Sorry for the lack of posts over the past year. We’ve been busy writing for other publications. Never fear, though. We’ll get back to you soon with more unsolicited opinions, dubious words of wisdom, caustic political commentary, and handy household cleaning tips.
10/20/2010
Farewell, world-besotted traveler.
posted by jeff samson
Last night, I lost a good friend to cancer. He was one of a kind–the kind you instantly liked and easily grew to love. He had a big heart. A sharp mind and quick wit. A big laugh. And a smile that…well…I’m afraid I have to defer to F. Scott Fitzgerald for that:
“It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced – or seemed to face – the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ah, that’s Barry. That’s how he made you feel. And why in part it hurts so damn much.
I posted the following tribute to the man this morning on the guitar & amp forum where we first met about eight years ago. So difficult to write. So lacking in so much I’d like to say…would like to have said. But I felt it should live here as well:
Barry to most. Baz to some. Frankenstrat2 to others. Beloved husband, father, friend. Preeminent jewelry historian and appraiser, esteemed Antiques Roadshow scholar. Impassioned musician. Ravenous tone enthusiast, ardent acquirer of fine axes and monster amps. Shameless enabler of the impulse buy, genesis of the dreaded “and what did that cost?” cry of the unconsulted significant other. Wielder of ten thousand pounds of swamp and sweet with an ounce of glass and a little finger. Bringer of laughs, of good times, of Grey Goose, of friends together. Of moments worth remembering.
I woke this morning looking forward to visiting you this afternoon, if for only a half hour of sharing in your spirit–in the inspiring levity, dignity and peace you brought these last few weeks to the most tragic of situations–knowing it would likely be the last “until next time,” for a long time. Alas, I never got the chance. And Saturday’s phone conversation, in which you were cheerful and witty as ever and I left too many things unsaid, will have to do for now.
I’ll miss our talks. Our musing about life and love. Our tone-crazed get-togethers at Jason’s. Making the rounds year after year with you and Pete at the Amp Show. Sharing war stories about gigs and girls and bad decisions after midnight. Trading tasteless jokes over tasty scotch. I’ll miss that “Weber-style” dinner at the Carlyle we never got to enjoy. That slide lesson I never got to take you up on.
You were a world-besotted traveler if there ever was one. And may we take a cup of kindness yet.
Love you, brother.
- Jeff
09/02/2010
Wha’s Like Us?
posted by brian hurrel
I’d like to talk about something that’s probably on everyone’s mind lately.
Scotland.
Admit it. If your of Scots descent, you think about Scotland a lot, and if you’re not, you think about how cool it would be if you were. I’d say I’m proud to be Scottish, but, to paraphrase George Carlin, I had nothing to do with it, so I’ll say I’m happy to be Scottish. Happier still to be a Scots-American.
And in that vein I’d like to share a little tract, author unknown, which shamelessly touts the accomplishments of Scots, particularly at the expense of the English:
For the record, “wha” is “who”, “a’” is “all”, and “deid” is “dead”.
Wha’s like us?
DAMN FEW AND THEY’RE A’ DEID
The average Englishman in the home he calls his castle, slips into his national costume — a shabby raincoat — patented by Chemist Charles Macintosh from Glasgow, Scotland.
En route to his office he strides along the English lane, surfaced by John Macadam of Ayr, Scotland.
He drives an English car fitted with tyres invented by John Boyd Dunlop, Veterinary Surgeon of Dreghorn, Scotland.
At the office he receives the mail bearing adhesive stamps invented by John Chalmers, Bookseller and Printer of Dundee, Scotland.
During the day he uses the telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh, Scotland. At home in the evening his daughter pedals her bicycle invented by Kirkpatrick Macmillan, Blacksmith of Thornhill, Dumfriesshire, Scotland.
He watches the news on T.V. an invention of John Logie Baird of Helensburgh, Scotland and hears an item about the U.S. Navy founded by John Paul Jones of Kirkbean, Scotland.
Nowhere can an Englishman turn to escape the ingenuity of the Scots.
He has by now been reminded too much of Scotland and in desperation he picks up the Bible, only to find that the first man mentioned in the good book is a Scot — King James VI — who authorised its translation.
He could take to drink but the Scots make the best in the world. He could take a rifle and end it all but the breech-loading rifle was invented by Captain Patrick Ferguson of Pitfours, Scotland.
If he escaped death, he could find himself on an operating table injected with Penicillin, discovered by Sir Alexander Fleming of Darvel, Scotland and given Chloroform, an anaesthetic discovered by Sir James Young Simpson, Obstetrician and Gynaecologist of Bathgate, Scotland.
Out of the anaesthetic he would find no comfort in learning that he was as safe as the Bank of England founded by William Paterson of Dumfries, Scotland.
Perhaps his only remaining hope would be to get a transfusion of guid Scottish blood which would entitle him to ask –
Wha’s like us?
Of course, the claims on television and a few other inventions have been contested, but all in all it’s not a bad list of accomplishments for such a small country.
For the record, the Ferguson who invented the breech-loading rifle, served in the British Army during the Revolutionary War. Before the Battle of Brandywine he and his troops happened upon an American officer on horseback scouting ahead of the Continental Army. The officer, seeing the British soldiers, did not flee, but casually trotted in front of them and just as casually trotted away. It would have been a simple matter to “put a dozen balls” in the officer, “But it was not pleasant: to fire at the back of an unoffending individual, who was acquitting himself very coolly of his duty, so I let him alone.” Ferguson later said.
A few days later he found out that the man on the horse was George Washington himself. Had Ferguson been a bit less sentimental, we can only imagine the historical consequences, so raise a glass to Major Ferguson next Fourth of July.
I’ll add a few more Scots of note to the list, though this is in no way complete.
William Wallace and Robert the Bruce
Robert Burns, who penned “Auld Lang Syne”
Andrew Carnagie, American industrialist and philanthropist
Adam Smith, economist whose works led to the modern political economy
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes
Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond
James Barrie, creator of Peter Pan
Lawrence and Christina Hurrel, creators of Brian Lawrence Hurrel.
Ewan McGregor, Ray Parks, and Ian McDiarmud; Obi Wan, Darth Maul, and Emperor Palpatine respectively
Sean Connery, 1989s Sexiest Man Alive
Billy Connolly, foul-mouthed and incredibly funny comedian
Macbeth, last Gaelic king of Scotland, and nothing like the guy in Shakespeare’s play
Rob Roy MacGregor, outlaw famous for being portrayed by Liam Neeson
David Niven, portrayer of consumate Englishman on-screen
Allan Pinkerton, founder of the noted detective agency
Sir James Clark Ross, Antarctic explorer
Saint Patrick, patron Saint of — do I really need to explain who Saint Patrick was? Yeah, that’s right, he was born in Scotland, you wanna fight about it?
