Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Fig Leaf Nation
When any man falls, we laugh, and when an upright citizen is exposed as just ordinary slime, we hoot and holler. Glad it ain’t me, we reflect. At least I’m not important enough to be publicly shamed. Rest assured, us nobodies could disseminate a steady stream of spine chilling pics of our hirsute or well-shaved shady regions and nothing would happen.
So big man LeBron got upstaged by little J. J. Barea, generously listed at 6 feet even. LeBron couldn’t score when it mattered. He talked big, but acted tiny. His mouth was huge. His deed puny. He shrank before climax. Many of us little people, so miniscule we’re invisible, got a big kick out of witnessing the biggest man, a self proclaimed King, brought down to size.
It’s always about sex, of course, and all performances are sexual auditions in disguise. At least Congressman Weiner thought so, for he sought to convert his public, well-dressed success into a series of ego-swelling, virtual striptease for half a dozen, oh so lucky (?) ladies. It was all a harmless prank, Weiner thought, because he hadn’t done anything but sent out pixels of his relatively adorable or icky self. Everybody is doing it. Hall of Fame football players, teens, preteens, grandmas. What’s the harm, really, aren’t we here to spread the joy? Shouldn’t we all be virtual friends, at least, with virtual benefits? Like countless men before him, Weiner also figured that public triumphs ought to be redeemable as private, sexual rewards, but since Weiner is not JFK or even Clinton, his mistresses are no fleshy Monroe or Lewinski, but wi-fi mirages of an ex porn star, a black jack dealer and a get-out-of-my-face college student.
So LeBron and Weiner have been stripped of their fancy fig leaves, but the most elaborate loin cloth of all is the one still taped to the groins of America. Uncle Sam talks a big game, still blusters about universal freedom, democracy and economic recovery, but what’s left, really, behind that humongous cod piece?
America hides behind state of the art fig leaves. She has long led the world in well-designed, colorful and seductive packaging. Don’t worry about substance, just jazz up the graphic design. Wrapped well, even crap will sell. It’s all packaging, advertising and public relations.
Sport arenas are themselves fig leaves. In city after city, stadia are the best, most impressive pieces of architecture, with the televised fans neatly dressed and well groomed. Slobs in the cheap seats are not visible, but the biggest, fattest slobs are priced out of these spectacles altogether. Drowning out guns and sirens, they can cheer from home, in their distressed neighborhoods. Who else but the well-heeled can afford these hundred-dollar tickets, not to mention overpriced parking, food and drinks?
Beyond the outfield is gorgeous downtown, with their phallic banks jutting into the sky. Americans get their glimpses of distant cities most often through sporting events, so with these slick, beautiful stadia and postcard perfect downtowns, everything looks first rate and first world, still.
In slums across America, you can go for a mile or two without sighting a supermarket or a bank, only donut or fried chicken shacks, check cashing agencies, liquor emporia and store front churches. Though ubiquitous and spreading, this America is almost never seen.
A block may be half abandoned, yet each occupied home, even one with a leaky roof or collapsed porch, will sport a working satellite dish so images of a glamorized normalcy can be beamed in nightly. White, black, brown or yellow, most Americans look fantastic on television, don’t they? All of television is a commercial for its host society. This is how we live and play, or, rather, this is how we want you to believe how we live and play. All of television is a fig leaf.
Take New Jersey. (Please.) On television, it’s an ocean lapped playground where a nice tan and decent sex are the only aims and worries, but in real life, a desperate Atlantic City casino has just added a “naked circus” to draw in customers. In South Jersey, three women were just arrested for removing 380 military grave markers, plus flower urns, from cemeteries and selling them for scraps. Some of these date back to the Civil War. The same week, firefighters fighting an arson, set in a long abandoned factory, had to draw water from the river because nearby hydrants had been vandalized. Their brass threadings had been stolen and sold for scraps.
