The Flyoverland Crank

Saturday, February 8, 2020

White Privilege

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandchildren (who exist), and my great-grandchildren (who don't) — the Stickies — to haunt them after they become grups or I'm deleted.

"Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too." -Voltaire

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (& Gentlereaders),

Please bear with me while I lay a foundation for some thoughts on White Privilege.

I'm an unattractive, old, white, heterosexual, cisgendered dude.

For a while there I self-identified as a gorgeous, young, black, lesbian dudette by the name of Cocoa (picture Halle Berry) who was trapped in the body of an unattractive, old, white, heterosexual, cisgendered dude — named Mark.

However, in the course of spending nearly two years in a secret monastery in the Wudang Mountains of China in search of enlightenment (so secret there's not even a gift shop or restaurant to serve the tourist trade), Cocoa was reabsorbed into the one soul.

I'm still not enlightened, but I came to realize that Cocoa was a false persona created by my formerly fragile ego to cope with what I used to regard as a veritable blitzkrieg of existential threats.

[Used to regard? How do ya repel a blitzkrieg of...]

Embrace the Way of Ishkabibble.

[Pray tell, Cranky Tzu, what is the Way of Ishkabibble?]

Well, Dana, the word itself is a faux Yiddish, archaic slang word that's been around for over a hundred years that was originally translated as "I should worry!" with a sarcastic twist that rendered it "Don't worry!" or "Who Cares?".

The definitive, relatively modern translation, in my semi-humble opinion, that captures the full meaning of the concept behind the word is expressed in the motto of the immortal Alfred E. Newman, "What, me worry?".

A more recent translation is the repellent, "What-ever" with the second half of the word accented enough to match an actual or implied eye roll. Yet another indicator of a culture in decline.

[That's a, uh, deep foundation ya got there, not Cocoa, but the title of this missive, if I can remember that far back, is White Privilege, yes?]

Yes, indeed.

Recently, I was thinking about the whole white privilege meme in light of the aforementioned personal existential threats — past, present, and potential — in the course of a rough day when I wasn't basking in the usual warm glow of my privilege.

Just one example, if you please.

If you're over fifty years old in this country, and certainly no shortage of other countries,

And,

If you don't embody some version of pretty, successful, fit, healthy, and at least locally famous — the order and importance of the adjectives vary — you are effectively invisible, and scheduled for deletion.

Being blessed, like me, with having actual loved ones mitigates this condition somewhat.

I chose this particular example because regardless of who or what you identify as, or actually are, this applies to everyone, even those of you still young enough to assume you'll live forever. Even those of you playing some version of the __ is the new 40 game.

I'm not going to mention my health problems, my financial problems, my severe case of recurring Been There/Done That/Is That All There Is disease with complications from Glass Half Full syndrome.

I'm not even going to bring up... Well, nevermind.

Ishkabibble.

Intuiting that I might be onto something interesting, I consulted that indispensable and unassailable compendium of knowledge, Wikipedia.

"White privilege denotes both obvious and less obvious passive advantages that white people may not recognize they have, which distinguishes it from overt bias or prejudice."

This paragraph ends with, "The concept of white privilege also implies the right to assume the universality of one's own experiences, marking others as different or exceptional while perceiving oneself as normal."

Yes, definitely interesting.

The next paragraph, from which I will not quote, delves into... Well, while I'm obviously not a highly trained, tenured professor in either the field of whiteness studies or critical race theory...

[There's no such thing as whiteness studies, you're makin' that up! And as far as...]

Nuh-uh, as Donnie Baker would say, "I swear to God, you can look it up."

Anyways, I would describe the next paragraph as a summary of the reasons the experts in these cutting edge new fields of study don't agree about exactly what white privilege is.

The rest of this exhaustive article, that boasts 176 citations confirms this, but obviously, they're working hard on it. I suspect that they will continue, undaunted, till they get to the bottom of things.

While we wait, I, a humble layperson, can't help but wonder if any of the scholars in these two fields  — both privileged, tenured profs and their personal slaves, grad students and postdocs, have given any thought to the following.

In their fearless pursuit of the truth — even the currently fashionable, untestable, and unverifiable version of truth, the oft-mentioned lived experience — have they considered that this may all be a bunch of crap.

[Excuse me! You can't just...]

Sure I can. There's a warning label at the beginning of every column and anyone that knows me and/or has read more than a column or two knows, I'm Mark-Mark the cute and cuddly Panda bear.

Behold the wisdom (and rewrite) of Cranky Tzu:

"Smart/athletic/funny/perceptual/beautiful/etceteral privilege denotes both obvious and less obvious passive advantages that ~~white people~~ H. sapiens may or may not recognize they have, which distinguishes it from overt bias or prejudice."

Most of us have some sort of innate, unearned ability that many of the rest of us don't and that we often as not take for granted. All of us employ bias and prejudice deduced from our lived experience, overtly and otherwise, just to get through the damn day.