James Connolly, prominent leader in Irish independence movement and the Easter Rebellion…what is it with these Irish icons?
In closing, a toast would be in order, the more so for a folk whose ancient word for “water” is uisge.
It’s pronounced “ooiskya”.
Yeah, now you get it.
And so:
Here’s to us!
Who’s like us?
Damn few, and they’re all dead!
07/12/2010
Wishful Thinking in 2010.5
posted by jeff samson
While we at Mists & Vapors like to think of ourselves as a realistic couple of fellows, it’s hard not to get swept up in the wave of idealism that’s sweeping the nation. So in the spirit of every head out there that’s made a home for itself in a cloud or up an ass, here are a few things we’d like to see happen in the latter half of 2010.
1. Penn & Teller receive a Pulitzer Prize for Bullshit!
After eight brilliant seasons, this show continues to be a breath of fresh air, a wellspring of cognitive dissonance, and a searing red-hot poker up the ass of anyone content to lap up the nonsense that passes for conventional wisdom these days. We’d also like to see it become required viewing in every high school in America.
2. Condell in Twenty-Twelve
For Pat Condell to suddenly announce his candidacy for President on the Republican ballot, a lot of strange things would need to happen (becoming a U.S. citizen, producing a U.S. birth certificate, and seizing the reins of that disjointed mess of a political party not being the least among them). But we can dream.
3. All academics are required to take a course in writing simply
You know who you are, with your mile-long Mongolian-cluster-fuck sentences, pretentious portmanteaus, and “I’m too chicken-shit to stray from the orthodoxy” footnote fellatery. Get this: obfuscation does not equal brilliance. And titles that amount to “(insert mildly witty hook here)(insert colon here)(insert string of invented and/or bastardized words featuring the egregious use of affixes and hyphens here)” scream bullshit! Really, if you can’t help but contribute to the ivory toilet’s ever-spiraling mass of regurgitated ideas, the least you can do is be accessible. And once you get that down, you can start thinking about writing things people want to read.
4. Bye-Bye SyFy, Hello Firefly
It’s kinda’ like this: tomorrow we all wake up to a world in which the SyFy Channel has ceased to exist. And all we are left with is but a vivid recollection of the first two and a half seasons of BSG. Firefly picks up where it left off and resumes for all of eternity.
5. Keith Gordon at long last receives the recognition he deserves
Sure, we all know him as Rodney Dangerfield’s dorky high-diving son in Back to School, and the geek-turned-crazed-Fury-phile-bad-ass in Christine. But did you know he’s also directed a few episodes of Dexter (best show ever) and House? And Mother Night before that? And even wrote the screenplay for–as well as directed–A Midnight Clear before that, and The Chocolate War well before that? Of course you didn’t–you live under a rock. Brilliant actor. Talented screenwriter. Visionary director. Heir to the Melon fortune. We think it’s about time we all gave ol’ Arnie Cunningham the recognition he’s earned.
6. Noam Chomsky admits he’s been wrong at least once in his life
Yes, we know that’s asking a lot. But it’s not as if he’s wanting for material.
7. A big budget movie version of The Hat Squad
This short-lived ’92 TV show is a real sleeper. It’s about three young cops who are also brothers. And they wear hats. Specifically fedoras. So they, um, well, that makes them “The Hat Squad”. That’s it. That’s the whole premise. Three young cops who wear fedoras and solve crimes and they’re all brothers. Why would we possibly want to see this made into a huge big budget spectacle? That’s a very good question.
8. A resounding mea culpa from the educational gurus
America’s leading educational “theorists” collectively stand up and say, “Sorry folks, but we were all way off base. We apologize for destroying literacy, basic skills, and every other hallmark of a classical education for three generations of Americans. We’re going to go away now. You won’t be hearing from us again.”
9. An Explosion of Seedless Fruits
Can you imagine–working your way through a coreless apple? A glass of fresh lemonade unmarred by the occasional slimy pit? We can.
10. Obama reads a history book
Any history book. Then he can lend it to Oliver Stone…who can lend it to Tom Hanks…who can lend it to Sean Penn…who will likely burn it and demand the author be jailed.
11. America bashing runs its course
WInston Churchill once said that, “Democracy is the worst form of government…” Then added, “Except for all the rest that have been tried.” At Mists and Vapors, it is our considered opinion that “America is the worst country in the world…except for all the rest.” We’re not quite sure when it became en vogue to brand America as the red-headed step child of the Earth, but we’re positive it’s getting old. Has America been a bad boy? Of course. Does that diminish the ideals set forth by our forefathers, and the considerable progress we’ve made in their direction since? We submit that it does not. And while our president might beg to differ, he’d be much wiser to focus less on apologizing for the sins of our past, and more on mitigating his own administration’s cataclysmically boneheaded diplomacy.
12. The doomsayers have their doomsday
Overpopulation. Mass starvation. Global warming. Global cooling. Nuclear holocaust. Revelations. Super viruses. Mayan prophecies. Supervolcanoes. Alien invasion. Biotic homogenization. The reuniting of Waters and Gilmour. There’s certainly no shortage of quacks out there touting some scientifically tenuous reason why we’re all about to participate in a mass shuffling off this mortal coil. So we say, let’s see all their predictions come true…but on a purely personal level. What does that mean? It means every paranoid schmuck with a hard-on for human suffering gets bumped off in the very manner they’re predicting will befall the species. As for the rest of us, we remain as we are–not without our problems, but on the whole doin’ just fine. Granted, it’s morbid. But you know what they say–fuck ‘em!
13. Paranoids suffer acute attack of common sense
The conspiracy junkies take off their tin-foil hats just long enough to realize that a government as catastrophically incompetent as ours could not possibly have secretly orchestrated the assassination of a President, convincingly faked the moon landing, kept an alien spacecraft and crew in secluded Area 51 for five decades, surreptitiously rigged two of the tallest buildings in the world with enough explosives to enact a controlled demolition, engineered a virus designed specifically to attack members of a particular ethnic/racial group, or plotted with the UN to form a single world government controlled by European Socialists, Jewish bankers and Lesbian Bikers.
14. The Darkness reunite
For a single show in Jeff’s backyard.
15. “Defenestrate” makes a comeback
Such a delightful word, yet conspicuously absent from contemporary vernacular. It really needs to be revived, both in parlance and in practice.
16. More songs sung in Breton
If you’ve seen Blackhawk Down, you probably heard the haunting vocals of a song playing as Staff Sgt. Matt Eversmann (Josh Hartnet) is saying farewell to his fallen squadmate Jamie Smith (Charlie Hofheimer). The film cuts to the loading door of a casket-laden transport slowly closing, gradually narrowing the harsh Somali sunlight to a thin horizontal sliver, then darkness complete. The song is poignant enough on its own, but in the context of the film is utterly heartrending, even if you can’t understand a single word. The language is Breton, an ancient Celtic language spoken by only a handful of people in Brittany, France. The song is called “Gortoz a ran,” roughly meaning “I’m Waiting,” and is sung by Denez Prigent and Lisa Gerrard. No, we’d never heard of them before, but we’re glad we did, and now so are you.
