Walking blues (my search for dress shoes)

Posted on May 20, 2023 by oddmanout215

I was checking my email and noticed that images of shoes were appearing every time I opened a new file. Dress shoes, so-called. Tassel loafers, oxford bluchers, brogues. Shiny and super-square. The sort of shoes I stopped wearing around the same time I quit working at cube farms.

“Where they all comin’ from? ” Swamp Rabbit said, looking over my shoulder at the shoe advertisements on my laptop screen.

“I did this to myself,” I replied. “I did an online search for local shoe stores this week and now every company in the world that makes shoes has my address and wants me for a customer.”

I explained that my search was in preparation for a formal occasion where my running shoes wouldn’t be appropriate. And that an online search for any commodity creates a plague of related ads that infects the sites you subscribe to. (Algorithms in action.) The capitalist monster finds out where you are, then it eats you.

Why’d you do an online search?” he said. “There must be shoe stores all over Philly.”

“You’re thinking of sneaker stores, rabbit. Running shoes, if you will. The neighborhood stores that sold dress shoes are mostly out of business now. The only places that come up when you do a search are those high-end shoe stores in Center City. There are a half-dozen of them, tops.”

“What you mean by high-end?”

“Shoes that are wildly overpriced because of their brand names. Wolf & Shepherd, Allen Edmonds and so on. Some poor-schmuck salesman at some high-end store on Sansom Street showed me a pair of loafers with a $395 price tag. That’s probably close to his take-home pay for a 40-hour week.”

“Why don’t you shop at a department store, or one of them consumer dumps like Walmart or Target?” Swamp Rabbit said.

“The shoes at those places cost less, but they’re much more cheaply made, so they wear out fast. Relatively speaking, they’re overpriced, too. Inflation is a bitch. The media isn’t telling half the story.”

He scowled. “Dress shoes are a lot cheaper at Target. You just don’t want to spend any money, Odd Man.”

“You’ve got no room to talk,” I said, looking down at his shoes. “You’ve been wearing those Chuck Taylor All Star high-tops since Obama was president.”

He asked me what I would wear to the formal occasion if I couldn’t find any dress shoes that suited me. I told him I’d dug up a pair of old black running shoes to wear with my suit.

“Great plan,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t forget to polish ’em.”

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Breaking: Cooper is a mouthpiece, not a newsman

Posted on May 15, 2023 by oddmanout215

“Get a load of this pompous jerk. He ain’t even embarrassed.”

Swamp Rabbit was reacting to video of Anderson Cooper mouthing off about CNN’s May 10 town hall with Donald Trump, an event that served as a free ad for the ex-president and damaged what little is left of the network’s credibility. Cooper, a prime-time talking head, should have issued a mea culpa, but instead he defended CNN and scolded viewers who have criticized the network for helping to legitimize Trump’s current campaign for the presidency:

You have every right to be outraged today and angry and never watch this network again. But do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away?

Cooper was being disingenuous, or just stupid. Everyone knew in advance that Trump, if given the opportunity, would use this free hour of network TV time to continue lying about the 2020 election results, abortion rights groups, immigration policy, his recent sexual abuse and defamation trial, and any other issues that came up. And that the event’s so-called moderator, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, would have little or no chance to refute Trump’s lies in a live setting, in front of an audience of Trump supporters.

“Cooper’s the one who’s in the silo,” Swamp Rabbit said. “He gets paid millions to be a mouthpiece for rich right-wingers who want to steal Fox News’s audience. He gets to pretend he’s a great guy for defending his boss’s bad decisions. Nice work if you can get it.”

“You got that right,” I replied, referring him to a recent piece by Robert Reich, who mapped the money trail that leads from Cooper to Chris Licht, the right-wing CEO at CNN; to David Zaslav, Licht’s boss at Warner Bros. Discovery; to John Malone, the right-wing multibillionaire and leading shareholder at Warner Brothers Discovery who helped make possible the merger of CNN and Discovery.

“Stop, you’re giving me a headache,” Swamp Rabbit said after skimming the article.

