The trial, day two: not a robust turnout for protestors.
The protestors at one point were outnumbered by the press. At one point the protestor-to-“medic” ratio was one-to-one. Later a fellow set up a drum and a cowbell and produced the sound of a drum and a cowbell. Around 3 pm, there were five people with small signs waving at traffic. A cop car appeared to drive into the parking lot, and they jeered from across the street.
USBank hosed off the ACAB and F Everything graffiti:
They left the words that have more hopeful sentiments.
The food support table wasn’t the cornucopia some may have desired.
The TV camera crews have set up in my lobby. I have an old longstanding animus, admittedly mild, towards TV camera news crews. I’m sure they’re fine folk, but there’s an aura of self-importance that attaches to them. Sometimes! Not always. But they arranged to have the main entrance of the building by the Gummint Center blocked off with barricades, for them. They put stuff out there, and then they take it inside, and then they put stuff out, and once or twice a day someone talks, maybe.
I have walked through the gap in the barricades a few times, and entered by THEIR DOOR, and walked through THEIR AREA. Today, it seems, someone took notice. I had walked through the barricade and was standing in the elevated area, observing the sign holders, when someone from the TV crew came out and asked - nicely, I must note - if I was with the media? Because this was the media area.
I said “yes, I am. StarTribune.”
Oh! He said, okay, I was just -
“This is my building,” I said. “You’re on my turf. By all rights I can bring down my crew and clean the lot of you out.”
He read my tone correctly and laughed, and we chatted. He was hired security for NBC. They . . . hired security? To watch the gear, I gathered. We parted on friendly terms. He was just doing what he was hired to do, and not being a jobsworth about it.
I expect to go through this on a daily basis. This is the front door of my building. I am not going to skulk around to the side because they’re TV.
I thought you guys were all on the same side! Oh you don’t know the tenth of it.
Yes, I am being petty. Years of being around some guys who think “I got the picture in focus” is the same thing as writing 750 words.
Some! Not all.
I was going to write something more about Seuss, the continuing pointless argument, but got sidetracked on Pepe LePew. I never liked him. I didn’t think the gag was funny, and even as a kid thought he was annoying. The only thing I gleaned from the cartoons was *do not be this guy, he’s pathetic.* He smells, and has no idea how he is perceived. He has no idea how to read others, because he is so besotted with his delusions. NO ONE ROOTED FOR PEPE LEPEW.
In the replies to the original Charles Blow tweet concerning the new thing we should all agree is bad, nodding with vigor - in fact, more vigor than the person next to us, just to show how correct we are - many come up with their own examples of things we should be talking about. Ralph Kramden. John Wayne. The Black housekeeper in Tom & Jerry cartoons. “Both Snow White and Sleeping Beauty” were kissed while unconscious and without their consent.” Tex Avery’s Wolfie. And so on. That’s the end result: the fire is hot and exciting and everyone’s faces are glowing, and you feel as if you’re missing out if you don’t toss something in, and then you feel you’re part of something if you toss in a book, and then you judge the people who don’t toss something in.
Anyway, LePew.
Well that escalated quickly, as they say. This is Kendism distilled:
This is not only insidious claptrap, it is intellectual LePewism: the harder the cat struggles, the more it really wants it.
How did I not get that from the cartoons? Perhaps for the same reason I didn’t become a Satanist after listening to heavy metal or become a mass shooter after playing a video game? You might recall the moral panics in the 80s about the media, and how the Tipper Gores et al were scoffed at for believing that exposure to something presented great peril, because we would be influenced and become stripped of will.
The liberal intelligentsia mocked this then; it’s become dogma now. It is also not possible to wave it away, because that proves your complicity. Someone tweeted out the Pyramid of White Supremacy, a graphic from the Equality Institute. (That name will be changed to Equity Institute soon enough.) At the toppermost of the Karl-Poppermost, we have genocide. At the bottom, the gateway beliefs that shroud your supremacy:
“There are two sides to every story” is obviously true, but must be derided because it does not factor in the power relationships of the speakers. Indifference is bad, as well as saying that “politics doesn’t affect me,” because this means you are complicit at worst and an enabler at . . . well, also worst, since there is no best.
Okay, you say, I don't want to be Hitler! The road to genocide starts with a single shrug, so I am going to be affected, seek out confrontation, and discount the whole "two-sides" thing. Well: Andrew Sullivan retweeted this:
To which someone responded:
This was echoed - and I like Jesse, but c'mon, man - in this response to another CRISIS:
"Here's a thing that never was an issue before."
"Okay, well, now that it's an issue, I have an opinion on it"
"Oh NOW you suddenly care."
Which leads me to this exchange on the Minneapolis subreddit. A local enthusiast of history posts then-and-now slide shows. It’s always interesting. Ten pictures. One of them was the old Minnesota Theater. I responded:
The Radio City Theater "now" version has some secrets. The theater was demolished - a tremendous loss - but the lobby and office area was rehabbed into 'CCCO's HQ. Inside, in the stairwells, you'll find the original balustrades, rails, and posts. If you look through the windows, you can catch a few remnants of the original terracotta exterior of the theater.
I know, I know: asking for it. First response:
This comment perfectly encapsulates Minneapolis's attitude towards its own history.
You know where he’s going, don’t you? But ever the charitable internet citizen, I asked:
. . . Interested in preservation of lost details? Or something else, like “too eager to tear down, then subsequently remorseful about the decisions of others when time passes and values change”?
The response:
Nah it's more, "ignoring our history by myopically focusing in on architectural trivia”.
Because any time spent discussing the history of an old building was time taken away from ignoring our history. By which he means the bad things, which we aren’t talking about, all the time, to the exclusion of all other things.
I responded:
I figured as much. Let us know which other things should be not discussed, and a list of the things that should, at all times. There isn't room on the internet for everything, and we oughtn't waste space.
The thing I keep banging on about here is the contraction of dialogue, the desire to subsume everything into a debris field that orbits a few barren planets, until everything smashes together over time and forms more lifeless bodies, each eclipsing each other in a ballet of cancellation.
It’s 1918, and this is . . . THE PRESS.
He’d ride this, and other positions . . .
. . . to the top of the American Bankers Association. Instrumental in getting a Federal Reserve Bank for KC. He died in 1934, and his son founded the Skylark Gasoline station chain, among other things.
HIS HEART IS IN THE CAUSE OF DEMOCRACY
How peculiar! The boy was shaking his head over the unlikelihood of this sequence of events for days.
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Ha ha you got the noo-monie
No wait the TB
Hey no I know, you got the Spanish grippe |
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This was on the editorial page, which also had a piece about the meaning of “ship tonnage.” A remarkable lack of actual news so far.
You first:
Readers knew the name.
Arthur Guy Empey (December 11, 1883 – February 22, 1963) was an American soldier, author, actor and filmmaker. He served with the British Army during World War I, and upon his return wrote a popular autobiographical book, Over the Top, which sold over a quarter million copies. He penned lyrics to several patriotic songs, and wrote, produced or directed several silent films including The Undercurrent (1919) and Troopers Three (1930).
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If you’re curious, an excerpt. |
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People who haven’t seen much of the newspapers of the day might be surprised how gung-ho everything was. Everything was on the line.
Everything.
That'll do. See you tomorrow.
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