News That You Can Use

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This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

“Popular culture is a place where...propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing.” 

                                                                                                    -Criss Jami

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

My news you can use file is filling up my hard drive so I've pulled out some of the more interesting stories. 

Wait...what? 

According to Renaissance Recovery (Effective treatment for addiction, founded by people in recovery), who would seem to be in a position to know, "There is...

{Founded by people... Now that's what I call making lemonade when life serves up lemons.} 

"There is a widespread shortage of the prescription medication hydrocodone in the United States, with drug manufacturers failing to provide clear reasons for the scarcity."

{Wait-wait-wait. Are you confessing that...}

No, I'm not, other than Ianazones Peperoni Pizza (ask for lightly baked as they tend to over-bake) my only addiction is current events and I've been unable to find a rehab that treats current events junkies. 

{Then how did...}

Someone that I'm very close to, who comes from a long line of drunks and druggies on both sides of her family, is suffering from Lyme disease that has triggered a cascade of other problems, including severe pain, told me. 

She's terrified of becoming addicted to painkillers and approaches the problem hyper-vigilantly, always careful to take the absolute minimum of her prescribed meds to get relief. 

She mentioned that there are all sorts of opioid painkiller shortages which sometimes results in her and her Docs having to get creative to keep her pain under control. She quite rightly refuses to buy anything "off the street," terrified of getting something laced with fentanyl.

{This makes no sense, I thought...}

So did I. Feel free to go a-googlin (I did) and you'll discover that the DEA, the FDA, and Big Pharma are basically stonewalling the public as to what's going on. The Fedrl Gummit has yet again dropped the public health ball, Big Pharma is afraid of lawsuits, and innocent people are suffering.

{Well, maybe. But the Princess of Wales is using AI or something to tweak family photos! What about that?!?}

N.I.M.B.Y.

According to FoxNews (I know, I know. Thank God for CNN, right? The writer emits an undignified giggle....) there's trouble in the District of Columbia school system. 

"Nearly 6 in 10 of the 500 children at Maury Elementary School are white. At Miner Elementary School, 80% of the kids are black, many of whom are in foster care, receive public assistance or are homeless." (My underlines and I decapitalized Black and White 'cause I'm not nuts.) 

In the name of DEI, D.C. officials want all students to start off at one of the two schools and finish at the other. Problem solved, yes?

No. 

Parents of the kids currently enrolled in one school or the other have gone to the mattresses in opposition to the plan for all of the reasons you can easily imagine. If you should go a-googlin' for details please advise me if you find the answer to two questions I've been unable to discover.

Has the plan been officially approved, or not?

Has anyone suggested using the vast resources of the Fedrl Gummit to resolve the problems at Miner and let the kids remain in their current schools? The knowledge gained could be used to fix problem schools all over America. 

I just thought of a third question. What's the official position of the local teachers union given that teacher's unions are well known nationwide for their expertise and unflagging dedication to educating the nation's young people?

Ban TikTok? What about free speech!

The Emperor never rests when it comes to protecting his flock. According to the Wall Street Journal, there's a citizen of the Middle Kingdom living in Italy who, via X and a website, provides news that's censored in China to over a million people still enslaved there. 

"Now, he is encouraging his China-based followers to drop him, after many of them told him they have been subjected to police questioning."

{Enslaved? That's a bit hyperbolic, don't ya think?}

Ask the Weigers, the Tibetans, millions of 996 employees (someone has got to make the sneakers and iPhones, and...), citizens with bad social credit scores, Hong Kongers, people that... 

{996 employees?}

9 am to 9 pm, six days a week. 

{My old man worked 12 hr. days.}

So that you, or anyone, wouldn't/shouldn't have to. Although... wait, you had a father? How could... never mind.

If you're too busy to follow the link and read the fascinating/horrifying article, one more quote if you please. 

"Li said in an interview that his website and X account have become frequent targets of hacking and cyberattacks and that he has moved four times in the past year for fear of being tracked down by Chinese authorities."

Checked your white privilege lately?