How much can you get for a bit of brass, you may wonder? But when people are desperate, they’ll resort to anything. In Philadelphia, I often see men pushing shopping carts filled with aluminum cans. Scavenging, they can make about 20 bucks a day, though one claimed he earned 50 daily. “I have to get up at five every day,” he proudly said. An impressive dude, he even wore a work uniform with a “SERVICE” patch on his chest. In Denver, one man explained that to make a single buck, you have to walk a mile. In Detroit, 500 bricks will fetch you a hundred dollars, and I saw two young men trying to knock down an abandoned factory wall with hammers.
Is it that bad? Of course, it’s that bad, but you wouldn’t know it from the mainstream media. There are more than four available workers for each job opening, but that’s the official statistic, so you can double it. When McDonald’s had a national job fair recently, a million people filled applications, but only 62,000, or 6.2%, were hired. A McDonald’s job used to be the last resort, a joke, really, but now it has become an out-of-reach, first aspiration for many Americans. I know a recent law school graduate who considers himself lucky to be employed as a manager at Subway. An ex security guard told me he had applied for over a hundred jobs in six states. Out of options, this 34-year-old was thinking of joining the Army.
Except as criminals or horny garbage, desperate Americans rarely make the news, yet stories like “Celebrities Out of Makeup,” “Celebrity Styles Worth Stealing” and “Michelle Obama Steps Out in $29 Gap Dress,” etc., have become national fare, presented each day for our contemplation and edification. Evening, we can sit behind our triple bolted doors and stare at a televised ballgame in a beautiful stadium, with a serene yet virile skyline in the background.
But at street level, even the beautiful downtowns are showing cracks, with commercial spaces at prime business spots abandoned. It is now customary to cover empty stores with large photos or false fronts touting their potentials. Imaginary, well dressed clients are tastefully displayed, and over them, the screaming pitches. IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES! PICTURE YOURSELF HERE! YOUR RESTAURANT HERE!
Across America, these potemkin hallucinations are mushrooming, and in New Orleans, I even saw a smallish, much graffitied shell of a building projected as a future time travel terminal! Among the destinations, Paris 1968, San Francisco 1957, Berlin 1973, Enlightenment, Garden of Eden and Victory Condition. It is telling that no recent years are on offer, no 2001 or 2008, for example. The current mantra of recovery, recovery means that Americans would rather not be in the here and now, but as things get even worse, we may yet develop a nostalgia for this frustrating, desperate and confusing era. As hard as it is to believe, we may grow to miss 2011.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
102 Comments so far
Show Allfrom the article:
~ It’s always about sex, of course, and all performances are sexual auditions in disguise. ~
wow...the simple truth appears so rarely, and unexpectedly...
how refreshing...
Virtual friends with virtual benefits, what a stitch!
Exercise contraptions, movies, plastic surgery, people walking on Nature trails talking on cell phones, diet fads, tackle box face ornaments, tattoos, clothes with logos, all reveal people who wish to be someone or somewhere else.
I met a 73 yr old retired Hmong Major, who told of his former country and the lifestyle before it was overrun by the communists. No one bought anything from stores. Food, clothing and shelter was made by the individual at home in the tropical mountains of Laos. Thoreau thought it the proper way of living. Me, too.
Later, my virtual friend without virtual benefits.
Great article, and wonderful use of bridging metaphors. Glad to see that Mr. Dinh also sees something I've recently related in this forum: that the likes of Obama signifies the TRIUMPH of packaging over substance.
Since I don't watch TV, Mr. Dinh explaining the carefully crafted juxtaposition of serene downtown scenes with happy stadium fans hits home.
Thank you, C.D. for publishing this writer. He's one many of us look forward to.
Siouxrose,
I wholeheartedly agree.
I love the way Linh Dinh turns the bought and paid for politicos into caricatures. Our "representatives" in bully nation are turned into laughing stock nation buffons.
His spotlighting of the enormous effort by the media to convince anyone and everyone (especially the poor) not to "go there" in realizing there condition and why they are in it is laudable. His attempts to wake up the national conscience are akin to a prophet crying in the desert. He is mostly ignored but the reality of what he predicts won't be affected one bit by mass manipulated denial.
