident. Liberals would collapse in fits of outrage.<br />
I beg you all to grow up. Hillary won the popular vote, NOT BY A LANDSLIDE. Trump won the Electoral College by a wide margin. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/09/donald-trump-white-house-hillary-clinton-liberals">He won legitimately</a>, and democracy means that we accept the result. We may not accept the man, his policies, or his party and we should protest and do everything in our power to counter and oppose their influence. They don't have consensus and they should be reminded of it every second of their lives. But we were aghast when Trump intimated that he would not concede, and now we are acting like him?<br />
We need to make our voices heard, but let's be tough and smart, like <a href="http://www.reid.senate.gov/press_releases/2016-11-11-reid-statement-on-the-election-of-donald-trump#.WCYSceErI_U">Harry Reid</a>. Let's hope the Democrats will grow a spine and some cojones and make it as hard for these people to govern as they did for Obama these last 8 years.<br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-82260402606225531572016-09-01T18:10:00.001-04:002016-09-02T09:01:30.097-04:00I Know What Peña Nieto Was Thinking<i>In which I will attempt to surmise what Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto was "thinking" when he decided to invite Donald Trump to Mexico.</i><br />
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Disconnected from reality by his own infatuation with power and surrounded by fawning yes men, all EPN could think of was how to reverse his precipitous freefall in popularity polls.<br />
How could he make the Mexican people stop arguing about his very recent <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/22/mexico-president-enrique-pena-nieto-plagiarized-thesis-law-degree">college plagiarism scandal</a>? How could he make them forget the new <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/09/mexico-first-lady-florida-property-government-contractor-documents-reveal">$2 million condo in Miami used by his wife</a>, real estate hoarder and ex-telenovela star, Angélica Rivera, a house that is connected <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/10/mexico-president-enrique-pena-nieto-mansion-explain">AGAIN</a> to a construction company that has been awarded big projects by her husband's government?<br />
How to make them forget their tsuris with the recent devaluation of the peso, or the horrific insecurity and violence all over the country, or the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/09/mexico-demonstration-43-students-confirmed-massacred">43 massacred students</a> at the beginning of his mandate that still no one has been found accountable for? How to stop Mexicans from deploring and relentlessly mocking his obvious lack of presidential stature, and his incompetence?<br />
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Reflecting that he needs to recover his mojo, a simple idea arises in his little mind (if not in the mind of some sibilant advisor):<br />
"Who do Mexicans hate more than me?"<br />
He didn't have to look very far.<br />
"Bingo! I'm going to read señor Donald Trump the riot act. Hell, I'm gonna lay down the law to the guy I compared to Mussolini and Hitler, right here in our country. That'll show that bunch of ingrates, the Mexican people, who's their daddy. I will go down in history as the guy who stood up to Donald Trump."<br />
<br />
Alas, yesterday Peña Nieto went down in history as the guy who went down on Donald Trump.<br />
<br />
In one fell swoop, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/world/americas/trump-mexico-pena-nieto-reaction.html">as many Mexican commentators have lamented</a>, he did what no one had been able to do yet: he made Trump look presidential, made his cockamamie idea of a wall a feasible notion, he legitimized his racist rhetoric and treated him like a head of state. If the invitation in itself was not humiliation enough, Peña Nieto got totally played and humiliated by Trump, the superhuman troll, who then came back to Arizona to a triumphant rally where he espoused his "immigration policy", which is nothing but the dangerous racial scapegoating of a demagogue.<br />
Peña Nieto, other than perhaps privately dying of shame at having lost his shriveled manhood to the human Cheeto, will suffer no real consequences. As per the Mexican political system, he is enshrined in power for 6 years, since there is no reelection (two long years to go), during which he, his vulgar wife and his corrupt cronies will continue trading on their shady deals and their violent contempt for their country. Then he will vanish into the sunset like the rest of all the other bad presidents we've had (most of them from his party, the P.R.I.), yet another forgotten blemish in our history. There will be potholed streets with his name in sleepy towns empty of Mexicans who will be found <a href="http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/09/01/mexico/1472744498_408428.html">in the US looking for dignity</a>.<br />
<br />
I'm not as flummoxed as some by the logic of Mexican political thinking, because, in essence, it is very simple. It goes something like this:<br />
<br />
"The Mexican people are idiot infants that are better off not knowing the truth. We have always lied and talked down to them and pretended that we govern, when in fact, all we do is steal and take long (six-year) baths of intoxicating power. We have always staged this dog and pony show that they innocently call "democracy", and pontificated with meaningless, highfaluting words, communicating nothing true and nothing essential.<br />
In fact, we're a bunch of deeply corrupt cynics who only care about fattening our bank accounts and safeguarding our uncontested, untouched, magical impunity. We steadfastly refuse to work for the improvement of our country, let alone reform its putrid institutions, which we deliberately keep inefficient, bureaucratized, moth-ridden and bloated, so we can continue the status quo.<br />
We conspire with the rich, to whom we give monopolistic powers so they can prop us up, whether they are drug cartels, the richest man in the world, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2012/jun/08/mexico-media-scandal-televisa-pena-nieto-claims">or privately owned media monopolies</a>. We buy the votes of the poor with free sandwiches and sodas. We don't give a flying fuck about the smart, hard-working people who love this country and have truly good ideas to make it better. We just smother everything in bureaucracy and impediments.<br />
We deliberately keep people in poverty and ignorance so that they don't get any ideas. Through our brilliance at entrenching corruption at almost every level of social interaction, we have created a nation ruled by distrust. We must admit, though, that despite the fact that almost everything we do conspires against progress and against greatness, Mexicans somehow still manage to be productive and creative. Imagine what they could do without us."<br />
<br />
This visit is no different. Like all their other farces, this is pretend statesmanship that is not fit to belong to a second rate circus, just like the president's guest.<br />
<br />
Which brings us to the uncanny parallels between Trump and the current Mexican President:<br />
<br />
• Both are playing pretend at being presidential<br />
• Both have been irresponsibly propped up by vastly corrupt and incompetent political parties.<br />
• Both are constitutionally incapable of true leadership, let alone statesmanship.<br />
• Both are crooks.<br />
• Both inherited their power from their families (Trump financially, and Peña Nieto politically).<br />
• Both are uneducated, anti-intellectual and married to uneducated, flashy floozies (one steals speeches, the other traffics in houses).<br />
• Both have had more than one wife, and children by several.<br />
• Both have unsavory friends. (For Trump, see Christie, Chris; Manafort, Paul et al. For Peña see <a href="http://www.vanguardia.com.mx/articulo/la-nina-de-alfredo-castillo">Castillo, Alfredo</a>).<br />
• Both have ridiculous hair, though Trump wins this contest hands down.<br />
<br />
So this little nightmare scenario we witnessed yesterday is nothing but two impostors getting together to convince people that they are real.<br />
<br />
Finally, this is what I imagine transpired behind closed doors at their meeting:<br />
<br />
BOTH:<br />
Nice hair!<br />
EPN:<br />
Let me cut to the chase: My wife wants an apartment in a Trump Tower. Any Trump Tower will do. We'll pay for the wall if you make it happen.<br />
TRUMP:<br />
Deal! Believe me, you're gonna be very happy. It's gonna be yuge.<br />
<br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-24680220676722484092016-07-28T17:18:00.001-04:002016-07-28T17:18:35.837-04:00Trump: A Disqualifying Event<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
The pathetic spectacle to which we are hostage right now as a country - having to endure a presidential candidate who is mentally unfit for office, is not a coincidence. It is the direct result of eight years of Republican Party policies. They courted the fringe, abandoned every pretense of service to the American people, made President Obama's job hell, did whatever it took to cater to corporate interests even in the face of unspeakable atrocities (NRA) and care about nothing except power. Their cravenness makes Frank and Claire Underwood look like Mother Theresa.<br />
The Republicans made this lice-infested bed, and now we all have to lie on it. We are now the laughing stock (if not the waking nightmare) of the world. But here we are. That Hillary Clinton, whether you like her or not, has to campaign against this carnival barker in her historic opportunity to become the first female president of the United States, is sad and unfair. This shameful humiliation is the sole responsibility of the Republican Party. The only consolation is to watch them self-destruct and slide deeper into indignity, absurdity, and shamelessness as they try to contain the demons they've unleashed: besides Trump's unbridled lunacy, the worse evils of xenophobia, racism, violence, divisiveness, and hatred.<br />
My only consolation is knowing that anyone who is remotely associated with, and pandering to, Trump has soiled their reputations forever. The nefarious Rudolph Giuliani, Chris Christie; any Republican that has stood by and encouraged this to happen is a coward and will live in infamy for eternity.<br />
But what kind of delusion are they under? It is barely understandable how any sentient being can support such a fake conman, regardless of how desperate they are to vote against their own self-interest, blinded by his simplistic bombast, his fake hair, fake tan and fake money. But career politicians who should know better? What in God's green earth is in it for them? Cabinet posts? Shady business deals? A lifetime supply of Trump steaks? Is their resentment at the legacy of a twice-elected Black president so pernicious as to aim to dismantle the entire nation? A legacy that is all the more admirable considering that they did everything in their power to thwart it.<br />
