Dan Riley's Blog, page 32

Punching Up/Punching Down

Is it punching down to mock Chris Christie because he's a fat guy
 or is it punching up because he's white privileged? The PC police gots to know. 
Seriously, because if they don't, who does?.
As I wrote recently The Daily Show in its last dying days of the Jon Stewart era seems to be missing more than not, but even allowing for some inevitable school’s about to be out slacking, it was still remarkable to see how badly they missed with a bit making fun of the California water crisis.  Al Madgrigal made a show of profligate water waste that had him dumping bottles of water all over New York. Half way into it, I turned to my wife and said, “This is obscene.” Then, for the first time in my TDS viewing history, I hit the fast forward button. I doubt I would’ve found the bit so offensive if I didn’t live in California...as an old professor of mine used to say nearly every class, "It all depends on whose ox is being gored." By cutting away early, I may have missed some saving grace in the end where the bit is turned around so the joke is on those wasting water rather than those needing water. If so, that would’ve made it a “punching up” joke rather than a “punching down” joke in the current lexicon, and therefore politically correct. 
So, if I, too, have a line that humor should not cross, perhaps I shouldn't be as contemptuous of the PC Police as I have been in the past. They are, after all, just doing God's work just like regular police. But PC has reared its ugly little, pinched-ass puss once again at Jerry Seinfeld for describing people looking through their cell phone contacts with all the pomposity of “a gay French king” and then ending the description with a swish of his hand. That brought the PC police out on twitter with Ferguson-level ferocity. Seinfeld coupled his reaction to the hysteria with a complaint that it’s becoming unrewarding to do comedy in front of college campuses these days because of their hypersensitivity. Jerry’s not alone on this score. A year ago Chris Rock stated the same thing in announcing he would no longer be doing gigs on campuses. In making his announcement Rock cited a personal conversation he had with the sainted George Carlin, who was among the first of the modern stand-up comedians to notice how humor-challenged college audiences of today have become. I no longer have any business on college campuses, but I can get a sense of what they’re talking about by watching Bill Maher’s HBO show. There’s hardly a week that goes by when he doesn’t have to stop in midstream and explain to those Mark Twain called the Miss Grundys how comedy works when they launch a wave of tsk…tsk…tskingat any joke that ends with a punch line aimed at non-whites, females or LGBTQRSTUVs.
Comic Colin Quinn confronted the issue head-on in a recent interview in, of all places, Salon, the Wahhabi school of American PC. In the interview Quinn said:

"And punching up, punching down! Once again, these terms were not created by humorous people. Activists are activists. They are great and a big part of American society. Humorists and activists don’t very often meld. Humorists and activists have two very different mentalities. Activists are very sincere, very positive. That’s how activists should be. Humorists are supposed to look at everything and see the bullshit in all sides. This is my opinion. We are not supposed to see 100 percent right and wrong. Everything is middle ground. Everything is hypocrisy in all people and all situations."

“Everything is hypocrisy in all people and all situations”-- in other words what we used to call the human comedy. It used to be a healthy sign when people acknowledged that like everyone else they were not above doing some pratfalls through life. There was human bonding to be found in the admission that the joke of existence is pretty much on all of us, and no one is really above it all. But now there are entire classes of people who want to claim exemption from being the object of humor because their lives have been so intolerable that laughter at their expense has become one more act of intolerance. There’s some truth to that, but if such an exemption were actually available, the folks applying for it wouldn’t only be those currently making the most publicized demand. Jews, Catholics, Evangelicals, Southerners, academics, farmers, old folks, and the lonely have all been at the butt end of countless jokes.  Are any of them any less deserving of protection than gays, women, the disabled, non-whites, the overweight, the stutterers, the slow-witted, or the foreign born? And if so, who decides that and how? What’s the metric for determining who can no longer be fodder for comedy?
The whole punching up/punching down notion arises out of the totally blinkered notion that good, socially approved comedy should only be aimed at those in positions of power and privilege. Well, that’s the best of jest of course, which is why monarchs often employed court jesters. But what happens when power and privilege is personified in a fatty like Chris Christie (as above)? Or when the anti-women’s rights governor of Texas is in a wheelchair? Or when the main proponent of “kill the gays” laws in Africa is black? 
Beyond the complexity of deciding who is entitled to a free pass and who’s not, there’s this: The quantity…and quality…of comedy that can be lost under the PC regime is staggering to contemplate. Just off the top of my head: Twain, Groucho’s encounters with Margaret Dumont (“Well, that covers a lot of ground. Say, you cover a lot of ground yourself!”), Sid Ceasar’s various foreign professors (Ludwig Von Henpecked); Dr. Strangelove’s prosthetic hand; Some Like it Hot (going trans to seduce a woman); much of Jerry Lewis; most of Lenny Bruce. And all of that pyromaniac of modern comedy, Richard Pryor (“Pryor started saying “nigger” when he began making comedy out of character sketches, inspired by the world he had been born into. ‘You cannot represent that world without using that word,’ [his biographer] says. Other commentators have offered more complicated explanations. But one should be careful not to rationalize the term, detoxify it, pat it on the head and say, Don’t worry, we know you didn’t mean to be bad. No, Pryor used it partly because he liked to be bad, and to drive moralists nuts.”)
In preparation for this post, I reviewed last week’s excerpt from my new book, one of those occasional Nobby forays into humor. It’s only 900 words long, but every 200 words or so I came upon a passage that could easily land me on the ground from tasering by the PC police—a guy throws his pregnant wife from a moving vehicle (making light of spousal abuse); a father drags his 12-year old son to executive board meetings (making light of child abuse); an Indian owes his wealth to a casino (racial stereotyping); a report on brain damage is totally denigrated (blatant disregard for the suffering of others); a black man serves as assistant to a white man (perpetrating the white power structure); and an ass-fucking on HBO joke, which could be seen as a slight on gays, yet it was inspired by the famous hetero anal sex scene on Girls.