Linh Dinh's writing is always spot on and impressive, but they pale in comparison to his photo blog, which if you haven't ever looked at, I advise you to bookmark it and check it at least every other day.
Why?
"In slums across America, you can go for a mile or two without sighting a supermarket or a bank, only donut or fried chicken shacks, check cashing agencies, liquor emporia and store front churches. Though ubiquitous and spreading, this America is almost never seen."
It takes a supermarket or bank to break out of "slumland"?
I am thinking those donut or fired chickenshacks, check cashing agencies, liquor emporia and store front churches meet the needs of their communities, while your vision of corporate supermarkets and banks surveyed the area and decided they didn't want any part of them. Funny thing though those check cashing agencies and liquor emporia, most of them were spawned by the big banks and the corporate world, probably because they could make more and stay above the contamination that the poor are considered by hiding behind second and third parties.
Sorry if I pass on even visiting his blog.
I smell a snob.
Exhibit A: Gardener does the (paid?) work of seeking to discredit this writer.
Once again, fellow forum posters, this sinister pattern suggests too much OF a pattern to qualify as evidence of mere disgruntled posters, here and there, each with a legitimate gripe to vent.
One would require a pretty good spread sheet to link together the names and positions of those who make use of this device, seen as a need to pick apart EVERY individual published on C.D. Of course there are some in this forum who are quite sincere in posts that reflect umbrage taken with specific authors, for who among us is not guilty of some "sin," or human imperfection? What I've come to notice in recent weeks, however, is the unmistakable regularity of these types of hits, or hatchet jobs aimed at just about EVERY voice that C.D. publishes. Taken together, the efforts resemble a decided ATTACK on positions, policies, and persons who are far more progressive than what the MSM allows (or grants celebrity to). I don't think we're seeing just a normal outpouring of honest views.
I encourage posters to consider what I've said. There's PLENTY of evidence to support it. Those likely to show up to attack me play a good game of shoot the messenger. It's also interesting to notice who does show up, as they're apt to be the very ones with the most to lose if their cover is blown. Far easier to paint me as the mad astrologer or the paranoid poster, or someone who wants to dominate the forum. I have utmost respect for the truth, and imposters, along with persons here who harbor compromised agendas are about as tolerable as Nazis.
Garden may smell a snob, but I smell a rat!
I think you may be on to something SR. I remember the days when highkarate was an avid Obama supporter; and it wouldn't surprise me if it was psyop put out by that crowd to discredit the left...
Higgs Boson ans SR,
I want to add that i remember over a year ago when highkarate was urging us to get to know each other outside this forum in a meet up. His excuse was to recruit people for street theater.
DemocracyNow has recently been showing how much money the FBI has been throwing at innocent animal rights groups or pro-peace groups as if they were some kind of eco terrorists...
OK hk, I stand corrected on the Obama thing---I could've mixed you up with another poster. Just remember that "the Dude abides". Abide my friend, abide.
HIGGS & AGELBERT: Thank you for being open-minded enough to notice that there is something insidious going on. I know that when I speak about it, I usually have to incur a good deal of abuse... likely from those who are most vulnerable TO that exposure. In any event, with the awful things taking place in our nation, added to corruption in high places of a sort that stuns the imagination and stings the soul, I cannot be silent to that which I see, sense and feel.
Eliz: I can't say I am sure about that individual you mentioned. I do KNOW the phenomena (of what I shared) is no longer conjecture. It is.
She never mentioned your name in her comment. Oops. Your mistake...
I wholly agree, Siouxrose. The trolls abound, even in my local paper's electronic comments section.
Snobs? Rats? I smell Kochs (the original non-pc pronunciation) and their propaganda money.
We cannot take them or their words seriously, and we must not continue to reply.
Imitate what "they" do to us. We've acquired experience of free-speech zones, kettling, sound cannons, and other crowd-control police tactics--or more modest police fig-leafing: what was done to us protesters when GWB came to town; "they" quickly moved in a battalion and parked tightly lined-up garbage trucks in front of 500 demonstrators so Mr. Bush wouldn't see us.
Remember his flicking us off in the original "Fahrenheit 9/11"? Remember his saying, "a dictatorship would be so much easier"? He showed the world what a snobbish b[r]ush-off was.
So sideline the trolls, ignore them, give them scant space and no attention.
It's an effective device--as we have learned to our own chagrin. I think "garden" never plants anything but propaganda. Of course his/ her name will change with the next post.
gardenernorcal,
You are wrong. He genuinely cares about the plight of the poor. He is as voluble about the faults of Viet Nam as the USA. It's his style to rub reality in the face of many who, like you, have become sensitized to views of poverty as some form of sensationalism. He isn't trying to sell you a God Damned thing. He is just trying to communicate that our society's values need to change or we will self destruct. His photo essays are the present AND our collective future if we don't change.
You generally have some fine comments on the sad state of humanity in this world due to the thrall of technology improperly used to pollute and destroy the ecosphere. I hope you reconsider your views on Linh Dinh. He is a treasure like Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens).
Garden, I’m trying to get a grip on what you’re saying. Do you really think that “chickenshacks, check cashing agencies, liquor emporia and store front churches” meet the needs of a community? Of course the check cashing agencies and liquor emporia are making money out of the misery—what’s your point? And why the allegation of snobbery? I’d take one Linh Dinh telling the real stories of the disenfranchised over a thousand spouting statistics and abstractions.
Siouxrose: I don’t think Garden is a paid troll—his thoughts are too disjointed for that.
The chicken shacks, also - selling various preparations of grease and hfcs to the poor with so few nutrients that they have to eat bucketloads to get enough vitamin B and C to scrape by - their bodies struggling to dump the excess calories into adipose cells. When the body can no longer deal with the empty calories, well: that's what type II diabetes is.
You think that's not exploiting the poor? With no supermarket for miles, they seldom eat a fresh vegetable, or fresh food of any kind. The chronic ill-health from malnutrition keeps 'em docile.
True. I was referring specifically to Garden's comment, and those where the two he mentioned as exploitive. I was trying to comprehend what the fark he was getting at in his absurd post.
Progressives seem to be in a strange place, and I'm in a strange place among them. My primary positions are anti-war and anti-thought-control, the latter of which has arisen from my experiences with the psychiatric profession and the ill-effects of our schooling practices. I believe we need to stop warring and learn to think rationally--and empathetically--before any other progressive issues can be addressed.
Much of the digging into the roots and true motives pertaining to schooling and psychiatric issues have come from the Libertarian/Constitutional/Patriot/Civil Liberty movements, while progressives tend to concentrate on preserving unions, to the detriment of thinking about what is really, really wrong with the schooling we have. On the issue of psychiatry, I'm often disgusted that most progressives think the answer is more funds for mental health, which is usually nearly tantamout to psychiatry, again without considering copious evidence that psychiatry is perhaps more a problem than a solution. In both cases, the majority of responses I get are knee-jerk: we just need to feed more money into the current systems, and I can't abide that.
I agree that the poor have been betrayed by much of the left, and it is a real tragedy that this nation was so fooled by Obama. Slay me for saying so, but I think that the policies of the Great Society tended to encourage dependency and discourage freedom from it--until Clinton dumped them into minimum-wage jobs and expected them to make it with their children on that. On the other hand, the Constitutional libertarians might do us worse (I consider myself rather happily as part of the working poor)--the Constitution was largely written for the benefit of mercenaries, as you know, and they can be an uncaring, even vicious lot. All approaches have their up and down sides. However, I agree with you, the Constitutional libertarians, if they could ally and temper themselves with the streets, could well hold the best chance of creating some real pushback against Empire. I'm expecting a real force of rage coming out of the ghettos and the abandoned industrial towns, and I don't think they're going to be much helped by the liberals, who have wasted their energies on fine points and, frankly, painted the poor as victims without acknowledging and respecting their potential for great power. Or maybe I'm as fooled as Winston Smith, who believed the only hope was the Proles. At any rate, I do believe that the trick is to return us to a nation of ethically-informed law, which we have surely lost.
The fact is that people considered hideously right wing on this site are actually reaching many of the same conclusions as most CDers, and we have more in common than differences in many instances. I prefer to energize the commonalities over ripping into the differences. I know that holds dangers, but what doesn't?
People seem a bit, um, fragile these days, and I think the constant threat of surveillance and personal invasion is part of the problem, plus watching this country and much of the world falling into the shithole of disaster capitalism. I think the best of both you and Siouxrose. I have tried to tell her to chill before--and I must say you really went after Photius yourself on a recent thread, to my dismay. We all need to find connections and deal with divisions in a way that honors everyone's perspective while respectfully but critically examining it, of course.
Yikes! Gardener, please save the bile for the bad guys, OK?
We can all become garbage "pickers". A very popular tv show because it's one of the few things most of us can aspire to since Wall St. got bailed out and there's nothing left for the rest of us.
And like rape it has very little to do with sex and more to do with the aspiration of power and control. Amazingly even though it doesn't have anything to do with genitals or sex they still seem to hide behind the fig leaves. And their marketing consultants continue to tell them if they keep us focussed on sex they can do about anything they wish to.
While Weiner posts his dick on twitter or whatever, Clinton gets his jollies with an intern in oval office, and Arnold has a son by his housekeeper, the rest of us have trouble making ends meet and still keeping the romance alive in private lives, what "private lives"?
As to professional athletes they are all so full of steroids I am surprised they can still get it up. Shrinking before climax...I think the best example of that is our president not even considering a single payer option when he was revising health care.
I understand your feelings...I must admit, however, that this particular piece's analogy, the fig leaf, reaches me...
we have a society that is largely a concealed lie...we hide it under patriotism, religion, education, etc., and he highlights a couple of others, particularly sports...
of course, my biggest 'fig leaf' is the owning of property, and the puritanical correctness of working one's life away to pay another for the privilege...what a lie that is...
don't get me started on sports stadiums, as I witnessed the fiasco that was the financing and building of Safeco Field in Seattle, and, naturally, the subsequent gutting of the team's star roster...what a lubricationless end-around was pulled by Slade Gorton on the voters of this area that day...
Safeco Field...like, what, the fightin' Seattle Policies? the Seattle Claims?
back to the article, I long ago concluded that the groin is actually the heart of the human experience, so his sentence went far in supporting my previous conclusion...
one of the interesting things about the sex act, in the abstract, is the personal involvement...one actually engages, physically, with another, based on mutual desire and acceptance...this also, of course, can be very reaffirming, psychologically...
this physical engagement and psychological affirmation is becoming less and less common in any arena...
more might not be a bad thing...
peace to you, highkarate!
Right, Jason.. you're THE expert on this author, his context, and what he does in his spare time. When not pushing Ron Paul along with your coterie of libertarian RIGHT wing followers, you're a lay psychologist, too... and you graduated with what degrees, from what noted university?
Does the concept of "Granting False Witness" mean anything to you? Or is it just every dog for himself?
I don't like seeing a good writer attacked by the C.D. official hit squad. You often aim below the belt, trying to sound like some kind of sophisticated authority as you berate others. Like this gem:
"but this feels like fluff that goes nowhere."
The author probably put his heart, soul, time and considerable insight to work to write what is NOT fluff. I can't remember if you were the one trying to say that Phil Rockstroh sounded suicidal for the vivid and apt portrait of American society he so glaringly painted. Again: hit job!
There are only a few reasons for this type of REPEATED behavior.
One, of course, would be the paycheck.
Another could be basic envy.
Another, a need to attack voices on the Left because the views they represent have to be systematically discredited, one by one, author by author, whatever it takes.
The last... just the ramblings of an ignorant egotist?
I vote somewhere between 1 and 3
And as for your INSINCERE peace offering to me, sorry, a poster who uses all sorts of sordid lies to try to discredit me in the past is NOT going to get a pass now. I have those posts on record. They may have vanished from others' busy lives and imaginations, but since they were aimed at me, I have more than taken notice. You creeps may be watching me, but guess what, sonny boy... the mirror works both ways. And I'm watching you, AND onto you!
Linh Dinh is a true gem. Just seemed like a good place to throw that in.
Your entire post is a mesh of half truths and lies. I am not going to take the time to deconstruct the chaos of your thought process. Anyone who pays attention to my posts, regardless of their view of my mystical inclinations, knows that I come from a place of integrity and am well-informed on the issues. And where I am not, I generally do not comment. I am not here to shoot holes in the armor of important figures noted for Progressive acts, works, and doctrines...
Good luck with your You Tube thing. Maybe you'll find an audience, certainly Rush Limbaugh and his "type" do. There must be a market for what you have to share...
It's hard to say if you've been trained with disinformation tactics give the way you traffic in complete fabrications. And that you post the items you do, well, the only other explanation is that they represent the reflections of a very scattered mind. You're also impossibly quick with insults, another Right Wing Hate Radio favorite. Another omen of likely success in times as morally repugnant as these. Your thoughts are yours to keep, whatever their source... Enjoy.
Great article and lust is the game, and anger coming a close...Brother Dinh has the art of seeing.
If you have a dick. What about the women of the world? Lust and anger not such a high goal on their agenda.
my last vice president was a dick...
who's vice president, now?
The president you now have is one, too.
Lust VERY much of a goal with us women. We just understand discretion. Or ... we HAVE to be more discrete than men. Remember: "Multiple Orgasms: We (women) WIN!"
Cuyahoga, I can't believe so many men still can't get that. What's the deal? Fear of the vagina or more frigid women than I suspected?
Too busy having babies.
The churches forbid them to have abortions, contraception costs money, and then of course there are the rapes. Try changing the world while you are poor, malnourished, and pregnant or nursing.
Speaking of appearance - I always noticed that Oprah's audiences were always very well dressed, coiffed, made up. There were never obese people on camera UNLESS the show topic was weight and then the fat people were in the front row.
Excellent, eye opening article.
Oprah?
There were never obese people on camera?
Oprah?
No obese people?
Oprah?
What?
From Basketball's idiom we have the term describing a shot from behind the three-point-line as being from "way downtown" because the stadium is usually located in the affluent suburbs and the player launching the shot from the innercity/downtown ghetto, and the term never gets any interpretation, but is said with positive affirmation and admiration. A Fig Leaf indeed. Taking Amtrak through Pennsalvania, specifically Pittsburg, is an eye-opener, while areas of Detroit look like post-WW2 Berlin after the rubbled buildings were removed. Linh is doing the same task as those who documented the human condition during the Depression, where even the Library of Congrees was able to see the import.
Always great insights and superb dot-connecting from Linh Dinh. It's astounding to learn that McDonalds jobs, and similar low-end service sector work, is now among the coveted, hard-to-get employment. Even at McDonalds you now have only about 6% chance of getting hired. If this doesn't tell us all we need to know about the phony "recovery" Obama keeps lying about, what does? All he cares about is Wall Street's recovery. When they get in trouble again, and there's no doubt it will be soon, he'll be there to take his marching orders. But don't look for any jobs program coming from this corporate shill. Wal Mart and McDonalds are the only kind of jobs awaiting the disenfranchised and unemployable, in an economy that stopped caring about anyone but the rich decades ago.
Yes, 6% success rate for McDonalds apps. Someone juxtaposed the higher success rate for Harvard and Yale law school applicants.
Go for broke!
Another trenchant Linh Dinh essay.
Only in Amerika: the Leafless Fig-Leaf.
In the film version of "Lord Jim", the title character sharply exclaims, "I've been called a hero and I've been called a villain-- and I tell you there's not the differerence of the thickness of a sheet of paper between them!"
So too with the proud salt of the earth noble scavenger who "collects cans" to earn an honest dollar-- Judge Judy's hero, the salvific Redeemer of a lost rugged-individual Amerikan paradise-- and the caricatured bottom-feeder junkie parasite who strips pipes, brass fittings, and even copper roof flashing from unoccupied houses or public buildings to pay for a fix.