Make no mistake: a lot of this particular descent into madness is the result of racism. Therefore, it must sting even more deeply to watch the Obamas sail into history with dignity and grace, having achieved some monumental changes like Obamacare and gay marriage. I think history will reciprocate. When Giuliani and Christie are relegated to the forgotten clown corner of the circus tent, the Obama presidency will be remembered as one of the greatest in history, his shortcomings notwithstanding.<br />
<br />
On the one hand, Trump is a gift to the Democrats; they can't possibly lose this election as things stand right now (although one fears that they are entirely capable of doing so. Just look at Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her crew).<br />
On the other hand, the presidential election should be between two feasible candidates. It took Trump to encourage Russia to spy on Clinton for pundits to scream that this is a disqualifying event, when everything he has done from day one should have disqualified him from the job long ago. It's like living in an alternate reality where reason, common sense, decency and integrity do not exist. The Republicans attribute everything to spin. "He was joking", "she didn't steal the speech". This deliberate denial of reality by the right is frightening.<br />
<br />
I assume someone will write the definitive history of how this happened to us. It seems like we blinked and woke up in the middle of this nightmare. Let this be an eye-opener to politicians on both sides of the aisle. This is what happens by ignoring the reality of the vast majority of people in this country, who struggle and dream of a standard of living that doesn't exist anymore. This is what happens when, by inaction and cynicism they encourage the existence of an uneducated nation who gets their world view from reality shows and talk radio instead of a robust public education.<br />
<br />
It's in the hands of the American people to save our own country, even the world, from disaster. This time, it means trouncing Trump so overwhelmingly that he becomes, in his parlance, a yuge loser, the biggest loser of all time. If you need to hold your nose because you are a conservative, or a Bernie supporter, or you just hate Hillary's guts, then do it. But sitting this one out because you are apolitical, or too ideologically pure, is not an option. And voting for Trump or any third party is suicidal.<br />
Trump must be destroyed, and the only safe way to do it is by voting for Hillary Clinton. So register to vote, whatever your persuasion, and let's make sure Trump gets nowhere near the White House.Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-61103976085035119382016-03-05T15:33:00.000-05:002016-03-05T16:29:16.930-05:00Donald Trump, Or Panic in the Streets.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Only events that spark the utmost consternation can make the Grande Enchilada come out of her lair. To wit: the mass hysteria surrounding the ascendancy of human Cheeto and giant dingleberry, Donald Trump, and his possible election to the Presidency of the United States.<br />
The headlines from the (liberal) media run from astounded exclamations that the biggest search on Google is how to move to Canada, to dire comparisons to the Nazis, the rise of fascism in America, the fall of the American Empire, Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burns, etc.<br />
People on social media, when not dying of horrific glee over Ted Cruz's flying goobers, are tearing their hair out in astonishment and fear. It's understandable. No one in their right mind can fathom how we got to this place. Oh, wait. Yes, we can!<br />
This is nothing but the end result of decades of deliberate policies by the Republican party to court and feed the most extreme right wing factions and to fight anything resembling common sense, sound governance and social cohesion (gun control, climate change, education, infrastructure, etc). For decades, they have devoted themselves to obstructing any and all paths to progress, have impeded President Obama to do his job in a racist, disrespectful and contemptible way and they have bowed down to the insanity of a lunatic fringe whose ranks they have helped swell, at the expense of their own survival. I am convinced that part of their hysteria stems from their inability to cope with the reality of a Black president. Besides that, they should have known they were sealing their fate when they invited an ignorant malignancy like Sarah Palin to run for Vice-president. This very well may have cost them the election. But instead of learning their lesson, they doubled down on their contempt for the citizenry. An abysmal disconnect exists between their ideology and most of American society, but they act like the fringe are the majority.<br />
The Republicans only have themselves to blame and they deserve everything that has befallen them and that is yet to come. The rise of Donald Trump is a direct consequence of their willful descent into xenophobia, racism, nationalism, anti-intellectualism, contempt for society, venality and stupidity. They allowed this clown to run on their platform, probably thinking that it was better than if he ran as an independent, and then they were unable to control him. They stood by, happy about all the buzz they were getting, and now it's too late to stop him. Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney are now trying to reverse the damage with speeches about human decency and the party of Lincoln. Guess what? It's too fucking late! Where were they when Trump started uttering his idiotic, yet mediagenic, racist statements? Now the Republican party has neo-Nazis and the KKK in their corner.<br />
To be honest, my schadenfreude is preventing me from running for the hills. I am almost hoping he wins: I want to witness with my own eyes the precipitous collapse of the American empire. It's like being alive at the time of Caligula.<br />
Will Trump win? Only if reasonable, decent people from both ends of the political spectrum fail to do their duty to vote against him. This country must unite against him. Meanwhile, Southern Democrats are not bothering to show up in big numbers at the primaries. Apparently, if they don't get homegrown heroes like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton or Albert Gore, they won't give the time of day to two candidates from the North. I certainly hope that Trump's results will scare Democrats enough to haul their asses to the rest of the primaries, whoever they decide to vote for. In the case of the Republican party, the options are so frightening that there is nothing to hope for.<br />
Only in America presidential elections resemble a sports' season (in hell). There are arcane rules to consider and nationwide tournaments to win or lose. So everyone is losing sleep over the odds of which one of the Democratic candidates is more likely to win against Trump or Cruz.<br />
I know a lot of people think that Bernie doesn't have a chance in hell of being President. Perhaps.<br />
But I am tired of deploying the useful vote. And so, I'm voting for Bernie in the primaries and you can blame me for the death of America all you want. He represents my political beliefs and what I want for this country better than anyone else. And while I have no doubt that Hillary will be a capable president and will support her if she wins the nomination, I want the Democratic party to start acting like the liberals they are supposed to be, and not like Republicans Lite (Obama included).<br />
Now, to vanquish Trump and the obscurantist candidates of the GOP, and even maybe return their party to something resembling dignity, moderate Republicans should feel comfortable enough voting for Hillary Clinton: she is closer to them than the fascist bozos on the GOP circus. And everybody who has half a brain cell, regardless of political affiliation, should make sure to punish the Republican party at the ballots (provided they are allowed to vote once they get there).<br />
When in an unprecedented election year the two most galvanizing candidates are perceived as outsiders and nonpoliticians, and they attract frenzied crowds, it's because the American people on left and right are tired of politics as usual. Politicians in Washington have been oblivious to the deep fraying of trust, which is now literally non-existent, between the American public and themselves. They allowed Citizens United to happen, they continue to cater to lobbies, they have allowed this nation to become a third world country, yet they didn't see it coming.<br />
The Republicans thought Trump was a joke that would quickly implode, and never in a million years did Hillary imagine that Bernie Sanders, the old socialist hippie Jew from Vermont, would be a serious opponent. Well, guess what? Hell froze over.<br />
I think a lot of this has to do with the internet age and the democratization of the media. News and their attending opinions travel much faster than the tortoises in Washington can keep their fingers on. As evidenced by the volatility of certain public debates, like the political correctness mass hysteria on campuses, and the way people take to social media to campaign for their candidates, it is clear that the people have left the traditional way of acting around elections in the dust. The establishment media tried to ignore and obscure the rise of Bernie Sanders with every weapon in their formidable arsenal. It didn't work. The Sanders campaign worked around it quite successfully. Donald Trump has done the same. So the media is now having a field day feeding panic into the hearts of liberals and into the hearts of beleaguered white people who live in suburbs and think immigrating predator zombies are out to get them.<br />
The establishment doesn't know what hit it. To quote Grumpy Cat: "Good."<br />
The American people are so fed up with the status quo, the entrenched corruption, the political dynasties, a mythically robust economy that only seems to succor the rich, that they are willing to vote either for a millionaire megalomaniac or a crusty old socialist. It's an interesting time to be alive.<br />
<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-82033623043028013152015-12-02T08:24:00.000-05:002015-12-02T08:26:29.192-05:00Open Unhappiness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I haven't seen a more offensive advertising since Donald Trump last opened his mouth. Mistakenly thinking that its role in society is to do good, Coca-Cola Mexico came up with a campaign to "open your heart" and "break prejudice". Which is fine. We don't listen to someone like the Pope when he exhorts us to do the same, but if Coke says it, the entire Mexican nation is sure to follow through. After all, it is a known fact that Mexicans drink far more Coke than water.<br />
In the commercial, a bunch of young white models, all behaving in slow motion, get into a hipstery looking truck, and, supremely enamored of their own munificence, arrive at an indigenous Mixe village in Oaxaca to spread their self-congratulatory, privileged joy. There, instead of bringing education, jobs, better housing, opportunities, water, curiosity, respect, understanding, equality, any sort of practical help, or simply begging humbly for forgiveness, they unload coolers filled with ice-cold Cokes and, armed with <u>plywood,</u> "build" a hideous Christmas tree made of Coca-Cola bottles that happens to look like a deformed Coke bottle and which says something like "let's keep the unity" in the Mixe language.<br />
