The Weekend in Foolish Attention
Bits and bytes of the week
MARCH OF DIMES SYNDROME? I never heard of this but it makes a lot of sense.
Why, last year, did the Human Rights Campaign declare a “national state of emergency” for LGBT people? Why was the election of the first black American president followed by the Black Lives Matter movement? Why have reports of “hate groups” risen during the same decades that racial prejudice has been plummeting? Why, during a long and steep decline in the incidence of sexual violence in America, did academics, federal officials, and the #MeToo movement discover a new “epidemic of sexual assault”?
These supposed crises are all examples of the March of Dimes syndrome, named after the organization founded in the 1930s to combat polio. The March helped fund the vaccines that eventually ended the polio epidemics—but not the organization, which, after polio’s eradication, changed its mission to preventing birth defects. Its leaders kept their group going by finding a new cause, just as antiwar activists did after achieving their goal of ending the Vietnam War. The Three Mile Island accident offered new fund-raising opportunities and a new platform for veterans of the antiwar movement such as Jane Fonda and her husband Tom Hayden, who both addressed the crowd at that first antinuke rally.
For career activists, success is a threat. They can never declare mission accomplished.
SPICY COFFEE. I made a meat chili last weekend for the week and used my coffee grinder to mash up some dried Arbol chilis and forgot to clean it. The next day, I ground up my coffee and made the pot. It was amazing to drink a cup with a bite of chili in the caffeine intake. Talk about the best part of waking up!
OH, THE POLLING.
91% of Americans agree that we all have the right to equal protection under the law.
90% of Americans agree that we all have the right to freedom of speech.
84% of Americans agree with freedom of religion for all.
60% of Americans agree that both Biden and Trump are too old to be president.
80% of Americans agree that elected officials don’t care what people like them think.
70% of Americans agree that ordinary people have too little influence over the decisions members of Congress make.
63% of Americans agree that most or all politicians ran for office just to make money.
85% of Americans agree that whatever made them run for office, it wasn’t to serve the public.
THE ANGEL VS THE DEVIL ON MY SHOULDERS. I had a great breakfast with an old friend who came in from Portland on Saturday last. The conversation reminded me of the nagging mandate that my brand is that of shaking things up, creating controversial art, telling stories designed to provoke. On the other hand, after so much drama in my life in the past few years, I’m genuinely enjoying non-controversy. I am pretty content being a misanthrope who works hard and comes home to write for fifty people. Living drama-free is nice.
On yet the other hand, there is a sense that the art being presented in Chicago has become sort of flabby, where the stuff of creation is satisfied to continue trumpeting the now non-edgy stories of the marginalized as if the artists imagine they are in Kentucky rather than true blue Chicago. Like Netflix and podcasting, the dominance of one sort of narrative (true crime) has made the artistic landscape different shades of the same color as if the reaction to the all male, all white stories told for so long is make the same mistake in the other direction. Mind you, this is not some sort of quest for more straight, white, man stories but one of creating art that challenges the given orthodoxy of any given moment. When art is safe and comfortable, an artistic molotov cocktail is required.
If my life trajectory is consistent, the chasm of trust issues and need for quiet won’t last for much longer. The devil will likely win the battle. If I’m focused, my cultural targets will be taken on with a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer.
If a creative is an artist without the art, then a PhD in creativity is the perfect product for an arts school that has dropped the human from the humanities. That cranks out well credentialed graduates while forgetting to teach them how to live or think or feel, only to produce. — Jessa Crispin
OOF. I was working Thursday night but I caught the Youtube of the Old Man Debate later and it wasn’t pretty. Trump, with the blood in his veins fueled by fast food and bile, in equal parts told baldfaced lies and almost looked sorry for the faltering old man next to him. Biden was small. That’s the worst—he seemed fully diminished as if the light to an afterlife was just a bit too bright in his mind’s eye.
Trump didn’t answer 95% of the questions asked but managed to look more grounded than he does in front of crowds and, gosh, I guess he’s really proud of his golf game. The debate about the golf handicaps between the two men was the saddest bit of theater on display.
The golfing shit was the most spirited part of this as Biden unsuccessfully tried to be Tom Cruise to goad Trump’s Jack Nicholson into a rant; it was the only moment when you could see the two men really seem to care about what was being said by the other.