I don’t make my living as a comedian, thank Jesus, so I don’t have to torture myself over this much as a professional concern. But it concerns me as a citizen, and it concerns me as an avowed liberal. There was a line in a 1941 Russian novel, called “Cement” that went like this, “Although we’re poverty-stricken and are eating people on account of hunger, all the same we have Lenin.” Making fun of people without food is, on its face, I suppose, slightly more cruel than making fun of people without water. The official Soviet PC police cut the line out, not because of how it mocked the hungry of course, but how it mocked Lenin. They routinely censored music, art, and literature that did not uphold the ideals of the socialist state. Political correctness is no laughing matter. It is liberalism served up Soviet-style, advanced with the purest of intentions of uplifting humanity, while corroding freedom at its core.

The Great Deflategate Conspiracy (excerpt 2)

WFL. Hale Badham, Jr. looked out over the Manhattan skyline from his posh office in World Football League headquarters and realized that it was only mid-morning and already one of those days when he doubted the trouble was worth his $40 million dollar salary as League Commissioner. He’d been awakened by a call from League security at 4:30 a.m. to tell him that Washington Redneck all-pro Screamin’ Ray Ferrell had been arrested for throwing his pregnant wife out of his moving Humvee. After two hours of a non-stop round of calls with Ferrell’s lawyer, his agent, his players’ union exec, Redneck owner (and casino mogul) Hiram Littlefeather, the League’s PR department, the police department, and his own therapist, news then broke that Stanford University had released another damning report on the connection between football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy  (CTE), or as the alarmists liked to call it, brain damage. That prompted calls from all 30 of his bosses, the team owners.
It was all nothing more than butt-hurt prolog to his scheduled meeting with the president of Pax Broadcasting. The network had carried the League’s precious Sunday night package for years and its contract was coming up for renewal…Junior called Seymour “the walking, talking proctology exam”, though not to his face. Mudd was in to discuss the upcoming season schedule…in particular the first game of the year for the showcase Sunday night. He commandeered Junior’s office like he owned the place, sitting down in Junior’s favorite chair and delegating a seat on the couch for Junior. Seymour was not alone in treating Junior in such high-handed fashion. They all did…all the TV execs…the corporate sponsors…the team owners...even some of the coaches and players did, and the lowest of the low sometimes too--the reporters. That’s because most all of them had first gotten to know Junior as the privileged, pampered, pudgy boy of Hale Badham, Sr.--“Hale as in hell,” as he liked to say upon introducing himself.
[snip]
Hale Sr. thought he was doing his son a favor in dragging him off to board meetings from the age of 12 in order to pave his path to becoming CEO of Tainted and commissioner of the WFL. But he was really just making it impossible for the boy ever to enjoy a day of earned respect, self or otherwise—from self-styled self-made men like Seymour Mudd. Seymour cut right to the chase--the opening game of the season between the Minutemen and the New Jersey Yeti (mockingly referred to through the sports world as the Yets for their legendary lack of on-field success). “This game is like a Dancing With the Stars face-off between bin Laden and Carrot Top,” Seymour grumbled.  “You got the most despised team in the league versus the most dissed. The last time they met, the Minutemen were up by three touchdowns 10 minutes into the game. If that happens in this one, we’re going to lose two-thirds of our audience to some 20-year olds ass-fucking on HBO, and we’ll never get them back.”
[snip]
“What can I do? The schedule’s been announced. Tickets have already been sold. Maybe you should think about doing something about your announcing team. It didn’t help last season when Moe Shorter came out against the Second Amendment on the air. He’s a loose cannon.”
“Thirty-five pre-schoolers shot during an Easter egg hunt. All he said was we ought to get a grip on our guns.”