According to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/02/coca-cola-under-fire-over-ad-showing-coke-handout-to-indigenous-people">The Guardian</a>, where you can still see the spot, there were calls to take this preposterous garbage off the internet, for the expected reasons: patronizing the Mixe people, and by extension all the indigenous cultures of Mexico, while encouraging their consumption of a drink that can only hasten their tooth decay, their diabetes, and their death.<br />
To me, this, although true, is not the biggest problem. I love Coke and will love it until it causes my untimely demise. In my case, the demonization of its sugar content falls on deaf ears.<br />
<br />
Forget about the tone-deaf impropriety of a foreign company that peddles what many people consider syrupy poison telling Mexicans how to deal with their "prejudice".<br />
Forget about the absurd appropriation of a Christmas tree by discarded product.<br />
Forget the wholesale contempt for the original religious and cultural traditions of the indigenous Mexican peoples.<br />
Forget about the imposition of Christmas, consumerism, cavities and Coca-Cola by a bunch of insufferable rich twats pretending to "give back" while they look down on the "indians".<br />
Forget, if you can, the plywood.<br />
What makes one retch is the abject cluelessness of an ad that preaches against prejudice while completely avoiding the vast majority of Mexicans, who are neither resplendent white specimens nor indigenous people.<br />
Where are the people who represent most Mexicans, not just the ones at the very top and the very bottom of society? Where's the working class? Where's that mythically expanding Mexican middle class everyone talks about? In short, where are all the other brown people?<br />
As is traditional in Mexican advertising, they don't exist. They are rarely, if ever to be found in a commercial.<br />
This ad is no different from the great majority of ads in Mexico, which, unless they are public service announcements, almost exclusively cast people who seem to have arrived recently from Scandinavia or the tonier confines of Buenos Aires. But in this case, for maximum absurdity and bitter unintended irony, it also stars, probably for the first time in the history of Mexican corporate marketing, a number of forsaken natives, and not even this fact could make the advertising agency, the casting agency, the director and the client consider representing all the rest of the actual people who drink their beverage, and who are hounded every second of their lives by the racism the ad purports to fight.<br />
People who deny that Mexican society is predicated on the most enduring, insidious racism need to be subjected to an endless loop of this ad, like Malcolm McDowell in <i>A Clockwork Orange</i>.<br />
So do the people who made it. Ad infinitum.<br />
<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-7054114820584397292015-07-20T11:14:00.001-04:002015-07-20T11:14:18.737-04:00Airbnb, Or The Limits of Advertising.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Perhaps you have seen the Airbnb ad at your local cinema where a comely young woman travels the world, staying in wonderful houses, (with pools!) surrounded by lovely people who soon become like family and take her to karaoke bars in Tokyo. Or the one about a baby peering out a window, a blatant rip-off of Terence Malick's <i>Tree of Life</i>, poetic mumbo jumbo included. Their new campaign concept is "Is Mankind?" Well, to judge from my own personal experience renting from Airbnb, the answer is "no".</div>
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<a href="http://blog.airbnb.com/">Airbnb's marketing and advertising</a> make it sound like their business proposition, in which total amateurs supplement their income by becoming innkeepers overnight is about community, sharing and humanity. And perhaps it is, in a few miraculous cases. But there is a chasm from here to Pluto between Airbnb's aspirational imagery and the reality of the business. And I think this sets both hosts and guests up for bitter disappointment. This gulf between the ads and reality reminds me of those cigarette ads from the fifties in which doctors endorsed smoking Lucky Strikes for good health.</div>
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It's all about managing expectations. People point out to me that making a buck from strangers by renting them your house is not new. Before Airbnb, people did it through Craigslist and other channels. But because there was no marketing, people were ready to expect ghouls, both as hosts and guests. Nobody expected veritable angels of mercy to descend on a property. After some back and forth to make sure nobody involved was a card-carrying psycho, you hoped for the best and braced for the worst. Airbnb provides a well-organized platform to do the same thing. However, they have also decided to brand themselves as the paragon of human kindness, and this is where expectations are squashed.</div>
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Now, I don't know about you, but for the life of me, I will never understand what people like about staying in the houses of strangers. Give me a hotel: clean, well managed, with a good mattress and decent towels, and I'm all set. You say: "oh, but it is generic, it is anonymous". Anonymous makes me horny. <a href="http://grandenchilada.blogspot.com/2007/08/i-hate-bed-and-breakfasts.html">I hate bed and breakfasts</a>. I have nothing to say to total strangers early in the morning. I don't want to use someone else's bathroom, much less have to make the bed and wash the dishes. Is this so hard to fathom? Hotels are expensive, I know. But their price includes not having to do all of the above: a fair deal, as far as I'm concerned. </div>
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The first time I rented on Airbnb, I found a very hip-looking house in Mexico City for a trip with friends. We wrote the host telling him that we wanted the house exclusively for ourselves. We were six people. He said yes. When we arrived, the house was not only falling apart, and dirty, but there were other guests staying in what were supposed to be our rooms. We ended up moving to a hotel.</div>
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The second time I rented was a three-month lease on behalf of an employee. The employee quit before his contract was over and when I asked the host to cancel the reservation, he completely ignored me. He had over $7000 in his pocket and was indifferent to my pleas to resolve the situation. I involved Airbnb, which ruled that I was responsible, and all I could do was appeal to the host, so I had to pay for the full stay. Then lo and behold, after the guest left, the host tried to shake me down for $1200, claiming damages: three burned pots that needed a vigorous massage with a Brillo pad, and similar pathetic stuff. Airbnb ruled that this was wear and tear covered by the insurance and I was not liable. I must say that Airbnb was swift and professional in getting involved. That host was a vulture.</div>
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I have since erased my profile from Airbnb. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Next time, I'm going to a HOTEL, where they know how to deal with guests because that is what they do for a living. Who needs the aggravation?</div>
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My point being: most regular people have no business in the hospitality business. They have no idea what it entails. I bet that many of the hosts for Airbnb could care less about being kind to humanity, and are just happy to make some dough. This gets exponentially complicated by the fact that they are opening their houses to total strangers - people who may be nice, or not; who may have horrid hygiene habits, or not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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I wonder if this new campaign isn't an attempt to remind people of the better angels of their nature, because Airbnb must be drowning in disputes. They posted their baby video on Facebook, a piece of schmaltz specifically crafted to elicit tears of gratitude for being alive, yet most of the comments are bitter complaints about everything: hosts, guests, the system, the reviews: human pettiness all around. This makes me suspect that Airbnb thinks it can coax people to behave themselves by waxing poetic. I'd prefer something more realistic.</div>
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It behooves Airbnb to stop the cute hipstery nonsense. Are you a cheap bastard who won't stay in a hotel? Well then, buyer beware. What you get for that is: amateurs. As for the hosts, it's not enough to put out a clean towel and call it a day. You have to be hospitable, and also not lie about the state of your place and its size. You have to be someone who enjoys making people feel at home. Otherwise, find another way to make a quick buck. Go stand on a corner, or become an Uber driver.</div>
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Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-20485681950309235392015-01-10T17:04:00.002-05:002015-01-12T11:31:49.571-05:00Suis Je Charlie Hebdo? #Je suis Charlie Hebdo; #Je ne suis Charlie Hebdo. Hashtag slogans are corny, no matter what the cause. If at first they may spark a quick burst of solidarity with the human catastrophe du jour, by the second time you see them, they are already stale.<br />
The minute #JeSuisCharlieHebdo took the internet by storm as a kneejerk protest against the despicable murders in Paris of the satirical magazine's cartoonists, staff and one Muslim policeman (#JeSuisAhmed), many pundits took to clarify that they were not Charlie Hebdo. For Charlie Hebdo's particular brand of satire is indeed mostly leaden, offensive, and unfunny. To me, unfunny is the most offensive fault of comedy, its most unforgivable sin, because it is usually tone deaf, mean spirited, and many times, deeply corrosive. Totalitarian governments have always used unfunny humor for nefarious ends. The sense of humor of the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Mao was to deride, stereotype and dehumanize people. Often, they did this through caricature. Totalitarians don't tend to have a funny sense of humor. They have vitriol, which is not funny. They can viciously deride others but tolerate no jokes about themselves. So it is with fundamentalist islamists. They are totalitarians: they abide no dissent. Punishment means death.<br />
Those who are now bravely stating that they are not Charlie Hebdo complain about the offensive nature of the magazine's cartoons, about the fact that they cross a line, are racist, are a part of the mainstream media (this apparently is some sort of sin, even though it is an independent magazine with a modest circulation), and aim to offend the most downtrodden sector of French society, in this case, poor, unassimilated, discriminated Muslims who are there as a result of French colonialism. According to those who are not Charlie, the sin of Charlie Hebdo's brand of humor is that it is exclusionary, racist, and hateful. This may be true, but it is no reason to die for.<br />
