"52"

Have a seat and wait for your number,
To be called. To explain. To account.
To give up bad blood to be tested,
Where you had been, and now just the wind.
Where thought and books to be written,
Promises forgiven, memory forgotten
Your overhead smashes unreturned, and now,
Where you stood, just the wind.

Once again I'm late to the revelation. The other day I made the mistake of seeing The Inside job the other day. I knew the story line well enough: I watched some of the congressional hearings a year ago. I read Krugman et al. I've studied the greed-ridden face of the principals. And I know some people who have been knocked down by it. Directly and indirectly.

I'd also read Matt Damon's reservations about the Obama administration, even Obama himself, and then promptly dismissed them.

The problem is that when you see the drama all laid out, all of a piece, and you see how in administration after administration the villains never go away, much less get called to account — not to mention the insidious link with academe in general and Harvard in particular – it changes your perspective. Or it did mine. I was most struck by Obama's introduction of Larry Summers.

And so you think, well Obama is saving the best for last, he'll deal with it after 2012. But I'm beginning to wonder if that's true.

Every few months I'm invited downtown to 250 Sutter Street to participate in a focus group. There's always a strange scene or an odd encounter. Last time, during a discussion about potato chips, a woman leaned out of her chair and part way under the conference table to smell her high-heel shoe. She was clever about it but I saw the whole thing.

Tonight, it was a former kindergarten teacher. A very striking woman by the way. She wore hot rod-red lipstick on a chalk-white face. Like a mime or a kabuki dancer. She was about my age. Not Asian. Her hair was grey and wiry like an unshorn sheep. She wore expensive blue-streaked shoes, from Mexico she said. They fit her as though they'd come out of a Tastee Freeze machine and swirled right on to her feet.

At the last minute she and I were not picked to participate in the focus group. We were told to remain for 15 minutes, until it was clear no alternates would be required. Then we would be paid and could leave.

When told she was not chosen this woman, whose name I didn't get, said she was insulted. "Aren't you?" she asked me mockingly.

"I am deeply hurt," I said.

"My husband will be devastated that I'm coming home so early," she went on.

I showed concern.

"We're in therapy," she said. "But it's not going well."

Why not?

"Nothing's working. We've tried everything. Part of the problem is that my husband worked in the district attorney's office for thirty years. Actually, one thing did work, for a while. The therapist told us that we needed to surprise each other more. You know, try to bring back the glow. Don't we all want the glow?"

What did you come up with?

"Lately, mostly new restaurants, weekend trips up the coast. It's all what we were doing before. I'm going to take him to see "No Exit" when that opens next month at A.C.T."

Does he like Sartre?

"He has no idea who Sartre is. But he has a taste for the bizarre."

Clearly, I thought. What's the most memorable surprise he ever gave you?

"He took me to Harbin Hot Springs for a four-day weekend with Neopagans."

How was that?

"A lot of overweight people frankly. A lot of standing around in circles with no clothes on. Surprisingly boring but perverse at the same time. I found that part interesting."

What's the most memorable thing you ever gave him.

"Once, I woke him up at 3 a.m. by playing opera out of a boom box as loud as I could. He hates opera."

She was clearly reliving the thrill.

What opera?

"Boris Gudonov. Mussorgsky's noisiest, if you know it. It was between that and anything sung by Gertrude Grob-Prandl. I think she's considered one of the loudest opera singers of the 20th Century. I literally put right the box right next to his ear."

It occurred to me that despite her wild imagination this might not be the ideal wife.

"But that wasn't the surprise," she went on. "Then I blindfolded him and drove him up to Napa for a balloon ride. But on the way up I almost ran over a dear and when we got there the event was cancelled. It was a bad end but still memorable."

Ten minutes had passed. One of the girls at the front desk told us we could leave. We went up to sign out. Before being given a check we had to show some proof that we had given to a favorite charity — a magnet to put on the frig, a thank you card.

It was at this point that the woman dug into her PBS tote bag and drew out a bloody arm. It was in a shirt sleeve, buttoned at the wrist. From a small man clearly. With stubby fingers and a wedding ring.

"Will this do?" the woman asked. One of the girls behind the desk fell out of her chair.

I had to look at this arm for a long time to realize it was rubber. It even had an odd smell. The blood stains in the shirt where the arm would have been torn from the shoulder were particularly life-like.

"My favorite charity is Doctors Without Borders," said the woman.

We took our checks and got on the elevator.

What do you do for a living, I asked.

"I was a kindergarten teacher for 30 years. Now, I'm just a housewife."

Not just, I said.

"No, not just," she replied, standing in the elevator looking up at the ceiling, the bloody fingers reaching out of her bag.

Prom Night, with Jesus

Dash & Nathalie (Jesus knows best)

This may have happened to us. It could have. I just don't know. The last thing I remember is arriving at the Clarion Hotel on Sisk Rd. in Modesto around 1 p.m. Three of us. In driving rain. The hotel was empty, dark. Steel plates around every door lock, low ceilings, some of the acoustic panels coming loose, Cinny the sinecure behind the front desk, and then a single figure standing absolutely still in the indoor pool. Turn of the Screw, I thought later. And then the crooked-scent of Pall Malls off the carpets, the snuff-like effect of fresh skid: 50 years of tobacco, sucrose, Propylene Glycol, Glycerol, Licorice extract, Diammonium Phosphate, Ammonium Hydroxide, Cocoa, Carob Bean, and all the artificial flavors. The place had the atmosphere of a minimum security prison; three pools notwithstanding.

In the old days, when Ronald Reagan was acting emperor-in-chief, this was a Red Lion Inn and a swinger's paradise. Well-to-do farmers lounged in the indoor pool listening to Dean Martin, watching Jetson reruns, dreaming of Marilyn Chambers while the lettuce pickers hummed Steinbeck.

The boys didn't care about the history of the hotel or the central valley. It all looked good to them. Particularly ika. Plus he was still reliving his goal off a bicycle kick in a state cup game earlier in the day, up in Ripon. Ika's from Georgia, the country, and the back of the country at that. So when we're on the road, no matter where we stay, it always seems like swanktown to him.

I told the boys they should try the sauna and wash their uniforms. I don't do 'valet' anymore.

I went to the weight room. There was a man with a pony tail watching Nancy Grace laboring on about dead prostitutes in Long Island. The man was in his 30s, dressed in tattoos the color of Mystery Oil. He was thin, forbidding. I couldn't figure out how to get the bicycle machine going. It occurred to me that he might have been able to help.

Meanwhile back in our room, out the window, the parking lot is a great puddle, a single car parked, that would be ours, and beyond that HWY 99, Meth route 66, the 18 wheelers running back and forth, belching and blowing, the drivers wide-eyed out of Fresno.

How many times have we been out here? How many games have I watched in Ripon? And always we have a problem. Traffic tickets, bad directions, bad games. Bad things here, always. Whenever I see the water tower I get the shivers.

That night we go to a Mexican restaurant on the other side of Modesto, in a mall full of vacancies. We sit at a corner booth. Ika goes on a rant about some boy in his class that always has a toothpick in his mouth and gives his teacher shit. The waitress rushes us. The table is a mess. You can hear Ika all over the restaurant. The people at the next table are saying that Obama told some woman with eight children she shouldn't have had eight children.

Dash just sees it all for what it is. Hears the face value. He doesn't care about the scene or the context.

We get out of there and back to the tiers in time to watch Saw IV. Then I pass out and in the fall direct the boys to get their crap in the washer and dryer before they sleep. They said they were going to do it much earlier. They said, they said. Finally, they bundle it all up and go off.

The next morning we get up at 9:30. Game is in two and half hours. On the field in one hour. It's still raining but clearing; 99 is still roaring. The mechanical blood of America is still flowing.

The boys go back to the dryer to get their things and return almost an hour later. I have a bad feeling. Sure enough. They come back to say the uniforms are gone, along with underwear, socks, sweats, slacks, about all we have. Why would it be otherwise? Teenagism can never be in remission.

Room disservice has no clue. I go mashugana-man and yell at the sinecure big time. There will be an apology later, but just now we have 40 minutes to get back to the field, which is 10 miles away. They can't play without uniforms. We've talked to the coach. Can't play without uniforms. There are no extras.

The boys talk to housekeeping. I talk to anyone I can find. I knock on doors. I'm thinking of the mind of criminals and the odds. The clock is running. The game starts in 20 minutes. Warm up is over. All players must check in. This is the state cup. Cinny says the night watchman isn't answering his phone. What about the cameras? I ask. "Could you come back next week?" Cinny's manager won't talk to me. The Cinnycure, is cracking.

"Come back on Monday," she says.

You don't understand, I say. Then she tells me someone checking out saw the boys sitting on the dryer at 12:30 a.m. Huh? What boys are we talking about? Someone checking out saw these boys? Who was that.

I think they were asleep closer to 10:30, having played two games the day before and the machines aren't big enough to sit on. But so what if they had been sitting on the dryer, what does that have to do with it?

"They've stolen their own clothes?"

Cinnycure will not look up from the monitor.

Okay now we're down to 15 minutes. At 75 miles an hour we could make it. The head of housekeeping says she's never heard of a theft in all her 10 years of housekeeping. The beer distributor wants to know why Cinny is crying. The coach is calling to say we have 10 minutes.

Suddenly, I realize, we're out of time.

I give up.

We walk back to the room. We pass the kitchen. I see a woman cleaning up. I duck in. I explain. She has a hard face. The eyes are brown and browned and quick. She's wide-bodied. Dirty blond. And oh but she's tired. Done in, too. And not about lost uniforms.

"Look," I say. "You're our last hope." The boys are in my ear about how they've already talked to her. She's washing a griddle top.

"If you were us, where would you look?"

She throws some eyes over her shoulder.

"Well, I'd start with the trash cans. Fact is there's a lot of missing and stolen stuff here. Happens all the time."

Boys shake their heads. They've never heard of such a thing and plus it's not cool to look in the trash. I go for it. Sure enough, five minutes later, fourth can on the other side of the building, just down the stairs from the washing machine room, there are the uniforms. I don't look further. I give the woman $40. She's nodding. She doesn't seem happy or sad.

"Remember this," she says, "and I've been in this business a long, long time. You lose anything in a hotel, no matter what it is, look in the cigarette cans, look in the trash cans. People take things and put 'em in places, somewhere where they can come back to."

She puts the money in her apron pocket, and goes back to cleaning the griddle, reaching far over the stovetop, pushing the grease this way and that and then pulling it into the grease trap....

(We get to the game, win, beat last year's champion; and then the next weekend in some other god forsaken place, up in Sactown, north of the Arco Arena if you know where that is, just the other side of Elveret, a few streets past Eloise, under a glide path, in the semi-finals, on fields as flat as medium surf, they lose in double overtime and just like that it's over. Some of them 10 years together and the coach is gone before the third whistle.. But that's all another story.)

A month ago you heard the news from Cairo as though it were the birth of a grandchild. And you thought, "well, look at those crowds in Tahrir Square and God's speed to a democracy. What a long journey it will be, but worth every step."

And now tonight you, yourself, are in the streets. Figuratively, at least. In Madison or Lansing. How did this happen? This was just a matter of some teachers who realized they needed to give up benefits but just wanted the comfort of collective bargaining. And now this outrageous plan to privatize local government in Michigan, and the local dukes and viscounts will need more than $150,000 per annum, thank you very much. Indeed, you'll need to pay them more than the governor to take apart the local school district, to delete city hall and put a whole town out to pasture.

And you realize that suddenly we are fighting much the same struggle as Egyptians. Better commentators will illustrate the point.

But what may not be readily apparent is how the Left's anger, and righteous it is, is now out of the bag. And now you're going to hear the equivalent of the Tea Party, the new howl, but now the same fear — that some nut will go after el Rushbow or the Kochs.

It is hard to imagine how much Republicans have overplayed their hand, but then they are acting roles they're not quite familiar with. The most interesting part of it is how a handful of people, "the 400" as they should be known, have stirred up a hornet's nest of 153 million people.

And how the Thanesters and the Koch heads and Innanity, NFL owners, and Gov. Walker, who imagines himself the new Reagan, how they're are all linking up... How they're all joined in this effort.

And you wonder when the president will give up the pretense, see through these people who he seems to admire and for what? Because he really did want to be their friends all along? Is that really it? Tell me it ain't so...

How extraordinary it is that four months ago conservatives held such a grip on public sentiment. From deficits to healthcare a progressive could not get in a word edgewise. Obama was turning into political poison, the righteousness of the Right was "on loan from God", as el Rushbow would say.

And if the puppet's hands were stringed to the Koch control bar, and even if some people knew that, it didn't matter. Because you couldn't feel that effect. It didn't seem to make any difference if that were true. What was important was that you had your anger and you were right to be angry, and anger was effective. It was fun to have power, to feel that wind in your hair.

A blink later and now you can see the plot. It's not a "conspiracy theory" anymore; it's just the way it is and, you could argue, always was. And now everyone has a front row seat so they can actually hear Gov. Walker's reverence for Charles Koch. You can understand their strategy. It's all so clear now.

And isn't it odd how those union protestors suddenly seem to have stolen the place of the Tea Party. Now the vindication is theirs.

But here's the point: As crazy as it might have seemed, there are a group of conservatives who really want to undo this country, who really want to crush unions and constitutionalize the power of the corporation and put in stone the wealth and influence of how many is it, 300,000 people?

And we're not talking about people who can't spell or who live in a car phone in Fremont or who believe the president is not an American or who say, how dare that Aunt Jemima in the White House tell me how much grease I'm gonna eat....

Meanwhile, in the background, those other protesters, from Casa to Baghdad. And there is a resonance, a vague connection between them and teachers in Madison and cops in Newark. The common protest is against those who would take away rights. It's the many against the few, those who imagine they have lost power against those who imagine they have power.

And maybe in this country this really is part of the last stand of a wealthy, Caucasian empire. No matter what you call it, or how you think of it, the truth is that the intermittent spirit of socialism that runs through America, in communes and coops the American Utopian movement — Brook Farm, New Harmony, and Shakers — and certainly with the industrial age, is burning brighter. Materialism, as we've known it here, is flickering.

Of course, there's still the desire to acquire, to buy and possess, to get the new new thing, but that desire seems increasingly mixed with fatigue and a kind of listlessness. You could argue it's the last legacy of the age of Aquarius. We've been told that for a long time and now perhaps we're beginning to accept it.

The long slow decline into the 'littler world' of Europe is what right wing labrador retrievers would say. That's party true. But it's also America maturing, and getting smarter and wiser, not just more frail.

The essence of America and the American experience is the role of the individual. Of course. We would all agree on that. And that's what needs protection. And monitoring. In the end, our well being in every sense is less a measure of the competing powers of unions and corporations, than nurturing the instinct to remain free, to hold on to a sense of individual freedom even as we slowly, painfully, even appropriately disappear into the great morass of ever larger communities and anonymity.

We went to watch the oscars with the Unwanted man and his wife. He was in the badly lit parlor room, sitting in his customary spot on his sofa nearest the old television. He designed the sofa, along with the chair his wife sat in: a clever wrought iron frame with a canvas seat, so comfortable you need to be excavated to get out of it.

They are getting a divorce, there's no question now; the papers are already in files underneath newer files. The reality is new but already old.

During the show they don't address each other. She makes fun of him and rolls her eyes; he comments on all the women he sees. How this presenter has a great body but her dress doesn't suit her, or that woman's body should be hidden, or this woman was in a film 20 years ago called such and such. He remembers all the details. He remembers the plots, who the actress was married to at the time and the director...

The Unwanted man talked with guests but never took his eyes off the screen. He said he was looking into moving into a high rise where many of the city's wealthy live. And for sure his own house will sell for a lot of money but the profit will all go to the bank to pay for indulgences long forgotten, trips and cars and chancy investments. He will be lucky if he doesn't have to live in the Tenderloin.

The unwanted man was himself was always a cinematic character, and even tonight, in his Fellini fedora, huddled in one corner of the sofa, hiding his gnarled hand, yelling at the Rhodesian Ridgeback when the pizza arrived, and when the faces appeared of all those who had died over the last year his lower lip turned over and he sobbed, really sobbed, but so quietly only I heard him.

He was grieving in that way when you are overcome by some sad reminder of life's quick trip and then just as suddenly you catch yourself, a long cloud on a cold clear day, you're in the shade one moment and out the next. The grief is so deep, and so shallow at the same time, and so tied to the memory of years ago and those actors and the lives they portrayed — you're so caught by that — that you almost can't tell what was real and what was not and which was your life and which was theirs.

The worst part of the day came in low and fast like this...

First, there was Hannity, that all-in-one Abbot and Costello, saying how poorly the president had reacted to the situation in Libya — "pathetic, isn't it?" said the Innanity, and wondered what would it take Obama to see the light, have some guts and take a stand?

Perhaps, he said, 'if the protesters in Tripoli joined the teachers in Madison The Annointed One would do something.'

With that I turned off the radio, got out of the car, went down five flights, and made my way to an Information desk where I was told to 'have a seat for a moment'. After 20 minutes, the girl leads me down to the trailer. The Mustang Ranch, as it were, where they service your wits, take apart your last remaining sanities. You put anything metal in the drawer, save your wedding ring. But your belt, your coat, not your shoes, you can leave those on, which I don't normally do, and now there are two girls — can I do this I'm thinking? — and then they strap you down on the tray and — and you think of executions, but no it's not that, yet something nearly as Sfi-Fi, they move you into the fallopian, and there you go, wearing ear plugs and a face mask, going up stream with the salmon, home somehow, all in the embrace of an acronym, MRI, or you're like a torpedo in a tube, in sinking submarine, or a football player who they think has a neck injury and as they get you on the cart you want to be sure to wave to the crowd, even if just the little finger, give them some sign of life, get a kind word from Ron Jaworski but you can't, and then the clanking begins.

It's the test of mind sinew, of course. Can you delete all your material world files and be a baby Jesus. Be just clean and open and fearless. Or maybe find cultural links. "This sounds like something Philip Glass might like," you think. Or not. After all, how much more koyaanisqatsi can we get here, folks? No, there's just no tempo except once, for a few minutes, as though someone was saying "Tony" over and over and very fast: tonytonytonytony, and soon you're imagining you're a Peruvian miner and then you're the girl in True Grit and the rattle snakes are in the tube with you and then you desperately shuffle through the pages of better thought, noble thought, and there's the enigmatic smile of the buddah statue in the entryway at home.

But hard to keep that smile front and center because of all the clanging and clanking, gonging, and every once in a while they recalibrate, you feel the pulsing on your fingers, they start all over again, and one of the girls is talking to you, the speakers are very bad. Here's this million dollar machine but the speakers are incredibly poor and the she-Hal is saying 'you're doing fine' as though, 'yes, you're doing fine, you're almost dead now, we just want to knock out any remaining life forms, and we'll have you right out of here'.

As Ram Dass once told me, I keep coming back to that, "you'll be dying and I'll be surfing', and that's how life is, and once more you feel the pulsing as the magnetic coils dismember you cell by cell, and you feel yourself becoming no more than a gopher out in a plastic yard hole.

Suddenly, there's the sound of birds, little yellow birds, or else something needs oil, because clearly the valve lifters are coming apart. No, those are definitely birds, what an odd thing, and something about the sound makes you think they're as yellow as sunup. Which brings to mind the mechanical bird, or was it a real bird, on the branch out the kitchen window in Blue Velvet and a whole other train of dark insanities comes roaring along.

Finally, it ends and five years later you can't remember if you ever had one of those, and the girl gives you your belt and your coat, but no kiss, as though there's nothing intimate that's gone on here, they should give you a kiss, no question, something to go with the $50 co-pay and the $1,100 a month, and the fact that you didn't call for help, but no, all you get is the 'attaboy', and frankly I wanted a little more sincerity, because the fact is 42.3 percent of the people who get in the magnetic orgamatron can't stand the pleasure and have to be pulled out of there. They squeeze the little red bag and then endure the humiliation of not being able to do it... The nurse smiles, a grim smile but still a smile. Remember, she's doing 18 people a day. How much affection does she have for you, especially when you can't do it....

So then I rush out the trailer, down the metal steps, into the hospital, through all these metaphors, and up the cement stairs, to street level, like popping up out of the ocean, and you get your ticket validated, up the elevator, I remember the floor on the first try, how sane am I now you frankendocs, and then throw yourself into the car, at 257,000 miles and the permanent scent of Jack-in-the-box, home sweet home, and then you turn on the radio for a little face cream for the mind... Silence would never occur to you.

And for just a fleagasm of a moment you wonder how could that possibly be, what kind of person are you to turn this on, especially at a moment like this, what is it? You haven't a clue, you have this obsession with political fanatics. You're sick. That's why you went to the hospital....

No matter, the on-life switch is on and you're just at the dot of the hour, at the beginning of another resonance machine, it takes a string theory to understand this, but there it is, the ever effervescent, and Mr. Evanescent, Mark Levin, always introduced by the heavy rumble of guitar grunge, and the barker's faux life-in-wartime prologue, "He's here! He's here. Now broadcasting from the underground command post deep in the bowls of a hidden bunker, somewhere under the brick and steal of a nondescript building.... We've once again made contact with our leader....(Grunge dirge up... swell) ....Mark Levin.

And it's all strangely comforting, even the sound of someone so absolutely malicious and vile and, under any other circumstances, bonkers — a recall unit if there ever was.....

I'm always happy to get a note from Tim Phillips, whose function reminds me of the ball and claw on the leg of an old-fashioned piece of office furniture, something called the Kock Brothers Corner Chair, perhaps.

No, always a delight to hear from Tim, who's not only a great American but he's an American for prosperity. So many are not these days. Why you look around and you see how people hate prosperity and run away from it as though it were the devil.