17. Self-cleaning underwear
Pretty self-explanatory.
18. Constitutional amendment bans unnecessary remakes
We have only two words on this. The In-Laws. Or is that three words? We like Michael Douglas and Albert Brooks, but could anyone even hope to compare with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin? We love Steve Martin and Jean Reno, but trying to match Peter Sellers? Or how about Gus Van Sant’s shot-by-shot remake of Psycho? The Wicker Man with Nicholas Cage? Are you kidding? Great directors and great actors with big budgets engaged in a massive waste of time and talent. There are literally thousands of great novels and original screenplays out there and only so many can be made into movies. Every needless remake is a wonderful original tale that will never see the light of day…or darkness of a packed theater. (Note: Unnecessary Remakes are not to be confused with Complete Re-Imaginings or Fresh Takes, i.e. John Carpenter’s The Thing…the latter being far superior and more faithful to the source than the critically lauded ’50s version.)
19. Multi-tasking comes to a much deserved and long overdue demise
Most of us can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can listen to music while mowing the lawn. Some of us can play an instrument or dance while singing. A rare few can walk on their hands and juggle six oranges while farting out the Star-Spangled Banner. But we cannot drive, text, change CDs, put on lipstick, and read our GPS devices all at the same time. Yet people still try to do this. We cannot work at six projects at the same time. We think we are increasing productivity, but we are simply doing six things inefficiently. We have lost the ability to focus, and the more we try to do at once, the more we rewire our brain cells to demand multiple sources of stimulation. Don’t take my word for it, check the latest research. We’re fast becoming the US of ADD. Think of that the next time you kiss your significant other while checking Facebook’s Farmville on your iPhone over their shoulder as you listen on your Bluetooth to Edwards from accounting spouting your client’s latest profit and loss statements and managing to watch baseball scores and/or stock quotes crawling across the bottom of the HDTV at Bennigan’s which incidentally is having a special on Jello-shooters as you can see from the specials blackboard.
20. Edwards from accounting gets his due
Edwards from accounting is a nice guy. He works hard, pays his taxes, barbecues in the summer, and keeps his yard and house tidy and attractive. Every summer he takes his whole family down to the Jersey Shore or up to Lake George. Edwards has instilled a sense of duty and patriotism in his children, even if some of his peers think patriotism is a little passe. Edwards and his wife are well-liked in the neighborhood. Their well-behaved (mostly) children do very well in school, and will no doubt be productive members of society.
Henri, on the other hand, is deeply in debt, mostly due to an out of control cocaine habit that cost him his earlier career in marketing. It also cost him his marriage. Henri has managed to alienate just about every person who ever cared about him. He has embezzled money from his employers and stolen money from his friends and relatives. He has hit rock bottom and and kept on crashing through. He is despicable. Pathetic. Scorned and shunned.
Now, which of these two guys will receive the most praise for his integrity and strength of character.
No, silly, not boring old Edwards from Accounting.
You see, Henri has somehow not only found religion, he has actually completed a rehab program. Henri has not only kicked his drug habit, he is now a counselor who helps others kick their habits. Henri is a man reborn. Once an object of contempt, he is now admired. Yes, admired for his strength of character. Feted for his struggle in overcoming addiction. Henri is just the all around coolest, kick-ass, compassionate, wise, and caring soul you could ever hope to meet, and fuck-all if we don’t wish there were more guys like Henri. Men with character. Men with integrity. Men with such inner strength by God! Why, Henri is a genuine American hero!
Bullshit. Not anymore. Kudos shall be given to those who do the right thing in the first place.
-Brian & Jeff
07/02/2010
Why New Jersey’s Inner City Schools are Broken: An Introduction
posted by jeff samson
Years ago, while earning my Master’s, I wrote a paper discussing my assumptions about inner city education. If I remember correctly, the assignment was entitled “The Conceptual Mindset Paper” and the course something equally as lofty, like “Social Dynamics of Inner City Pedagogy.” (I would later learn that every course in the program was heavily geared towards inner city education in the hopes of churning out South Side saviors and Down Neck messiahs–this one was just more honest about it.)
The assignment was transparent enough. Spout a handful of negative attitudes and perceptions towards inner city schools and students early on and you’d have plenty of targets to shoot full of holes over the next few months. It also made great material for future reflection (I would write no less than 47 reflection papers over the next two years).
The whole thing came pretty easy to me. After all, I had no shortage of negative perceptions of inner city education, especially if those inner cities were in New Jersey.
At the time, my wife had been teaching in an Abbott district for two years, and there was seldom a night where I didn’t come home to a diatribe on her clueless administration, her disruptive and/or apathetic students, the scripted Mickey Mouse curriculum, the nonexistent parental involvement, the lack of high standards and accountability, and on and on and on. So, I didn’t have much love for an entity that–along with my never failing to leave the toilet seat up–was making the love of my life’s life a living hell. I also didn’t really think of what I was about to call my “assumptions” as being preconceived notions so much as realities.
But what did I know? I was but in my educational infancy then–green as hell and so damn wrong about so many things. I hadn’t yet learned that because my wife was a (gulp) Alternate Route teacher–and thus an ill-trained and ill-informed product of an insidious system seeking to subjugate New Jersey’s black and Hispanic populations through institutionalized racism, culturally biased curricula and punitive methodologies–she had no clue what she was talking about, and was forever doomed to be part of the problem. Sometimes I think if only I’d been told sooner, I might have been able to thwart her wickedness. Alas, tenure robbed me of that chance.
In any case, being the good student that I was, I assumed away and wrote the paper.
After a few months of heated discourse–encompassing the evisceration of Bush’s NCLB, the debunking of E. D. Hirsch and all like-minded reactionaries, the exoneration of the inner city pupil from any and all academic failure, and the exorcism of all traditionally held notions concerning the merits of a classical education from my ignorant, indoctrinated, white, upper-middle-class soul–we were assigned a follow-up paper. This time, the objective was to reexamine our assumptions through our newly-enlightened lenses, and lay them to rest. And so I did, shamefully addressing and incinerating my prejudices and misconceptions of old, and citing a myriad of books and research to buttress my philosophical transformation.
And I was indeed transformed. Why shouldn’t I have been? It all made sense in the abstract. And who could argue with the overwhelming consensus of scholarly research presented to us throughout the course? Besides, any opposing viewpoints didn’t stand a chance in our community of inquiry–our ideological rigor positively laid friggin’ waste to the opposition.