“The whole country has a headache,” I told him, “and yes men like Anderson Cooper are helping their masters make sure the headache is permanent.”

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Deep in the heart of Texas, yahoos still rule

Posted on May 12, 2023 by oddmanout215

Just when it looked like Texas might be prioritizing clean energy over dirty, this happens:

The Texas Legislature is moving to erect barriers to clean energy development while providing incentives for fossil fuel production. This would make the task of reducing emissions much harder. And it comes even though oil and gas production has continued to grow, though not at the pace of the market’s embrace of wind and solar…

I showed Swamp Rabbit the NY Times op/ed and he said, “I don’t get it. Ain’t you the one told me Texas was a red state that was trending blue by encouraging companies to build wind and solar? Didn’t you say them varmints bowed to market pressure and made laws that allowed renewables to catch on in a big way? And that investors in wind and solar created thousands of new jobs and raised tax money to help dirt-poor counties get by?”

“They did,” I replied. “And some of the giant dirty energy companies are cashing in on the renewables trend. But a core group of rich fossil fuel hustlers and the Republican office holders who do their bidding want to hit the brakes on renewables. The yahoos down there are still in charge.”

My mangy friend looked puzzled. “”What you mean by yahoos? That’s one of them search engines, right?”

I explained to him that, in Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift invented Houyhnhnms, a race of highly civilized talking horses who guard against the incursion of ignorant, disgusting humans called yahoos. “The real-world modern equivalent of yahoos are humans who reject life-saving vaccines and ban books and love AR-15s and laugh at rape victims and cheer for Donald Trump and ignore global warming and –“

“Alright, I get it,” Swamp Rabbit said. “But what do the rich peeps got to do with it? Ain’t you confusing them with the rubes who prop up the rich by voting for little monsters like Governor Greg Abbott? It sounds like the peeps with no money are the real yahoos.”

“They’re all yahoos, you dope. Being rich doesn’t make you more humane or thoughtful or environmentally conscious. The opposite is usually true.”

I reminded him that Abbott, after a cold snap in 2021 that knocked out electric power for ten million people, tried to blame the power failure on wind turbines, when in fact it was largely the result of outages at gas and coal power plants.

“Abbott is a poster boy for yahoos all over the country,” I said. “He’s helping the rich by making sure the world is wrecked by climate change.”

Swamp Rabbit shrugged and snapped open a can of beer. “I guess he’s doing a good job of it. Seems like they love him in Texas.”

Posted in apocalypse, climate change, environmentalism, humor, mainstream media | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Carlson defenestrated? No, just fired.

Posted on April 26, 2023 by oddmanout215

“There’s that word again,” I said, pointing to the Michelle Goldberg column on my laptop screen:

The Los Angeles Times reported that Carlson was defenestrated by Rupert Murdoch himself…

“Does defenestrated mean fired?” said Swamp Rabbit, who was reading over my shoulder.

“Nowadays it does,” I replied. “But it literally means being thrown out of a window — usually a very high window.”

Goldberg and a few other columnists used the verb to describe Carlson’s removal from Fox News in the aftermath of Fox’s expensive lawsuit settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. “Defenestration” is from the Latin and is often associated with tossing government officials from tall buildings in Prague, in what is now the Czech Republic. A defenestration in the 17th century helped spark the Thirty Years War, which engulfed Central Europe.

I was in Prague years ago and imagined the mess that was made when the defenestrated guys hit the cobblestones after being launched from way up in Prague Castle. This week I imagined Carlson, who looks like a puzzled Pillsbury Doughboy, making a squishy noise when he plummeted to the concrete on the Avenue of the Americas in NYC.

Fortunately for Carlson, this is the 21st century, not the 17th. The women-hating race-baiter was shown the door, not thrown out of a window, although many Americans surely think he deserved the latter. He might be second only to Murdoch, or Donald Trump, or Father Coughlin in the 1930s, on the list of creeps most responsible for spreading fear and loathing through the media in America.

“Goldberg is optimistic,” I said. “She says Carlson’s ouster proves it’s ‘sometimes possible to shame the shameless,’ meaning Murdoch, and that justice sometimes prevails.”