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

Please scroll down to react, comment, or share. If my work pleases you I wouldn't be offended if you offered to buy me some cheap coffee.

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Your friendly neighborhood crank is not crazy about social media (I am a crank after all) but if you must, you can like me/follow me on Facebook.

Cranky don't tweet.

Saturday, February 1, 2020

The Three Wise Men

A Mr. Cranky's neighborhood column

-Image by Prawny from Pixabay-

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, and/or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering

  Glossary

  About

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlerreader

"The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin." -Jay Leno

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (& Gentlereaders),

There are three gentle men who live in my neighborhood that my daughter has nicknamed, respectfully not sarcastically, the three wise men. Fortunately for her, unlike her old man, sarcasm is not an automatic, go-to reaction.

I don't see them very often and I'm always surprised when I do because they're obviously living in a different movie than I am so they sort of jolt me out of my comfortable rut for a few seconds when I encounter them.

Recently, while puttering about in the kitchen, I happened to look up and out of the picture window that looks out across a narrow side yard and provides a scenic view of a small porch/main entrance of the house next door where My Favorite Mormons live.

[Readers of a certain age may remember the sitcom, My Favorite Morman, from the early sixties.]

As to the why of said picture windows scenic view, both of the houses in question are very old and were modified multiple times before me and mine came along. There are myriad examples of odd architectural juxtapositions throughout the neighborhood.

Two of the three wise men were making their rounds, collecting aluminum cans
from various porches throughout our hood that people set aside for them so they can make a few extra bucks by recycling them.

One is actually more likely to encounter only two of the three gentle men in question as one of them has health problems that often keep him at home.

All three of them are developmentally disabled, a term I much prefer to the one commonly used till recently. This is one occasion in which I'm comfortable siding with the armies of political correctness.

Just a sec', I better check. I'll be right back...

Hoo-boy, I may not be woke after all. The proper term depends on who you believe. Ain't livin' in the information age great?

Anyways, one was as tall as the other one was short. They were wearing matching bright red Ohio State jackets and knit caps. The tall one was tossing cans off the porch. The short one was picking them up, one by one, and putting them in a trash bag.

When they were done the shorter one linked arms with the taller one as they toddled away, seeming to need the support.

My daughter knows them better than I do. When I occasionally encounter them when I'm in the midst of one of my two (in theory) daily one mile walks, I can see, and feel, their apprehension.

I always make a point of smiling broadly and saying, "Gentle men, how are you today?" to put them at ease. They always seem relieved and respond with a generic, "Good, how are you?"

If they notice the pause between gentle and men they're unimpressed, but it makes me feel kind, literary, and lyrical.

That rude noise you just heard was a snort of derision by Dana.

I don't know if their apprehension is the result of my physical appearance — large head, no neck, tank shaped torso and a mug that I'm told makes me look like I work for Tony Soprano if I'm not smiling — or the fact they've probably taken a lot of crap from not so gentle men.

I hope it's the former but it's probably both.

It's a very long walk from their house, at the other end of the neighborhood and far beyond my one-mile circuit, to the bridge that crosses over a large creek (that locals claim is, and label accordingly, a river) to downtown Hooterville (my label) where they do their grocery shopping at the Sparkle market.

[Other readers of a certain age may remember another sitcom from the sixties called Petticoat Junction that featured a town named Hooterville.]

(Rusty) Hooterville is a bit different than the one in the sitcom. Drucker's store is now a saloon called the Dream Bar. Homer Bedloe is long gone and the train still runs. Now it's subsidized by The Fedrl Gummit and loses $1,200,000 a year.

The Shady Rest Hotel, now called Uncle Joe's Motel, owned and operated by Betty Jo Bradly, has been closed by a temporary restraining order since the city went to court seeking to have it declared a public nuisance after a recent spike in heroin overdoses as well as long unaddressed building code violations.

[Ahem...]

I'm on it, Dana.

The reason my daughter knows them better than I is that she gives them rides if she sees them walking to or from Sparkle Market. She not only doesn't look like one of Tony's employees she's one of those people, like her late mom, that people immediately like and trust.

I don't have that gift. If I pulled up and offered them a ride they would probably run. But I am pretty good at preventing people from sitting next to me on a bus just by looking at them. In my defense, I only do this if there are other seats available, and people are always pleasantly surprised if I smile and turn on the charm. Well, usually.

My daughter is the reason that I know why one of them often stays home, and where their home is. She also informs me that the short one (oops, height-challenged?) is the de facto leader and that they all have jobs working for a local non-profit that employs developmentally disabled(?) folks.

Sometimes, when I'm thinking about/bitching about my anemic fixed income and/or my health problems I think about the three wise men and I'm grateful. Well, sometimes. And no, I don't know what happened to Tony, he never calls.