“Like I say, loose cannon. The League caught a lot of flack for that. I’m still getting mean tweets. I’m just suggesting a little less radicalism in the broadcast booth and maybe we don’t have to worry so much about ass fucking on HBO.”
Mudd rose and glowered down at Junior. “Moe’s in my golf foursome, Junior. He stays. But wego…the whole damn network…we’ll never give another nickel to this league if you don’t do something to fix this damn game for me.” And with that he turned and walked out, leaving Junior to roll up into a ball on his couch and emit a low, pitiful squeak.
That’s when Malcolm Olotoonji, formerly famous all pro running back, walked into the office. As Junior’s cunning executive assistant, he was not at all surprised to find his high-salaried boss curled up in the fetal position. This was often how it was after a meeting with any powerful individual, regardless of race, gender, or home of national origin. After the first two or three instances, Olotoonji got used to it, and knew that it was up to him to get his boss back in the game.  “Junior,” he said firmly, “I have the update for you on Screamin’ Ray Ferrell’s wife toss.”
“Oh, not now,” whined Junior, pulling himself up off the couch.
“I also have our preliminary spin on the Stanford CTE study.”
“Spare me,” said Junior, rising to his feet. He walked across the room to his very big window on the world. “If Pox pulls out of the Sunday package because of this stinker of a New England/New Jersey game, it’s going to cost us hundreds of millions. The owners will have my balls. My balls, Olo. Do you hear me? My balls.”
“I hear you,” Olotoonji replied. “It’s a dog of a game for sure. No doubt.”
“It is a dog,” said Junior, addressing the unhearing masses outside his window. “It is a junkyard dog.” Then he slowly turned to face his loyal aide, renown in his playing days for never dropping a handoff, and asked, “Is there no one to rid me of this dog of a game?”

Advanced copies of The Great Deflategate Conspiracy: A Farce of Our Times available now here.

Available at Amazon in both paperback and Kindle versions, June 16.

Available elsewhere July 4. 

The Great Deflategate Conspiracy (an excerpt)

The Great Deflategate Conspriracy: A Farce of our Times is a novelette scheduled for publication on June 23, 2015. (Which happens to be the day Tom Brady meets with Roger Goodell to appeal his four game suspension. Coincidence? We think not.). On that date, the little blockbuster will be available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iTunes and wherever else fine books are sold. As a special treat for our loyal readers, The Nobby Works will offer two free excerpts. Below is the first. (If there are football fans on your Father's Day gift list, consider your shopping done.) 

Fat Balls. In the runway to the locker room, Grady Thompson passed the Deflator and the Inflator, two team staffers assigned to equipment management. They had earned their respective and unusual nicknames because one was grossly overweight and the other was pathetically underweight and they were both always adjusting their diets accordingly. The Inflator was specifically in charge of football inventory, behind the scenes making sure there was a plentiful supply of balls in good playing condition during practices and games. The Deflator was more hands-on, scuffing up the balls and gauging their internal pressure to suit the rigorous standard of his boss, the Golden Boy. The Deflator had come to his position by birth. His Daddy, once known as The Needle, had prepared footballs for some of the great names in the game—Otto Graham, Roger Staubach, Elvis Grbac. At the moment Grady walked by them, they were checking their MyPlate apps on their cell phones to see what brand of bacon had the most calories. The Deflator was getting married in a few months and the Inflator was to be his best man. Neither of them was looking at all spiffy in his tux, so they were on a mission to get into their best tux-wearing weight. But they couldn’t let Grady know any of that. Around the Minutemen, the inflexible rule was: Do your goddamn job. So the Deflator quickly looked up at Grady, tapped on his phone and said, “Checking on the weather for you, GT.”

“Winds out of the northeast,” the Inflator added.

Grady nodded knowingly. He’d already printed out a detailed weather forecast for himself during breakfast.

