All this preoccupation over the "C" word...

No, I'm not speaking about Coulter, or the word used to describe her...and I don't mean "conservative" or "commentator"...

Coup...is the overthrow of Morsi in Egypt a coup, or isn't it a coup? That seems to be preoccupying the entire commentary on the situation in Egypt and our national reaction to it....

Of course it's a frigging coup...to the extent that, in the face of intransigence on the part of Morsi and his Theocratic, Iran-sympathizing thugs of the "Muslim Brotherhood" to yield to the people's demands for constitutional reforms, the army stepped in and made him step down. That's a coup...or a revolution backed by the indigenous armed forces. Take your pick.

What's the big deal? "People are dying in the streets"! Yes. In revolutions, people die in the streets. They did in Russia in 1905, and again in 1917, and for decades thereafter (not in the streets, but in gulags)...they did in France in 1787, and again in 1832...and then the French killed people in the streets of Algeria a century later... Name a revolution--and I am not even going to try to enumerate the incidents of revolutionaries dying in the streets, the mud puddles, the barrios of Africa or South America--name ONE revolution where people did not die, by the hundreds...men, women, children...and worst of all animals--who never asked to be part of this crap...

Wake the f*ck up, kiddies... Gandhi's revolution of peace gave way to what amounted to virtual genocide in India and Pakistan... Things get dirty and nasty when people revolt, and when the other side of the argument really gets pissed they start shooting. Then people shoot back. Hatfield and McCoy, times infinity.

Wanna really, and I mean REALLY have something to get your knickers in a twist about? Hmmm? It could happen here. Yep, right here in Mayberry, Opie...

When Theocrats raise their ugly heads above the water-line, and start to infiltrate the air with their putrid stench of intolerance and bigotry, and that stench starts to permeate the body politic, that's when things get ugly.... And things here in Mayberry are getting pretty pungent....

Theocracy is arsenic to Democracy. It is kryptonite to the superpower of the plurality. It's what brought down the French monarchy--in a staunchly Catholic nation...it brought down the Romanoffs--in a nation virtually ruled by the Russian Orthodox Church... The realization of the poisonous nature of Theocracy is what prompted our founding fathers--you know, the boys Bachmann and Palin are so fond of misquoting?--to make damned sure that Church and State would remain separate...

But now, all bets are off. Under the guise of a "democratic process", the Machiavellian Masters of Koch/ALEC have seen the light....they have infiltrated our legislatures with Right Wing Regressive pseudo-Christians, with an agenda devoted to creating an America carved in the image of the KKK, merged with a sprinkling of the Taliban...marching us inexorably towards a bible-thumping, woman-hating, race-baiting, serfdom where the Plutocrats will reign supreme...all hail the conquering, White Supremacist, misogynist Oligarchs...

Do you really think this will not lead to something very ugly here? Do you really think that "No Justice, No Peace" rallies will move them? Do you really, and I mean REALLY think that all the brutality they are starting to demonstrate to the peaceful opposition they are encountering in Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina or Florida is as far as they will go? And do you really think that those of us who have lived through the battlefields of Vietnam, or Iraq, or Afghanistan...or the battlefields of the civil rights movement of the 1960s...are going to go quietly into that "good night"???

So, please kiddies...wake the f*ck up and stop thinking that this is just some reality show, something that you can flip the channel and avoid...Big Brother or Survivor Raleigh...

It's real life...

and it's your asses on the line...

An Open Letter to the "Tea Party"...

I awoke this morning expecting to hear that all the obstructionist crap of the past few months had been put to rest...that we had, in fact, averted the dreaded "fiscal cliff" (OMG how I hate those words)...but instead was greeted by the same crawls and bullets on CNN and MSNBC...the same "no agreement reached" nonsense that I closed my eyes to over 6 hours ago...the same instransigence...the same doctrine-driven avoidance of reality...

I don't know how else to say this:  If you really think that you pay too much in taxes...that your country is too deeply in debt...that our society has gone too far from God and the Bible...then please get on a plane, or boat, and leave....or please kill yourselves...but please, above all, just sit down and shut up.