Did you know that marriage promotes white supremacy?

From an article in The College Fix: “I theorize that marriage fundamentalism, like structural racism, is a key structuring element of White heteropatriarchal supremacy,” I'll bet you're wondering what marriage fundamentalism is, right? 

Well, the quote is from Professor Bethany Letiecq, of George Mason University. "...an associate professor in the College of Education and Human Development, specializing in the utilization of community-based participatory action research approaches, anti-racist research methods...and mixed method designs (e.g., qualitative and quantiative methods) in partnership with minoritized and marginalized families."

Benjamin Vogel (a student at Hope College, who wrote the College Fix article) got the marriage fundamentalism quote from a paper published by Dr. Letiecq in The Journal of Marriage and Family with the titillating title: Theorizing White heteropatriarchal supremacy, marriage fundamentalism, and the mechanisms that maintain family inequality.

{Cool, but what's marriage fundamentalism?}

Sorry for the drift, but as a public service... I'm sure that many people are familiar with the phrase "publish or perish," which refers to climbing the occupational ladder to become a full professor with bulletproof tenure and then remain at the top of the academic food chain.  

Big BUT, publish what? Where? Well, often as not it's obscure papers for obscure academic journals that almost no one will ever read. 

Anyways... as to marriage fundamentalism: "I theorize that marriage fundamentalism, like structural racism, is a key structuring element of White heteropatriarchal supremacy. Marriage fundamentalism can be understood as an ideological and cultural phenomenon, where adherents espouse the superiority of the two-parent married family." -Professor Letiecq

I suspect that some of you may be tempted to skip reading Prof. Letiecq's paper but Mr. Vogel's article helpfully supplies us with another quote that explains where Prof. Letiexq is coming from, in his/her/their own words. 

"Letiecq employs 'critical family theorizing…to delineate an overarching orientation to structural oppression and unequal power relations that advantages [white heteropatriarchal nuclear families] and marginalizes others as a function of marriage fundamentalism.'"

{Well who can argue with that?}

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down if you wish to share my work or access my golden oldies.   

I post links to my columns (and other stuff) on Facebook so that you can love me, hate me, or lobby to have me publicly flogged.  

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em

 

Image by Evgeni Tcherkasski from Pixabay

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"At some point or another, everyone has felt unseen and unheard and marginalized." - Ayanna Pressley 

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

I'm a member of a marginalized group.

I went a-googlin' to discover exactly what a marginalized group is having been triggered by the use of the phrase. It happened to turn up in a bunch of articles one recent morning when I was in the midst of my daily relentless need for input.

{Yeah, yeah, we know, you're a current events junkie and...}

In my defense, Dana, I'm very particular about what sort of current events I shoot up, and I'm a wanna-be polymath with wide-ranging interests beyond current events.

{Half-assed polymath... Hey, isn't that a line from a Randy Newman song?}

Perhaps I should settle for renaissance man person and make a point of pronouncing the word as ren-a'-sance. 

{This whole often crossing out man or men shtick and inserting person, not to mention making fun of the pronoun wars by writing he/she/they or the like is getting old.}

As am I, but now that I'm officially declaring myself to be a member of a marginalized group I'll have to give some thought to changing my ways.

According to CultureAlly.com ("Your diversity, equity & inclusion solutions all in one place") "...marginalize refers to the act of treating a person or group as though they are insignificant by isolating and/or disempowering them." 

Having been raised in front of an old school television (think 27" black and white box with tinfoil draped rabbit ears mounted on a cheap stand with two cat hair-clogged plastic wheels for viewing maneuverability) my isolation and disempowerment started early and continues to this day. 

{Huh. Do tell.}

I refer, of course, to heterosexual pasty patriarchs being treated with thinly veiled contempt via that all-American institution, the TV sitcom. 

Anyone of a certain age is aware of the rapid devolution of the wise and patient family patriarch type, think Ward Cleaver or Ozzy Nelson, to the likes of Alan Harper of Two and a Half Men and Al Bundy of Married, With Children, with Archie Bunker of All in the Family bridging the gap. 