So through my Master’s program I went, a transformed and ever transforming educator-to-be, with a renewed and positive outlook on inner city education.
That said, when I received my student teaching assignment in the mail, and discovered I’d be cutting my teeth at a high school in Newark, the second thing I did was put on a clean pair of underwear. I mean, I might have been transformed and a true believer in the educability of all students and all that stuff. But I wasn’t suicidal.
After a month of sparring with the director of student teaching placements–a woman whom I can best describe as a cross between Louis Farrakhan and Master Sardu–it was clear that I wasn’t getting my placement changed to a school system that was more compatible with my bowels. So I accepted my fate, and spent the rest of the summer prepping myself for my student teaching practicum.
The experience turned out to be eye-opening beyond anything I could have imagined within the confines of my 500 level classes.
And nothing less than life-changing.
In the months during my practicum, I found many of my “assumptions” confirmed, often heartbreakingly so. In some instances, I found my initial attitudes and fears reduced to cute, whitewashed versions of a much bleaker reality. Other times, it was the extent of my ignorance that slapped me across the face. In many respects, I truly had no idea how bad things were.
Also devastating was what my experience revealed about my new-found bag of ivory tower ideologies. These were the principals that were presumably inextricable with success in teaching and learning–the pillars of a pedagogy that would help me motivate and inspire and bring student achievement to soaring new heights, and inject a healthy dose of cosmic justice into the Newark school system while I was at it.
Instead I felt lost.
Much of what I’d learned about the philosophical foundations for best practices–the rhetoric and research on multiple intelligences and multiple literacies and differentiated instruction and whole language and whole-school reform, to name a few–now seemed so misguided and naive. And what still seemed sound in theory, I found to be cataclysmically absurd in execution. The gap between ideology and practice was simply stunning.
After that experience, I decided to leave inner city education, and take a job in the suburbs instead.
Some of my professors weren’t happy about it. I got the sense that because I was going the way of suburbia, they felt I was minimizing my potential for “real success” in the classroom. Coulda’ been an Abbott Ace, became a Blue Ribbon Bitch-Boy instead, or something like that. It was upsetting…if unsurprising.
I’ve been thinking about it a lot these last few months, what with everyone even marginally involved in education up in arms over Christie’s fund-slashing extravaganza, and Obama’s patently ridiculous Race to the Top Program and “I’m really too busy with other shit” blueprint for revising NCLB. And I’ve come to the conclusion that there should have been a final paper. One assigned well after the initial course and after my student teaching experience that would have allowed me to reflect both on my early assumptions and on the antithetical mindset that emerged through my coursework in light of my experiences in the classroom. One that would have allowed me the chance to explain–to my professors, my coworkers, my students, and myself–why I chose to leave Newark behind.
So, with the help of my M&V co-founder, Mr. Brian “Hammer Time” Hurrel, I’m going to write that paper.
Over the next few months we’ll be posting a series of articles discussing why inner city education in New Jersey is broken. But we won’t be stopping there. We’ll also be discussing why Jersey’s suburban schools have their fair share of problems. And what’s more–we’ll tell you how to fix it. All of it.
Yup…we’re that good.
More soon.
-jeff
06/25/2010
Where Have We Been?
posted by brian hurrel
We here at Mists and Vapors have received scores of emails wondering why we haven’t had any updates for so long…okay, not really, but we figured it was time to put up some new material. Otherwise we’ve both been busy, busy, busy. I just realized something recently, and wish Jeff had clued me in when he left teaching to go into the private sector. To wit:
Ex-Teachers Do Not Have Summers Off
My son’s last day of school is today. The school where I last worked is finished on Friday. But come Monday, for me, it will just be another Monday. But, on the brighter side, it will be a Monday without any wretched children, horrible parents, illiterate literacy coaches, make-work supervisors, or young female teachers wearing inappropriate clothing. Okay, I’ll miss that last bit. Of course, I’ll take the trade-off. You would have to offer me twice my former teacher’s salary to even consider going back into the classroom. And even then I’d consider it for all of eight seconds and respectfully decline…if you consider, “No, no, and fuck no,” respectful. There are many reasons people leave the teaching profession after only a few years, and in New Jersey, our new governor has managed to scapegoat teachers and other public employees as the source of all the state’s fiscal problems. In the process he has publicly vilified, insulted, and demonized the entire teaching profession, and the hysterical sheep in the thousands have followed his example. Teachers are being accosted by out of work parents blaming them for unemployment, children are telling teachers they get paid too much and that their parents are their bosses because “they pay your salary”. And that’s just the least of the bullshit. Way to scare any sane person out of the profession, Governor.
But enough about education. We’re going to have an entire series of posts outlining the most serious problems in public education today as we see it. It’s only our opinion, of course, but since we both have teaching experience and are not brain-dead, we have a pretty good handle on what works, what doesn’t work, and what is absolutely catastrophic in the classroom. There are things going on in public education that will outrage you, leave you stunned in disbelief, and even chill you to the bone. Hard as it is to believe, there are scarier things than cataclysmically unqualified Hudson County Politician Bret Schundler becoming Education Commissioner.
A few words on Obama’s “Race to the Top” and “School Reform”:
If you have school-age children, any time you hear the word “REFORM” you should be afraid. Very afraid. Educational reformers have all but destroyed basic literacy, lowered standards, forced teachers to perform all sorts of inane academic and pedagogical acrobatics, pandered to the lowest common denominator, and pushed all sorts of wrong-headed and counterproductive educational “theories” onto an unsuspecting and in many cases apathetic American public.
In short, educational reformers have spent four decades trying to fix something that wasn’t broken in the first place, and have turned many public schools into a pathetic politically correct joke when it comes to academics. Personally, I think Governor Christie’s policies will be a disaster for public education in New Jersey. Only time will tell, and I hope I’m wrong, but if I’m not, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Coming up soon I’ll talk about some of the best books I’ve read recently. These include Polybius’ excellent “Rise of Rome”, written over 2,000 years ago, and “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”, which is considerably newer.
To all of our readers, who must number at least seven by now, we thank you for your patience.
03/20/2010
An Open Letter to the Newark Star-Ledger: Enough With the Teacher Bashing
posted by brian hurrel
(Letter the Star-Ledger Will Never Print #2)
The bashing of New Jersey public employees, especially cops and teachers, seems to have become something of a sport at the Star-Ledger, and Tom Moran is no exception. (N.J. Gov. ‘Wrecking Ball’ Christie swings budget ax, misses tax cut for wealthy, March 17th). In the past year the editorial attacks have become relentless, with the Ledger putting the state’s fiscal crisis squarely on the shoulders of public employee unions. Unfortunately, Mr. Moran trotted out the same tired story of Edison cops averaging $100,000 a year. I must have seen this Edison cop story at least half-a-dozen times in the news, and though true, it is hardly representative of police pay scales across the entire state. For one thing, I guarantee you that the young cop who recently got shot up in my hometown of Fairfield isn’t making anywhere near $100,000. And gosh, why should he, what with all his outrageous perks? Never mind the very real risk of getting shot on the job. Of course, unlike police, or even fellow journalists in autocratic or unstable countries, journalists in New Jersey don’t have to worry about getting shot at, and are not putting much on the line when they publicly refer to leaders of the powerful teacher’s union as “dark lords”.
