what was your time?
Monday: Is there a better feeling than timing your laundry day shower so you have ZERO dirty clothes? No. There is not. I see no need to elaborate on this.
Tuesday: Hey, Dave's pants are in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame:
Wednesday: I'm far enough removed from my college days that I can probably talk about this without anybody getting into any trouble, but once upon a time I was in a fraternity at Tulane. We were a relatively “chill,” “less fratty” frat, which means we were still a bunch of drunken oafs, but we kind of flew under the radar while other, more horrible Tulane fraternities were busy making national headlines for scalding their pledges with crab boil. We weren't too big on hazing or compulsory drinking.
That is, save for one particular tradition. I have no idea if this is still a thing- my honest guess would be no, if only because Tulane clamped down pretty hard on Greek life a year or two after I graduated- but it involved a full bottle of MD 20/20 and a stopwatch (actually just a few dudes counting, but whatever same difference). Suffice it to say that the time it took one to complete this little rite of passage had the potential to be a badge of honor or a mark of shame. The upperclassmen were incredulous when one of the guys from my year, a soft-spoken pre-med student- very “absent-minded professor” type- tied the official record, which was twelve or thirteen seconds. For the sake of comparison, I clocked in at a pedestrian forty-three seconds (the Douglas Adams fan in me was livid at the near-miss), which was somewhere near the middle of the pack. Within that tightly-knit circle, asking someone “what was your time?” was a way to express camaraderie and- if you had done well- an opportunity to flex on one's peers.
In light of Tuesday's Presidential debate, I can't help imagining an inverse “what was your time?”, where the “time” in question is the duration for which one can bear to watch that dumpster tornado before changing the channel or passing out. My time was probably about eight minutes, which I assume is on the weak side. As with trying to chug 750 milliliters of fruit-flavored hobo wine, watching that debate for a “respectable” amount of time is likely bad for one's health and- let's face it- requires an inadvisable level of alcohol consumption.
Thursday: Around the end of high school, some friends convinced me to join them in volunteering for Democratic House Rep Brad Carson's senatorial campaign. I worked in-house a few days a week, doing data entry and answering phones, so I only have a handful of memorable anecdotes, like the time the campaign asked me to appear in a campaign commercial. I got a buzz cut and drove to some private airstrip out in the boonies, where they dressed me and two other guys in flights suits and shot B-roll of us walking down the tarmac with Carson and nodding deferentially while he talked to us about baseball. Then there was the time when my friends and I were celebrating Carson's victory in the primary with some late-night diner food, and we were goofing on some local candidate who'd lost a race that night- I'm going to say it was Doug Dodd, but I'm not totally sure about that- and how he was a sadsack perennial also-ran who would come home after his inevitable crushing defeats and put on a pair of footie pajamas and curl up in bed with a glass of warm milk (remember, this was the mid-2000s, and teenagers had not yet developed the capacity for empathy). When we went to the counter to pay our bill, we realized that Dodd and his family had been seated in a booth at the other end of the dining room the whole time we'd been there clowning on the guy. I think we were out of earshot, but still. Oof.
My two friends, who were both on the debate team and much sharper and more politically engaged than I was at the time (I'm sure this is still true today), would actually go out canvassing for the campaign- knocking on doors and trying to get folks hyped about voting for Brad Carson. They had loads of stories about people telling them in all degrees of politeness to fuck off, as well as probably some weirder anecdotes that I've forgotten by now. But there was one I don't think I'll ever forget from when the campaign had them canvassing in West Tulsa, which was a low-income exurb full of rural conservatives. It wasn't exactly home field for a Democratic Congressman, even a moderate, right-leaning, red-state Democrat like Carson. Canvassers tended to go in there with tempered expectations. So my one friend knocks on the door of some dilapidated pre-fab home along a gravel road, and when a guy comes out, he goes into his usual spiel: "hi, I'm with Brad Carson, the Democratic candidate for US senate, we want your support, blah blah blah, Oklahoma is worth fighting for!™️ Can we count on your vote?"
The guy looks at my friend for a beat, then leans in conspiratorially and replies:
"Yep. I would rather vote for a mule n----- than a Republican."
I tell this story now, because this is an election year (as you may have heard), and racial and social justice are at the forefront of the national conversation, and I think it's worth pointing out that anyone beating that old Republican drum about “we're the party of Lincoln, the Democrats are the party of the Ku Klux Klan!” is effectively viewing America's sociopolitical landscape through the same lens as Mule Guy up there. And yeah, Mule Guy is right that the Klan- freshly butthurt at GROAT (Greatest Republican Of All Time) Abraham Lincoln after he spanked the South in the Civil War- found its first political foothold within the ranks of the Democratic Party. But (and I cannot believe we are still litigating this point in 2020) the winds shifted about fifty years ago, when Strom Thurmond and his fellow Dixiecrats all packed up their hooded robes and flocked to the emerging pro-segregation wing of the Republican party under then-Presidential candidate and forever-garbage human Barry Goldwater. The transition was likely complete by 1989, when this new-look Republican party put David Duke- a literal KKK grand wizard- in the Louisiana state house right after Duke himself switched parties. Kind of funny how all these self-proclaimed Southern history buffs have apparently never heard of the Southern Strategy.
To be clear, the point here isn't that all Republicans are racist (they aren't), or that Democrats have been free of the specter of racism since the parties essentially flip-flopped in the sixties (hah! Also no). It's just that the “party of Lincoln” line doesn't hold up anymore, and it hasn't for a long time.
That said, I don't think you have to be a white supremacist to want to vote Trump. I don't even necessarily think Trump himself is a white supremacist. I think that's one possible explanation for some of his behavior. I also think it's possible that he's genuinely clueless- as he more or less stated when he called Fox News the day after his “stand by” gaffe to try and clear the air. It could be that he's ambivalent towards white nationalists, but cynical enough to string them along for their votes. I tend to think that he's just garden-variety old-man-racist (not to imply that racism becomes cute or normal or acceptable when old people do it), and he's used to being able to say whatever he thinks and do whatever he wants without any consequences or blowback. He's been gross for decades, but he just doesn't have the capacity to appreciate why all of a sudden people care about all of the gross things he does.
BUT. Trump is definitely the Official Candidate of White Supremacy, in the same way that Bud Lite is the Official Beer of the NFL. Now, sure, he didn't TECHNICALLY express tacit approval of a white supremacist group during the debate. The Proud Boys, who apparently took Trump's remarks as a long-distance fist-bump, may be a vast network of violent, hyper-nationalist “Western chauvinists” whose founder has expressed concern over the dilution and ultimate extinction of the white race, but they, like all non-racists, will be the first to tell you that they're totally not racist, really, we mean it you guys. But, even though they publicly denounce white supremacy and vehemently deny allegations of racism within their ranks, they'll fight shield and homemade cudgel to defend principles that one might call “racism-adjacent.” Principles like “a Spirit of Western Chauvinism,” “Closed Borders,” “Anti-Racial Guilt” (whatever the fuck that means), and “Venerating the Housewife” (whatever the double-fuck that means). They may be "not racist," at least in a "sibling holding a finger half an inch away from your face while taunting, 'I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you!'" sense, but they certainly do things that make white supremacists feel cozy and safe, and at heart they're the same tired old clods whose idea of “free speech” is “I get to be an asshole, but you don't get to call me an asshole.” I can't imagine why Trump would have a soft spot for them.
Also, for a club that lists “Maximum Freedom” as one of its core values, the Proud Boys sure have some, uh, unconventional bylaws regarding personal conduct.
Anyway. I think a lot of good people are planning to pull the lever for four more years of Trump. If you're one of them- maybe you identify as pro-life, or you think it'll be good for your stock portfolio, or you just want to own some libs- know that I still love you, but right now, whether you know it or not, whether you believe it or not, whether you mean to or not, you're backing the same horse as this guy, and these guys, and these guys. You're voting for more of this. I don't think that's something anyone should be proud of.
UPDATE: Despite its being filed under "Thursday," I've actually been working on the above since at least last week, obviously folding in the bit about the Proud Boys after the debate. In light of President Trump's hospitalization with COVID-19, I was hesitant to include all of that, but ultimately I decided to leave it as is, because, well, it's true. It will be true if he bounces back. It will be true if he doesn't. All of this ugliness is a part of his legacy. For nearly four years, he has held the arc of history in his hands and bent it as he saw fit. For better or for worse, he has helped create the world we're all living in now. I'm not here to dance on his grave or anything. I'm just trying to tell you what I can see.
Friday: I was saddened by the news of Tower of Power bassist Rocco Prestia's passing earlier this week. Tower of Power has been my favorite band since the first time I saw them play at the Greenwood Jazz Festival as a teenager, and Rocco's playing was a huge part of why their grooves stuck to me when I was younger. He could lay back and drive at the same time. He could make splashy, complex lines seem simple and unobtrusive. His pocket was as deep as the Mariana Trench. His work on the band's most enduring hit, “What Is Hip?”, is probably the best showcase of his trademark straight-sixteenth attack, but I'm going to go with a personal favorite where he really shines. Here's a jam:
Rest in peace, Rocco. You changed my life.