For the record, I confess to thoroughly enjoying All in the Family which began in my last year of high school. It was well-written, funny, and cutting-edge for its era. 

But being a relatively clueless callowyute at the time, I never gave any thought to the fact that while Archie's hip, self-righteous son-in-law Michael (aka Meathead) went to class to study sociology, Archie, went to work. 

I went a-googlin' to jog my memories of All in the Family and discovered that I had forgotten that Archie fought in the Second World War. Worse, I had no memory of the fact he had been a young baseball star who dreamed of playing for the Yankees but had dropped out of high school to go to work to support his family during the Great Depression.  

Still, everyone knows the dads of TV Land are (usually) well-meaning dopes... except for evil ones that run hooge global empires that spend all their time ripping off everyone they can, including loved ones.

{What about Cliff Huxtable?}

Moving on...

Despite being told for decades that dads are dopes, I attempted to overcome the damage inflicted on me from being raised in a psychological ghetto in TV Land. I fell in love with, and set my sights on, a blond, girl next door type in my mid-twenties. 

I set out to become, Superhusband! Partying had become boring and my genes were crying out to be reproduced.

I spent nearly three years proving myself worthy and able to make such a thing financially and realistically possible while my love finished college by the skin of her teeth and subsequently informed me that it wasn't me, it was her. 

Later dude. 

{Oh c'mon...}

Seriously. 

"I think there's something wrong with me, I don't think I'm capable of making a commitment," she said.

It would've been nice to know that before spending three years re-enacting the Labors of Hercules.

"I know we promised to be each other's rock, but like, I'm just not up for being anyone's rock right now."

{Oh c'mon...}

Seriously.

To be brutally honest, the previous paragraphs were as far as this column got before I ran out of gas. Not having dropped out of high school to support my family and abandoning my dream of being a professional baseball player (or having fought in a world war) I was feeling like a sissy. 

 

{You're aware Archie Bunker wasn't an actual person... right?}

I definitely don't feel privileged but life and my late wife (born sick, died sick) has taught me that my life could've been way worse, perhaps I should just click on the little trash can icon.

{Uh-oh, do I smell white fragility?}

That's my new deodorant. 

But then I came across this, Thousands of Seniors are still dying of Covid-19. Do we not care anymore? courtesy of CNN.com.

"Prejudice against older adults is nothing new, but 'it feels more intense, more hostile' now than previously, said Karl Pillemer, 69, a professor of psychology and gerontology at Cornell University." 

{I don't understand.}

That one sentence tells ya everything you need to know, you don't have to read the article. Everything in the article is a variation on that one sentence.

{I still don't understand.}

I'm a victim! I'm marginalized! Get Kimberle Crenshaw on the line I need validation! I'm yet another victim of "multiple forms of inequality or disadvantage."  

According to the chicks at Womankind Worldwide, "Intersectionality is the acknowledgement that everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and oppression and we must consider everything and anything that can marginalise people – gender, race, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, etc."

{Hey, you spelled acknowledgement and...}

You need to stop marginalizing the way folx in the UK spell. 

{I was referring to Womankind, shouldn't that be Womynkind?}

Wait, I'll be right back... Nope, that's how they spelled it.

Cool! I'm officially oppressed and marginalized! Do I get a check? Is there a softball league? An official Facebook page? Hows about reparations? I gotta go... busy, busy!

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down if you wish to share my work or access my golden oldies.   

I post links to my columns (and other stuff) on Facebook so that you can love me, hate me, or lobby to have me publicly flogged.  

 

 

The History of the World, Epilogue

Ruh-Roh!

Image by JJ Jordan from Pixabay

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." -Charles Dickens

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),

From the Department of Fun Facts: In 1790 most Americans lived on farms; about 90% of our predecessors used a rooster for an alarm clock. 

But then, between 1870 and 1920 roughly 11,000,000 people said goodbye to Ma and Pa and moved to cities to take advantage of industrialization and 25,000,000 (legal) immigrants joined them. Obviously, this was a really big feckin’ deal that changed everything. 

Yes, Virginia, we are a nation of immigrants. 

We’re currently in the midst of a hi-tech/communications revolution that is also changing everything that started late in the last century and continues apace. The more things change, etc.

By the late 1970s, the seemingly unstoppable post-World War Two American economic boom collided with a booming global economy. What seemed like suddenly at the time (trust me, I was there) the American steel industry, which actually had been gradually declining, more or less collapsed. In short order, it was followed by a general hollowing out of the American industrial base. 

The rust belt started rusting and we’ve been arguing over who and/or what the cause was and what should’ve been/should be done about it ever since. 

Jimmy Carter made us feel like it was game over but Ronald Reagan made us feel like it was a new season and we were bound to come out on top. 

The roaring nineties, the result of the rapid spread of the internet and the seemingly endless possibilities for new ways to make money, made us think Regan may have been right. It was only a matter of time before all those economic refugees from the factories and the mills would be reabsorbed into the economy, just like the unemployed buggy whip makers eventually were after the last time something like this happened. 

The whole world was going to prosper by adopting the aforementioned pursuit of self-interest, division of labor, and freedom of trade. The American way (a phrase that I suspect most of my younger gentlereaders may not truly appreciate the meaning and significance of) had triumphed. It was The End of History and the good guys (us) had won.  

Big BUT...

China’s been doing its level best to prove that economic freedom (well, more or less) is perfectly compatible with draconian restrictions on political and personal freedom powered by cutting-edge technology — much of which they purchased or stole (and continue to steal) from the Western Barbarians.

The Pooteen is doing his level best to prove that history's not over and that bloody wars of attrition haven’t gone out of style, particularly for the dick-tater class. 

Meanwhile, here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, it turns out that you can’t print money and accumulate massive debt without unleashing the inflation dragon after all. 

Oopsie. 

Ya’d think this would call attention to the possible long-term effects of a cumulative 2% inflation rate, that’s now regarded as the minimum price we should/must pay for fiat money that’s backed by nothing much, would be getting more attention. 

{I’ll bite, why should we care about that?}

It’s the reason we have to play/are at the mercy of the stock market. Living within your means and saving up your dough is nowadays a suckers bet. You have to bet on the stock market and pray the value of your house (of cards) doesn’t collapse before you do. 

I’m not going to explore the fighting of endless wars… or the fact the Democratic Party has been taken over by relatively tiny groups of Wokies, Greenies, and folx on the sexual fringe… or that the Republican Party gave us the Donald, a gift that just keeps on giving… or that both parties are incapable of compromise on issues normal, everyday Americans would like to compromise on and then move on… or mention that Hollywood, academia, certain corporations and much of the mainstream media, have chosen sides and pursue their agenda like the devoted members of a cult. Or…

{Could we move on, please?}

Point taken, Dana. I’m primarily concerned about the Woke folx, many of them the postmodern versions of Lenin's useful idiots, who think they are changing the world but are actually controlled by duplicitous tech oligarchs with the help of a corrupt clerisy. Folx that take their salaries and bennies for granted, and sneer at the beliefs and lifestyles of people with blue collars who built (and maintain) America. 

Having gleefully “disrupted” millions of people out of a job they’re now working their bums off building robots and developing artificial intelligenci to disrupt millions more. 

I’m concerned that no shortage of techies are telling us that it’s only a matter of time before our machines and technology will be smarter than we are and might decide to delete our dim, inefficient, species -- yet keep working to make it happen. 

I’m concerned that irregardless, millions of us will be out of work and that this will finish off the middle class.

{On the bright side, that could solve the climate change thing.}   

I hope I’m wrong, but this jaded old man has a new reason for getting out of bed in the morning. I'm hoping to live long enough to see if I’m wrong (yet again) before I’m deleted. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down if you wish to share my work or access my golden oldies.   

I post links to my columns (and other stuff) on Facebook so that you can love me, hate me, or lobby to have me publicly flogged.