Author Archives: Zachary Klein

RECENT MUSINGS

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12

By Zachary Klein

Last week I began thinking about today’s column and knew I didn’t want to spew another tirade about the state of the country, world, or my own politics. Not that there wasn’t plenty to rage about given the past few weeks, but hell, it’s the holiday season and I didn’t want to play Grinch.

It’s that strange time of year where the holidays have put an end to the normal part of 2014 and the new year has yet to begin. So here are flashes of the flotsam and jetsam that are floating through my head.

Sony and The Interview. After all the stories and interviews with Sony executives, I began to wonder whether they hacked themselves. No way would they ever get the audience and ticket sales for that crappy movie had they gone the traditional route. Now? A lotta people are going to make a fortune. If I were North Korea and gonna hack, I would have gone after their financial passwords and bank accounts. You know they need the money.

Level playing field. If, after all the newspaper articles, television talking heads, incarceration statistics, grand juries, and the number of gunned down Black men and boys, I hear the term LPF again, I really might choke myself. Or, at the least, smash my head against a wall. There’s only so much bullshit I can tolerate and that one is used up.

Tim Burton. How can a guy who is as talented and creative as Burton turn out a snoozer like Big Eyes? Let’s hope he learns from this loser. Mr. Burton should stick to weird and crazy which he does very, very, well and stay the hell away from straight.

And speaking of movies:

Foxcatcher. I knew Steve Carell was in it before I went and, while I’ve seen The Office countless times, I didn’t recognize him playing John du Pont until a quarter of the way through. Either Carell was absolutely terrific or I’m starting to lose it. I’m going with the former—a way to feel good about both of us.

The Hobbit. How the hell many of them are there?

Tavis Smiley and David Ritz. Not a film but finished their book, Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Year and, while learning a large amount of information I hadn’t known, the most important “take away” was the regeneration of my belief and commitment to non-violence as the only meaningful agent of change. I won’t publicly “marry” non-violence in front of a congregation the way King actually did (“I take thee…”), but I’m not about to change my mind. Begin with blood, end with blood.

Holiday habits. For the first time in at least thirty years the tradition of Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with the usual assortment of suspects went south for a variety of good reasons. And will probably never be the way it was. (Yeah, I hear Streisand in my head, too). As completely legitimate as it is, and while we were a significant part of its demise because of new family constellations, I still hate it. Call me a stick in the mud.

Binge TV. If you know me you know I love television. It’s kept me company virtually my entire life. To survive my addiction, I don’t hold its programming near to the standards I do with other art forms. But now there’s a new twist thanks to “on demand” cable and Netflix. It’s possible to watch an entire series one after another until its conclusion. Or, in the case of this past week’s Marco Polo (Netflix) until the season’s end. The show? A poor man’s Rome which wasn’t at all rich. So what? I can’t fuck like a bunny anymore and I’m too fat to binge eat, drink, or smoke. So, unless we’re going out, I’m a telly camper.

Facebook. Yep. There’s an enormous amount of criticism, most incredibly well deserved. Nonetheless, I’ve met people who I honestly consider good friends through this medium and am grateful. Believe me, if I had the opportunity, I’d go drinking with all. I love the idea of “one world” and while we’re light years away from even visualizing that, FB is a small step. How else could I have connected with people from different cities, countries and race who I’ll never meet but care for any way. Yeah, it’s a strange new reality and I don’t have a clue whether it’s a good strange, but it makes me happy.

So speaking of happiness:

Matt Jacob reboot. Matt’s move to Polis Books has publically begun. Polis is reissuing the first three books of my Matt Jacob novels individually and in a set during February and publishing the new book of the series in March. Made for a hectic week of working with BoismierJohnDesign (the great people who created and maintain my website) swapping out the old covers for new and placing the first chapter of Ties That Blind on its own page. Got it done and felt pretty damn good working with both companies.

Family. Two new granddaughters at the same time! Two new additions to those I already adore and love. I plan to enjoy every moment of their lives as long as I’m around. And frankly, I’m hoping for at least twenty.

So there it is, folks. A small piece of my head and without a rant. (Well, maybe there was a mini one tucked in there.)

Happy New Year and may it bring peace to all.

“The difference between what we do, and what we are capable of doing, would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.” ~ Mohandas Gandhi

LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT

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I’ve hated that phrase since the 1960s when people who despised our demonstrations for civil rights or against the Vietnam war hurled the words at us if they were bricks.

Not so sure what I think about love it or leave it these days. I’m not even sure I like our country anymore, so maybe it really is time to pack up and get out. The work I do can be done from anywhere there’s an internet connection. And there are Internet connections in countries that more closely resemble my democratic socialist and non-violent beliefs.

Why now? Honestly, I’m finding it harder and harder to breathe when I open a newspaper and read a synopsis of what I’ll call the TORTURE REPORT, a non-partisan summation of five, count ’em, five years of study that concludes we did indeed torture people. And also concluded that little or no useful intelligence was actually gathered. Okay. We tortured. And while the very idea is horribly disgusting, I also understand we’re not the only country to use Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (a very benign and misleading use of language). And we won’t be the last. But to then have government officials who were, at one time, vocal in their opposition to torture (e.g. the present Director of the CIA and the fucking President himself) dance around the report’s conclusion of its usefulness by repeating over and over that “it’s unknowable” appalls me. Hell, my government was more honest in the mid-70s when it disclosed the findings and transcripts of the Pike and Church CIA congressional hearings.

Actually, this blind eye toward torture isn’t new. My government wrote a constitution that spells out the notion that Black men (they didn’t even bother with women of any color) were worth three-fifths of a White. So for generation after generation we encouraged and welcomed slavery. (Just another torture form). And please don’t think this was only a North versus South issue. Vast fortunes were made in New England through the slave trade.

We can go back farther if need be. We blood-let Native Americans for the simple reason we wanted their country. Again, I get it. We weren’t the first and certainly won’t be the last to steal other peoples’ land and homes. But a nation born from blood and continues that tradition through to the present, simply can not pretend that its hands are clean and claim, ”it’s unknowable.”

But the pull toward leaving isn’t solely based on our bloody history. It isn’t even based upon our current belligerent cop of the world posture and actions. It has as much to do with the attitudes and behaviors we’ve been acting on since ketchup became a vegetable.

Without romanticizing the 1960s when I first cut my ethical and political values, there were, at least, politicians who actually attempted to right wrongs. Not many, but many more than now. Even Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren voted to fully fund the Israeli military despite their very clear knowledge the funding was going to an apartheid state. What we got now is nothing and damn near nobody.

I sense a seismic shift of the underpinnings in even the great stuff my country has done. There was a time (though not without its own set of politics) when we had pride about being a country where people, not counting people of color, could actually have a chance to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” We no longer have bootstraps. We have part-time employees without living wages or benefits. Now, we want to pitch kids back to countries where death might be the kindest thing to occur. We once were proud of our roads, bridges and, at the time, perhaps the greatest infrastructure in the world. Now, that great infrastructure is crumbling and rather than address it, we give tax breaks to those who need it the least and carte blanch to corporate theft. Is it a surprise that almost 50% of our people don’t vote? Why bother? Both political parties are about feeding the rich. Thirty-three states have laws against people sleeping outdoors but don’t fund anywhere near enough shelters to house them. This is what we’ve become and I believe that those who don’t bother to vote have a gut level understanding of that. My government isn’t about them—or about me.

The cruel joke of it all is how many things I love about living here. Our arts, our literature, our music all speak to me in ways no other culture’s could. The caring and giving between people who might even be strangers. The often spontaneous celebrations or even protests that bond us, if only temporarily. The ability—if one chooses—to meet with people (whatever their politics) who, while different than me, still infuse my life with learning and growth. And of course there’s sports.

Would it be easier to be a stranger in a strange land than to be an outlier in my own? I guess I’d need to leave to find out. But let’s face it, I’m not going anywhere. Some very obvious reasons: family and friends. Not so obvious or even understandable to myself is the irrational never-ending hope that somehow, in some way, we still have time to change. That it’s potentially possible to become a land of sanity and community rather than warheads, drones, and prisons. That our culture might find its way out of our racist, economic, and military fog and into, at least, some light.

But the way I feel right now, I ain’t betting rent. Although:

It’s amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday. ~ John Guare

LATE TO AN UGLY PARTY

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By Zachary Klein

Since the 1960s (and probably before) it’s been no secret that our government spies on its own citizens. We knew that S.D.S. meetings, demonstrations, activists, and people the government distrusted have always been under systematic surveillance. Books have been written about it; friends had it proven to themselves by requesting their own dossiers after the Freedom Of Information Act was passed.

Like I said, it was no secret, but I never cared. If the government wanted to play garbologist with my life, so be it. It was their hands that got dirty. And when the Internet blossomed and people had the opportunity to chat with others far and wide, let alone visit websites that discussed everything from politics to porn, I just assumed they were being monitored. And I still didn’t care. If they wanted to watch me look at naked ladies, go for it. I’d lost any belief of the “right of privacy” a long, long time ago. I had other fish to fry and barely considered the implications of my own facile attitude.

But a week ago I saw a movie called Citizenfour, a documentary by Academy Award winner Laura Poitras. Shot in real time Poitras follows Edward Snowden leaking thousands of classified documents, primarily to Glen Greenwald, at that time a reporter and columnist for the British newspaper The Guardian. Then she followed the aftermath of the published leaks.

These leaks detailed the wholesale data interception by the N.S.A. We’re not just talking about spying upon known or suspected terrorists and their connections and associates. We’re talking about damn near everybody including prime ministers of other countries. (One example was Germany’s Andrea Merkel). And when I say everybody I mean pretty much that. Telephone companies, cable companies, Internet search engines, and any institution who gathered personal information were essentially ordered to turn everything over that they had on all of their customers or clients.

When the story first broke publicly in early June, 2013 I met it with a shrug, continuing to believe we were talking about rummaging around in people’s underwear. But at one point in the movie (and I’m going to paraphrase) someone commented that while we were calling this massive collection of information the loss of privacy, it really went much, much deeper. The enormity of this invasion of peoples’ lives actually represented the loss of freedom and liberty. A situation where the quantitative morphs into qualitative.

Well, that notion spun my head. If our own government quietly watches every person, with access to all our conversations, we are living in what ought to be described as a benign police state. A police state usually conjures images of barbed wire and machine guns and, in many countries throughout the world, that’s exactly what it is. But let’s remember what has always been true: information is power. Having virtually all information about every one of us residing in the hands of the government is more power than I’m willing to cede.

I’ve listened to the other side of the argument. “We need to be safe and secure.” “Everything changed after 9/11 and that tragedy demands heightened security—even at the loss of some liberty.” “We don’t know how many attacks have been thwarted because of the N.S.A.’s eyes and ears.” Which is true. We don’t know. But that lack of knowledge is due to our government’s ongoing refusal to provide any hard, real information.

Then there’s also the demand to show how this overwhelming amount of spying has affected anyone’s rights. Where is that slippery slope that will lead to the loss of liberty? Which organizations have been affected by the government’s knowledge about everything they do or say?

I can’t answer those questions. But the government can. And won’t—though some small glimmer occasionally shines through. Does anyone really believe that every major news organization decided on their own not to show the body-bags of our dead soldiers returning home? And that due process has been denied for every single person who has been sent to Guantanamo on the basis of information the government refuses to make public? Do we really have to wait until neighbors, relatives, or friends are arrested and detained because they had a conversation with someone who knew someone who knew someone else that attended the same church as someone who might have known a person who had possible ties to a radical organization? From where I now sit that’s way too late. That’s stick a fork in it time.

I’m sure there are people who believe that all undercover espionage on our citizenry should be eliminated. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world and the possibility does exist that dangers might be greater than some reasonable surveillance.

But the key word is reasonable and that is not what’s happening. What’s really happening is blatantly unreasonable. For our government to secretly spy on its entire population because they can and not be held accountable in any way (and please don’t throw the secret F.I.S.A. court in my face because apparently they have no accountability to anyone but themselves) is shameful for any country that calls itself an open democracy.

Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras, Glen Greenwald, and those who drew back the curtains on the N.S.A.’s illegal activities should be honored for their attempt to expose our government’s spitting in the face of liberty and freedom. Dictionary.com defines a police state as a nation in which the police, especially a secret police, summarily suppresses any social, economic, or political act that conflicts with governmental policy.

We aren’t there or that. Yet. But most of the Patriot Act and especially the N.S.A’s extraordinary hidden reach, brings us a giant step closer.

“The best people possess the…, courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice.” – Ernest Hemingway

REFLECTIONS

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by Zachary Klein

It’s been about twenty-nine years and change since I last cradled a newborn. Much has happened since—both to me personally and to the world in which I live. I’ve struggled to stay somewhat open-minded and positive in the face of personal losses and still willing to grapple with a globe that seems bent on making all the wrong choices.

But while holding each of my new grandchildren and seeing the light gleaming in Matthew and Alyssa’s eyes, my weary energy slipped away. All was right with the world.

Of course we know that last sentence is blatantly untrue. Unadulterated joy is fleeting, an experience to be savored even as it dissipates into what we know as “reality.” Still, it got me thinking about my own evolution since I had my first child (now new dad Matt) at the ripe old age of twenty-one.

Much has changed—not the least of which, me. Back then I was engaged in social service, but my ideas and attitudes were way different than they are now. I really did believe in “any means necessary” to foster change, wrote people off if their beliefs strayed too far from my own, and actually thought violence was a legitimate tool for revolution. I believed that I’d be a failure as a person and father if I weren’t willing to throw my body in front of a bullet, or use one to create a better society and life for my son.

Fast forward fifteen years when my second son Jake was born. I had my own private counseling practice and while I think the work I did helped some individuals, couples, and groups, I continued to see my ongoing hope for a different, a better world, continue to whither away. In some fashion it was worse than when Matt was born. Then, at least, I didn’t feel as alone. There were larger numbers of people who, in their own inchoate ways, shared my longings. Tough to imagine now, but when Jake was conceived I had serious reservations about bringing another child into our world.

But then, as with Matthew, those doubts dissolved in the presence of little arms, hands, legs and an uncontrollable cowlick. Without quite realizing it, the state of the sphere took a backseat to the renewed joy of fatherhood.

And by the time the “real” world returned, I had changed. Still fiercely committed to social justice, violence was no longer part of the equation. Something important had taken over my heart and I no longer imagined bloodshed as an answer to anything. Whatever “good” born out of violence was bound to encourage its lifespan. Whatever positive change might happen because of guns and bullets would eventually disintegrate through the use of those same tools.

Some might say this evolution is the result of age as mortality creeps closer. Actually, I believe that the “something” which had turned me around has been my cumulative years as a parent. Perhaps it was fear for my own and other people that I loved. Whatever it really had been was cemented when one of Jake’s closest friends who regularly spent nights at our house was murdered after I had sent him to work. Murdered trying to save his boss from a thief. A life I loved for tubes of toothpaste. Never again have I been able to see violence as a path to anything other than more violence.

And maybe just as important was a growing willingness to see people as a whole rather than any of their particular beliefs. I find I no longer tease out and judge a person solely by their political or religious ideas. I want more. I want to connect with a person’s humanity which, I’ve learned, has little or nothing to do with left, right, center or particular opinions.

I’ve written somewhat optimistically about life in previous columns but, for the most part, the posts have focused upon the positives within our culture and society. In retrospect, however, Mari and Vivian have already pointed out the big miss. Which for me means relationships. Despite all my talk about how my books are relationship driven and the manner in which those relationships impact each character, I never connected the dots. Those categorizations have to do with me and my life. Something which I had known but in some strange way forgot.

I don’t know whether the world is better or will be better for Mari and Vivian. I don’t know whether humans have the capacity to ever lay down their arms, stop their oppression of each other, lose their racism, or find a way to care for all. I surely hope so. But I do know that my wives past and present, my children and grand-kids, my relatives and friends, old and new, have enriched my soul. And that enrichment has been what’s made my life worth living.

I also have no doubt if two newborn infants can help me realize what’s been in front of my blind eyes, I’ll learn plenty more from them as they grow. So, thank you Mari and Vivian. You’ve already given me a great gift.

And to Alyssa and Matt, a Lou Reed song title says it best. You’re at…

THE BEGINNING OF A GREAT ADVENTURE.

SisterSnuggles1

A SELF DIVIDED

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10

BY

ZACHARY KLEIN

I’ve written about the Showtime program Homeland a number of times with my last comment (I think) a couple of years ago. A new season has begun and, as most of the show’s other seasons, it’s high quality and anxiety producing. Although I’ve only seen the first three episodes, the series is once again a plot driven spy versus spy versus double agents drama. And once again it has raised questions for me. In our present era when every Muslim is often seen as a potential enemy and threat, it’s complicated to look forward every week to a terrific TV series that is built around a world view I detest.

Well, I just doubled down on that conundrum. Prisoners of War (original Hebrew title being Hatufim, (which translates to “Abductees”) is the threadbare low budget Israeli show upon which Homeland is based. In fact, after Hatufim won Israel’s Academy Award For A Television Series was sold to 20th Century Fox, some of the program’s creators and cast have been directly involved with the US show. We brought the dvds home from the library and have barreled through most of Season One. Gotta say, so far it’s a much better series, focusing intently upon the two ex-prisoners of war and the effects their release after seventeen years has upon themselves, their families, and everyone in close contact. Especially the Israeli intelligence community.

No surprise I’d find Prisoners the better show. People who have read any of my Matt Jacob novels or even my Just sayin’ series Interviews With The Dead (King Richard lll, Truman Capote, Martin Luther King, Norman Mailer and more to come) know my writing is character driven. Although I’m sure there will be more spy versus spy as Prisoners progresses, fact is, the characters are already more fleshed out and complicated than those in Homeland. The truthfulness of the relationships between each of the characters and the situations in which they find themselves feels true to the bone. And more. This is a particularly smart show where the unexpected occurs at exactly the right moment with writing and acting I just love.

But here’s the rub. Prisoners of War has raised even more misgivings inside than Homeland. Anyone who knows me knows my feelings about the overwhelming abuse and injustice the Israeli government exacts upon the Palestinian people. And while Prisoners has yet to identify the kidnappers, it doesn’t take a weatherman to imagine who they were.

So here I am, once again, praising a show whose politics sicken me.

Pablo Picasso was a misogynist his entire life—using women then kicking them to the side once he was done with them. Yet it’s impossible to ignore that he was arguably the greatest artist of the twentieth century who created Guernica, the most important anti-war painting many of us have ever seen. Even Diego Rivera, whose murals closely reflect my own political point of view, was often questionable when it came to his personal life. And, of course, there’s always the Ezra Pound dilemma.

Music, theater, and literature are also overloaded with artists who created great work but I wouldn’t invite to dinner. (Actually, there are some on my list who disgust me as people, but I’d love to engage in conversation.)

Firesign Theater’s album title, How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All, only half describes my plight. I am somewhere. Stuck between my values about humanity and art I enjoy or even love, at the same time made by people who make my skin crawl. Hell, it’s hard enough to bridge the contradiction about individual artists, but when two television shows I consider art (ok TV haters, take your shots) present attitudes and behavior I abhor, that interior contradiction becomes even more difficult to transcend.

But in for a dime bag, in for a pound. Throughout my own artistic life I’ve maintained that it’s essential to separate people’s creations from the individuals themselves. I’ve always believed to not do so would lose too many important, thought-provoking, often beautiful experiences.

For all the agita these two series raise, that’s my belief and I’m sticking to it. If a creation merits consideration as art, then I’m going to view it as such—despite its content or creator. To be otherwise would undercut my convictions about freedom of speech. And just as I won’t judge a person simply by their politics or beliefs, neither will I judge creative expression only by the person who created it or the content it presents.

So how to recommend a television series that triggers serious internal conflicts? For those who don’t share my ideas about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, it’s easy. Rent or borrow Prisoners of War and enjoy great television.

For those that do share my Middle East politics, I’d say grit your teeth and, for this series, allow art to trump.

“What is life without incompatible realities?” ~ Ursula K. Le Guin