As for teacher objections to merit pay? What is this? I mean, I know the general idea behind it, and on the surface it seems like such a good idea that only the most stubborn, recalcitrant, obstructionist, and outright lazy teachers would object. But…and that’s a honking big but…I have yet to see a single clear and logical explanation of how such a system would work. One op-ed writer went so far as to say that he didn’t know the specifics of this excellent idea, but was sure that education officials (yes, the same Einsteins who fouled up education in the first place) could come up with something that worked. Well, thanks, Mr. Handy Helper!
Of course, most people whining about merit pay ignore a very basic fact about teaching: Not all teaching positions are created equal, and not all schools are created equal. How does one compare an English teacher witha History teacher? I have taught both and I can tell you that the former required about three times the amount of “homework”. The former was also a standardized testing hotspot, meaning that I was under intense pressure and scrutiny to follow state mandated guidelines and raise test scores at all costs. And by all costs I mean at the cost of other subjects. Even as a History teacher, I was once ordered, in the weeks leading up to the statewide GEPA exam, to “forget about this history stuff and just have them reading and writing every day.” How do you compare a Gym teacher withan Art teacher? What exactly constitutes acceptable progress for students of a Music teacher? Fact is, no matter what useless measures the state might come up with, the system will never be implemented fairly.
By the way, I’m not bashing Mr. Moran specifically. His article was just one of many over the past two years that seems to put the brunt of its ire on teachers, and I take that a bit personally. Undeniably, the public school system is broken, especially in the Abbott Districts. And folks, this is not a dented fender or some scratches that can be buffed out. This is rusted out frame, busted head gasket, broken axle, cheaper to get a new one rather than pour money into repairs kind of broken. That said, targeting teacher misses the real problems with the education system.
Want to save money in schools? Stop dumping on the front line teachers and start trimming the bloated administrations. Get rid of counterproductive and barely literate “literacy coaches” (think I’m being flippant? I used to read their emails!). Does an English and Math teachers need three bosses, e.g. vice-principal, literacy or math coach, and curriculum supervisor, not all of whom necessarily agree on what teacher should be doing? Does an elementary school in corrupt and nepotism riddled Union City really need 3 vice-principals and, as if that wasn’t enough, a newly created fourth “supervisor” position (without explanation of what is being supervised) for an obvious political appointee? What about the politically connected folks who do their absolute minimum five years of (mostly ineffectual) classroom teaching before becoming highly paid (and mostly ineffectual) administrators? Back in the day did any of us ever have a principal withless than 20 years of classroom time? I doubt it, but the schools are now filled with these 5-year wonders. These are the people pulling in the “huge” salaries the Star-Ledger is always squawking about while the vast majority of rank and file teachers can barely afford to live in Northeast Jersey.
How about keeping school administrators from funneling taxpayer money to cronies masquerading as “education consultants” and stop the frightened rabbits running failing schools from jumping on every newfangled snake-oil educational strategy at a cost of millions per year—not to mention the cost of frustrated teachers who are forced to not only swallow but disseminate the steaming piles of who-knows-what spewing from the minds of illiteramuses withdoctorates. Balanced literacy, anyone? These are the kinds of knuckleheads that will tell you, witha straight face, that students “don’t need to waste time looking up words in the dictionary” to determine meaning and/or spelling. They’ll spout statistics “proving” that “out of context” grammar instruction and “repetitive” writing drills in and of themselves are useless, and that reading and writing is best taught by “immersing and surrounding children withliterature”. That’s like me saying that my son can become a star basketball player if I surround him with basketballs and posters of Michael Jordan while forgoing such useless and “out of context” things like wind sprints and “repetitive” passing drills.
The system is utterly broken in most urban districts and the blame can be laid squarely on administrators and school boards. Don’t take my word for it, just look at the news and attend a few board meetings. Check out the payrolls. See how much money is wasted on useless perks, questionable workshops, and, God help us, on redecorating the new principal’s office in a Hudson County school. For those of you who think more money would solve the problem, do yourself a favor and see how many more thousands of dollars are spent on inner city students in Newark and Jersey City in comparison to that spent on suburban brats in Maplewood and Randolph. You’ll be amazed. I won’t even go into the $180 million new high school in Union City, 95% of which was paid for by taxpayers in the rest of the state. Urban schools also work the system by fudging numbers (kid goes to Columbia or the DR for three months, they remove him from roster, then reinstate him when he returns, rather than count him absent) to make it look like attendance is higher — higher attendance means progress, which means more funding.
As for cutting budgets? Well, let’s see how this will play out. Here’s a for instance, and this is stark reality. A friend of mine who works for a school district in central Jersey could lose his job this year. Why? Because if the budget doesn’t pass, they’ll trim non-tenured teachers to get it through. How will they do this, you ask? By assessing teacher performance? Nope. They will quite literally throw all of the non-tenured teachers’ names in a hat, and select at random. I kid you not.
You don’t blame privates and sergeants for losing battles; you blame the generals, and rightly so. The best fix for this would be to clean out 90% of the administration from public schools—except for the secretaries, of course — and start over from scratch. Take a look at some of the excellent Charter Schools in Newark and Jersey City (please don’t mention CREATE HS—that’s the exception and not the rule) and see how well they do with far fewer funds. And again, as a bonus, stop blaming hard-working teachers who have to put up with all the mudslinging from every direction. If you think any of the current proposals will do anything but drive out good teachers while continuing to line the pockets of the powers that be, then you need a solid New Jersey reality check:
A good hard slap in the face.
03/02/2010
Republicans are evil…just ask the Democrats.
posted by jeff samson
Democrats have always felt extremely comfortable bashing Republicans to me. As for why–your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps it’s because I’m a libertarian. They hear that and think, “Hrm, well, he’s a libertarian and I’m a liberal, and the first five letters are the same, which means he must think at least somewhat like I do, so I don’t see any harm in wasting the next twenty minutes of his life expounding on how the GOP is the enemy of progress, the bastion of out-moded ideas, and, essentially, the fountainhead of everything that’s wrong in America.” Or perhaps I just have one of those faces that says, “Bore me…please.” Regardless, I always seem to wind up at the ass end of a marginally coherent tirade in which I’m told that Bush is Hitler, Cheney is the Devil, Republicans use Hispanic quadriplegics instead of clay pigeons when they go skeet shooting, and Obama is just dreamy.
Occasionally, the mood will strike me right, and I’ll inform them that if they’re looking for validation or camaraderie, they’ve come to the wrong place–that our similarities are purely alphabetical, and that philosophically we couldn’t be farther apart. And if I’m feeling particularly prickly, I’ll explain to them with a sigh that many moons ago I would have indeed been called a liberal–a classical liberal, to be precise–before their unimaginative progressivist ancestors hijacked and bastardized our word. But more often than not, I end up biting my tongue and tuning out.
For one, I don’t typically feel inclined to defend the Republican platform. While some of my views certainly lean more right than left, there’s much along the Republican party line with which I disagree. And as for seizing the opportunity to expound the libertarian worldview, experience has taught me that trying to demonstrate the merits of free market capitalism, limited government, individual liberty and personal responsibility to liberals is about as worthwhile a chore as discussing the impact of Yeats on modernism to a class of ineffectual, iPhone-entranced 16-year-olds–given either option and the alternative of slamming my balls in a dresser drawer, I’d gleefully select door number three.
These encounters never used to bother me much. I’d chalk them up to having the bad luck of being a magnet for the fringes of the Democratic party–the ones politicians hope skip out on rallies and show up en masse on election days. But the more I look around, the more it seems these fiery rants speak to a general ugliness, hatefulness and ignorance in the attitudes of Democrats towards Republicans today.
In the eyes of far too many vision-impaired Democrats, Republicans are evil. To them, the predominately red-colored region between the left and right coasts is a vast wasteland brimming with bigoted, bible-beating ignoramuses, too uninformed to make an educated decision on anything, and too unintelligent to even try. And their representatives and leaders are merely slightly less unintelligent, if somewhat more opportunistic, individuals who’ve managed to push their way to the front of the lynch mob. Honorless fat cats, content to serve as shills for big business and instruments of the religious right, and bent on maintaining the insidious status quo in Washington. They are fueled by greed. They lust for power. They exist to oppress, stifle, discriminate, exploit, pervert and cash out. And they are all of them united in an omnidirectional disdain for all but Christ’s children, and a wistful longing for a time when being half black meant you couldn’t be President, and being all white meant you weren’t necessarily the scourge of the earth.
This mindless demonization of the GOP and its supporters doesn’t accurately describe Republicans any more than “soft-headed, bleeding-heart, guilt-stricken, tree-hugging, multi-culturalist, quasi-Marxist, crypto-fascist pussies with lofty visions and big opinions about everything, and knowledge about slightly more than nothing” accurately portrays Democrats. These caricatures describe, if anything, the extremes of the spectrum. And when you use the extremes of a spectrum to define its entirety, you are creating an image that is fundamentally false. Are there nuggets of truth in either? Of course. But to think that’s what all Republicans or all Democrats are all about is simply lazy thinking.
I have a number of Republican friends and family members (some of my best friends are Jewish too, and I’ve easily had over a dozen black people over my house). They’re good people. Moral people. They’re well educated, well read and well informed. They have families and friends whom they care deeply about, and want nothing more than a world in which they can live freely and happily. They want people to be treated equally. They want their politicians to behave and act in their best interest. They want peace. And they feel that the decisions on how to best live their lives are best left up to them.
I’m not saying that all Republicans are like this. Indeed, some are thoroughly repelling, though typically for reasons that transcend Republicanism. But most that I know and meet are way more in line with that generalization than with any that effectively liken them to minions of the Underworld. And, quite frankly, if any of the above qualities strikes you as evil, you should probably throw in the towel on thinking right now.
Republicans simply have different ideas than Democrats on how to go about achieving, what are more often than not, the same ideals. Democrats love to spin this as in indicator of a lack of information and intelligence–Republicans are just too ill-informed and stupid to grasp the intricacies of complex issues, and therefore ill-equipped to generate meaningful views. Thus their opinions are reductionist and obtuse and not up to the perceived level of discourse on which the Democrats operate. They cannot fathom that a Republican could accept or reject anything based on a more substantial set of criteria than, “Is it sufficiently evil, does the Bible say it’s kosher, and will it keep minorities down?”
Take, for example, healthcare. Democrats hear Republicans denounce their plans for government funded healthcare, and claim they’re doing so because they want to stifle progress in America, line their pockets with kickbacks from insurance companies, and because “denying” people their “basic human right” of healthcare satiates their evil Republican urges. That their objections might be based on the exorbitant costs on top of an already absurdly huge deficit, higher taxes, the potential for a decline in the quality of care, the greater expansion of government control in the private sector, the hijacking of doctor/patient decision-making, the use of fines and penalties to coerce businesses and individuals, the artificial lowering of prices without lowering actual costs, the fact that rationing seems inextricable with socialized medicine in every other part of the world does not even cross their mind. That they might object on the basis of preferring medical savings accounts, allowing competition across state lines, or eliminating the 3rd party payer system is not within the realm of possibility. It is purely, “not a fan of government run healhcare = not a fan of humankind.”
Take Obama as another example. Think Republicans didn’t vote for Obama because of his views, voting record and lack of qualifications? Not according to Democrats. Nope, they didn’t vote for him because they’re all racist. Marginal experience, a liberal voting record, extremely questionable political and organizational and personal ties, a Chicago machine background, socialist tendencies, a tenuous grasp of history, a disregard for basic economics, a shameless love affair with FDR, utter ineptitude in foreign policy, unrestrained vision, a scarily inflated sense of self and purpose, incomparable skill in talking out of both sides of his mouth, a friggin’ Jedi master of talking without saying anything…none of this held any weight at all. They simply took one look at him and said, “Dear lord, look how brown he is, would you just look at how BROWN he is! Fire up, I said fire up them crosses, that Muslim must be stopped!!!!” The night Obama won the election, every Republican cried themselves to sleep–an autographed picture of George Wallace clutched tightly in their arms…a thoroughly dog-eared Mein Kampf resting cold and lonely on the night table.
The problem with Democrats trying to vilify Republicans, while shoving their own agenda down our throats, is that they are engaging in exactly the type of behavior they profess to abhor. Presuming that their differences of opinion indicate an intellectual and moral imbalance between parties is about as reductionist and obtuse as it gets. If these issues are in fact as intricate and complex as the Democrats claim, then isn’t it perfectly reasonable that critical examination from different people might yield different conclusions? Isn’t the consideration and valuing of the variety of ideas from all people and parties the very essence of the democracy the Democrats claim to be trying to restore? It all seems very hypocritical and spiteful to me.