When they saw Grady head into the Quarterback’s Room, they turned back to MyPlate. “See, man! What I tell you?” exclaimed the Inflator. “Kirkland Signature Fully Cooked Bacon, 80 calories for two slices; Farmer John Classic Premium Cut, 100 calories.”

“Crazy shit,” argued Deflator. “You think they raising fat-free pigs down on those farms. Fat’s to a pig what air pressure is to a football. It’s their identity. You can’t mess with it.”

Just then they both looked up to see Malcolm Olotoonji walking past.

“Uh-oh,” said the Inflator softly.

“Trouble,” the Deflator replied. “Someone best ought tell Coach. He hates that dude coming around.”

Minutemen coach Lyle Lessinger, known throughout the football world as The Genius, was a potpourri of negative emotions…hatred, disdain, indifference, paranoia…especially when it came to the League front office. He found the League establishment largely clueless about the day-to-day requirements of getting a football team ready for competition at the highest level. That cluelessness manifested itself, he believed, in a lot of unnecessary rules and regulations that were either detrimental or utterly incidental to the performance of world-class football. He regarded the League hierarchy much the same way a field commander in war regards the brass sitting at desks back behind the lines…with barely concealed contempt.

He took two basic approaches to the rulebook. The first was to force officials to enforce every rule in order to expose the useless and annoying ones enough to have them overturned. The second was to parse the rules to the faintest shade of meaning (and damn original intent) in ways that not-so-ingenious coaches would ever think of in order to create competitive advantages for his team in specific game situations. Such was his mindset as he sat analyzing the league’s baroque rule on legal substitutions that he thought might one day be ripe for exploitation:

The Rule: An offensive player wearing the number of an ineligible pass receiver (50–79 and 90–99) is permitted to line up in the position of an eligible pass receiver (1–49 and 80–89), and an offensive player wearing the number of an eligible pass receiver is permitted to line up in the position of an ineligible pass receiver, provided that he immediately reports the change in his eligibility status to the Referee, who will inform the defensive team.

Now, Lessinger was already well known for using the first part of this rule to move, say, a big bodied, sure-handed linebacker from ineligibility to eligibility in order to catch the defense off-guard for a sneak pass into the end zone. But as far as Lessinger knew…and no one could possibly know better…no coach past or present had ever used the tactic implied in the second part by declaring an eligible receiver ineligible. If utilized in a big game, he thought, that might sew considerable confusion among an opposing defense at just the right time.

His revelry at the thought was interrupted by the appearance of his inscrutable, but indispensible top assistant Oscar Chow, affectionately known around the team complex as VP of Covert Ops. Lessinger had preceded Chow’s departure from the CIA by 15 years, but the bond they’d formed at The Company was strong. Chow had been mentored by Lessinger’s father, legendary spook Les Lessinger. It was Les who had come up with the notorious idea of trying to assassinate Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar. When that plot’s failure was revealed during a Senate investigation into illegal CIA activities in the early 70s, Les’s reputation plunged from James Bond awesomeness to Maxwell Smart silliness. The public humiliation of his beloved father had been enough to poison young Lyle’s mind against bureaucrats, politicians, and company men of all stripes forever. Chow, who had handled the operational end of the cigar gambit, was a steadfast defender of Les Lessinger’s mad genius. “Ever hear of Jose de Castillo?” he asked new recruit Lyle at their first lunch together in the CIA Commissary. “Of course not,” he said, answering his own question. “He was Castro’s personal bodyguard. Castro gave that box of booby-trapped cigars to de Castillo for his birthday. We had them right there…in Fidel’s hands…one lit match away from ridding the world of a despot. How could anyone know it would be de Castillo who would light one up and blow off his own face? Your Dad’s idea was money, kid, done in by a simple twist of fate.” That lesson would not be lost on young Lyle Lessinger who swore that he would never leave anything to fate.