Trump, in response to a question about his age and fitness for office, cited his golf prowess, claiming he’d won two country-club golf championships. “To do that, you have to be quite smart and hit the ball a long way,” Trump said. He then claimed that Biden challenged him to a golf match but couldn’t hit the ball 50 yards. In response, the president implied that Trump routinely lies about his height and weight, claimed to have a six handicap (which would be good at any age, let alone at 75 years old, as Biden was when he last recorded a golf score), and expressed his desire to have a driving contest with his opponent. “I'm happy to play golf if you carry your own bag,” Biden quipped.
Oof.
Will this be the moment that Biden is reminded of RGB who held on too long to her post, croaked, and allowed for the ascendance of Amy Coney Barrett or start singing “The Impossible Dream” from The Man of La Mancha? Also, I’m pretty certain this is the first time in history that a presidential candidate has ever uttered the phrase “I didn’t have sex with a porn star.” Is that bragging or nah?
STRANGER (NOT) DANGER. Joe suggested I catch the Show & Tell for Grown Ups at a brewery on Ashland & Fulton this week. It was fun—sort of a mashup of low rent Ted Talks with a meet up with new folks vibe—and the beer was on point. In lieu of driving, I grabbed the Ashland bus and was planning on heading back north the same way.
At around 9:30pm, I started walking to the bus. There were no people on Lake street and no traffic. A guy pops around a corner—white, too thin to be healthy, with a prosthetic leg and three heavy bags of groceries.
“Hey, hey. I’m not going to ask you for money.”
He is definitely going to ask me for money.
I remove my AirPods. He launches into a practiced but rambling explanation of a motorcycle accident that resulted in his lost limb, pulling the leg off to prove the truth of the prosthesis, the fact that he has to go six blocks to get get to a buddy’s apartment, the bags are too heavy, and can I get him an Uber?
He’s asking me for money.
“Nope. You said you weren’t going to ask me for money, so we’ll hold to that. I will help you carry your bags, though.”
He contemplates this and hands them over. He leads the way and, for six blocks, regales me with every angle he can to get me to send him money via Venmo, swing by an ATM and he’ll pay me back (or, rather, his father in Florida will). “No. I don’t know you, man. I’m not giving you access to my Venmo and, I don’t believe I’ll ever get any repayment.” He gets it but continues to try. For six blocks I also have the nagging feeling that I’m going to get jumped at the end of this. Like Peter Parker’s Spider-sense, it felt like maybe this stroll would end badly but I ignored the itch and just conversed, making sure to walk only as fast as he could (…leg…).
“Hey, I’m glad you were here,” he says. “This neighborhood is a little scary. I was kinda afraid I might get robbed.”
And there it was. He had the same nagging sensation I had and was relieved to have a stranger help him out. We turn the corner and come to his friend’s apartment. He buzzes, the friend comes down, grabs the bags, and they both thank me. “I’m Ryan. Thanks.”
“Don. My pleasure. Take care of yourself and maybe buy fewer groceries and in the daylight, yeah?”
“Yeah. Good idea.”
In my lifetime, the incidents when strangers have hurt me can be counted on one hand. The moments when friends, acquaintances, or romantic partners have hurt me are in the double digits. My Spider-sense needs recalibration.
LATE BLOOMING. During my last marriage, I was reminded about how old I was almost daily. Since being free of that, I’m looking at my age less in the number of years but in the wealth of experience I’ve accrued. It’s a nice reframe. So is this:
Successful late bloomers are all around us. Morgan Freeman had his breakthrough roles in Street Smart and Driving Miss Daisy in his early 50s. Colonel Harland Sanders started Kentucky Fried Chicken in his 60s. Isak Dinesen published the book that established her literary reputation, Out of Africa, at 52. Morris Chang founded Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the world’s leading chipmaker, at 55. If Samuel Johnson had died at 40, few would remember him, but now he is considered one of the greatest writers in the history of the English language. Copernicus came up with his theory of planetary motion in his 60s. Grandma Moses started painting at 77. Noah was around 600 when he built his ark (though Noah truthers dispute his birth certificate).
And that was the week in foolish attention, readers! Go talk to a stranger, dread the inevitability of Trump, and try some spicy coffee!
Good stuff, as always. I like that you've turned "never give a sucker an even break" into "never give an asshole an even break." Cheers to that! We live in a world that now has way more assholes than suckers. And possible even more who are both.
Sorry to hear you actually tuned in on the "debate". Surely there were Three Stooges shorts somewhere amongst the zillions of channels on cable? Keep on trucking', Amigo!