The difference between Charlie Hebdo's heavyhanded satire and that of, say, the Nazi regime, is that the magazine felt it was involved in a fight to preserve and exercise their right to be offensive; to use, and even abuse their freedom of expression guaranteed under the law. What is permitted as free speech in France may be debatable, and perhaps in the future, open to change. The French obsession with insisting that their citizens be no different clings on to an idealistic notion of a secular republic which seems increasingly unattainable, as in reality, communities in France are not only very different but alienated from one another. These are crucial questions for how France deals with its ethnic and religious minorities. But this is also not a reason for the murder of these people.<br />
Those wounded by Charlie Hebdo's humor could resort to a number of responses, from angry letters to the editor, to legal recourse, to disseminating funny or unfunny cartoons about French liberals themselves; God knows there's plenty of comic material there. These brainwashed, ignorant idiots opted for murder.<br />
My problem with the train of thought that focuses on Charlie Hebdo's morally suspect humor is that it provides a slippery slope towards virtually blaming the victim. The French government had asked the magazine to stop publishing inflammatory drawings, the magazine had been threatened with violence before; hence, they had it coming. This is dangerous thinking because it detracts from the fact that i<u>n no universe is publishing offensive cartoons about anything a justification for murder</u>. If we become inured to the abject absurdity of killing someone for their opinions, we will cease living in a free world. We might as well welcome back the Inquisition.<br />
All those who start their harangues assuring us that of course they in no way justify the killings and then go on to blame France, the white man, colonialism, racism, and in effect, the offensive cartoons, may have a point. But they are mis-assigning blame. <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/blame-for-charlie-hebdo-murders">The blame lies squarely with islamist terrorist groups</a> that recruit the criminal and most desperate elements in Muslim communities to terrorize the world for their own political agenda. If these kind of arguments take hold, someone can arrive at the conclusion that the Jews who were shopping at that kosher market in Paris when they were taken hostage had it coming to them because Israel, and Gaza and, you know the drill. Or that the people who died in 9/11 deserved it because of America's imperialist, idiotic foreign policy. No. Nobody deserves terror.<br />
Another false moral equivalency troubles me. Some complain, rightly, that when 16 Europeans get killed everybody has a fit, but no one cares about over 200,000 Syrian dead or whatever other large number of non-white human beings are being currently traumatized elsewhere. Certainly, this is a good opportunity to remind everyone that islamic fundamentalism is killing and terrorizing far more innocent people in Africa and the Middle East than French citizens in Paris, but the comparison is uneven. The reason for the massive outpouring of shock and outrage at the Charlie Hebdo's murders stems less from us callously caring only for our our own, than from the infernal disproportion, the chilling insanity of <u>killing someone over some drawings</u>. It hits closer to home, not because we are indifferent or racist, but because most of us do not live in war ravaged countries, in hellish situations that rage on for years for which our outrage has muted into helpless despair. I do not argue with the fact that we should be equally tormented by every injustice that takes place in the world, but this brutal attack was shocking. People reacted with shock. Why are we being taken to task for our outrage?<br />
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The democratization of opinion in the internet has brought us a new kind of creature: the hectoring social media commenter. The comfort and anonymity of our screens now serve as our own personal bully pulpits. Some use their virtual soapbox to spew the vilest defamatory commentary. Racists say vicious things in forums with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. Antisemites are already claiming that the attacks in Paris were orchestrated by the Mossad. On a thread online, a commenter declared that she could bestow no sympathy to the cartoonists, but that she felt for their families. Who is she, God? What kind of senseless, asinine posture is that?<br />
Among liberals with a conscience, the fashion is to be offended by everything and to accuse everything and everybody of racism. In this cacophony of opinion, everything is equally racist. If someone decides to dress up as a geisha and they don't happen to be Japanese, that is decried as racist cultural appropriation (a particularly insidious academic term that drives me crazy). Wearing a geisha costume to a party is equivalent to saying that Blacks provoke their own deaths by not obeying the law. What happens then is that the actual meaning and manifestations of racism get watered down and equalized with irrelevant, politically correct whining.<br />
Because the persona we project publicly on the internet is who we wish to be, rather than who we really are in our innermost hearts -- flawed, prejudiced and far from saints -- online, people become moral crusaders. Apparently, on the internet people have never had a contradictory thought; prejudice has never crossed their minds. Most of us are guilty of harboring prejudices, but all we hear online is a chorus of insufferable self-righteousness.<br />
I am not Charlie Hebdo because there are wittier, less toxic ways to champion freedom of thought, belief and expression. But I am Charlie Hebdo because I should not live in fear of a violent death for expressing my opinions, offensive as they might be to anyone.<br />
<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-18860827829705665042014-11-08T17:50:00.000-05:002014-11-08T17:50:04.911-05:00Catcalls and Harassment: The Mexican Version<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by the great Nacho López.</td></tr>
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Ever since I saw <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A">that video of a humorless woman</a> who walked the streets of New York for 10 hours and endured plenty of catcalls, I have been wanting to add my two cents to this outrage du jour.<br />
Well, here goes:<br />
I grew up in Mexico City. What she went through is Emily Post's version of chivalry compared to the kind of stuff I, and every human with a vagina, goes through in Mexico. To be honest, when one comes from a Latin country this is so commonplace, so accepted, encouraged even, that I was shocked, SHOCKED, when I read that people were calling this gringo version of male attention, harassment. <u>Not that it isn't</u>, but that there are entire countries on Earth where nobody thinks it is.<br />
Of course, upon watching the video brimming with Latinos, I was not surprised.<br />
A little bit of background:<br />
In Spanish, there is a name for gallant, poetic, corny, inventive catcalls. They are called <i>piropos</i>. Examples:<br />
"It turns out that sculptures walk!"<br />
"If you lived in heaven I would die just to see you."<br />
"From what toy store did you escape, doll?"<br />
You get the idea.<br />
I died laughing at the Black guy in the video who comes up with the priceless: "I just saw a THOUSAND dollars!" He would not pass muster in Mexico.<br />
I got only a handful of piropos. Apparently, modernity is the great vulgarizer, so most of the ones I got weren't particularly creative, but they were sort of romantic, something praising one's superior beauty. Those made me smile, and sometimes even say thank you. Men who utter piropos or gallant phrases would never dream of pursuing the issue further. It's just a bon mot, and one's acknowledgement is their prize. <br />
I just found out there are internet <a href="http://www.piropos.org/">websites</a> with lists of <i>piropos</i> to aid males in their conquest of females. Americans, please don't faint.<br />
Then there are the double entendres (a skill Mexicans excel at), some of them clever and some of them vulgar, and many of them bizarrely both: "I'd like to be your blowdryer, so you could hold me by the handle." I got some of those. The really clever ones, you got to hand it to them, they make you chuckle inside; for the vulgar ones, the best response is chilly hauteur.<br />
And then I got some, usually from construction workers, or other men in the lowest economic rungs, muttered under the breath but clearly audible, which were so violently filthy that they actually made my heart pound with disgust, and made me feel violated. I don't remember exactly what they were, and I may have been young enough not to even know what the hell some of them meant, but I knew they were revolting, and had the intention to debase.<br />
And that is not counting the dirty, salivating ogling of one's legs or breasts as if the viewer had never before seen a pair. A typical Mexican female response to extremely aggressive gaping is: "Did you lose something?" I find this kind of gaze far more intimidating and disgusting than catcalling. Also, it is more cowardly.<br />
Further along the scale of objectification, how about the guys on crowded streets that deliberately bump into you just to graze your breast with the tip of their elbow? In the Mexico City subway, at rush hour on certain lines cars are segregated by gender. I was once on a very crowded bus when I felt a digit go up, way up, between my legs. That, ladies and gentlemen, is harassment.<br />
When I was about 14, I was with a big bunch of friends at a park in Mexico City, all girls, all the same age. A guy drove by, rolled down his window and exposed his erect dick at all of us. It was brutal and shocking and we all screamed and averted our eyes, but we also, if I remember correctly, started howling with laughter. I think a couple of my friends pointed at his dick and laughed and laughed. I'd like to think that was the end to that erection.<br />
So permit me if I roll my eyes at the nationwide outrage unleashed by the video (plus the added outrage when it was found that they edited out all the white guys and left only the Blacks and Latinos to represent).<br />
I don't dispute that there is something wrong about men feeling entitled to comment on any female who simply happens to be walking by. They certainly do not do that to their own kind, do they? I wish they'd try it, see what happens. But I find that when guys simply saying "good morning" elicits the kind of outrage almost fit for a sex offender, something dangerous is at play. The lack of a sense of humor is very alarming to me. It reminds me of lynch mobs.<br />
There are degrees, people. I bet if it's Hugh Jackman saying "good morning, beautiful", nobody would call it anything but charming. Women need to understand very clearly the difference between an innocuous catcall and truly abusive harassing behavior, like that of the guy in the video that walks by the woman's side for 8 minutes. If she wasn't being filmed, I bet she'd have screamed 30 seconds into it.<br />