Dinh's devastatingly accurate thumbnail sketches of urban lunar landscapes alone are worth the price of admission. It makes a nice sweet-and-sour counterpoint to today's Jay Walljasper paean to "pedestrian districts".
What's the matter, haven't you ever seen a 1st world nations slide into 3rd world status? The GOP doesn't care about anything, unless it is rich and is willing to share some of those riches with them.
It's not just the GOP as Dinh exposes in an essay previously published by CD, http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/30-5
I wonder what Rome's figleaf was? I don't give a shit what LeBron does but the stadium thing was a good anology. We are at that Roman stage where a figleaf is required to hide the rot and shit in the cesspools of governments from the feds down, with very few exceptions; a cave maybe the only place to find peace and anything resembling humanity. But then your heart, mind and Soul would not leave you alone..Tony
"In Detroit, 500 bricks will fetch you a hundred dollars, and I saw two young men trying to knock down an abandoned factory wall with hammers."
This is nothing new. People have ben scavenging abandoned buildings for thousands of years.
True, but how is the state of those abandoned buildings's societies described historically? Do check out the photos on his website, although he lists no Canadian cities.
Have you seen Windsor, Ontario recently?
No. My one and only visit to Canada was to Victoria, BC in 1967. Windsor is across the river from Detroit, correct. I'm using google map street level to take a look but don't really know where I should be looking.
Remember Bush's fly-in on the carrier Abraham Lincoln, for the victory party with the "Mission Accomplished" sign on upper decks? Bush actually co-piloted the aircraft (probably excluding landing and take-off - never Bush strong points). Anyway, there were pictures of Bush walking around the deck in his flight suit with this parachute straps conspicuously tightened. The effect of tightened parachute straps is to pull the jump suit up around the crotch, creating a giant, outsized bulge, sometimes called a "moose knuckle" by flyers. Is there any possible way that Bush, a former flyer and a veteran frat boy towel snapper could NOT have known about the moose knuckle? The public reaction included Republican flak Lisa Schiffren calling Bush "hot" (you may pause here to puke...)
So, Bush parades around the flight deck with a false bulge for the entire world to see and he gets praise. Weiner sends a photo of a real bulge to 3 or 4 people, more or less privately and gets driven out of office by his own, craven party leadership. Which "incident" was more pathetic, more "innappropriate", more indicative of "bad judgement", more embarrasing and sordid? Well, to put it in terms we good old "pragmatic" Americans can understand, Weiner's idiot prank cost the country considerably less than Bush's, in every possible way the cost can be measured.
Linh Dinh is right, I guess. In America, it ain't the package, it's the packaging...
Bush also had faux reporter and known male prostitute Jeff Gannon (aka James Gluckert) spend several 'sleep-overs' in the White House.
Zero noise from the Repubs.
As bogi666 said, good point, jareilly. Nicely complements Linh Dinh's portrayal.
Beautiful! Thanks to Mr. Dinh & CD for the great post.
Packaging and perception made America. Neither will work now. The Emperor is stark nekked.
Gee, what will they do now? MAKE us believe again?
"But at street level, even the beautiful downtowns are showing cracks, with commercial spaces at prime business spots abandoned."
This is just an example of how our economy is really going great guns. Sales are so good that everything has been sold to the bare walls!
What's the %age of people applying for advertized jobs and getting them and those wannabe sport's heroes who actually get a 'contract'. Bet on a national level the advertized jobs are much smaller than the sportsman.
Very apt and succinct article. And how, does it really show what a false country this is and what a bunch of false ignorant citizens still keep trying to live that old fashion american dream. Only the future holds what the the future will be but one thing about it, it most likely isn't pretty.
Another thing, and I can't reconcile that the M$M reports it and probably a reason for the football negotiations, are the empty seats in sport's stadiums and arenas. So much for buddy seileg's 80,000,000 fans this year.
Those 'commercial' venues paid for with public money for more corporate welfare, need to start thinking of making lakes in the fields of play and having live with live weapons and munition pirate wars. Winners get to go home and sleep.