TDS: The Fox Files

Having been watching Jon Stewart and The Daily Show for most all of its run, I think I'm a savvy enough viewer to say they're really calling it in now that the end of the line is in sight. I say this without a note of complaint. Stewart's earned some slack. His show over a decade and a half has done absolutely heroic work in helping the nation maintain its sanity through our dangerous flirtation with all-out looniness.  I heartily believe that before he leaves office, one of the very best things President Obama could do is present Stewart with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The Daily Show's most important work has been in its vigilant reporting on the toxic effect Fox News has had on American politics. I think it can be reasonably argued that the 30% of the voting public that is the driving force behind our most repressive, regressive, aggressive and just plain nasty recent politics can be directly traced to the ethos of Fox News. I have to believe that people of common sense, intelligence and goodwill are all capable of seeing what a cancer Fox News has been on our society. And so, though I am very sad to see the Jon Stewart Era of The Daily Show end, I am heartened that it is leaving behind a voluminous, scathing, and funny archive of what a laughing stock Fox News has been. Here is just a small sampling for readers who want a reminder of what we all owe Jon Stewart and The Daily Show or who have friends and relatives who still need to be rescued from Fox News. (Please excuse the 30 second ads that precede each clip…it's a small price to pay.)

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/lbeozd/the-special-network
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/q5tmo2/the-poor-you-know---did-you-even-try-to-research-this-
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/ucrk7y/apocalypse-cow---welfare-rancher
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/ufqeuz/race-off
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/8gpcf5/big-vladdy---semi-delusional-autocrats  http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/vzw74n/terror-on-bulls--t-mountain---family-first
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/5aozn7/bullet-points-over-benghazi
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/ev6h6r/war-on-christmas---s--t-s-getting-weird-edition---black-santa
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/wj3t4a/pay-mas---fast-food---minimum-wage

My Bob Dylan Birthday Bash

Before the party begins, let's raise the musical question: 
Has anybody ever…EVER...called this song Rainy Day Women #12 & 35?
The Bash








"The man in me will do nearly any task…"

My Mad, Mad Weekend

The Mad Men Sextet
It started Friday night when Lorna and I went off to see Mad Max Fury Road in 3-D (guilty pleasure!). It was as advertised.

"What?" you say. "How can that be? More car chases…more glamorized psychopathic killers…more people blown up, shot at and burned. How can it not be like the third day of a Thanksgiving turkey?" Here's how: 70-year old director and Mad Max visionary George Miller marinaded the turkey in 30-year old cognac, drenched it Sriracha, and set it on fire. It's definitely not your mother's leftover turkey.

And the final episode of Mad Men, which wrapped up my weekend, is not your mother's soap opera. Those who compare Mad Men to a hyped-up soap opera (and you know who you are) totally miss the point and the power of Mad Men. To be sure, I've had my own argument with the show's creator, but it's incidental to my admiration for his show, most especially its main character, Don Draper. For our American culture's entire existence, we've made heroes out of those who've hidden behind secret identities--from James Fenimore Cooper's original American hero, Natty Bumppo who went by the name of Hawkeye, to those authentic Tea Partiers in Indian disguise, to the masked Lone Ranger, to Superman and Batman hiding behind Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne respectively. Don Draper/Dick Whitman was fully within that tradition of assumed anonymity, except he showed us what kind of sex life and otherwise personal life being masked and anonymous demands of you. 

More than a mere similarity in title, Mad Max and Mad Men actually share a far more profound connection. That is to the French Existentialist view of humanity as described in Jean Paul-Sartre's play No Exit about a trio of people trapped in a room together they can't escape, and realize they've come to the end of whatever road was promised them. There's no detour. No light at the end of a tunnel. No destiny. And what's more: "hell is other people." Compare No Exit to The Suitcase, the most emblematic episode of Mad Men, or compare the scene in Mad Max (no spoiler) where Charlize Theron's Furiosa drops to her knees in the desert to the scene where Don stands alone in the middle of his empty apartment. It doesn't take a PhD in philosophy or literature to connect the dots among all three. The sense of oppressive irony that permeates No Exit colors the attempts at "happy endings" in both Mad Men and Mad Max. The survival of Don Draper as a pop icon is a sign of maturity for American culture, and surely a sign of the very un-arrested development of our long-time cultural whipping boy, television. Led by HBO's Tony Soprano, mass American audiences can now handle complex central characters such as Walter White and Don Draper. It's a sign we're growing up...in spite of ourselves.

As a send-off to a show that brought me much personal gratification, I offer the following fantasy. The main characters of Mad Men form a jazz combo and play the same smoky nightclub every night from here to eternity…sort of a No Exit musical. And here's my wish list for a play list that might actually endure an infinite number of performances (feel free to suggest your own): 

Fly Me to the Moon
The Girl from Ipanema
That's Life
Beyond the Sea
Sunny
If Dogs Run Free
Mack the Knife (Bert solo)
Scotch and Soda
Summertime
Smoky Places
Ooh, Baby Baby
New York State of Mind (featuring Peggy on piano and vocals)

Say it taint. So?