Like porn, you should know it when you see it. When confronted with a catcall, you have three choices: best and most effective to ignore it, appreciate it if it charms you, or tell the motherfucker to shut the fuck up.<br />
As for stronger kinds of harassment as described above, it is very hard, but also very important, to do something. Scream; if safe, confront the perp, if not, report him or ask for help.<br />
"Good morning, beautiful" is okay, but all that other stuff has got to go.<br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-82640787974859294422014-09-03T09:30:00.000-04:002014-09-03T09:30:00.502-04:00From Russia With Love<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I'm very disappointed with Moscow. It was not the chaotic place I expected or what the travel guide cautioned about. Either all the crooks were on vacation or it felt very safe, very normal, like any other cosmopolitan, modern capital. To hear it from our horrid travel guide (Fodor's -- but they all suck), we were supposed to look over our shoulders at all times for pickpockets during the day and bands of marauding drunks at night. All we got was a bunch of mostly local tourists and regular folks, with the occasional drunken bum here and there; nowhere near the amount of homeless people one sees in New York. Perhaps they were on vacation too.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Bolshoi</td></tr>
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Other than giving our brains a workout with the cyrillic alphabet, Moscow was easy. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Metro">Moscow Metro</a> is the 8th wonder of the world. I want to live there. Each and every station is spotless. There is no garbage, not on the tracks, not on the platforms. I wonder if the Russians simply don't have that terrible custom of eating "on the go", or maybe they are just good citizens that don't like their city to look and smell like a dump, or maybe Putin sends them to Siberia if they litter, but whatever it is, it's working. Walking the streets of Moscow, from Red Square to far flung working class neighborhoods which were just as clean, I got angry about the cesspool of filth that is New York City. Why do we live in a giant trash can? Why don't we have good municipal cleaning? We should be ashamed of ourselves.<br />
The metro was first built by Stalin (a very evil man) for the people, and it is a marvel of public propaganda and Soviet grandeur, that actually works. Many trains are old but in working shape. You never have to wait over five minutes for a train. And the stations! Each one has a different motif, from the streamlined art deco of Mayakovskaya, to the Soviet rococo of Komsomolskaya. We actually took a ride on its circular line and got off on all the stations, just to see them. It's a great thing to do on a rainy day.<br />
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We did not interact much with the locals. Like New Yorkers, they live and let live. A couple of women heard us speaking Spanish and asked in halting English where we were from and we had fun conversations with them.<br />
The first weekend the city was deserted. If there was a war in Ukraine, you could not tell. Peace and quiet, except for the unfortunate custom of restaurants to broadcast techno music at all times. Apparently, this is a thing.<br />
Moscow is an imperial capital. It has grand wide avenues, and huge imperial and Soviet buildings. It is pretty majestic. And it seems that the gazillions made by the oligarchs as they divvied up the spoils have trickled down. The city is clean and well preserved. I imagine this was not always the case.<br />
We saw spawns of oligarchs in some places. The girls tend to wear a uniform of Louboutin high heels and flared miniskirts and lots of bling. Girls who are naturally six feet tall love to wear six inch heels to make everybody else feel like dwarfs. People who look like peasants go into the Louis Vuitton store (catty corner from a frieze of Marx, Engels and Lenin) to buy stuff for their sullen teenage daughters. For Russians, when it comes to luxury, more is more. Like a bottle of vodka that comes in its own Fabergé egg with crystal shot glasses and costs thousands of dollars. We saw that in this here humble supermarket:<br />
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We went to the Kremlin's armory museum which showcases the gowns and jewels of the Tsars.<br />
You look at the accumulation of bling and you understand why there was a revolution. Too much! And now it's like that all over again. 80 years of brutal communist rule, to go back to oligarchs. In the meantime, Stalin destroyed a huge cathedral to build the largest outdoor swimming pool the world has ever known. He basically created a new religion of communism, with the same lies and fantasies as any other religion, plus a reign of terror. Now they have rebuilt the cathedral. Apparently, underneath it there is a car wash and a dry cleaner. We looked for them, but could not find them.<br />
Highlight of the trip: Lenin's mausoleum. Lenin is still lying in state, in a somber, cool and sinister art deco mausoleum. He is embalmed. He is a redhead and had a beautiful nose. One of his hands is clenched. He looks rather pasty and shriveled, from all these years of being dead. Everybody loves Lenin (pronounced Lyenyin). There are statues, and the national library and plaques in his name. Stalin, on the other hand, is almost nowhere to be found.<br />
Russian brides take pictures in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, around the corner from Lenin's corpse. So cheerful!<br />
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What is interesting is that remnants of Soviet grandeur are proudly preserved. We went to a fabulous Soviet park that wants to resemble both Versailles and a World Expo. Besides the Museum of Cosmonauts (super fun), it has pavilions for all the Soviet republics, and things like geology and petrol. The Soviets basically replaced religious iconography with their own iconography. There are always solid, hardworking Slavs looking forward into the future with resolve, when they are not carrying sheafs of wheat. The story of the triumph of the revolution is told through magnificently executed tableaux all around the city, the communist equivalent of stained glass panels in medieval churches. It's all a crock of bull, but at least they had great artists and designers in charge. I'm sure that the more you see thick sheafs of wheat and vases laden with fruit, the more privation there was, but that is propaganda for you.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">To infinity and beyond!</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Crock of bull</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Commie kitsch</td></tr>
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The Bolshoi was on vacation, as was the opera, but September promised to bring a lot of culture back. There are a lot of theaters. We went to the Moscow version of Pere Lachaise to pay our respects to Chekhov and Prokofief. Einsenstein was also buried there, but we could not find him. Some of the tombs are inscribed with the hammer and sickle in lieu of a cross. Religion is the opium of the masses, huh?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With my main man, Anton Chekhov.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Boris Yeltsin's grave. A disaster. </td></tr>
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-42903058447747160302014-09-02T16:30:00.000-04:002014-09-02T17:35:45.502-04:00Crime and Punishment<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">To quote Chekhov, I am in mourning for my life in this homey restaurant from Hell. </td></tr>
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Hello, tovariches! Back from Moscow, which was surprisingly grand, unbelievably clean, and easy to handle. My cholesterol count must be through the roof, as I spent ten days eating Russian food. This hearty and tasty cuisine, by the way, is the reason why almost everybody on my mother's side of the family succumbed to heart disease, and where I am probably heading as well. Alas, when in Russia, how can you not have the <i>smetana*</i>?<br />
One evening, after walking enough miles for a Siberian forced march, we saw a cute little restaurant on a corner. Aromas of pasta sauce wafted from it. After all that borscht and varenikes, good old Italian pasta sounded like a swell idea. <br />
So we walk in at around 10 pm, and a very sweet, smiling waitress welcomes us. The place looks like somebody cute's living room, full of tchotchkes. There is a big table with Japanese people and a couple of other tables. It takes her a while to bring us the menus. In general, service has been slow and erratic in Moscow, but not rude. Food always arrives cold and with not much chronological order.<br />
My two companions order first, an appetizer and a main course each. She writes it down. Even though all the menus have an English translation, most waitstaff do not speak English, so like Alan Turing, they need to break the code and make sure that that which we are pointing to in a strange alphabet in the menu is the same thing we are ordering in Russian.<br />
Then it's my turn. I order the tomato basil pasta. I am told: not possible. She taps on her wristwatch. No pasta of any kind. So I order the fish, which Magnificent Arepa has ordered. No fish for me. No fowl either. No entrees. Apparently, my friends can have dinner, but I'm late to the party. While we are trying to figure out what on earth is happening, the waitress keeps running back and forth to handle the other tables and the kitchen, where I imagine, an ogre of a chef is wringing her neck for letting us in so near to closing time (11 pm).<br />
After much pantomime, we understand that she is telling me that I can only have appetizers. At this point, the universal code for dining expectations is broken. How is it possible that two people at the same table will be served dinner, but not I? In New York, the hostess would have made a face like she's smelling farts and said that the kitchen is closing in ten minutes, but this was not an option here. Here the option was: some of you will eat what you want, but not all. One of you will eat what I tell her to eat.<br />
Normally, I would not object to the only-appetizers plan, but the list of offerings was not very appealing. I ordered the herring with boiled potatoes and raw onion (like a cossack, you bet), but the rest was further down the scale of foods that hunter-gatherers in the Steppes eat. Stuff like boiled pork skins or cold vegetables. Nyet.<br />
She brings our bottle of wine and starts uncorking it, still without addressing what is to happen to me. We gesture to her that before we drink, we need to solve my dinner problem. Our facial expressions denote a growing frustration. She keeps smiling, the mousy bitch. So far, she has gently steered me away from food but has not offered alternatives. She simply does not seem to understand what is my problem. I am to have herring. Is that not enough?<br />