If you think that this world we have created and that we live in...this high-tech-300-channel-everything-on-demand-high-speed-Interstate-highway-cheap-six-pack-in-every-convenience-store-on-every-intersection-fresh-milk-every-day-flip-a-switch-and-lights-come-on-turn-a-faucet-and-something-other-than-mud-and-benzine-comes-out-of-the-tap world we live comes cheap, then you are just plain stupid or really, really, REALLY FUCKING NUTS!  So, unless you are Amish and don't avail yourself of all these things. sit down, shut up, open your wallet and pay your share.

If you want to be able to drive your Dodge Ram Turbo to the woods, pull out your Bushmaster and kill stuff, or tow your boat to the lake and go fishing and catch and THEN kill stuff...if you want to have electric lights so you can home school your toothless brood...or, especially, if you want to socialize them and send them to public school, in the hope they can then have the privilege of putting themselves and you in perpetual debt paying off their college tuition so that they can go out and get a job working for some asshole who will pay them less and less in proportion to the profits of the company they work for...if you want to have the ability to wave your "Don't Tread on Me" flags at rallies held on public property--parks, public squares, etc.--built, maintained and protected (by police and firemen), all paid from tax revenues...then sit down, shut up, open your wallet and pay your fucking share.

If you want to pretend that you are patriots and continue to pollute our world with your vitriol and diatribes, the right of which to do is guaranteed by our maintaining the largest military force in the world--a force populated by, for the most part, people from the lowest economic brackets of our society and who are being forced to go into 3rd, 4th and 5th deployments in combat zones, only to return damaged in body and soul and find themselves without adequate infrastructure supports to tend to their wounds--then sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up and pay your motherfucking share.

Or leave.  Find someplace else where they will put up with your bullshit without hitting you in your empty heads with a baseball bat, then rape your wife and daughters.  Good luck with that.

If not, then PLEASE sit down, shut up, open your goddamned motherfucking wallet and pay your
share...and stop thinking that your "idealism" even vaguely resembles patriotism or concern for your country's future.  It doesn't.  Your ideas, your words, your ideology is crafted and broadcast by a cadre of plutocrats and oligarchs who could care less about you or your country.  They have their assets, and their asses, covertly covered in tax-shelters and offshore accounts.   They are multinational warlords, and they are laughing all the way to their Swiss bank accounts every time they see you march and scream and elect the flotsam and jetsam you send to Congress to further their interests.

Wake the fuck up.  Sit the fuck down.  Open your wallet...go to Walmart, and then pay your fucking share.

Just another compound tragedy...

I learned, this past weekend, about the death of the second of my partners at BAYLEY LEIGHTON & RYAN, the firm I left to my remaining senior partner Pat Bayley in 2005, when I relocated to LA to marry Lisa.

Pat died just before Christmas 2011, quickly and sadly years before her time...and this weekend I heard that Glenn Ryan, just turned 60, had been discovered inside his Staten Island apartment after being dead for more than 2 weeks...  Glenn had left the company in 2003 to pursue a teaching career.  He was a sweet, intelligent and caring man who loved animals and people, and who was a raging alcoholic.  I only mention this because it is what killed him.  He died alone, accompanied only by his 2 cats, Monty and Fergus, probably from total liver failure.

He had contacted his brother sometime in the mid-summer to tell him that he was having very dark "tea colored" urine.  When urged to go to the hospital, he refused because he was worried about who would take care of his cats during his absence.

The compound aspect of this tragedy is that Monty and Fergus have been doomed, despite Glenn's concerns, to a stunningly cruel and lingering death by starvation, thirst and broken hearts.

On Tuesday 11/6, shortly after Sandy hit SI, Glenn's neighbors were alerted by the yowling and howling of his cats.  When the police gained access to Glenn's apartment, they found his badly decomposed body--he had to be formally identified by dental and x-ray records.  Then the police, despite the fact that the cats had sounded the alarm, proceeded to seal the apartment WITH THE CATS STILL IN IT, and then simply drive away.  Animal Control was supposed to have picked up the cats, but they dropped the ball due to being overwhelmed by the storm and logistical problems.  Then, to complete this dark comedy, the police proceeded to LOSE THE KEYS TO THE APARTMENT so that Animal Control, once ready to pick up the animals, couldn't gain access to the apartment.  Furthermore, a court order would have to be filed to allow any access to the apartment, and this--in case you've forgotten--was a long weekend due to Veteran's Day...

