Author Archives: Tom Crippen

300: what it means

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The Daily Show did a segment about 300 and various jokey parallels with U.S. politics, and then the Daily Dish gathered up links to the clip and to several blog discussions of the film’s (not very strong) sense of history. 

I saw 300 a few months ago and didn’t have much of a reaction except this: its Sparta-Persia matchup seems like a dream image of how the Taliban might see the world. There’s the scrappy band of underdogs who live the hard but good life and who will fight and die before they accept comfortable submission to a debauched empire. And then there’s the debauched empire, where women don’t wear a lot of clothes and men put their tongues in each others’ ears. The empire has money and numbers on its side. The underdogs have nothing but courage and morality.
Where the parallel falls down is that the Persians are dark and from the east, the Spartans white and from the west. Apparently those factors beat anything else involved.

Milton, you’re a genius!

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I’ve mentioned my cafe buddy Milton a couple of times. He’s not dumb, but he’s usually a couple beats behind in a conversation. Worse, he doesn’t take his lag into account. He jumps in with irrelevant questions, he sums up what you’re saying and gets it wrong — things like that.

The other day we were talking about the girls who work in the cafes where we hang out; that’s a favorite topic, of course. I told him about Emily, who was greatly loved and admired before she went home to Vancouver. She worked the early morning shift, so Milton had never met her. 
Emily had a fabulous, sunny personality and greeted everyone walking thru the door like they were an old friend. The old Quebecois gents — retirees or fellows headed to work at 7 in the morning — would all call out “Abientot, Emily, au revoir” as they left, and she would give them a big wave and smile. Very sweet.
She was also very good looking, in a blond, broad-shouldered, farm-girl way. A lot of times people say “big boned” when they mean fat. Emily actually was big boned. 
I made the above points to Milton. “… when they mean fat, but she actually was big boned,” I said, winding up.
Milton:  “Oh, I know who you mean. Pam.”
Pam was a big favorite of ours, but she didn’t work the early morning shift or call out to customers as they walked in the door. Also, she was noticeably fat, not big boned. “Well, no,” I said to Milton. “Because Pam, you know, she actually was pretty overweight.”
Milton:  “Yeah. When you said ‘big boned,’ I just thought that was what you meant.”
Milton, you’re a genius!

Nonexistent political cliche

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I can’t believe no one ever thought of this:

Like a shoe store in an earthquake.
The idea: take “Waiting for the other shoe to drop,” normally used when a damaging bit of news has been released and another damaging bit is expected, and apply it to a politician who is suffering a whole series of damaging revelations. It’s typical for big scandals to go thru a phase like that, when the hits just keep on coming, headline after headline, and reporters love the shoe-drop figure of speech. But nothing about shoe stores in earthquakes; I even checked Google.

Victory

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On line at the Cafe Depot today, the woman ahead of me was talking on her cell phone so hard she couldn’t follow what was going on. When she was fumbling around for her money, and still talking, I got mad and reached over to touch her shoulder. Me: (level but stern):  “You’re taking my time. Stop talking.”

The woman was perfectly polite about it. She got her money out, and noted that she had been reaching for it, then paid and took her coffee before she started talking on the phone again.
I always feel silly after I get angry, so it touched me when Lynn, the young monarch of the Cafe Depot counter people, thanked me for saying something. The cell phone people drive the Depot staff crazy, she said, and there’s nothing they can do about it. Then, over by the milk and cream pitchers, a young fellow on staff appeared at my elbow and thanked me too. I had no idea I’d been doing the right thing! I thought I’d just got mad and lost my cool.

Trig and his awful mother

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Reactions to Sarah Palin’s decision to resign the governorship of Alaska have been a reminder of her unmatched ability to elicit strong emotions from friend and foe alike. We know some of the reasons why. It’s her evangelical Christianity and her folksy manner. It’s her small-town roots and her “new feminism.”

Yeah, if you don’t like Palin it’s because you’re a bigot. It’s not that you think being mayor of Wassilla isn’t enough to prepare someone to run the country. You just hate small towns. Come to think of it, a lot of Palin haters liked Bill Clinton just fine, and he was awfully folksy. But Palin is also ignorant and intellectually feeble, and she tries to fake her way thru difficult situations by desperately bullshitting whoever’s in range. And for her a difficult situation is a question, such as “How about that economy?” or “So why did you quit being governor?” She says nasty, untrue things about political opponents (“read terrorists their rights”) and whines whenever anybody hits back. So, of course, yeah, what we dislike about her is her “new feminism.”
Obviously, I just got triggered by a Christian Right op-ed piece. It’s by Gary Bauer, a longtime CR panjandrum, and Daniel Allott, a fellow he employs to help with the words. It got such a rise out of me because it says I despise a one-year-old kid who has Down syndrome: 

Palin gave birth to her youngest son, Trig, who has Down syndrome. Since then, mother and son have become objects of the left’s unrelenting scorn and the right’s unflinching fidelity.

Well, fuck you, Gary Bauer. You have three pieces of evidence for your claim: a reader’s diary entry at Talking Points Memo, a post at an antifundamentalist humor site (the post’s writer just quit), and a quote by a libertarian nutball at a place called the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism. The first two items weren’t directed at Trig, just at the idea that Down syndrome might be something the world needs more of (because of Palin’s comment “The world needs more Trigs”). The third item is just a libertarian being crazy: “it is crucial to reaffirm the morality of aborting a fetus diagnosed with the Down syndrome.” If you don’t like what the guy said, talk to him at the next CPAC. But leave “the left” out of it.

Trig is a reminder of our fierce ambivalence over disability. Every mention of his name is a pinprick to our conscience. Every photo of mother and son is a reminder of concepts — vulnerability, dependency and suffering — our culture no longer tolerates, as well as virtues, such as humility, dignity and self-sacrifice, it no longer extols.

The left doesn’t believe in “vulnerability, dependency and suffering.” Well, that’s a new one. Furthermore, Sarah Palin embodies “humility, dignity and self-sacrifice.” Sure. All you have to do is redefine every word involved and the idea works perfectly.
You can see that Gary Bauer is after some big game here. He thinks the medical profession and society as a whole are pressuring people to abort genetically handicapped children. I think he’s got matters the wrong way around. Raising an afflicted child is an admirable choice, but it’s not one I would force on anybody. And you’d have to force people because being born with a severe handicap — being retarded, being born without a spine — is an onerous condition, one that imposes suffering on the child and requires great sacrifice from everyone in the child’s family. Given a choice, most parents won’t have such a child.
Gary Bauer figures that’s the result of some far-reaching propaganda campaign. No, it’s just people being allowed to do what they want. Bauer doesn’t see it that way, but he sees none too clearly. Just ask him what he thinks about Sarah Palin.