So, hungry, or rather quite <i>hangry</i>, I have a tiny little meltdown and I stand up and announce that we are leaving. Some sort of ado ensues and then the waitress points to the pasta carbonara and says that she can offer that. How a pasta carbonara is faster and easier than the tomato basil one is a question that will haunt me until the end of time. Because of this kind of communication glitch, one spends a good amount of time in restaurants pondering questions along the time/space continuum such as, if everything takes so long, why does it all appear at the table at once? Or, it is possible that they were making the sauce from scratch, ran out of tomatoes, or Einstein was plain wrong?<br />
Anyway, the waitress apologizes. I apologize. We drink to everyone's health. Food arrives. To the waitress' utter amazement, I exchange my hard earned pasta for the fish Magnificent Arepa ordered. By the way, Arepa ate pasta carbonara for three or four consecutive days, once both for lunch <u>and</u> dinner. They make a decent version in Russia.<br />
We finish this food, which is quite tasty, and look forward to our friend's beef Strogonoff. We wait. And we wait. And soon there is no one left in the restaurant, and the waitress is cleaning up. Then we start getting interesting cues, like the chef going out the door with a huge pyrex in hand (with which I'm convinced he will feed my friend's Strogonoff to his family and/or dog). The Strogonoff never arrives. The waitress smiles without explanation or apology until the bitter end. <br />
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*Cream: it's on everything.Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-82722014514378696732014-07-17T12:35:00.000-04:002014-07-17T13:11:43.488-04:00A Recurring Nightmare<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Deja vu all over again. Every time that a new provocation threatens to deepen the violence between Israel and the Palestinians is yet another time of anguish and despair. Why is this conflict so intractable? The reasons are many and complex.<br />
But nobody really wants to hear them, on either side. In the now hysterical echo chamber of social media, it boils down to one thing on both sides of the divide: propaganda.<br />
I don't trust that most people, regardless of their stance on the matter, can tell the difference between information and propaganda. Propaganda is manipulative, easy to digest and aims to inflame passions. Information, on the contrary, is hard work. It relies on facts. It's supposed to be objective and most importantly, it makes you think, consider, weigh, make up your mind. It's too much work, so people go with propaganda. <br />
Well, I'm sick of the propaganda <u>on both sides</u>. I'm sick of scrolling down to rivers of hatred unleashed upon Israel, the likes of which other terrible crises, indeed even worse crises, never manage to provoke. I don't hear such passionate outrage about Assad's ongoing genocide of his own people, or about the depredations of ISIS in Iraq, about the horrifying perennial conflicts in Africa, about America's drone attacks, or even about the humanitarian crisis of undocumented immigrant children right on our border. Such outpourings of virulent outrage are reserved exclusively for Israel because Israel is perceived to be the sole bully, the oppressor, the eternal aggressor in this conflict. Also, in many cases, because it allows antisemitism to come safely out of the woodwork. And please don't tell me that I perceive antisemitism because as a Jew, I am too sensitive. Antisemitism is like porn: I know it when I see it.<br />
<u>Newsflash for both Jews and non-Jews alike</u>: being critical of the policies of the State of Israel does not make you an antisemite. Many Israelis and Jews, myself included, disagree with the continued occupation and other right wing policies of the current Israeli government. We are appalled and concerned by them. That does not mean we do not support Israel. On the contrary, we are worried that they are detrimental to Israel's survival. We want a better way.<br />
Hating Israel, on the other hand, claiming that you are an anti-zionist, questioning Israel's right to exist, and spewing vitriol against Jews, that is a different story. <br />
I am equally sick of Israeli propaganda about thousands of Hamas missiles (not remotely hitting anything, yet) and how the kind Israeli army sends leaflets out to warn Palestinians, and how restrained it is. And what would you do if your neighborhood was showered with rockets every day? These spiffy memes neglect a fundamental issue: they neglect to consider the occupation. They neglect to consider that the Palestinians living under it in permanent humiliation and distress, have a right to fight it, just like Israel has a right to its self-defense.<br />
No one looks at a map. Well, here's another map: <br />
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No one cares about the geopolitics, the demographics, and the frightening political complexities of the Middle East.
People are busy posting pictures. Of fizzling flying missiles, to Israel's public relations misfortune, rarely landing on top of as yet unscathed civilians; on the other side, and far more damaging in every sense, of scores of Palestinian children killed and maimed by the Israelis. You tell me what provokes more outrage. <br />
But much worse than the propaganda are most comments. Caught between two sides of a world citizenry that, with the advent of social media, has taken it upon itself to be the bearer of bad news, defender and apologist for one cause or the other, one is at the mercy of unrestrained lunacy, bordering on idiocy, on both sides. <br />
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Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is a rapidly spreading cancer that threatens its existence. It is morally untenable. It is fraying the fabric of civilization, let alone democracy, in Israel. In my view, it has become a grave strategic error. All it has unleashed is a threat to Israel's survival as a modern nation, from the oppression of the Palestinians to the unconscionable coddling of religious Jews in the expanding settlements. If Israel continues its path towards the extreme right, it may survive as an obscurantist theocracy, but that, my fellow Jews, should be cause for alarm and our most vocal opposition. Because if that happens, it will be the end of Israel. <br />
Having said this, many people see this conflict as Israel's sole responsibility. They choose to ignore the fact that the Palestinians are also oppressed by the vested, byzantine interests of the Arab world, to whom the Palestinians are a convenient tool for directing elsewhere the frustrations of their own oppressed citizens.<br />
The only way out is to find the political will of all parties involved: of Israel, of the different Palestinian factions, of the neighboring Arab states and the rest of the Arab world, of Iran, of the US, the EU, Russia, China, etc, to sit down to serious negotiations and commit political will and economic resources to find a viable Palestinian state or some other option that ensures Israel's right to exist, preferably in peace.<br />
Good luck with that.<br />
Still, nobody, it seems to me, is thinking creatively. Part of my despair comes from realizing that Israel always falls right into Hamas's traps. I admire Israel's technological ingenuity and its human capital, but it amazes me that it has been unable to come up with a surprising, out of the box strategy against its enemies that does not entail a massive show of force, making Israel look like the worst villain the world has ever known. Think of something that will find its enemies off-guard. It can't be easy, but the predictability of the reaction is getting to be very depressing. <br />
I have no solutions, but, perhaps unlike most people screaming like banshees about the conflict, I think about them. What's more, I've seen a map, and I have lived in Israel. I am not a Pollyanna (see maps). I am well aware of how a hostile Arab world in turmoil must look like from Israel's vantage point (hint: not good). But at this point, there has to be a more intelligent way to protect and defend Israel.<br />
In the meantime, this is it. I will refrain from posting or commenting, defending or attacking, arguing and wasting my breath. If you bother with a screed for or against, don't expect an answer. I'm tuning out of this nightmare. Wake me when it's over. Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-32353139746040767952014-06-20T09:30:00.000-04:002014-06-20T09:57:13.907-04:00The Problem With PutoMexicans are up in arms at FIFA's investigation of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/jun/19/world-cup-fifa-discriminatory-chanting">discriminatory misconduct</a> by Mexican fans in Brazil, who have been heard to chant the word "puto", which means "faggot" at opposing teams. Mexicans only recently are slowly becoming aware of their own deeply ingrained prejudices, mostly thanks to the internet. We are always amazed that slurs that to us are perfectly common, such as "puto" or "blackie", are found offensive by others. "We said it in jest", or "it's a term of endearment", some of us will protest.<br />
Mexicans will say that the word "puto" in this context was not uttered in the spirit of discriminating against any gays. This is true. The Mexican fans that were so maturely and in such a sportsmanlike fashion screaming "puto" at the opposing team were not berating any particular player because of their homosexuality. In Mexico, the word "puto" has become an all-purpose insult, not necessarily aimed at gay men. Think of Alec Baldwin or Jonah Hill hurling "faggot" at the paparazzi. People choose to neglect the fact that the original intention of both "faggot" and "puto" is to denigrate homosexuals, and when used against straight men, to disparage them by accusing them of being gay. It's the worst thing you can say to a guy (in Mexico, without mentioning his mother). Even if it is directed at the straightest man on Earth, the connotation is sissy, weakling, crybaby, coward, less than a man. <br />
In Mexico, people are making outraged jokes at the whole situation. How dare FIFA, a corrupt organization with no ethical credibility, chastise Mexican fans for their innocent chanting? A jokey letter to FIFA is making the internet rounds. Written rather pathetically in bad English, it clarifies the definition of homosexual as a person who likes someone of their own gender and the definition of puto as "whoever reads this". It's funny, but that is exactly the crux of the matter: people prefer to ignore the fact that the insult, whether directed at gays or not, is inextricably linked to homophobia. And the word homophobia has in itself become a bit of an empty cliche, so let me remind you: it means fear (and loathing) of homosexuals.<br />
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Now, I use slurs (in the privacy of my own mind) and I hate unbridled political correctness, which also largely thanks to the internet, has created a climate, at least here in the US, of self-righteous censorship and mob accusations of racism and discrimination that threaten to turn everybody into either the thought police or hypersensitive whiners. Now college teachers need to warn students that there may be "offensive" passages in books dealing with the usual depredations in human history. People scream "racism" indiscriminately. Everybody is a victim. It's as if we are pretending that we are better than we are and that having prejudices is not the norm in human behavior. Newsflash: it is and we all have them. But that doesn't mean that people should not be aware that words have history, they have power, they can keep others down. The anti-discrimination Fare network, which reported this behavior to FIFA, considers "puto" a slur because it is, no matter how good humored the usage. They don't know that in Mexico people think there's little wrong with it. This is common. We liberally use slurs and then pretend they are not racist or derogatory. By the same token, but inversely, I have heard some fellow Mexicans try to avoid the use of the
word "judío" (Jew) in my presence because they think it is a horrible slur. It is not, but they resort to rather amusing euphemisms,
asking me if I am a Hebrew or an Israelite (do I look like I'm 5000
years old?). And when I say I am a Jew, they flinch because in their
minds "Jew" means someone terrible. Obviously, the more ingrained the prejudice, the deeper the lack of awareness.<br />
So let's simply turn the tables for a moment. I bet Mexican soccer fans would be delighted if their
rivals would disparage our team in the same good-natured fashion. The Mexican
team, a bunch of putos? I didn't think so.<br />
I can understand to a certain point the frustration of Mexicans with the solemn humorlessness of the correctness brigade. We are great at humor, but still lag in the awareness department. At the second decade of the 21st century, however, it is about time that we look into our dark little Mexican souls and simply acknowledge our deepest prejudices. It is the first step towards diminishing them. <br />
Something else gnaws at me. Forget about political correctness for a moment. Why is it
necessary to root for our team by insulting the others? It is bad form, vulgar and completely unnecessary. Whatever happened to our good manners? <br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-8265805201890104952014-03-05T09:29:00.000-05:002014-03-05T09:29:00.254-05:00Nationalism, Politics and FrivolityThe Oscars just blew into town, leaving nothing but <a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/oscars-postmortem-2014.html">despair</a> and <a href="http://gawker.com/who-is-adele-dazeem-and-why-did-travolta-introduce-her-1535018635">destruction </a>in their wake. Apparently, Mexico and Kenya almost went to war over the nationality of Oscar winner and classiest new star since Audrey Hepburn, Lupita Nyong'o, a daughter of Kenyan diplomats who was born in Mexico and left at the age of one. Lupita gamely <a href="http://www.thewire.com/entertainment/2014/03/lupita-nyongo-ended-kenya-and-mexicos-mini-feud-over-her-nationality/358766/">averted an international crisis</a> by saying that she is Mexican-Kenyan or Kenyan-Mexican and she loves carne asada tacos and both countries equally. <br />
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Poor Alfonso Cuarón is first lambasted for not making films in Mexico, then treated like a national hero for winning a bunch of Oscars. National pride surges to an all time high, since his cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, is also Mexican. Some Mexicans consider the Poncho-Chivo-Lupita a Mexican axis of world domination. The last time this happened was when the Three Amigos (Del Toro, Cuarón and Iñárritu) all had nominated films. <br />
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Venezuelans bent on overthrowing their abject, incompetent, irrational, yet democratically elected government, organized a campaign asking Hollywood people to mention Venezuela's plight in their Oscar speeches. Apparently, Best Supporting Actor Jared Leto got the memo and mentioned, among other things, Venezuela, Ukraine, his mom, AIDS, etc. A lot of people liked his speech. I was not that impressed. <br />
People who win Oscars are suddenly foisted upon a soapbox in front of a billion people, but they are still in a circus called Hollywood, not in the circus called the United Nations. Increasingly, I think they should stick to thanking their agents and costars and directors and moms. If they want to do something for world peace, they should do as Angelina Jolie and actually work it. <br />
I know many Venezuelan friends will disagree with me on this one, but asking people who have nothing to do with that country to give it a political shout out at an entertainment ceremony is absurd. Why Venezuela and not Syria, where things are far more dire? Why not some war torn country in Africa? What makes Venezuela so special? The request is both disproportionate and inappropriate, as was the Venezuelan government's response delusional in the way that only ideologically perverse regimes can muster: they banned the Oscars. <i>Reductio ad absurdum</i> on both sides of the divide. <br />
People have been trying to call the world's attention to sundry plights
at the Oscars since Vanessa Redgrave lashed out against Zionism and
Marlon Brando sent a Native American to retrieve his award. Except in very few instances when the issues are relevant to the films, broadcasting them from the winners' perch is misguided and frequently embarrassing.<br />
And even when relevant, as in the case of <i>12 Years A Slave</i>, it was rather jarring for Steve McQueen to mention that almost 30 million people are still slaves today, then jump around the stage like an overgrown schoolboy with his coveted Oscar. There is a tonal conflict at work. The possibility for gravitas is almost nil.<br />
Bringing serious issues to the most frivolous event in the universe belittles and cheapens those issues. Unless the winners happen to be intelligent, articulate and self-possessed enough for impromptu eloquence, they all look like pompous asses trying to be something they're not when using their thirty seconds for some cause or another. Lupita Nyong'o did more against racism and for women with her poise and her refreshing lack of ego than any bombastic speechifying ever has. Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-82910646265665747852014-01-27T11:11:00.000-05:002014-01-27T11:15:11.604-05:00La noche que conocí a José Emilio PachecoLa noche que lo conocí, hace ya varios años, una noche rara en la que José Emilio Pacheco aceptó salir a tomarse un trago al Bar Nuevo León con algunos amigos literarios, le comenté que una de mis tesinas universitarias fue sobre los <i>Cuatro Cuartetos</i> de T.S. Eliot. Me dijo que llevaba unos catorce años de su vida traduciéndolos y generosamente ofreció regalarme los que ya había terminado, algo que cumplió unos días más tarde, y que yo atesoro, en su versión de copia engargolada, hasta el día de hoy.<br />
Al parecer, José Emilio Pacheco no solía salir mucho de su casa. Esa noche, estábamos cenando y conversando tranquilamente. La cantina estaba casi vacía. De repente, en una mesa del fondo donde bebían dos señores con pinta, quizás, de burócratas, uno de ellos tomó el servilletero, de esos de metal que parecen cajas fuertes, y se lo estampó a su amigo en la cabeza.<br />
Creo que nos percatamos porque solamente oímos un <i>crack</i> y al voltear, vimos a un hombre de cuya frente chorreaban borbotones de sangre; una cantidad de sangre exagerada. El atacado permaneció sentadito, calladito en su silla y su amigo también. Si se quejó, no lo oímos. Si no mal recuerdo, el amigo hasta le pidió perdón. No hubo gritos, ni una vulgar pelea. Un mesero impasible acudió al socorro del agredido y un garrotero se dispuso a limpiar el charco y la pared estrellada de sangre con un trapo. <br />
Lo insólito, además de que fue la noche insólita en la que Jose Emilio finalmente aceptó salir de su casa, es que fue como ver una película muda, de violencia tristemente cómica y trágicamente sangrienta, algo que solamente México es capaz de producir.<br />
José Emilio estaba bastante impactado, me imagino pensando que estos despliegues bizarros de machismo alcoholizado eran de rutina en este lugar. Creo que le juramos y perjuramos que no era así. Fue una escena totalmente surrealista, y yo pensé, qué extraña suerte tenemos todos, incluyendo a José Emilio: peleas en cantinas hay de sobra, pero estas cosas sólo pasan en presencia de un poeta. Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-59005287677257269352014-01-23T13:02:00.002-05:002014-01-23T13:07:17.301-05:00What's It All About? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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What could have possibly stir up the long dormant ranting of the Grande Enchilada? Governor Christie's Bridgegate? That spawn of Satan, Assad, massacring his own people in Syria? Vladimir Putin (every day)?<br />
All of the above, of course, but what got my goat yesterday was something infuriating enough, but far less tragic.<br />
First, some background. I have seen a couple of those Broadway musicals (yes, this is today's incendiary topic) that are supposed to be about young, hip people being bohemians, all rebellious rock & roll. Apparently, nobody involved ever notices that the words "young and hip" and the words "Broadway musical" are, for the most part, mutually exclusive. If you are truly hip, then you are nowhere near a Broadway musical. And to judge from the audiences, the same goes for "young".<br />
With the exception of <i>Hair</i> in its day, which has some pretty nice music and some disturbing war stuff going on, I hold this to be truth to be self-evident.<br />
The first one of these youth-centered musicals I saw was <i>Rent</i>, which is supposed to be <i>La Boheme</i> transposed to the now defunct starving artists of the East Village (currently to be found gentrifying the far edges of Bushwick, or getting free housing in Detroit). Every single thing about that show was neither hip nor authentic, nor really bohemian, and the music was a saccharine travesty of rock. Then I saw<i> Spring Awakening</i>, of which I remember nothing but a bunch of intolerable young people, choreographed to act rebellious, climbing on walls.<br />
I must alert you, I hate young people. In particular in America, they are fed on a steady pablum of personal reinforcement and cheerful, if delusional empowerment that leads them to believe they can actually do anything they set their minds to. This is not always bad (think Lena Dunham, or Mark Zuckerberg, or your precocious genius du jour), but it seems to breed an overconfidence in their own talent that we are supposed to forgive in lieu of its youthful exuberance.<br />
Which brings me to the case in point.<br />
Kyle Riabko, an enterprising young talent, decided to bestow the genius of Burt Bacharach on the people of his generation. This, on paper, is an awesome idea. God knows his generation needs to learn a thing or two about crafting spectacularly melodic, original, unforgettable songs. His show, called <i>What's It All About. Bacharach: Reimagined</i>, is where the concept went south.<br />
I grew up with Burt Bacharach (he was huge in Mexico). Just reading the titles of the songs in the playbill brought their melodies instantly to my mind. "I Say A Little Prayer", "Do You Know The Way To San Jose", "Walk On By", "I'll Never Fall In Love Again", "Raindrops Keep Falling<i> </i>On My<i> </i>Head"<i>.</i>.. etc. I was intrigued by several glowing reviews that claimed that the sparse
arrangements (no Dionne Warwick, no amazing brass section) brought a fresh light to Bacharach's iconic music. Sure enough, the show sheds a new light on the songs, but not always for the right reasons. <br />
If an opera singer sang "Do You Know The Way To San Jose", and eluded most of the quickfire notes that cascade in the second phrase (na na na na nana, nana nana nana nana), they would be torn apart by the audience. If they had to cheat and lower their pitch one register as they sang "Walk on By"<i>,</i> I shudder to think. As I listened to the young, not particularly spellbinding performers, I did get an epiphany about Bacharach's music. The songs bloom with notes, resembling baroque arias or complex jazz melodies. But that is because of what's missing in Riabko's arrangements: they avoid many of the notes that make the songs a challenge to sing and a beauty to listen to. Some of the arrangements sound like U2, or Coldplay, some like those ubiquitous TV commercials that think they can sell you anything with a ukulele and a xylophone. Some of them were perfectly nice. The most fortunate was a quiet group rendition of "(They Long To Be) Close To You", a song so richly gorgeous that it's pretty impossible to screw up. But with any of the more challenging melodies, my sense is that the arrangements took the easy way out, leaving the audience to mentally hum the missing music. Which is not totally criminal, if done the right way. Burt Bacharach's best songs (he wrote some treacle here and there) are so intricate, the melodies so unpredictable, that even in the hands of unseasoned, if well meaning artists, they still soar.<br />
Alas, as I watched the very young performers mug for the audience like an overgrown troupe of Mousketeers, I was reminded of the essential Noel Coward theatrical dictum: "Don't just do something, stand there". Unless you are at the opera, or a traditional Broadway musical with a dramatic libretto, you don't need to act the songs. Sing the glorious music with those crazy cool lyrics by Hal David and call it a day. The music does 75% of the work. But the cast was mimicking reading love notes, then tearing them apart, smiling maniacally, dancing halfheartedly at some stupid choreography intended to evoke youth, or in the case of the promising singer who tried her hand at a bluesy adaptation of "Don't Make Me Over", actually forcing herself to cry while looking at the floor the entire song. Honey, the tears are already in the music and the lyrics. The direction and the conception are both sophomoric and hokey.<br />
Then, as the Magnificent Arepa cannily pointed out, how can this be a show for Riabko's "generation" if the median age of the audience is 65? Or, in my case, if it feels like watching <i>Up With People</i>? Arepa was reminded of the Catholic spiritual retreats of her youth, which tried, with guitars and bonfires, to seem cool and hip. <br />
If you want to be cool and hip, you either have to be Patti Smith, or you have to play in cool and hip places, like the Mercury Lounge or the Bowery Ballroom or any cavernous hall in the boonies of Greenpoint or Gowanus. You are not hip and cool if you put on something that works too hard to be likable; that wants to behave like a Broadway show. <br />
Which is a pity, because Burt Bacharach is the coolest and the hippest, as Elvis Costello, who was in attendance, can attest to, since he has collaborated with Bacharach. Also in attendance, and sitting right next to Costello was Mike Myers, Austin Powers to you, which was bizarre and thrilling, and ultimately mortifying. I doubt that they went for the painfully fake, utterly unhip, youthful exuberance shtick. <br />
This show could have promise if it were stripped entirely of its annoying
theatrical pretense, and packaged as an intimate recital of a bunch of
amazing songs. Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-76751191118331807072014-01-14T14:46:00.001-05:002014-01-14T14:46:40.175-05:00Now Showing At a Theater Near YouIt's awards season, so if you live in a densely populated urban area, you probably still have a chance to check out <a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-10-best-and-all-rest-of-2013.html">many of the remarkable movies</a> that came out in 2013 and perhaps some notorious clunkers, included, for your reading pleasure in the link above. Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-16350573838353883302013-12-11T15:40:00.000-05:002013-12-11T15:40:22.363-05:00Now Showing At A Theater Near You• Check out many reviews of the most talked about movies this year <a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/">right here</a>.<br />
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• If you speak Spanish, you may also enjoy my take on <a href="http://revistareplicante.com/el-racismo-en-la-pantalla/">human atrocities on film</a>, a subject dear to my heart.<br />
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• And coming soon in <a href="http://grandenchiladafilmblog.blogspot.com/">I've Had It With Hollywood</a>, my annual list of the best and worst movies of 2013. Stay tuned!Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-85986105649210792552013-11-05T11:37:00.001-05:002013-11-05T11:53:29.411-05:00Mexican Coke Is It<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art by Andy Warhol, who should be rolling in his grave.</td></tr>
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Only a threat of this magnitude could rouse me from my long hibernation in the world of film reviews, dear readers. I am concerned about an extremely frightening scenario I stumbled upon <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/11/04/mexican_coke_may_stop_using_sugar_cane_to_boost_bottom_line.html">here</a>.<br />
The headline screams "Could This Be The End of Mexican Coke?"<br />
It is not the stuff the nightmares of cocaine fiends are made of. Just imagine: no more mountains of deeply adulterated, cheap and plentiful cocaine, a byproduct of the spilled blood of tens of thousands of Mexicans and of the voracious appetite for blow north of the Mexican border. That coke we don't care about. If that ends, goodbye and good riddance. <br />
We are talking about Coke with a capital C. We are talking about the end of Mexican Coca-Cola, which is the only Coca-Cola worth drinking, in my estimation. It is made with cane sugar, as opposed to high fructose corn syrup, and while it will still make you fat, diabetic, and will rot your teeth just like the other one, the difference in the experience of drinking it is enormous. Plus, as poisons go, it is the less bad of the two. <br />
As you all know, there is a difference between Coke that comes in a can (bad), a plastic bottle (worse), a two liter bottle (the pits), or the very best Coke, which comes in the classic curvaceous glass bottle, either small or medium. So it stands to reason that there is a difference if Coke is made with cane sugar or with corn syrup. You can taste it right away. Mexican Coke is less syrupy. It is less cloying. Less sweet. It is lighter, easier to drink, more refreshing. The very best Coke comes, ice cold, in a medium (probably 12 oz) glass bottle. Pour that cold Coke over a glass full of ice. Open happiness, indeed. <br />
So now that the Mexican government is following the Bloomberg approach and wants to tax soft drinks (Mexico has the greatest consumption of soft drinks in the world and alarming rates of rising obesity and diabetes), Coca-Cola Mexico is threatening to switch to high fructose corn syrup, which supposedly is cheaper than cane sugar.<br />
This is malevolent. If I were the Mexican government, I would tax them double for making it with corn syrup. If people are already going to pay an extra tax for their coke, why would they want a worse Coke? Coca Cola will win this battle, like it wins all battles, because it is all mighty. But since it claims to be a nice company about happiness, that spends so much money trying to pretend their bottled water is not destroying the Earth and that Putin is a nice guy, they should have a public relations fiasco with this bullying threat.<br />
Unfortunately, the majority of Mexicans won't give a damn if their Coke is made one way or the other. They may revolt at having to pay more for a drink they consume like water. But it is up to fineschmecking foodies like me and my indignant Facebook friends to man the barricades against this blatant attack on taste (and less bad health).<br />
<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19875034.post-33215411310877724842013-09-19T20:22:00.000-04:002013-09-19T20:22:08.431-04:00Mi Tía DoraMy beloved aunt Dora died last night. She was only 84 and full of life, so the news came as a very sad shock. I imagine she was still teaching yoga. I know she was still interested in movies and books, politics and culture. I got an email from her just a couple of weeks ago, responding to my wishes for a happy new year. <br />
I am going to miss her generous appetite for life and laughter.<br />
She was my mother's sister. They were very close. When my sisters and I were kids, every time we had an argument, which was often, my mom used to boast that she never ever argued with aunt Dora. I found this impossible to believe (how can anybody not fight?), but indeed, I never saw them argue. I now suspect Mom wasn't bluffing. She could not fathom why we were at each other's throats, while she and Dora were always the best of friends.<br />
Dora was warm, charming, funny, and delightful company. You could talk to her about any subject under the sun. Mom and her fed off each others' robust sense of humor. They invented a non-existent millionaire uncle from Australia, Uncle Wilbur, who never met us, but was going to leave us his enormous inheritance nonetheless. They made up endless puns in Yiddish, Spanish, English and French. They lovingly nicknamed their podiatrist, "Buster", in honor of Buster Keaton, since he never smiled either. They called Gregory Peck "Peckory Greg", and Tyrone Power something to do with the word for fart in Spanish. And so it went on. <br />
They were always ready to make good-natured fun of things, but they did not have a mean streak. Anita and Dora were sophisticated and salt of the earth. And Dora was always fun. She had a sunny nature.<br />
She made it a family tradition to close the Passover seder by channeling her inner mezzo-soprano at the very end refrain of Chad Gadia, the very last melody of a very long evening. She brought down the house every year. It is safe to say that her wisecracks contributed to make all our family occasions much more fun than average. And in adversity, she rallied, and let that bright sunshine of hers peep out even when she was sad. <br />
She traveled the world and was welcome everywhere. She got along with everybody. I will miss her enveloping warmth, which I think is what best describes her, a radiant, cozy, comfy, warmth. I will miss her big heart, her sonorous laughter, and the mischievous sparkle in her eyes. <br />
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<br />Grande Enchiladahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12469834745007793943noreply@blogger.com3