(Disclaimer: If the scandal known as Deflategate involved a team I did not have a rooting interest in, there is no way I would’ve spent as much time following it and writing about it as I have. Even if it involved a team I hated--let’s say the Lakers--I doubt I ever would’ve taken it seriously enough to become part of a torch and pitchfork mob like the one in pursuit of Tom Brady. One of the only things clear in this teapot tempest is that your degree of objectivity about it pretty much correlates-- like so much else in our ongoing culture wars--to one's tribal allegiance. And there has been some tricky shifting of allegiances within the tribes as well, indicating that sports sometimes trump politics. Progressive icon--and unabashed New Yorker-- Keith Olbermann called for the league to hand down a Cheneyesque year-long suspension of Brady, thus revealing himself to be exactly the wild-eyed hysteric conservatives always accused him of being. So, as I launch into this extended expiation of favorite son, TB12, let me be clear…if it had been Kobe Bryant at the center of all this, he couldn't count on me to write a single word in his defense…though Kobe or any other athlete similarly caught bending the rules is welcome to use what follows.)
I would have preferred that Tommy-boy had come clean about this whole matter when it broke back in January, since I believe it was well within his power to put the craziness into a context that would’ve gotten by with much of the sports world…and certainly would’ve left lying the sleeping dogs in the world beyond sports. To wit: I, Tom Brady, am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to playing football. Call me anal, but it’s what got me here. It drives me nuts to go out and play this game with balls inflated to a totally arbitrary standard. It’s as if every hitter in Major League Baseball was told he had to use a 32-ounce bat. It’s worse when whoever’s overseeing the pressure negligently allows balls into games, as has happened, that are over or under the regulated pressure. I’m sorry that I may have put undo pressure on our staff to keep the balls within a range I’m comfortable with. In doing so, I probably pushed up against NFL rules. I apologize to the league and will accept whatever penalty it deems appropriate. At the same time, I hope the league addresses the issue of ball pressure in the off-season. I’m sure other quarterbacks around the league would join me in contributing to a re-evaluation.
That’s the old Catholic boy in me, of course…a good Act of Contrition and move on. But the old Catholic boy in Tom heard some cockamamie play come in from the sidelines and rather than audible out of it, he went with it, turning a venial sin into a near mortal sin that threatens his legacy. The word "cheater" is now attached to him individually and “tainted” to the championships of his team. To all that, I say, “Whoa, Nelly!”
After the media frenzy, the exact infringement here will earn the perspective it demands. Some wizened observer of the sporting life will note that in football, holding, for instance, is against the rules and yet offensive linemen cannot survive without perfecting their holding skills, which includes hiding their elicit acts from game officials. A savvy cultural observer will note that any “cheating” Brady did here is at the level of driving 75 in a 65 mile an hour zone or inflating a $250 charitable donation to $450 on your taxes. A shrewd political observer (of which there are damn few) will explain that deflating footballs by 1 or 2 psi should not be compared by any fair and rational person to cops who rough up prisoners, bankers who defraud investors, or politicians who take bribes. As tempting and facile as it might be to draw a mosaic of such national corruption, it is superficial and supercilious.
Until the fog clears and such astute observers come down from their ivory towers to talk the nation off the ledge, let me draw upon old friend Johan Huizinga whose book Homo Ludens: A Study of Men at Playremains the definitive work on the role of game playing in human culture. Somewhat incidentally, Huizinga tells us that in the world of games, the cheater is a far more benign figure than those who stand on the sidelines draped in disdain for both the game and its players. He calls them "spoil-sports": “The spoil-sport is not the same as the false player, the cheat; for the latter pretends to be playing the game and, on the face of it, still acknowledges the magic circle. It is curious to note how much more lenient society is to the cheat than the spoil-sport. This is because the spoil-sport shatters the play world itself.”
Deflategate has attracted an inordinate number of spoil-sports--gadflies from the arenas of journalism, politics, religion, entertainment, etc.—who not only don’t know much about the sport they now have very definite opinions on, but don’t care about the sport…and actually may hate it. Their contributions to the entire discussion, fully outfitted in all the ignorance of the outsider, have been painful to endure. Personally, I have more respect for the opinions of the most rabid Jets fans who pass judgment on Brady from the depths of their Patriot-hating hearts. That’s because, as Huizinga says, we all--Jets fans, Pats fans, Colts fans, etc.—respect what Huizinga calls the magic circle. And every one of us knows--as Jon Stewart admitted in his own scathing Brady takedown--in our heart of hearts our respective takes on Deflategate are a tribal, rather a moral prerogative.  
And speaking of morality, Huizinga further writes:

To our way of thinking, cheating as a means of winning a game robs the action of its play character and spoils it altogether, because for us the essence of play is that the rules be kept—that it be fair play. Archaic culture, however, gives the lie to our moral judgment in this respect, as also does the spirit of popular lore. In the fable of the hare and hedgehog the beau role is reserved for the false player, who wins by fraud. Many of the heroes of mythology win by trickery or help from without. Pelops bribes the character of Oenomaus to put wax pins into the axels. Jason and Theseus come through their tests successfully, thanks to Medea and Ariadne. Gunther owes his victory to Siegfried. The Kauravas in the Mahābhārata win by cheating at dice. Freya double-crosses Wotan, granting the victory to the Langobards. The Ases of Eddic mythology break the oath they have sworn to the Giants. In all these instances the act of fraudulently outwitting somebody else has itself become a subject for competition, a new play-theme, as it were.

So, I think it’s safe to say that in time Brady’s legacy, like the Pelops and Ases before him, will indeed belong to the ages and not to the moral equivalency fetishists among us. Ten years from now, American culture may very well be more corrupt than it is today, but it will hardly be a result of Deflategate. The real shame lieswith those who pretend otherwise while letting the true dangers pass.

Two Weddings and No Funeral

Even with the opening of baseball season and the NFL draft, it was hard to think of anything else but marriage in April. We opened and closed the month by attending weddings on two different coasts and in between the US Supreme Court was busy hearing arguments in what everyone assures us will be the definitive case on marriage equality. The wedding ceremonies of two young family members were great, but I have my doubts that any court case will be deciding any hotly contested cultural issue anytime soon. The land is overrun with zealous Tevyes stomping on the rooftops and singing “Tradition! Tradition!” at the top of their lungs and very much off key. Only death will stop them…and then we can talk funerals.
Once again, I believe it is more helpful to view the antagonists in our national dramas in as charitable a light as possible. There are people who are against marriage equality for gays and lesbians who are no doubt motivated by hate…indeed, they proclaim their hatred in their protest signs, their T-shirts, and anytime anyone puts a news mic in front of their faces. But the majority of anti-marriage equality folks are motivated by fear…the same fear that has animated forces against social progress through most of human history…Tevye's fear of losing tradition.
Tradition is tricky. It is on the one hand a totally benign thing…Dad carves the turkey at Thanksgiving…Mom gets a new hat for Easter…the President throws out the first ball to open the baseball season. On the other hand, tradition can become tiresomely, even offensively, outdated…marriages are arranged by families, women do not serve in the military, men cannot serve as flight attendants. When I was a kid, it was tradition to open the school day with a prayer, which didn’t bother me, but it clearly bothered others and rightly so. And there’s the rub: imposing our beloved and seemingly benign traditions on others turns them into acts of suppression at best and aggression at worst, ruining them for everyone.
There’s a fine line between honoring one’s traditions and succumbing to another's traditions. In regards to the tradition of grace before meals--which I object to—I follow Major League Baseball’s rules pertaining to the DH…another controversial tradition, followed in the American League, but disdained in the National League, which views it as radically untraditional. When Interleague games are played in American League parks, both teams use the DH; when it’s played in a National League Park, neither team uses it. Thus when I visit your home and you say grace before your meals, I’ll bow my head and keep my mouth shut; when you dine at my house, I’ll expect you to keep your grace to yourself.
Weddings are among the most universal of traditions…all over the world weddings are held to celebrate the official joining together of couples with public promises to each other about the future course of their relationship. Weddings themselves are festooned with traditions...from the silly “something borrowed/something blue” to the serious vow to be true through sickness and health. The tradition of asking if anyone in attendance objects to the joining together of this couple seems to be one of those traditions that’s become quite outdated and largely fallen out of use (unless I just haven’t gone to enough weddings lately). There’s a good reason for that, of course, and that’s because most everyone agrees that it would be grossly inappropriate, not to mention futile, to stand up in mid-ceremony and object to any couple’s union.  The argument against marriage-equality before the US Supreme Court right now would seem to be nothing less than a pre-emptive and prescriptive objection to all marriages a certain group of traditionalists have to any and all marriages that don’t fall within their purely traditional definition of marriage. Like the tradition of a white bridal gown signifying virginity, the tradition of only gender specific couples getting married is passing before our eyes.
Because I love music, the wedding tradition that most interests me is the wedding song…and I don’t mean “Here Comes the Bride” (which also seems to be a waning tradition). I refer to the signature song the couple chooses to feature at their wedding. As I’ve written before, the song Lorna and I chose as prelude to our marriage ceremony was Richard Fariña's rather grim, yet challenging Children of Darkness. It was 1968, war, protest and assassination were in the air, so it was not exactly a time for happy feet, and we wanted to show our acknowledgement of the times we were marrying into. 
I was positively struck by the equally tradition shattering two songs respectively highlighted at the weddings we recently attended—Bob Dylan’s Make You Feel My Loveand Bruce Springsteen’s If I Should Fall Behind. As one would expect of those writers, both songs are light on the sugar and mush. Dylan’s lyric is a musical elaboration on that line in the wedding vow about sickness and health (sample lyric: "When the rain is blowing in your face/And the whole world is on your case/I could offer you a warm embrace/To make you feel my love"). Springsteen's lyric is no less defiant against sentimentality...sample lyric “Now everyone dreams of a love lasting and true/But you and I know what this world can do”. Amidst so much willful hope and joy at a wedding, any reference to the inevitable difficulties ahead is like the proverbial skunk at the garden party. Choosing a song that acknowledges that reality is not only a sign of maturity, but an act of bravery in the face of the overwhelming romanticism of the day. 
As part of a couple nearing the half-century mark of wedded bliss, I’m often asked how  we’ve done it, in that long-term relationships such as ours have become as rare was white rhinos. I have a simple, but deeply-considered response: it’s a combination of being able to laugh at ourselves, give each other enough space to be who we are, and always let as much grounding reality into the relationship as hopeless romance. There’s not much of a tradition of uncles giving toasts at weddings, but had there been, that’s what I would have wished for Cayce and Wayne, Dan and Erin. Cheers!

Oh, Baltimore...

Nina Simone sings Randy Newman's Baltimore to scenes from The Wire
Oh, yes, I do have lots to say about what's going down in Baltimore, Maryland, these days, but none of what I have to say fits the current national conversation because that conversation is just more of the same old veil spinning we do to hide the truth from ourselves, summed up in this passage from Love's Body, which was lifted from Durckheim's Japanese Cult of Tranquility:

"The secret of victory without conflict....One must break through to the world where all things are essentially of one body".  "In the consciousness that all things are of one body the 'other' can be equated with oneself and oneself with the 'other'. "Victory without contending...how can this be achieved? It comes the moment the stage is reached when the enemy no longer sees me nor I the enemy, when heaven and earth are undivided, and light and shade are one...."

Or, to put it in other words, when cops no longer treat people on the street worse than dogs; when citizens no longer see cops as bullies with badges; when people sitting comfortably at home no longer judge demonstrators against prolonged injustice as thugs; when angry mobs no longer turn community builders and leaders into scapegoats for their grievances; when to become a "hero mom", a woman no longer has to beat up her child on TV but achieves that status for clothing, feeding, and protecting him in a world where clothing, food and protection get scarcer by the day.
--from The Washington Post
It all sounds so lofty, and it is. But that's what we're here for, aren't we? To put ourselves back together again....to heal ourselves...to hear I am you, as you are me, and we are all together not as mere pop song lyric but as a manifesto...as humanity's mission statement. Randy Newman wrote his song Baltimore 40 years ago; The Wire stopped turning out new episodes 10 years ago; Nina Simone died somewhere in between. Yet the combined artistry of those three (on display in the video above) managed not only to prophesy what's been happening in the city of Baltimore over the past two weeks, but to explain it and contextualize it. The Wire worked so brilliantly because it saw everyone as culpable…and everyone as vulnerable. Art pursues truth wherever it leads, whatever it costs, however far and lofty it seems. 

Our culture, on the other hand, is obsessed with the fissures, the things that tear us apart…finding enemies everywhere. The media chases what it calls breaking news, but what is actually broken news...fractured reality...twisted truth. And we all go along for the very rough ride.

Oh, Baltimore, indeed. Oh, us. 

Dan Houseman and Erin McCoy Get Married

Once again the copyright cops at Facebook have forced me underground with an outlaw video. I therefore claim personal privilege to post it here at The Nobby Works, even though it will be of limited interest to anyone outside of family and friends…unless of course we apply the best and broadest meaning to Love's Body…

This is my body. Mistake, or magic, or madness; or child's play. This is a house and this is a steeple--Norman O. Brown.

For Dan & Erin: