Columns

A Wednesday Like No Other

Off to do some shopping at the Shattuck Avenue Berkeley Bowl last Wednesday, we pulled into the last parking spot on nearby Newberry Street. Since I've been chased away from Newberry before—by the oncoming ruckus of a city street-sweeper—I checked the local No Parking signs. Sure enough, they warned drivers that no parking was permitted from "9 AM to Noon. 3rd Wednesday Each Month."

And it happened to be the third Wednesday in March. But when I took a closer look at the sign next to my parking spot, I noticed it read: "No Parking. 9 AM to Noon. 3nd Wednesday Each Month."

I briefly wondered what my chances would be to beat a no-parking ticket because it was issued on the "3nd." (And how would you pronounce that? "Thurcond"?) 

The Greatest Hate States 

The Southern Poverty Law Center recently released its annual "Year in Hate" report, which identified 838 klan/nazi/nationalist/supremacist/confederate groups active in the US. According to SPLC's Hate by State app, California (a large state with a large population) ranks near the top with 72 active identified hate groups festering within our borders. The list ranges from the Proud Boys and the Counter Jihad Coalition to the Western Hammerskins and the Golden State Skinheads. (The good news: California scores seven fewer Fürher front-groups than in 2017.) 

According to the SPLC's Hate Map, every state is infected by the vicious virus of intolerance. Only seven states were found to have only a single hate group. Those seven are Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Vermont. 

On a per-capita basis, America's Most Hateful States are: Alabama, Arkansas, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. 

No Jury Trials for Supervillains? 

Minneapolis prosecutors are having a difficult time seating a jury to consider the fate of former city police officer Derek Chauvin, the cold-hearted cop who kept his knee on George Floyd's neck and ignored the dying man's pleas. The problem is that it's proving next to impossible to find potential jurors who (1) know nothing about the case or (2) know about the case but haven't come to any conclusions about guilt or innocence. (It doesn't help matters that, in this racially-charged case, the former police officer is also, literally, a white Chauvinist.) 

The jury juggernaut raises a disturbing judicial question: If a crime has been so widely publicized that no potential juror harbors any doubt whatsoever that the accused is guilty, that could make a jury trial impossible. 

And if there were no jury trial, would that mean that the accused could not be tried, convicted, and jailed? And, if that were the case, wouldn't it follow that some criminal genius might realize that the way to evade prosecution would be to intentionally engage in a crime that was so clear-cut, so self-evident and so widely publicized that a "fair and open-minded" jury could never be convened? 

There may already be a recent precedent for this kind of "above the law" Supervillainy. This inability to prosecute well-documented and egregious "supercrimes" could wind up being called "The Trump Exemption." 

Palindromes that Bear Repeating 

Palindromes are words that read the same forwards or backwards. Words like: Civic, Dad, Kayak, Level, Madam, Mom, Pop, Poop, Noon, Racecar, Radar, Redder, Refer, Repaper, Rotator, Rotors, Sagas, Solos, Stats, Tenet, and Wow. 

And there are even palindromes that are whole sentences: 

A man, a plan, a canal: Panama.
Dammit I'm mad!
Never odd or even
A nut for a jar of tuna.
Poor Dan is in a droop.
Sit on a potato pan, Otis.
Straw? No, too stupid a fad; I put soot on warts
Are we not pure? “No, sir!” Panama’s moody Noriega brags. “It is garbage!” Irony dooms a man—a prisoner up to new era. 

More surprises lurk online at: https://examples.yourdictionary.com/palindrome-examples.html 

The Films of Mark Kitchell 

Local filmmaker Mark Kitchell checks in with some good news. "We have restored Berkeley in the Sixties. After thirty years of degrading video masters, we digitized from a film print. It’s much sharper and color-corrected by the master, Gary Coates. He brought up the blacks, which made the interviews look like I’d intended, with dark backgrounds to focus on faces. I urge you to have a fresh look at a well-loved classic." 

And that's not all. Kitchell's crew also has digitally refurbished the filmmaker's other two documentaries—A Fierce Green Fire (about the environmental movement) and Evolution of Organic (about the rise of eco-farming). Here are links: Berkley in the Sixties: Google and iTunes. A Fierce Green Fire: Google and iTunes. Evolution of Organic: Google and Itunes. 

On March 15, all three remastered films were released for online screening on Amazon, Apple TV / iTunes, Google Play / YouTube, and Vudu. (Rental: $3.99/4.99. Purchase: $12.99/14.99.) 

Meanwhile, Kitchell's YouTube Channel is featuring Archival Gems and Deleted Scenes from Berkeley in the Sixties, including these Kitchell favorites: "The Hells Angels volunteering for Vietnam; the Free Speech Movement’s Mario Savio receiving a clip-on tie for a birthday present the day after getting dragged off the stage of the Greek Theater by his tie; Ken Kesey at the Acid Test Graduation; runaways in the Haight; and the Black Panther Free Breakfast program. Deleted Scenes include: an early cut of the Black Panthers scene; Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign in California, which ends in assassination; the unraveling of the Democratic Party; the nascent Peace & Freedom Party alliance with the Black Panthers, doomed by nominating Eldridge Cleaver for President only to have him spurn it as he turns toward revolution." 

The Films of Mark Kitchell website provides additional text, photos, and trailers for each film and a store for purchasing digital streams ($20) and DVD’s ($40 including shipping). And Kitchell is offering a bonus: (1) "My student film, The Godfather Comes to Sixth St., about the impact of filming of The Godfather Part II on my Lower East Side neighbors" and (2) a sample reel for the forthcoming film, Cannabis Chronicles. 

Extinction Inc. Humans Versus Butterflies and Whales 

Over the past four decades, bees and butterflies have been in a steady, deadly decline—thanks to rising temperatures and rising use of chemical pesticides. Populations of Monarch butterflies have seen a 97 percent loss over the past 40 years. It's even worse in coastal California where the Monarch population has fallen by 99% with populations of irreplaceable Monarchs in an accelerating free-fall for decades and now vanishingly near a final collapse. A December 2020 count of California's overwintering Monarchs found barely 2,000 survivors. Extinction seems tragically imminent. 

At the same time, humpback whales—one of the largest creatures on the planet—are also at risk, having seen their historic migration paths disrupted by warming oceans. (Somehow, in a recent statement of concern, the Yale Climate Connection construed this calamity not as a threat to the humpbacks so much as a threat to tourism related to the "whale-watching businesses.") 

And how about polar bears? With the loss of floating plates of sea ice, the bears are finding it harder to find places to rest while they swim for food in the warming waters. Instead, we now see pathetically thin survivors desperately climbing the rocky inclines of coastal slopes in hopes of dining on the eggs of seabirds. 

Here's a thought: What if we gathered up all the tons of discarded plastic that are polluting the world's oceans and used the indestructible plastic mass to create small, artificial ice bergs. These platforms could then be released in northern waters to give the starving bears something better to cling to than an outcropping of seaward rock. 

Haaland for the Heartland 

New Mexico Representative Deb Haaland has won confirmation to a new post as director of the Department of the Interior. Haaland thus becomes the first Native American appointed to a cabinet position—and who better to serve as a steward of the land than a Native American whose ancestors have occupied the land for 35 generations—that's about 900 years or more than three times longer than European squatters have been a presence on the continent. 

It's a long overdue and profound gesture in the direction of justice. Caring for the land is rooted in the nine-century-long history of Haaland's indiginous ancestors. If buffalo could dance, the prairies would be echoing with their hoofbeats! 

If you would like to sign a card congratulating Haaland on her confirmation as president Biden's new Secretary of the Interior, click here. 

Note: Every vote against Haaland's nomination was cast by a Republican and everyone who voted for Haaland was a Democrat—with the exception of three Senate Republicans who voted to dub Deb the new Interior chief. Bravos to Susan Collins (Maine), Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), and Dan Sullivan (Alaska). 

A Gender-bender Poem 

The Gender Addendum has become all the rage these days. A friend of mine just checked in with a long email letter. At the end of his message and below his signature, he added "he/any." 

Hence, this poem: 

The rise of gender pronouns is pronounced 

"He" "she" "him" "her" are now announced. 

But given multiple-personality-disorder-plus 

Can I address myself as "we" "them" "all of us"? 

Calling a Trumpublican to Account 

Public Citizen's Robert Weisman had some choice words after hearing Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson's GOPish reaction to a question about the armed mob that broke into the Capitol building on January 6. 

Referring to the unruly mob of insurrectionists, Johnson told a right-wing radio host: “I knew those are people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law, so I wasn’t concerned.” 

"Just a few points, senator," Weisman responded:
• If you love this country, you don’t attack its most symbolic building in a murderous attempt to overturn a democratic election and install an authoritarian regime.
• If you respect law enforcement, you don’t scream obscenities and abusive epithets at police officers who are guarding the Capitol. You don’t viciously attack them with flagpoles, crutches, bear spray, fire extinguishers, makeshift clubs, metal barricades, and your own fists. You don’t leave 140 of them wounded and three dead.
• If you would never do anything to break the law, you don’t participate in an unprecedented act of sedition that is by definition illegal. 

Compounding his white-populist scenario, Johnson added that, had he instead seen “tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter” activists inside the Capitol, he would have been “a little concerned.” 

Johnson assured his critics: “There is nothing racial about my comments.... This isn’t about race, this is about riots.” Prompting Weisman retort: "But not the insurrectionist, white-supremacist riot on January 6, I guess." 

"Racist rhetoric has been normalized by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, and, above all, Donald Trump," Weisman noted. "It has been normalized because Republicans permit it, refuse to denounce it, and—in too many cases—actually subscribe to it." 

With an abiding faith in the power of redemption. Public Citizen is inviting public citizens to appeal to the GOP with a simple message to our senators — especially — Republicans: It is your duty to demand, at a minimum, that Ron Johnson apologize. 

Facial Stereotypes and the American Zeitgeist 

Have you noticed the two great visual tropes used in the promotion of animated films? You see them on display in every new release from Disney to Pixar. The first is the image of screaming bug-eyed, sub-sized, child-like avatars screaming in terror as they plunge through the air in free-fall. Somehow, it's understood that this translates into a subject for hilarity. People who laugh at the videos of strangers slipping on banana peels or getting whacked while stepping on garden rakes, respond to the depiction of a cartoon avatar's abject fear as if it's amusing (and secretly empowering) to watch some weak creature getting punked. (If there were a phrase for this, it might be called a Schadenfreudian Slip.) 

The second (and more widely promoted) image depicts the film's heroe(s) standing warrior-like in bent-knee readiness, generally brandishing a weapon (usually a sword or spear) and glaring back at the world with the patented "angry-happy" face—involving furrowed brow, clenched eyebrows, and a sidewise smirk that combine to send the message: "Watch out! I'm dangerous and powerful. I'm not afraid. I'm superior and I know it!" 

Perhaps sociologists can explain why promoting these two provocative emotional extremes seduces viewers and translates into box office gold. Could it be something as simple as (1) Hollywood knows its potential audience lives in constant, unconscious dread and (2) wants to feel as invulnerable as a ripped-and-ready, all-powerful Superhero? 

Elizabeth Warren's Got the Goods on US Billionaires 

According to Team Warren, over the past pandemic-paralyzed year—a year that saw hundreds of thousands of small businesses close while millions of people lost their jobs and benefits—America's billionaire class saw their wealth balloon by $4.2 trillion—a 40 percent increase. 

Warren insists that her plan for an Ultra-Wealth Tax "wouldn’t break the bank of any of these guys, or anyone else who has a fortune worth more than $50 million." And, if you'd like proof, she's come up with an app for that. "See for yourself by checking out this interactive visualization. You’ll see how much richer Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jim Walton have gotten since the pandemic started"—and how much they would pay under Warren’s Big Bucks tax plan. 

(NOTE: The online infographics are a bit tricky. You have to scroll down to reveal the abundance of data-boxes that reveal the expanding wealth of each billionaire.) 

Bidenomics Versus Reaganomics  

Berkeley's redoubtable Robert Reich has no doubts when it comes to the benign impacts of progressive taxation. In a March 14 opinion piece for the London Guardian, Reich (who served as Labor Secretary in the Clinton Administration) wrote: "Bidenomics beats Reaganomics and I should know – I saw Clintonomics fail." 

As Reich noted: "Trump obliterated concerns about government give-aways. The CARES Act, which he signed into law at the end of March 2020, gave most Americans checks of $1,200 (to which he calculatedly attached his name). When this proved enormously popular, he demanded the next round of stimulus checks be $2,000." 

Biden's been taking tons of GOP heat for the $1.9 trillion tab on his CARES Act but, as Reich observes, "Trump’s biggest giveaway was the GOP’s $1.9 trillion 2018 tax cut, under which benefits went overwhelmingly to the top 20%. Despite promises of higher wages for everyone else, nothing trickled down. 

"Meanwhile, during the pandemic, America’s 660 billionaires—major beneficiaries of the tax cut—became $1.3 trillion wealthier, enough to give every American a $3,900 check and still be as rich as they were before the pandemic." 

Meanwhile, Reich noted, under Biden’s plan "more than 93% of the nation’s children—69 million—receive benefits. Incomes of Americans in the lowest quintile will increase by 20%; those in the second-lowest, 9%; those in the middle, 6%. 

"Rather than pit the working middle class against the poor, this unites them. Some 76% of Americans supported the bill, including 63% of low-income Republicans (a quarter of all Republican voters). Younger conservatives are particularly supportive, presumably because people under 50 have felt the brunt of the four-decade slowdown in real wage growth. 

"Given all this, it’s amazing that zero Republican members of Congress voted for it, while 278 voted for Trump’s tax cuts for corporations and the rich." 

Goodbye Q from the Founders Sing