Tim began his missive today on the horrible situation in Wisconsin:

As I looked out from the stage on the faces of thousands of folks at the "Stand With Walker" rally in Madison, Wisconsin today a young 7 or 8 year-old girl atop her dad's shoulders stood out. She was waving a "Fight Back Wisconsin" sign and cheering happily. Before the rally her dad had told me they gave up her basketball game today to come to the rally because "It's time to stand tall." Next to them in his hard hat was Mansfield, a tall, wiry gentleman who runs a small brick laying business near Madison. These two individuals symbolize what's at stake.

Such an accurate personification of the conservative view: an 8-year-old-girl atop her daddy, and Mansfield. And can you not hear the little girl saying, "Daddy dearest, I've been listening to Rush Limbaugh, what an old pussycat he is, and he said people who want to know something about government should listen to his show. So that's what I did. That's where I went on all these mornings when you thought I was watching Spongebob, Wizards of Waverly Place, That's so Raven, and Suite Life of Zach and Cody.... But I gave that up to watch the Rushbow ap on your I-phone. I luuuuuuuuuuuv it. But this morning he said there were bad teachers in Madison who just want to do bad things and they want us to pay for it. He asked me if I could believe it and I said no, 'Uncle Rush I can't.' So then he said I should make a sign up to express my feelings. So then it jsut came to me, "Fight Back Wisconsin". Yea, because we're fighters, aren't we Daddy? Aren't we?

"And then Daddy I wanted to ask if you could make it so I didnt have to go my basketball game tomorrow because it's like Uncle Rushbow said.. No, wait. Uncle Hannity said. He's the other fatty guy, right. Boy wait 'til Mrs. Obama gets on HIS case. Well he said we all have "to stand tall". And I want to stand tall, too. So can we go to Madison tomorrow, and I could sit on your shoulders and together we'll stand tall. Can we daddy? Can we?"

But then what about Mansfield, the tall, wiry gentleman with a hard hat and a brick-laying business symbolizing all those hard working tall, wiry gentlemen with hard hats and a brick-laying business.

If Wisconsin isn't really about the survival of the Democratic Party as Rachel Maddow believes and it isn't about the brass balls of the Tea Party movement as Tugboat Limbaugh believes, I'm glad Tim's got his finger on what's at stake: the obscure, off-key symbolism of an 8-year-old girl used by her father to make his political point and Mansfield, a tall, wiry man, a brick shithouse of a man, who never takes off his hard hat even when he's finished laying bricks.

I want to offer a public apology. This is no joke. Some years ago I wrote a profile of Ram Dass which appeared in West Magazine, the Sunday magazine of the San Jose Mercury News. He told me something in a way that I didn't understand. Now I do. I think I do. I didn't see it then. I'd like to apologize.  He was seeing AIDs patients and then on his 60th birthday he was going off to Australia to go surfing.  He'd always wanted to do that.  And I asked him how he would do that, thinking it must be very difficult to leave people who depend on you so much.  He said, "well I'll be surfing and they'll be dying. And that's just the way it will be."  Something like that.  And I thought how coarse, how tough.  What kind of guru is this?  Where's the compassion in any of that?  But I understand now.  I get it, as best I can.  I see how this works.  Although quite honestly I can't explain it.

Who am I to say, but I would explain it this way: The leadership model among Arabs has always been the charismatic strongman. Beginning with the Prophet. Who you will remember brought together the warring tribes around Mecca and for a moment kept the peace. As soon as he died, the tribes returned to their feuding. Without someone to hypnotize them, they are at the mercy of their nature.

And so Arab history is filled with good and bad charismatics. Saddam Hussein on the one hand; KIng Hussein on the other. Although don't forget Black September if you remember him only as the monarch with the kindly smile.

And why this obsession with the dictator. Because, as a Moroccan history professor explained it to me, Arab know themselves. "They have always sensed that they need to be 'ruled' and they have been convinced by religion and circumstance that chaos is their true enemy."

But now, you could say, the Arab Awakening is over. Now, it's time to get up and do something.

From Rabat to Riyadh there is a drive to write a new history. What they are saying is, "we have endured this self-imprisonment long enough. We're sick of our ghosts. Now we want to try something else."

Of course, the incendiary for all this is poverty and the incredible distance between rich and poor, the lack of strong middle classes. The false promise that education would be an elevator. The dangling images of wealth and freedom, and sexuality, that they have access to.

So now we are asked to watch whether they can solve this riddle of their nature. Can they find a way out of their fear and ignorance, their addiction to the past, and form a new image of themselves. Can they accept freedom? Can they trust themselves in a way they never have before. Can they find a new way to imagine 'the tribe'.

As for Mubarak, he's finished. The only question is how long it will take him to accept that. His son has fled to London. His son had been the reason to hold on to power.The mob has taken over the central government buildings. But their argument is not with technocrats, which is why Mubarak turning out the whole government is not a solution. The people in the street want the end of a regime. Which is also to say they want a new regime. But what does that mean?

The danger from a Western perspective is that the Muslim Brotherhood, whose party has 10 percent of the power, can somehow take more than their share. They are the medical doctors and Islamic intellectuals who ended up in prison, whose offspring is al qaeda, who murdered Anwar Sadat, who are a fifth column, to be sure....

But they are not the authors of this. They may instigate, they may take advantage. But this turmoil is much more widespread. Much deeper.

Remember this is a country of 80 million people. There are a couple hundred thousand people in the streets. It's not like in Tunisia with a much higher proportion of the population in the streets. That's a true turn of events. This is not that. Yet.

This solicitation appeared today — for a ghost writer to tell a man's story. Here's the assignment: weave these threads into a story that anyone would wish to read:

I have written a 45,000 word account for my daughter (9) of my experience of trying to maintain contact with her since her first birthday. The aim of this project is to publicise the extraordinary family court process and in particular the fecklessness of the senior judges. Although a harrowing tale, it needs to be presented with lightness and humour. The story has several threads:
1. My pioneering struggle to build a successful organic dairy farm and business from scratch.
2. My health problems a) infertility leading to successful embryo donation, b) colon cancer.
3. Mother's history -- finding her "dead" father after her mother disowned her for marrying me
4. Being marginalised from my daughter at birth, then separated by broken contact orders, eventual
alienation.
5. Divorce and allegations of cruelty to animals, physical, mental and sexual abuse, domestic
violence, 2 arrests: all cleared in courts.
6. I lose my home, farm, company and my daughter
7. 50+ hearings, over £200,000 wasted, 18 different judges, LIP.
8. Constant assurances from judges and Cafcass to support contact and keep a link with my
daughter, even residence change. Last order from high court judge denying my parental right to
even know my daughter's school.
I cannot identify my family so ghost can be named author

As great as the president's speech, as moving and unifying as it may have felt to so many, it will make no difference to the tone of political debate. Nor will it lead to a general civility. Which is not to dismiss the speech or mock its idealism, or to say that it will not initiate a subtle but profound change in this country. Nevertheless, for the moment, through 2012, this speech will make no difference.

Indeed, the voice of fear and ignorance will only become more shrill. Why? Because of bad economic times, of course, but more because hatred is now commerce. It's now become a sophisticated product, and bought the same way you might buy gold to protect against inflation or buy an accountant's help against the IRS, or buy a posturpedic mattress to fight sleeplessness.

It is finally a remedy and although sold under another name, another label — knowledge, for example — cynicism and skepticism are the natural ingredients.

Earlier this week Mark Lavin excoriated Chris Matthews, as he often does, adding, "Is he still drinking?" Lavin is more vitriolic than ever.

And you understand, it's not just a matter of personal animosity, it's not just an ideological difference, much as the haters hide behind that conceit, it's knowing the taste of the crowd in the coliseum, how and when to bring on the lions and the gladiators.

Or think of it this way: What is the best entertainment? The mystery, the thriller, the disaster movie, the horror movie... The Hills Have Eyes.

We pay to be frightened, because that's the way to get out of the doze. It's the only way we know, have ever known as a specie. We have to be reduced to fight or flight to find ourselves. We need to be at the most dangerous point to be saved...

Meanwhile, gun sales are up, and in one state or another it has been reported that gun owners have been coming in droves to shooting ranges with their Glock 19s to see for themselves how it is that this man had such a problem putting in a new magazine.

Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh goes right on with his mantra, this morning looking for insincerities in Obama's speech, finding solace in David Gergen's criticism of the "pep rally" atmosphere during the President's address.

In the end, I don't believe Limbaugh really believes his shtik. He simply found a way of political being that fits with his personality. He has discovered his nature in an ideology and a culture that has increasing value these days.

On the morning after Jared Lee Loughne’s attack his political identity remains unclear. A classmate describes him as a liberal; his writings, to the extent they makes sense at all, reflect both libertarian and conservative themes.

Whatever his politics, I was struck by how much both language and views reflect what you hear on say, The Mark Levin Show.

For example, listen to the Lavin show on December 15, 2010 the same day Loughne posted his youtube ramble, which touched on immigration, the Constitution and “property.”

Lavin’s own ramble that day touched on those three issues as well. Here’s a rough transcript of one excerpt.

“The way they (Democrats) see it, ‘we’re importing Democrats’… The more the entitlements, the bigger the welfare state, (and) the more they’re going to win elections… The Democrat party and the government are intertwined… We conservatives don’t believe that. We believe that the federal government has certain responsibilities. The constitution gives us the guidelines, and that’s how we want our society to function… Democrats are about evading the constitution. They use the federal government to improve their own political situation. Ours is legitimate; theirs is lawless."

Lavin, who often points out that few people except his listeners have ever read the Constitution, continues his rant saying to one caller, “That’s what I said in Men in Black and Liberty And Tyranny: What have we become? If we’re not a constitutional republic, a representative republic, a federal republic, what the hell are we? Well, we’re a country that is spiraling into this soft tyranny. That’s why I say what I say. I wish I could give you a more comforting answer, but there is no more comforting answer.”

Loughne writes,

The majority of citizens in the United States of America have never read the United States of America's Constitution. You don't have to accept the federalist laws. Nonetheless, read the United States of America's Constitution to apprehend all of the current treasonous laws.

In conclusion, reading the second United States constitution I can't trust the current government because of the ratifications: the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar.

But it was on the issue of property that there was the strongest resonance with something Loughne wrote:

If the property owners and government officials are no longer in ownership of their land and laws from a revolution, then the revolutionary’s from the revolution are in control of the land and laws.

The property owners and government officials are no longer in ownership of their land and laws from a revolution.

Thus the revolutionary’s from the revolution are in control of the land and laws.

Toward the end of his show that day, Lavin interviewed Walter E. Williams a black professor of economics at George Mason University and a well known conservative. Williams has been a substitute guest on the Rush Limbaugh radio show since the early 1990s. He was on the Lavin show to publicize his newest book, Up From The Projects: An Autobiography.

Williams' website includes various conservative links and references and this: Wisdom of the Month: "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush [September 23, 1800]

Williams made this comment to Lavin. Again this a very rough transcript:

“I am my own private property and I belong to Walter E. Williams and you belong to Mark Lavin... if we accept self-ownership… the reason murder, rape, and assault is immoral is because it violates private proerty. It violates me, it uses me in a way I choose not to be used…. When the government takes my money and gives it to a farmer or a poor person, or to Haiti, they are forcibly using me for the purpose of another…. We’re becoming totalitarian. We live not by law but by orders… ordering us to buy health care and wear seat belts… The founders would be disappointed at how we’ve allowed people (to take our rights away)”

Lavin adds, “They would also think we’ve been pretty quiet… They would take to the streets.”

To which Williams says, “The reasons they gave us the second amendment...(was) the right to protect ourselves not against criminals, but against the United States congress… “

“We’ve been pretty quiet,” says Lavin. “we haven’t gone to the streets. Am I allowed to say that?"

I told you about the man who'd lost his mind. Who had a stroke, fell into a depression, then disuse and finally now has become Mr. Unwanted. Recently, he was thrown out of a care facility up in Bolinas. He was too abrasive, always insulting the staff, always wanting to see the breasts of the volunteers and nurses.

Ten years ago, fifteen maybe, he was a bon vivant. He was on top of the world. He would come to your house and assume the role of raconteur, tell you about old French movies, tell you about his travels around Europe. Tell you about his fabulous adventures. He was loud and funny and kind. He dyed his hair black. He dressed elegantly, and always with a flourish. He wore berets and Australian outback hats. Sometimes he wore very long scarves. He drove exotic cars: an old Ferrari for example. He seemed to have an endless amount of money but he didn't do anything.

Actually, that wasn't true. He designed les objects d'art. He made furniture and drew up plans for extraordinary gardens. He had studied landscape architecture but never finished. He never finished anything.

Then a little less than five years ago he had this attack. It followed a car crash on the Golden Gate Bridge. And right near the spot where a close friend of his had committed suicide.

After the attack one side of his mouth had an avalanche. His brown eyes turned white. He decided he wasn't going to walk. He had people running around like crazy. He started drinking. I told you all this. He had women come over and undress, just so he could watch. He would invited people over and while his wife was making dinner he would talk about women he had had affairs with years ago. Or maybe not years ago. There was always an ambiguity. But he would go on and on, about this woman and that. And all the while his wife would be cutting the onions into ever small slices.

They were living in Marin at the time. They had a huge indoor pond with the most exotic ferns. Orginally the idea had been to make it into a hot tub but after the accident they gave that idea up.

And then when his daughter wouldn't bring him wine, he would call the police and try to have her arrested.

Eventually, he went up to Bolinas, but now he's been thrown out of there. He's back in his little room at the bottom of the house: Mr. Unwanted at a dead end. No one wants to see him. His daughter won't take his food down. His wife has stopped cooking. He himself refuses to get out of bed make his way up some stairs and prepare his own dinner.

It's as though he's on strike and now his wife has all but left him. His friends are reluctant to come by. He tells them strange stories, how his family is trying to kill him, how he has millions of dollars hidden away under the seats of his sports car.

But the car was sold several years ago. There's nothing in the garage now. His tools are long gone.

No doubt you read about the study at University College London suggesting that conservative brains are structured differently than the brains of other people.

According to the initial news report, people with conservative tendencies have a larger amygdala and a smaller anterior cingulate than other people. The amygdala -- typically thought of as the "primitive brain" -- is responsible for reflexive impulses, like fear. The anterior cingulate is thought to be responsible for courage and optimism.

According to the report, since only adults were included in the survey, researchers were unable to determine if cerebral physiology drives politics or if political beliefs change the brain.

A previous University of California study suggests the former is possible, isolating a so-called "liberal gene" -- the neurotransmitter DRD4 -- responsible for an increased receptiveness to novel ideas.

Meanwhile, conservatives point to both studies as proof of their biological superiority. In the conservative blogosphere and twitterverse, DRD4 was cited as the underlying cause of the "mental illness" known as liberalism; and some conservative tweeters have even tried to claim that the enlarged amygdala just means that conservatives "have bigger brains." Of course, the first claim begs the question, and the second ignores the shrunken anterior cingulate.

I think it makes perfect sense. Hate radio is thick with fear and paranoia. It's all about fight or flight. I can see a time when politicians wouldn't be allowed to take office until their brains had been measured to insure their politics were aligned with their brains. That way you eliminate frauds.

I could see having to wear baseball caps, and skull caps for that matter, with your brain ID on the bill. I could see whole a new possibility for restaurants, immigration and postal offices, hospitals, psychiatrists, and zoos. And what about a new olympics? Or new Harvards, one for each kind of brain.

We went to the de Young Museum today to see, "Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond." The show was jammed, and with overcoated people. The whole place was black and blue with overcoats.

As for the paintings, they were among those familiar canvasses that arrive every year or two with great fanfare. The images are always stunning, and comforting in their way. I have no argument, although I'm becoming more drawn to the abstract, literally and figuratively. I'm less drawn to depictions of life than interpretations.

"What an idiot you are," an educated critic would say, "You don't know anything. What are you talking about? Many of these paintings, even the lesser ones, are filled with abstractions. You just can't see them...."

What I was going to say, before I so rudely interrupted myself, was that I have less interest in Impressionism, had less interest until I rounded a corner at this exhibit and there was Vilhelm Hammershøi's 1905 painting, Rest.

This is the small painting of a young woman sitting in a chair, facing the wall. We see only her back.

Here is part of a description of the painting from the Musee D'Orsay

A descendent of Vermeer or a forerunner of Hopper? Hammershøi, a Danish painter who made his reputation in the 1880s, is without doubt neither. The minimalist intimisme of his interiors and the disturbing atmosphere that emanates from his apparently rigorous approach are sufficient proof of that.

Hammershøi most probably invented the back portrait, as opposed to the existing full-face or side portraits. This seated woman—we cannot tell whether she is a maid or a member of the bourgeoisie, or even guess what she is doing—is intriguing because of her displyed indifference to the spectator. The silent figure has been brushed in a refined range of greys and browns, showing the artist's deep sensitivity to indoor atmospheres.

The composition is a series of right angles: the lines of the chair, the skirting board and the sideboard divide this eulogy of absence into squares with a sort of Protestant rigour. But it would be an error to jump to the conclusion that the painting is an allegory of solitude or human tragedy. Because the real subject is perhaps the nape of the neck, the most indecent part of the body to oriental minds. Just as the few unruly wisps of hair, the opening of the blouse which gives a glimpse of white skin, in counterpoint to the flower-shaped bowl laid on the sideboard, are radical antidotes to the temptation of a purely puritanical interpretation.

I would never have thought of this as an allegory of solitude or human tragedy and I don't agree with this idea of her 'displayed indifference'. I have the sense that the woman has been asked to sit just this way, and that she's well aware of her sensuality. She could as well have just come from the arms of her lover.

She may be at rest, but from what? If she is exhausted, it is not a sign of weakness.

Perhaps she's angry, or just petulant. The way her right arm hangs on the chair suggests to me a woman unsettled. There's an emotion in that arm and the way her blouse catches on the chair.

I find her irresistably sexy and very powerful — on her own, regardless of her status in society. Above all there is the desire to see her, to confront her or reassure her, or else kiss the back of her neck....

Jennifer Jones is dead, at 90. She was an actress among other personas and was nominated for five academy awards. Her second husband was David O'Selznik who produced several films in which she starred. Most unnotably, Duel In The Sun.



Here's an anecdote from that time.  My father was O'Selznik's publicity man, and toward the end of O'Selznik's run, when the job was to promote films that were not successful.

Often, my father would have dinner with O'Selznik, in his home.  This was when Jennifer Jones was the new bride, and David was still smitten, having left his wife who had done so much to help him.  And as the martinis were being served, Jennifer would come down the spiral staircase asking David if this dress was right for the evening.  It was inevitably not.  And so another presentation, and another.  And another. Until finally something was right and then dinner and Jennifer Jones in the candle light, and for that moment, the most beautiful and dangerous woman who ever lived.

Frank Capra’s 1939 film, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, is forever timely but especially just now. Whenever you see it the film works as a cultural astrolabe, measuring the distance between the broad moral convictions we held in common 70 years ago, even if we didn’t act on them, and the narrow moral understandings and fine-print ethics that divide us now.

Still, a few things haven’t changed. Bernie Sanders’ (D.Vt) filibuster last week may have lacked Jimmy Stewart’s heart-wrenching theatrics, but there was the same feeling of tilting at windmills, and the Kafkaesque sensation that fairness itself was on trial, and found wanting.

What's changed is the moral fantasy itself — then it was that a senator might suddenly come clean and admit publicly that he or she had been wrong, the way Mr. Paine burst on to the Senate floor to say he’d failed his country and himself, and it was high time to denounce ‘the machine’ and vindicate Mr. Smith.

Now the fantasy is commonground and bipartisanship. And if you did some terrible thing, you cheated on your wife or courted house pages, then you concede. As little ground as you can, but you concede and make an elliptical statement of apology, equalizing the matter, making it clear that "yes, America, I did something wrong but this is the result of the times we live in and my opponents are no better."

Remember that Mr. Smith is neither Republican or Democrat or Independent. He is simply our better side, our good, old-fashioned free self forever in the thrall of a big idea, and the thrill of riding into town on a motorcycle, in the middle of a parade. That was the original ending of the film: Mr. Smith returning to town on a motorcycle with his legislative aid and fiancé, and then while riding down Main Street in a motorcade to celebrate his victory over the dastardly machine, he spots Mr. Paine, stops the procession to draw him out and takes him along to see his mother. Redemption, completed.

Seventy years ago that ending seemed dispensable for the audiences solicited to help cut the film, which was incredibly long. But that was Capra’s intent: to finish with a true reconciliation.

Capra’s fantasy also offers an interesting commentary on ‘the machine'. In Capra’s time, the machine was a bunch of cog heads from the unions, the accessor’s office, the police, the local newspaper chain, the state senate, and maybe a few US senators, all in the chain gang of a greedy developer-magnate intent on building a dam.

These days the magnate is the journalist-barron, surrounded by people formerly known as journalists, and who really just want a job. Yet as rich and powerful as Murdock is, with his bright yellow eye on China’s vast markets, he’s just a middle man. The real power is further in the shadows, the likes of the Koch Brothers and a handful of other wealthy people who play the working class for fools using the likes of Mark Levin et al. The preeminent sentimentalist and political fabulist who insists he is open to opposing view points until the caller says something stupid or argumentative and the Levin has no choice but to open the electronic trap door.

Seventy years ago there were also hate radio characters, the likes of Father Coughlin. They did their schticks, often at outdoor rallies, but the audience was limited and in the Depression that kind of talk had little traction. Unlike periods of inflation, recession and economic depression tends to bring people together.

You could argue that's true even now when you look at polls that show the president remains popular and that what people hunger for is not Republican policies but effective policies.

But what's really different now, from Fr. Coughlin's era, is the unrelenting flow of propaganda and the unrelenting indifference and ignorance of an electorate that seems unwilling to seek other points of view.

Which is why, as insufficient and unjust and undemocratic as it seems, it’s time to reconsider the Fairness Doctrine. I never thought I would get to this point. And I say that not sanctimoniously, but as someone who feels defeated at the prospect.