Of course there are some Republicans who oppose government run healthcare purely on the basis that it will interfere with lining their pockets. But so are there Democrats who support healthcare purely on the basis of receiving special funding for their states and pet projects, and justifying their existence by making big government bigger. Are there Republicans who voted against Obama simply because he’s half black and couldn’t stomach the thought of someone of his melanin content running the country? Most definitely. Just as there are Democrats who did the same. And that is unquestionably simple-minded and sad. But no more simple-minded and sad than the slews of people from both parties who voted for Obama simply because he’s half black, and therefore felt it was the “progressive” or “hip” or “anti-racist” thing to do, or saw it as their chance to “answer the call of history,” or even as the ultimate release valve for years of pent-up white guilt. It’s what Thomas Sowell astutely called, “Racial Roulette.” And from what I’ve seen this past year, hipsters–you got the unlucky chamber.
Look, I understand where the Democrats are coming from. After eight years of suffering through an abysmal administration, their big wins have put them in a position to kick some Republican ass. House majority! Senate majority! And the White House’s albedo has been positively HALVED, muthafucka! You’ve got the Speaker of the House declaring we won, so we make the laws! You’ve got a fired-up Harry Reid–a lover of all things light skinned with no Negro dialect–doing…well…as Harry Reid does. You’ve got a thuggish president who uses his state of the union address to assure Democrats that they hold the higher ground and Republicans that they will not be allowed to stand in their way, and never misses an opportunity to stir the masses by lambasting the wellspring of greed and evil and Republican kick-backs that is big business (on a related note, is it me, or is the relentless attack on Corporate America by a president with his very own fucking logo the pinnacle of irony?). You’ve got a media-fueled cult of personality that any Latin American dictator would kill–and likely has killed–for. And you’ve got a veritable army of HOPE-clad drones parroting your party line. If ever there was a time where you could do some serious damage across the isle, it’s now.
Or, you could take the high road–you know, the one reserved solely for the Democrats–and behave with some dignity and decency. Stop lumping people together under false umbrellas. Stop demonizing simply because you disagree. Stop labeling because you can’t think far enough past your own prejudices and narrow worldview to see room for alternative ideas. Such ugliness does little more than offend and polarize. If anything else, it fires up the nut-bags who DO fit your stereotypes, and that’s not good for anyone. And in spite of how good it might make you feel to exalt yourself and throw shit from your joke of a pedestal, you really do look like a jackass from down here.
-jeff
p.s. To any indignant Democrats who feel I’m being unfair–I am well aware that the Republicans are just as guilty. But, much as it keeps me from sleeping through the night, right now the Democrats are the ones in charge of screwing up the country. When the Republicans are once again at the helm of the short bus barreling headlong up the asshole of the American people (which, thanks to the Democrats’ bang-up job thus far, will likely occur this November, and again in 2012), you can guarantee I’ll be taking aim at them. Until then, physician–heal thyself.
01/20/2010
Ignorancia de Moda
posted by jeff samson
“What’s that shit on your chest?”
–Ricky Vaughn
A few years ago, back when I was still inhabiting my former life in education, I experienced what some teachers might call a teachable moment. I was heading to a particularly torturous 9th period Brit Lit class, and noticed a student in a New York Dolls t-shirt. It was a bit of a surprise. In a day and age when most kids were sporting emo, screamo, hardcore, grindcore, and post rock (whatever the fuck that is) band-wear, seeing a beacon of 70s punk/glam was pretty unexpected. Sure, I’d see the occasional Zeppelin or Floyd or Hendrix or even Jethro Tull shirt now and then. But the New York Dolls? How very strange…and encouraging!
Naturally–and likely in a subconscious attempt to gain some ground in the coolness department, as all teachers do and fail–I asked the kid if he was a fan. He started to say yes, then stopped himself, and said that he was indeed a fan of the shirt, but that he’d never actually heard the band. I found that a bit odd. But be that as it may, I seized the teachable moment, and offered the kid some insight into David Johansen, Johnny Thunder and Co., based on my reasonable knowledge of the band and their music.
He thanked me of course, but who knows if he ever bothered to listen to the band. Shit, if I were in his position I’d have run home and torched it for the simple fact that a teacher approved. But I’d like to think at the very least I gave him some insight into the statement he was making, even if he didn’t download the entire Dolls catalog onto his iPod that very evening.
Because t-shirts do indeed make statements. Some are overt, some subtle. Some profound, some absurd. Some innocuous, some offensive. Some hilarious, some why don’t you just kill yourself. And whether the statement is as surface as “I like the New York Dolls,” as radical as “I Heart Eugenics,” or as mysterious and deep as “my penis is a rocket ship to a higher consciousness,” it typically says as much about the wearer as it does about the subject matter. So it would seem to me a good idea for the wearer to know what’s being said. And the best way to know what’s being said–and what people are likely to perceive, which is clearly important to you since you are quite literally wearing your mind on your sleeve–is to acquire a firm understanding of the subject matter.
I’m reminded of my teachable moment every time I see someone in a Che Guevara t-shirt.
I like to think of myself as open-minded. I’m tolerant of most things, and accepting of many. I always hear people out regardless of whether or not I agree with them, though I do try to avoid particularly hateful rhetoric. And when it comes to free speech there isn’t a more black and white issue in my mind. That said, if you are above the age of 18, possess an IQ upwards of room temperature, and own one or more Che Guevara t-shirts, you deserve to be strung up in public and flogged with rubber dicks.
Now, don’t get me wrong–I understand the allure. Che was a revolutionary. And revolutionaries are inspiring. From quiet flame to roaring bonfire, they nurture ideas that stir the zeitgeist, rouse the masses, unite the populace in a common cause. They have the guts to question, to dissent, to speak out, and most importantly to act. They topple old regimes and erect ones that embody new ideologies and modes of governing. It’s exciting stuff. Hell, I can’t help but marvel at the utter brilliance and foresight and massive, massive, massive balls of the revolutionaries who brought my country into existence.
However, not all revolutionaries are created equal. Some revolutionary ideas are simply better than others. Some are just plain awful. And history shows that when it comes to revolutions, it’s often much easier to dismantle an existing political structure, than to erect and maintain a new one in its place.
But enough beating around the bush.
Che Guevara is one of the all-time worst revolutionaries in history. And I can say that confidently without taking any of his ideological intentions into account. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find another revolutionary with so vast a heap of cold, hard historical facts stacked against him. So rather than take the time to disembowel his ideologies, I think it will suffice to allow his record to speak for itself. My hope is that, while you may not like what you’re about to hear, it may at the very least give you pause as to your stance on the man, and on the countless cotton fibers doomed to spend their lifespan bearing the visage of a complete prick.
For your consideration:
- Ready…Aim…FUEGO!
Che’s concept of what makes a revolutionary is best summed up in his own words: “…unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine.” Che and his comrades are responsible for the deaths of thousands, most of whom met their end as human targets–nothing stirred Che’s loins quite like a firing squad pumping lead into a wall of bound, gagged and blindfolded prisoners. Che called it, “…the pedagogy of The Wall.” As head of La Cabana prison, he personally ordered and oversaw the execution of hundreds of prisoners. Some were “war criminals” and ex-Batista bureaucrats. But many were simply suspected of being enemies, and imprisoned and murdered with no hard evidence against them. It didn’t matter if you were on Batista’s side or not–if you weren’t on Che’s side, you paid with your life. All he had to do was question a man’s loyalty, and he’d “…end the problem with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right side of his brain.” It was a simple philosophy: “If in doubt, kill him.” But let’s say you had a boat-load of evidence in your favor to present at your trial–what might that have done for you? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Why? Because Che and his cronies dismantled that “archaic bourgeois detail” otherwise known as due process. “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary.” How convenient.
- Marx loves an economic basket case.
Perhaps the only thing that Che butchered worse than the Cuban people is the Cuban economy. Che was a Marxist. And like all Marxist assholes with a tenuous grasp of basic economics, he felt collectivism was the way to go. Social justice was coming to Cuba! And Che the Revolutionary was about to broaden his skill-set. He became Che the Minister of Industry. Che the Head of the National Bank of Cuba. Che the Head of the National Institute for Agrarian Reform. This stronzo held more simultaneous municipal jobs than a Hudson County freeholder. And what was the fruit of Che’s unrestrained economic vision? Unrestrained disaster. During Che’s tenure as Cuba’s Economics Czar, Cuba’s economy plummeted to depths that made the Batista years look like a golden age. Despite his promises, Cuba completely failed to industrialize. In the aftermath of the revolution, it had neither the resources, the money, or the will. His “moral incentives” program to punish unproductive workers with pay deductions and reward productive workers with certificates of merit led to massive drops in productivity, or folks just plain not showing up for work the next day. Apparently, Che’s “new man” thought he deserved a little more than a pat on his back for his sweat. Oh, there was land reform alright. He stole it away from those rich capitalist pigs and gave it to the people! The result? Harvests were reduced by half and sugar production all but collapsed. Within a few years, rationing was introduced, leaving the Cuban people to subsist on a meager amount of food per week. Were it not for the Russians generously allowing Che and Co. to fellate them and serve as an unofficial colony in return for oil and a few billion dollars in spending money each year, their economy would have collapsed. It’s a hell of an economic legacy, the effects of which continue to cripple Cuba today.
- How’s my governing? Dial 1-800-POLICE-STATE, bitches.
Che was a Stalinist to the core. The autocracy of his creation was–and continues to be–one of the most repressive in history. Che vehemently opposed freedom of speech, religion, the press and assembly. And through the systematic indoctrination of the military, he turned them into the ultimate instrument for propagating his own ideologies, and squelching all those opposed. Dissent was dealt with swiftly and mercilessly. Those who “committed crimes against revolutionary morals”–that is, those who were not immediately executed–were put in concentration camps where they were forced into hard labor. Soon, more unfortunate souls who didn’t fit Che’s “new man” ideal–including Catholics, homosexuals and Jehova’s Witnesses–found themselves on buses to similar concentration camps, where many were beaten, raped and killed. After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Che solidified his police state even more by rounding up tens of thousands of Cubans for interrogation, imprisonment and execution. In his mind, he was justified in torturing and killing twenty men on the grounds that one counterrevolutionary might have been among them. With an unmitigated monopoly on the media, the narcissistic thug developed a cult of personality that elevated him to messianic status (you can thank the droves of idolizing useful idiot leftists in the United States for that too). Any information that reached the Cuban people did so because it bore Che’s seal of approval. Sure his literacy brigades might have taught people to read and write, but read a book or write an essay on the merits of Capitalism or Democracy, and there’d be a knock at your door at 2am–and that’s the last your family would ever see of you. As a coda to this section, I leave you with this: When Che, the man of the people, was asked when he thought there might be free elections in Cuba, he responded accordingly–by bursting into laughter.
- For my next trick, I’ll turn the entire planet earth into a barren wasteland.
Che sure did love those Soviets. So much so that when asked how he’d feel about having a host of nuclear missiles and about 40 thousand Russian troops occupying Cuban soil, he reputedly cried, “Well, I think that’d be faaaaaabulous, Niki dear, just faaaaaabulous!” (note to self: double-check source). Che was a man of vision–of ideals. And this was his chance to stick it to the antithesis of all he stood for–that festering quagmire of Capitalism just 90 miles north. He summed it up with, “This country is willing to risk everything in an atomic war of unimaginable destructiveness to defend a principle.” Yup, Che had no qualms about wiping out the human race in the name of Marxism. History would deny him his big chance. But he made his sentiments quite clear after Kennedy and Krushchev’s diplomatic solution by reminding the world that, “If the rockets had remained, we would have used them all and directed them against the very heart of the United States, including New York, in our defense against aggression.” Che accused the Soviets of being too soft–of lacking ideological rigor. Truly, they had some nerve in wanting to prevent a worldwide nuclear holocaust. What’s funny to me is that as comfortable as Che was with dealing out death on such a grand scale, when he found himself on the business end of a machine gun in Bolivia, he promptly shouted out, “Don’t shoot. I’m Che Guevara–I’m worth more to you alive than dead.” Apparently, when he said his country was willing to risk everything to defend a principle, “everything” didn’t include his own head.
It’s amazing how accessible good information is these days. And it’s tragic how so terribly few have any interest in good information. Most never feel the need to search beneath the surface. They’re content to take the word of out-of-touch ivory tower hacks, and stunningly ignorant celebrity d-bags. Their sources begin and end with bleeding hearts in tweed jackets…with Stephen Soderbergh and Zach De La Rocha. No real knowledge is sought. No understanding occurs. Perspectives are grossly uninformed. Any information that doesn’t gel with their existing limited perceptions gets tossed out. Any information that fuels their perceptions, no matter how out of touch with reality it may be, is accepted sans critical examination. And next thing you know you’ve got hordes of Che-garbed ignoramuses thinking the statement their making is “Freedom” or “Power to the People” without the slightest idea about who’s really hiding behind the mask, and what’s really being said.
But if you have an open mind, do a little research. Spend some time with Che’s biographies, historical accounts of the time, and his own writings. In short, take the time to figure out who’s on your fucking shirt. Then decide if you still want to keep ol’ Che in the rotation.
-jeff
P.S. If, by any chance, you’re one of those weird people who can’t feel whole without the likeness of a Latin American dictator on your shirt, please, allow me a recommendation: Pinochet. Sure, he was a brutal autocrat, but at least his laissez-faire economic policies led to a revitalized economy. I mean, if you have to pick one…just sayin’…