“Them’s just words,” Swamp Rabbit said, shaking his head. “Like I said last week, it’s a money-and-power story. Carlson thought he was bigger than his evil boss, so Murdoch took him out. Threw him out the window, if you like.”

“Them mainstream pundits write some weird shit,” he added. “And your shit ain’t much better.”

Footnote: The word traveled fast. Don Lemon, a CNN talking head, was also fired this week. Vanity Fair called it a defenestration.

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Money talks, justice walks

Posted on April 21, 2023 by oddmanout215

CNN’s Jake Tapper laughed, and so did most others who saw the statement issued by a Fox News lawyer after Dominion Voting Systems settled its defamation suit against the network:

We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.

No admission of lying. No apology for pretending to report the news while dispensing propaganda meant to help overturn the 2020 election results. Just Fox giving the finger to the courts, the journalism profession and the public.

Swamp Rabbit shrugged. “Being a corporate scumbag means never having to say you’re sorry.”

I tried to play devil’s advocate. “They’re sorry, in a way. Having to pay out three-quarters of a billion dollars isn’t exactly a slap on the wrist. More like a massive punch in the face.”

“But it ain’t gonna slow Fox down,” Swamp Rabbit replied. “It’ll just make that pampered sissy boy Tucker Carlson and them other talking heads more careful of what they say when they ain’t on TV.”

“So where’s the justice?” I said, trying to sound serious. “Where’s the accountability that decent people everywhere were looking forward to in a trial?”

Swamp Rabbit almost choked on the beer he was guzzling. “You been watching too many movies, Odd Man. In this country, justice takes a back seat to big money. Sometimes it don’t get no seat at all.”

I couldn’t argue with that. The Murdoch family and their odious underlings at FOX remain free to make big money every year by spreading and endorsing anti-democratic lies. As Robert Reich noted in a recent post, “‘Accountability’ is just another cost of doing business.”

Clarification: I’m not forgetting that CNN and the other news media giants aren’t beacons of truth, but Fox is in a league of its own. So is our so-called justice system.

Posted in humor, mainstream media | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Hanging out with Goethe at Cherry Blossom Fest

Posted on April 18, 2023 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit looked around and said, “Where are the cherry blossoms?”

It was a good question. We’d arrived to work the 18th annual Cherry Blossom Festival, at the Horticultural Center in West Fairmount Park. There was plenty of greenery but few traces of the delicate pink blossoms that appear every spring on the rows of trees that line the pathways.

“It’s because no one can tell from year to year exactly when the bloom will happen,” I answered. “Last week, you would have been choking on cherry blossoms.”

I pointed at some kimono-clad attendees and told Swamp Rabbit that the event celebrates Japanese-American culture. He wanted to know when the tradition started, so I sought help. A scholarly looking fellow in a conical hat directed us to a statue of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), the poet, playwright, novelist, scientist and central figure in the German Romantic movement who wrote, along with many other works, The Metamorphosis of Plants.

Goethe, an old white guy, has been neglected for years in his little corner of the park. He was happy to talk and told us that cherry trees, planted here in 1926, were a gift from Japan to mark the 150th anniversary of American independence, and that additional plantings by the local Japan America Society were completed in 2007.

“Your English is decent,” Swamp Rabbit told the great polymath. “But how come you ain’t in Germany instead of this here Japan-America thing? You some kind of spy?”

“Such are the vicissitudes of life,” Goethe said, his tarnished bronze face beaming. “I miss Weimar, but I’m glad I wasn’t there in the mid-20th century. Not the most enlightened period in German history. Better to be here, watching people from different backgrounds throw a party and get along.”

Swamp Rabbit still seemed suspicious. “Pretty words, but how do you pronounce your name? And ain’t you the guy who sold hisself to the devil? Ain’t you the German Robert Johnson?”

“You’re confusing the author with his work,” I said, embarrassed for my friend. “Faust sells his soul but is ultimately redeemed because of his determined effort to transcend his imperfections. Or something like that.”

After a few hours of work, I drank matcha and ordered beer for Swamp Rabbit and Goethe. We ate sushi and watched a squad of costumed dancers perform. The sun broke through the clouds, but Swamp Rabbit predicted a long period of Sturm und Drang just up ahead.

“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart,” Goethe said, shrugging.

“More pretty words,” Swamp Rabbit replied. “You wouldn’t talk like that if you lived in my neighborhood.”

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Is the GOP fascist? Let’s consult the experts.

Posted on April 14, 2023 by oddmanout215

“Is it a good thing or a bad thing that they got their jobs back?” Swamp Rabbit said. “What did them experts at The Washington Post say?”

He was referring to the reinstatement this week of Reps. Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, the young black Democrats expelled from the Republican-dominated Tennessee House of Representatives for their roles in a public protest sparked by the recent shooting deaths of six people at a private school in Nashville.

“No experts were quoted this time,” I replied. “Not like last week.”

The headline last week regarding expulsion of the legislators was “Tennessee vote marks latest GOP move to stifle dissent, experts say.” The Post apparently tacked on “experts say” to appease right-wingers who might dispute charges that the GOP was trying to stifle dissent, and that race was a factor in the expulsion decision.

“Ain’t it obvious?” Swamp Rabbit said. “They got expelled by the white, rightwing majority because they’re black and represent parts of Tennessee that are black and liberal.”

I frowned at him. “Just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean you can say it in the news. The bigger your publication, the more you have to be careful not to piss off rightwing readers and advertisers and higher-ups. The Post is owned by the guy who runs Amazon, in case you forgot.”

“I ain’t forgot nothin’,” he said. “I’m just wonderin’ why them news peeps don’t find some other line of work if they’re too scared to report what’s really goin’ on.”

He named a bunch of major stories that the corporate media misreported or ignored — the second Iraq war, the connection between global warming and the oil industry, the ongoing corruption of Congress and the Supreme Court by lobbyists, the GOP’s use of gerrymandering, expulsion and other tricks to force their pro-gun, protofascist agenda on the country.

“What do you mean by protofascist?” I said. “Why not just say fascist?”

“That’s a tad too bold, Odd Man. Better wait till the experts weigh in.”

Posted in gun nuts, humor, mainstream media, voter suppression | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Cloud cover to blame for overcast, experts say

Posted on April 10, 2023 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit was retching on the side of the road near my shack. I had just shown him a front-page story in Washington Post that featured this headline: Tennessee vote marks latest GOP move to stifle dissent, experts say.

“Those mainstream newspeople can’t state simple facts without deflecting responsibility,” I said. “Makes you sick, doesn’t it?”

Actually, Swamp Rabbit was throwing up because he drank too much Wild Turkey the night before, but I ignored this. I was focused on the media’s deathly fear of being accused of bias.

The headline and story were about two black Democratic legislators, Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, who were expelled by their white, Republican colleagues after taking part in a protest at the state Capitol that was sparked by the shooting deaths of three children and three adults at a Nashville school. The protesters were demanding stricter gun control laws.

“It’s self-evident that the Republican-dominated legislature is stifling dissent,” I said. “It doesn’t take an expert to see that voting out those two guys amounts to a classic, fascist-style purge.”

Maybe print media should qualify all headlines, Swamp Rabbit said, citing a few possible examples: Experts blame cloud cover for overcast day. Bullet in brain indicates gun used in slaying, experts say. Experts: Famine deaths linked to food shortage.

“The mainstream media will love your idea,” I said. “Better safe than sorry, experts say.”

Footnote: We’re still a long way from the peaceful world imagined in “I’ll Take You There,” the 1972 Staple Singers hit… experts say.

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What lies beneath rock bottom?

Posted on April 7, 2023 by oddmanout215

I read to Swamp Rabbit from an op/ed in which the venerable rightwing attack dog George F. Will comments on the state of the nation:

Today’s embarrassments — Donald Trump, his prosecutorial adversaries, the tribalism on both sides — might be a foretaste of degradations proving that there is no rock bottom in U.S. politics.

Later in the piece, Will has second thoughts — “However, it is possible that this acutely embarrassing moment in U.S. history actually is rock bottom, with a bounce coming” — but not before warning us that Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg’s “jerry built” case will make Trump look like a martyr and inspire some future Republican prosecutor to make a case against Democratic officeholders.

Will thinks Republican voters, if given the chance, would decide on their own that their homegrown Mussolini is a loser and would choose a less divisive presidential candidate. He fails to note that Trump’s base is still strong and that almost all other possible Republican candidates never disavowed Dear Leader and are in fact Trump wannabes.

Swamp Rabbit stroked his wispy goatee. “So did we hit rock bottom or not? Will Trump get elected or will he get convicted? What if he gets elected and convicted?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” I said. “Will pretends that Trump is as low as the GOP can go, an anomaly, and that prosecuting him is ’embarrassing.’ But what if there are critters under the rocks who are even more toxic?”

I reminded Swamp Rabbit that on Jan. 6, 2021, a mob urged on by Trump overran the Capitol in support of his lie that the election was stolen from him. That night, 117 Republican members of the Senate and House, in solidarity with Trump, refused to certify the election of Joe Biden. All of them should have been kicked out of office for breaking the laws they were elected to uphold, but they’re still there.

“That should have been rock bottom,” I said, “but we’re in a new era. The GOP has become a subterranean army of election deniers and democracy foes, fascists in everything but name. What else would you call a party whose bright lights are goons and hypocrites like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Kevin McCarthy, Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Nikki Haley, Matt Gaetz — “

“Okay, you made your point,” Swamp Rabbit said, cutting in. “Maybe Will was right the first time. There ain’t no bottom.”

Posted in humor, mainstream media, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A pre-April Fools’ Day joke on Trump

Posted on April 1, 2023 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit: Ha-ha-ha-ha!

Odd Man Out: Alright, what’s so funny?

Swamp Rabbit: The grand jury didn’t meet on Wednesday, so Trump tweeted that “the Rogue prosecutor… is having a hard time with the Grand Jury” because he’s trying to make a case that “CAN’T BE BROUGHT.” But Trump got indicted the very next day, March 30. The D.A. faked him out. Sort of a pre-April Fools’ Day joke. You don’t think that’s funny?

Odd Man Out: Sure, but don’t laugh too loud. Trump has been a cruel, greedy hustler his whole life, but he’s always managed to slither out of legal jams. Just because he’s the first ex-president ever charged with a crime doesn’t mean he’ll get convicted. We don’t even know what the charges are yet.

Swamp Rabbit: I forgot — when there’s a ray of sunshine, you focus on the dark clouds. Lighten up. Here, have a beer.

Odd Man Out: No thanks. He should have been indicted years ago. He had sex with Stormy Daniels in 2006 and used Michael Cohen to pay her 130K to hush up about it when he ran for president in 2016. He reimbursed Cohen for the payoff. Cohen got jailed and helped investigators follow the paper trail back to Trump. And then there are all those bigger crimes! It’s 2023. What took them so long?

Swamp Rabbit: They had to fight to get Trump’s business records and evidence that he used campaign funds for the payback to Cohen, I think. They had to find other witnesses besides Cohen, a convicted felon. It ain’t easy hanging charges on an ex-president, especially one who can pay millions for defense lawyers.

Odd Man Out: Exactly. I’m just a humble scribe and you’re even more humble than I am. If it were us, we’d be rotting in some dungeon in the Great White North. But Trump still has millions of ignorant supporters, some as poor as we are. He despises them. They worship him. Republican politicians still back him. They’re just as corrupt as he is.

Swamp Rabbit: Them justice wheels turn real slow. He’s gonna be indicted for Jan. 6 and for election-law tampering in Georgia, too, but not until them investigators are sure they got the goods.

Odd Man Out: I’ll believe it when I see it. This guy is a human dumpster; 76 years old and he’s still spilling over the side with garbage. He might be in his 80s if and when he stands trial for something, What kind of justice is that?

Swamp Rabbit: Slow justice is better than no justice, I guess. You sure you don’t want a beer? How about a chill pill?

Posted in humor, mainstream media | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments