Author Archives: Zachary Klein

A HOUSE DIVIDED

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RScapNo, I’m not talking politics this week. (Is that a collective sigh of relief, I hear?) I’m talking October baseball. And how my marriage deals with it when we both have teams playing against each other.

For me the notion of a “home team” is not as clear cut as Sue’s. I grew up as a Brooklyn Dodger fan until they deserted us for the Golden State and then, with some loving prodding from my Aunt Jeanette, rooted for my old nemesis, the Yankees.DT2

Once off to school at the University of Wisconsin, other than rooting for a few different ballplayers (Bob Gibson jumps to mind), I exchanged sports for sit-ins, protests, and occasional classes.

Politics and social service were too hard to resist.

I eventually quit school before they tossed me out and enrolled in a national program called Volunteers In Service To America (VISTA). Instead of sending me to California as they’d promised, I was assigned to a storefront YWCA in Chicago. The Y was located in Uptown, one neighborhood away from Wrigley Field. While I was never able to wrap my head around the Cubs, I was drawn back into baseball and rode the train again and again to the Southside for my newly adopted White Sox.

After several years, a marriage, and a son, it was time to move on. My wife Peggy was amenable to the idea and Matthew was too young to vote. I got lucky and was hired by a social service workers collective called Project Place. More importantly, at least for this post, I became a Red Sox fan. It wasn’t hard. This is a diehard sports town, and I like to have things to believe in. It was also a team with a curse, which, given my family history and my increasingly likely divorce, I could believe in as well. It might have been these reasons or the fact that I moved to an apartment a couple blocks away from Fenway, but I started to love the Sox. It also didn’t hurt that in those days you could actually get a ticket on game day and they didn’t cost you a house.

A lot of my friends are askance when I tell them I actually root for three teams. I personally see this as a virtue; I’m someone who holds on to old friends. But I’m basically a serial monogamist. I think it’s love the one you’re with; the Red Sox are my current Number One. And having lived in Boston since the very early 70s, if I were to move again, I’m pretty sure the Sox would remain my number one.

Sue’s allegiance to her team is much more straightforward. She’s always been a Detroit Tigers’ fan and always will be. Probably has something to do with living in one place for all of your childhood and staying in state (University of Michigan) during her college years. And, as Detroit’s fortunes have, well, declined is the nicest word you could use for it, she has become even more rabid. “The city needs some good fortune,” she says. But she too has been in Boston for a real long time and has slowly warmed to the Red Sox.

Unless they play Detroit. Which is about to happen this coming Saturday night as the two teams begin their struggle for the American League Pennant.

So far Sue and I haven’t talked about the upcoming best of seven. In part because she doesn’t know her players as well as she did back in 1968. (Sue can still name that year’s entire starting line-up and pitching staff.) But this season that lack of knowledge won’t make a damn bit of difference when the teams take the field. I’m gonna hear her chant and watch her dance around the living room cheering, “Go Tigers, go Tigers,” for as long as the series lasts.

Me, well, I’m a little more hard core. I’ve followed this team’s configuration since last winter when they reworked their roster much to the derision of most baseball pundits. “Victorino for three years at 13 million? He has nothing left.”  “Jonny Gomes? Ben Cherington (the  General Manager) must be crazy.” Given his age, there was even disbelief that the Sox re-upped David Ortiz (Big Papi) for two more years. And who the hell is Mike Carp? Jeez, the Red Sox even had to make a trade for a manager to replace the nut-job who held the position last year. Truth is, most prognosticators had the Sox finishing last in their division just as they had last season when they imploded with a set of different players.

Well, the prognosticators were wrong. We finished first in our division and slashed our way through the opening round of this year’s play-offs—despite losing both our closers during the season and resurrecting a 38-year-old to fill the gap. Go figger.

Historically, sabermetricians, statistic junkies who have created new paradigms for understanding the game and a player’s worth, usually don’t rate a team’s “chemistry” very high on their list of variables. Well, I learned something this season. “Chemistry” does make a difference. These guys enjoy playing with each other and it shows. This is a team of dirt-dogs who play hard and count on each other to play hard until the last out of every game.

They’re real easy for me to like.

So tomorrow night (I’m writing this on Friday) the games begin and by the time you read this you’ll know the outcomes of the first two. And I’ll have “go tigers, go tigers,” ringing in my ear.

“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” Rogers Hornsby

WHO THEY KIDDING?

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The irony was just too much to ignore. The morning after I wrote the first draft of this post (Friday), I opened the newspaper to read that two of my friends and Mel King, a legendary Boston community organizer, had been busted for blocking yet another eviction by a greedy bank.

This gave me great pause since I’d written a scathing denunciation of our right-wing jihadists’ ability to blackmail the federal government into a shutdown. A shutdown which meant that more than 800,000 government employees have been unable to work1, 3,200 children have been locked out of Head Start, 2 and 401 national parks have been closed to the public.3

I’d even gone as far as presenting a chart that listed the number of federal employees in each of our states, noting how the congressional jihadists were hurting their own constituents. But after reading the article about my friends, I began to reconsider.

How would I have felt if the Vietnam Anti-War movement had been able to shut the government down? Truth is, I would have felt great, useful, triumphant. But then I realized this country never closes the military. Wouldn’t have then and didn’t now. Realized that shutdowns are programs that help people or build a better country. War, on the other hand, doesn’t sleep.

That’s when it struck me that the government shutdown was more than a byproduct of Tea Party activists, and the underlying philosophy of shutdown politics is not really less government as much as no government. Some of what this shutdown actually provides. A Facebook friend commented to me, “This is a war about what this country is.” I guess I’d say this is a war about what a social compact means.

One side believes that people ought take care of themselves and their families and choose on their own whether to help those in need. I have no doubt that a huge number of people on this side actually do choose to help. They adopt, give money to many different charities, feed the hungry, and live lives that are a testament to their beliefs. They also believe that government is wasteful, runs on pork, misuses their hard-earned money, and interferes with their lives. While they do acknowledge people need some government, say a military, on the social side of the ledger there is no need or place for the feds.

Actually, many progressives agree with some of these points from their own perspective. For example, who does the government really work for? They see the overwhelming support government gives to the rich and powerful, the banks and multi-national corporations, the 1% and it sickens them. And some of them, like my friends, try to shut the government down by committing acts of civil disobedience to stop ugly and unfair foreclosures.

For this side of the division, though, social compact doesn’t leave the wellbeing of others to individual decisions or buy into the notion that it’s every person for themselves. While it agrees that government wastes a huge amount of money, it relies on a federal government to provide jobs for the unemployed, food for the hungry, and yes, healthcare for our people.

That doesn’t mean those of us with the collective view of our social compact rather than the individual uber alles position think governments walk on water. There’s plenty to complain about. We don’t believe that governments have the right to follow us around, intercept our emails, mess with peoples’ personal lives (or bodies) and the list keeps rolling on.

But we do believe it’s a necessary condition to administer a social compact. Without it people would starve, bridges would crumble, and the quality of most peoples’ lives would hit the shitter.

There’s an enormous amount of problems with this government and I certainly haven’t been shy in writing about them—from institutional racism and unnecessary wars, to our governments’ lapdog ass licking to big business and the greed-heads. But unlike the other side of the divide, I’m not willing to flush it away—even with my significant doubts about potential reformation.

Because right now government does feed the hungry, does fund shelters for the homeless and battered woman, does make sure that back alley abortions are a horror of the past, and does provide educational opportunities for those who can’t get them on their own. (And I’m just naming a few. Haven’t even bothered with the really big stuff like the F.D.A, Medical Research Grants, Transportation etc.)

If the day comes when the private sector decides to do all the above and more at the scale needed, then it might be time to shut the government down. But right now it’s nothing but extortion by people who, at their best, actually imagine that more than 300 million people can go it alone. That’s not thought. That’s delusion.

THIS COLUMN IS DEDICATED TO THE LIFE OF NATHAN BRENNER, A MAN WHO TOUCHED THE HEARTS OF MANY—INCLUDING MINE.

Sources:  1. “Federal Government Begins First Shutdown in 17 Years,” Time Swampland, October 1, 2013
http://www.moveon.org/r/?r=293957&id=75833-10335568-6ytOFax&t=3

2. “Shutdown Closes 3,200 Preschoolers’ Head Start Programs,” The Wall Street Journal, October 2, 2013
http://www.moveon.org/r/?r=294108&id=75833-10335568-6ytOFax&t=4

3. “National Parks: Shutting Down America’s Best Idea,” National Geographic, October 2, 2013
http://www.moveon.org/r/?r=294089&id=75833-10335568-6ytOFax&t=5

A VIEW OF THE BRIDGE

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I was intrigued when I first read about The Bridge, adapted from a 2011 Scandinavian series of the same name. Although the drama would have been a very different one if located on the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Canada, (which was first suggested) I was pleased it was half in El Paso, Texas, and then on the other side of the bridge and border Juárez, Mexico.

The show follows two detectives—Sonya Cross (Diane Kruger) of the El Paso Police Department and Marco Ruiz (Demián Bichir), a Mexican homicide detective from Juárez—as they search for the killer of a body spanning both sides the border on the bridge.

I was especially pleased to see that when events took place in Mexico, Spanish would be used with English subtitles—something the movie Traffic pulled off with great success. Something that implies everything isn’t all white USA, all the time.

The other detail that caught my attention, though never explicitly stated, was the knowledge that critics had almost universally accepted that the U.S. detective, Sonia Cross, has Asperger’s Disorder, a condition that interferes with social interaction and non-verbal communication.

In Law & Order: Criminal Intent actor Vincent D’Onofrio played a detective that many people believed had Asperger’s, though the show or major television critics never mentioned it. So the notion that The Bridge would deal with this a bit more directly piqued my interest.

Thanks to cable’s “On Demand,” I’ve been able to binge on the first season for the past two weeks and, at first, was pretty disappointed. The plot seemed clichéd, albeit with occasionally a bit more subtlety. We discover, for example, that Marco Ruiz, the Mexican detective, slept with one of the other major characters because she returns his forgotten wallet to Sonia instead of watching them writhe around in a bed. But high ranking Mexican police officials are portrayed as completely indifferent to the multitude of missing woman in Juárez, only interested in closing the book and getting rid of the U.S. detective.

How many television shows have that one good detective up against an uncaring bureaucracy? Women as bloody victims are, in and of itself, a major cliché.  Even the oddly complicated shotgun partnership between Sonia and Marco learning to work together is something we’ve seen before. Many times.

Furthermore, at first, Sonia’s “Asperger” character was so over the top it defied belief—not that someone on the spectrum would behave as she did, but that she could have managed to become a detective. As a mitigating factor, the police chief was also her rabbi, so to speak. As time goes on, we realize that the gentle coaching he gives as supervisor and mentor is the result of some mutual history.

Perhaps, though, my biggest annoyance was what I was initially most interested in: the use of the Tex/Mex border town as the locale. Rather than allowing viewers the opportunity to actually experience and realize the changing demographics of our country, I wondered if the show permitted people to write off the socio-economics and changing demographics as limited to only where the rubber meets the road. That is, just the towns directly on each side of the line.

But I was caught up in my binge so I kept watching. And ended up very, very pleased that I did.

The second half of the season turned The Bridge around. The writers softened Sonia’s symptoms to a place where it was actually possible to imagine her as working her way up the ranks while still struggling to solve both the mystery at hand along with the mystery of human interactions. At the same time, Marco’s easygoing, but virtuous cop became more complex in the face of his imploding marriage and family. Despite a few missteps, Demián Bichir’s acting and compelling face has jumped from the screen and has been superb.

Even more importantly, for me anyway, I’ve come to see the real value in using the Tex/Mex border towns. Imagine if you will two giant funnels, each located in one country and tubed together with the other. Mexico’s funnel gives the viewer a realistic look at those who have gone through the torturous travel of crawling toward its skinny pipeline—defying dessert heat and unscrupulous bribed “transporters,” only to arrive in a town that cares nothing for their well-being. We all know the sentiments and attitudes that waft through our funnel, even though we try to block it as best we can. And woe to those who manage to squeeze through the tube. I find it passing strange that we diligently work to jail or deport people who risk everything imaginable and survive hell to simply better their lives and those of their children while, at the same time, we barely slap the wrists of those who have actually crippled our economy and the day-to-day lives of millions of our fellow citizens. Really, who are the “illegals” living here?

Bottom line: I’ve re-learned a lesson that I should have remembered. Sometimes it takes more than a show or two, or even a season or two, for an ambitious attempt at a series to find its legs. Art ain’t art with one stroke of a brush. (Unless you’re already really, really famous.)

I recently read that FX (the show’s network) has signed up for a second season of 13 episodes. If The Bridge continues its creative development and doesn’t regress into stereotypes or overly traditional plot lines, the view has the potential to be really special.

Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview – nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty. Stephen Jay Gould

 

 

SAID THE JOKER TO THE THIEF

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There is, but frankly it’s pretty unappealing. I’d rather interview the dead than be one. I hate returning to my regular Monday posts on a down note, but see no other way. It’s not that my off time was unproductive–got the major revision of TIES THAT BLIND finished and will begin the second revision after my publishing work partner re-reads the book and we review her comments. So, as far as writing goes, I’m pretty pleased. And, in fact, I had a much cheerier post planned for my return.

So why the down?

I read the newspaper every morning. And every morning I read about another fifty dead Iraqis. Another car bomb in Afghanistan. Obama ready to drone Syria—which most of Congress and even more of our population oppose. And then he catches hell from talking heads and those same opposing congressmen for agreeing to a negotiation rather than a bombing.

Ah-h-h, bombing—and they call baseball the “national pastime.” Since the Korean War we have bombed the following countries AND a city in the United States:

  • Guatemala 1954, 1960, 1967-69
  • Indonesia 1958
  • Cuba 1959-1961
  • Congo 1964
  • Laos 1964-73
  • Vietnam 1961-73
  • Cambodia 1969-70
  • Grenada 1983
  • Lebanon 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
  • Libya 1986. 2011
  • El Salvador 1980s
  • Nicaragua 1980s
  • Iran 1987
  • Panama 1989
  • Iraq 1991 (Persian Gulf War)
  • Kuwait 1991
  • Somalia 1993
  • Bosnia 1994, 1995
  • Sudan 1998
  • Afghanistan 1998, 2001-present
  • Yugoslavia 1999
  • Yemen 2002, , 2009, 2011
  • Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular basis)
  • Iraq 2003-present
  • Pakistan 2007-present
  • Somalia 2007-8, 2011

Plus:

Iran April 2003 – hit by US missiles during bombing of Iraq, killing at least one person.

Pakistan 2002-03 – bombed by US planes several times as part of combat against the Taliban and other opponents of the US occupation of Afghanistan.

China 1999 – – Its heavily bombed embassy in Belgrade is legally Chinese territory, and it appears the bombing was no accident.

France 1986 – After the French government refused the use of its air space to US warplanes headed for a bombing raid on Libya, the planes were forced to take another, longer route and, when they reached Libya they bombed so close to the French embassy that the building was damaged and all communication links were knocked out.

Philadelphia May 13, 1985 – A bomb dropped by a police helicopter burned down an entire block, some 60 homes destroyed, 11 dead, including several small children. The police, mayor’s office, and FBI were colluded  to “evict” a black organization called MOVE from one house and the effort got out of hand

(http://williamblum.org/chapters/rogue-state/united-states-bombings-of-other-countries)

Do the math. In the fifty-four years since we stopped dropping bombs in the Korean War, we spent 36 of them dropping bombs on someone else. Or, if you want to reduce the fraction, it comes down to a very disturbing super-majority of two-thirds. I thought about researching the number of civilian casualties now simply known as “collateral damage”, but frankly, I was afraid I’d throw up. And I really hate to puke.

I imagine there are people who might be able to find rationalizations for some—or even all the above. And I say go for it because it sure doesn’t look like anything is about to change. We might as well have “reasons” for slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people. We ought to have “reasons” for a military force greater than that of damn near every other country combined. Let alone, “reasons” for not spending that unconscionable amount of money on giving our kids great schooling and healthcare.

Bottom line; we’re still taking scalps.

Some of my disgust probably comes because of age. I’m getting closer and closer to “the way out of here” and the older I get, the more violence sickens me. To have my homeland be a serial killer on steroids is excruciating. I’ve been alive through all the above and shudder to think how much more “collateral damage” I’ll live through during the rest of my life.

It would be easy to simply blame politicians, generals, national security councils. Too easy. We the people allow, encourage these mass murders. And I see nothing on the horizon that gives me much hope for change. Hell, the Socialist French President was extolling the virtues of bombing Syria.

Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to live in a country where bombs rain down day after day. Or even the threat of it. I have a Palestinian friend who once told me the first word he ever learned was “bomba.” The very idea of spending every day and night literally waiting for the bomb to drop is almost unfathomable. But in a country where every car’s backfire sends people scrambling for shelter, it’s a whole different experience. Those of us who are old enough to remember “duck and cover” probably remember the apprehension that came with the drill—and that was merely practice. As tragic, frightening, and painful as 9/11 was, it doesn’t equal the slaughter and fear we’ve inflicted upon innocents throughout the past fifty-four years. So many others have awakened every morning wondering how many of their family members are still alive. Not something our own children are forced to cope with.

Although I know a lot of people who feel the way I do, I still experience myself as A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. I go about my daily life, worrying about my relatively insignificant problems, then each morning coffee get jolted back to crazy. Only it’s apparently not crazy. It’s our country and the world in which we live and this is why I felt compelled to write this post.

I am, however, pleased to be writing my Just sayin’ column again. I missed doing it and missed the comments from people I know and those I don’t. And while I do feel intensely about politics and the United States’s role in this insanity, my column will once again tackle a variety of subjects, ideas, art, entertainment–as well as more INTERVIEWS WITH THE DEAD. Just sayin’ will not be an every week political rant–but I gotta tell you, thems there some low hanging fruit.

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life-–Jane Addams

 

SLIPPING INTO DARKNESS

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Nah, it’s not depression nor loss of electricity (which would really depress me). I’m simply taking a recess, a working vacation from my Just sayin’ posts until sometime in September.

As I mentioned last week, I’m in a serious revision push with TIES THAT BLIND. I want to strap myself in so the book has a chance to be online sometime this fall, which includes the revision, copy editing and reworking the format for each type of e-book published (including the PDF version).

I don’t expect to finish everything before I turn the Just sayin’ light back on, but I sure hope I’m close. So to those who might actually miss the posts and to those who have been following them, I’ll be baaack!

In the meantime, please enjoy the first chapter of each of my books, which can be found on my web site. And, of course, if you’re so inclined it’s easy to purchase them through my site as well. But thanks again for taking your time to read and comment on my columns. I can’t say enough about how much I’ve appreciated it.

See you in September.

“God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.” Pablo Picasso