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

Please scroll down to react, comment, or share. If my work pleases you I wouldn't be offended if you offered to buy me a coffee.

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Your friendly neighborhood crank is not crazy about social media (I am a crank after all) but if you must, you can like me/follow me on Facebook.

Cranky don't tweet.

Saturday, January 25, 2020

Anxiety

-Image by Merio from Pixabay-

"We have the ultimate reason to be anxious. We know that we're vulnerable and we know that we're going to die." -Jordan Peterson

[Due to the fact I'm in Australia fighting the bushfires this column is a—New & Improved!—version of a column originally published on 5.5.18.]

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (& Gentlereaders),

An anxious and slightly depressed human and his Vulcan friend are sharing a joint in a cargo hold of the Starship Calvin Coolidge.

"Life is just one damn thing after another."

"Yes, there is no doubt about that," his Vulcan friend replied, "Assuming we share the same space-time continuum, it's logically irrefutable."

"Huh?"

"Life is obviously one thing and then another, and then another, and..."

"I'm speaking metaphorically my bat-eared buddy. Note that the phrase is just one damn thing after another. That is to say, one unpleasant thing after another."

"I get that, we Vulcans are logical, not stupid. Here, hit this, perhaps you'll feel better. I scored this Tralfamidorian Tan because I thought it might cheer your whiny human butt up. For the record, your statement still makes no sense.

Life is no more likely to be one damn thing after another than it is to be one awesome thing after another. Life just is. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, but, mostly, just another day on the starship CalCool."

"So what you're saying is..."

"I'm saying it's always something. If it's not one thing, it's another." (HT: G.A.)

"Geez, I hate Vulcan humor."

I, being me, went looking for the source of life is just one damn thing after another and discovered it's attributed to multiple people (including, of course, Mark Twain) by multiple people.

[Aside: The National Bureau of Literary References recently received a significant budget increase from Congress to fund an expansion of their Mark Twain department. The volume of quotes attributed to Mr. Twain continues to rise at a pace that parallels the growth of the National Debt.]

I did find an attributable variation on the theme. "It's not true that life is one damn thing after another—it's one damn thing over and over." -Edna St. Vincent Millay

Setting logic and logic jokes aside both quotations still ring true. In spite of Johnny Mercer's advice, we do seem to accentuate the negative. Science calls it the negativity bias. Hang on a sec' and I'll go find a respectable looking source I can link to...

That was easy. From Psychology Today (and Rick Hanson, Ph.D.), "The alarm bell of your brain—the amygdala...—uses about two-thirds of its neurons to look for bad news: it's primed to go negative." Why? Well, as you've probably already guessed my highly perceptive Stickies and Gentlereaders, survival.

"...humans evolved to be fearful—since that helped keep our ancestors alive— so we are very vulnerable to being frightened and even intimidated by threats, both real ones and 'paper tigers.'"

Considering we've risen to the top of the food chain it's hard to argue with success.

BIG BUT
Beware the downside. Paper tigers are not on the endangered species list. In fact, the web/cable news/social media/etceteria has created a population explosion.

When I was a callowyute, locally-based news (and threats), via newspapers and local TV, were all the rage.

I'm so old that I remember that when national TV news broadcasts first began they were 15 minutes in length, once a day. You had all of three choices—ABC, CBS, or NBC—and you had to pick one because they all broadcast at the same time and the technology to watch 'em later didn't exist yet.

While American culture was less coarse and life hadn't yet deteriorated into all showbiz/exhibitionism all the time, the Earth was no less dangerous than it is now. But we weren't followed around by virtual town criers with bullhorns 24x7x365.25.

Anxiety
Merriam-Webster: apprehensive uneasiness or nervousness usually over an impending or anticipated ill.

The ability to perceive the future and prepare accordingly is a powerful gift we H. sapiens are blessed with. Jordan Peterson likes to interpret the Old Testament, and the equally ancient stories of other cultures, from a psychological perspective.

He equates sacrificing to God/the gods with sacrificing short-term pleasure for the sake of a long-term goal. If you go to work/school/the DMV today instead of executing a Wake and Bake via some Tralfamidorian Tan, your future you will thank you.

H. sapiens, it would seem, have known for thousands of years that material and psychological preventive maintenance will getcha a cool phone and stave off Xanax addiction.

However, the town criers with bullhorns render the naturally anxious worse and the rest of us unnaturally anxious.

Have a face to face conversation with a snifficant other with all the screens turned off. Put your phone in a drawer once in a while and go for a long walk in the real world and just—be.

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

Please scroll down to react, comment, or share. If my work pleases you I wouldn't be offended if you offered to buy me a coffee.

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Your friendly neighborhood crank is not crazy about social media (I am a crank after all) but if you must, you can like me/follow me on Facebook.

Cranky don't tweet.