So there are two loving animals, two souls, which are languishing--or have ceased to languish--suffering from starvation which has gone on for at least 3-4 weeks, thirst which can only be abated by drinking from a hopefully-accessible toilet bowl, and the broken hearts brought on by total abandonment.

I am very sad, and very very VERY ANGRY...at Glenn for his self-destructiveness...at the NYPD for its blatant stupidity--albeit they had an overload of issues to deal with, to not even note the presence of the animals in their incident report is beyond dereliction of duty--and at the long list of people...creatures with prescient brains, two hands and two legs, who have failed to come to the rescue of these helpless creatures.

Windows are made of glass...BREAK THE FUCKING THINGS...Supers have keys...GET THE FUCKING THINGS AND GO IN THE DOOR...  In other words, act!  I am 3500 miles away from the scene of this moral crime, or I would have done all of this myself by now.

To Monty and Fergus:  God bless you, and rest your souls.  I hope you found solace in each others' company at the end, and that you went simultaneously.  To have to linger alone after years of companionship would be too cruel to contemplate.

That's a fact, Jack...

To Rep. John Boehner:

Yes, it's true.  Despite the billions, with a capital "B", spent by your pals in the Right Wingnut underground, America has overwhelmingly rejected the message of hate, mistrust, misogyny and falsehood being puked out by you and your Republican brethren in the Tea-Party-cult...  You cannot hide behind the skirts of the well-paid pundits who have promised you that they would produce an electorate too stupid to care about truth, facts and common sense and allow you to continue down the path of obstructionist politics.  You and your grey-faced table-thumpers are exposed to be the bigoted, know-nothing, perversely anti-American fools that you all know you are, deep in the dark recesses of your narrow minds.

I suppose you can take small comfort that Michelle Bachmann squeezed out the smallest of victories in her attempt to return to the table...you can have coffee together during recess and lick each others wounds...

But take this to the bank, because it's a fact, Jack:  we are all going to be watching you over the next few months, and any attempt to pull the crap you foisted on this country for the 24 months prior to this election will result in a purge, with a capital "P", of your side of the aisle in the House of Representatives.  Just try having another 300+ filibusters, or voting down another Jobs for Veterans bill, and see how fast you are directed to the exit door.

Trust me.  We are watching, and waiting, and eager to fulfill the promise of ridding this country of politicians like you and your fellow Teabag Shaker-dancers who have been whirling like dervishes for the past two years, chanting your mantra of hatred and lies and pseudo-science and bad math.

Enjoy being the Mad Hatter at the party while you can, Speaker Boehner, because your days at the table are numbered.  That's a fact, Jack.

The beat of a very different drum...

I have grown used to being on the outside looking in...  As an only child, I learned about a persistent isolation from my fellow man, which was heightened by my being a child actor/singer and, thus, an object of ridicule and exclusion by my peer group.  Luckily for me, I have found, throughout my life, kindred spirits to make this bumpy journey more tolerable.

But now I feel a terrible isolation from my fellow countrymen.

I was shooting a small film last weekend on the campus of a faith-based Christian university...an isolating enough experience for a lapsed-Catholic agnostic like myself...  What made the experience particularly chilling was an event being held in a neighboring classroom.  A large group of Hispanic Evangelicals were gathered for a lecture.  The subject of that lecture:  Los Cuatros Caballeros des Los Apocalypse... These earnest Latinos had gathered together, taking time from their campaigning for the ultra-Right Wing right-to-life candidates they support, to swoon over the coming Rapture...

I left that shoot with a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I have watched this country be infested, like roaches overrunning a tenement kitchen, by a hate-mongering, pseudo-Christian Right Wing mentality with all of its attendant self-fulfilling prophecies...among them the inexorable march towards the apocalyptic vision of Nostradamus, with armies flooding the plains of the Tigris in their final battle...  I have watched, like a stunned motorist going the opposite way on a freeway, the inexplicable high-speed frenzy with which the Red State Tea Party supporters have created a pile-up of obstructionist legislation in Congress, and have deluged our airways with their 501C(4) junk "issue" commercials, filled with lies--and watched a hungry populace eat those lies like candy...

I have watched the navy of plutocracy seal our harbors and shell us into submission...

I will vote my conscience on November 7, but I fear that this will be a futile gesture...like a wounded animal rearing on its hind legs...which will do little more than feed my delusion that I still live in a democracy filled with other than self-centered, self-delusional automatons who never fact-check, never think outside their own box, and never question "authority", as long as it is Caucasian, regardless of its lies...  Imagine their shock when and if they ever awaken from their anesthesia, and find themselves in a fascist state, with a puppet Supreme Court pledged--like the Republican Congress--to the will of Grover Norquist, Karl Rove and all the other grey-faced functionaries who are so effectively delivering this country to the special interests of the uber-wealthy.

Once again, the beat of that drum is asynchronous with my march, and I cannot follow that parade. 

"That's Federalism!!"...er, no, actually, it's not...

Watching "Morning Joe" yesterday, waiting to fully wake up, I heard Joe Scarborough huffing and puffing about how things like healthcare shouldn't be the venue of the Federal government, but should be left to the states.. "Let the states do what they want...they know what's best for them...that's FEDERALISM!"

Actually, no, Joe, it's not.  It's Anti-Federalism, a movement which plagued the Founding Fathers (which Joe and his fellow Conservatives are so fond of identifying with) during the drafting of the Constitution.  The anti-federalists wanted all power to remain with the states, so that they (the wealthy plantation-owners) could control the matters in their own areas.  That argument may have been more attractive in the days when everyone's life centered around one locale--most people never traveled more than 10 miles from their homes--and when they basically mistrusted the folks from the next village, let alone the neighboring state.  It is not remotely feasible in this era of extreme mobility, when many people make a daily commute to work across state lines.

This is supposed to be a nation of Americans devoted to a common cause, and regardless of how the pseudo-intellectual factions of the Conservative movement want to pervert and misrepresent that fact, this is a simple and long-held belief.  This is why men and women from Alabama fought alongside men and women from Illinois on the battlefields of the Argonne, or the jungles of Viet Nam, or the deserts of Iraq.  It is the reason why these same men and women deserve a national system of healthcare which extends beyond parochial state lines and has national scope.

I, for one, am sick to death of the perversions of truth which have been vomited from the Right during this campaign, whether it is the "60% growth of the national debt during Obama's term" (how the hell does 3.3 billion equal 60% of 16.5 billion???) or the Socialist labels plastered on this President's efforts...  I expect this kind of crap on Fox News, but can't tolerate it on MSNBC,

Christmas in July...?...

My new puppy has kennel cough...so I stayed up with her in our casita (read garage converted into studio) so my wife and other dog could sleep undisturbed through the night...  The point is:  my resulting insomnia led to an all-night-into-early-morning sojurn through old movies on TCM...pre-war comedies, wartime musicals...all great stuff...leading to this morning's showing of the Preston Sturges film CHRISTMAS IN JULY...made in 1940, when this country was still struggling to remove itself from the Great Depression...

In one of the opening scenes, Dick Powell (playing a guy with big dreams but a dead-end, low paying accountancy job) is daydreaming at his desk, and his supervisor (played by wonderful character actor Harry Hayden) calls him into his office.  Hayden's character gives Powell a pep talk.  The gist of it is that Powell has to think of himself as a success, or he never will be one.  The gem of this speech is as follows (with apologies to Sturges, who says it a little differently and a lot better):

"No system can succeed if only one-half of 1% of the parts are a success, while the rest of the parts are failures!  All parts must be successful for the system to succeed!"

I sat there dumbstruck.

Here, coming off the screen in a film made 72 years ago, reflective of a time where economic struggle and the fear which accompanies it were spread across all classes in this country, was a razor-sharp and cogent message for our time.

If ever there was a message for the Democrats and Progressives to adopt in this fight against the Right-Wing, class-warfare mongers who want to see more wealth distributed to the wealthiest while the rest of us are left to scramble for the crumbs, this is it!

Please, Lord, let somebody on the DNC have been watching TNC this morning, and take this message to President Obama, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and all the other warriors in this battle, and let their speechwriters and ad campaign managers get the soundbite of Harry Hayden's speech from this film, and play that 10-15 seconds over and over and over again on every station in this country.

Then, it would turn out that the title CHRISTMAS IN JULY would be particularly meaningful, if it turned out that Preston Sturges' words gave a great gift to the Progressive cause in the defeat of the Republicans in the upcoming election.