Undernews: Recovered history: Flint water story on Al Jazeera America one year ago

Undernews: Recovered history: Flint water story on Al Jazeera America one year ago

At the back of the hill: ABOUT LANGUAGE, WEXLER, AND HODGE-PODGE SCHOLARSHIP

http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?SubID=14402

Great Historical Bum: Wisconsin's Beery Conspiracy

Great Historical Bum: Wisconsin's Beery Conspiracy

Wisconsin's Beery Conspiracy

Among the 133 Facebook users who are not so fastidious that they cannot call Matt Wynns of Eagle, Wisconsin a friend is Wisconsin's Attorney-General, J.B. Van Hollen. The blog, Politiscoop, has been performing admirably in bringing this story to the informable public. Wynns is one of the 15 blowhards, hooligans. and peacocks who, on the 10th of this month, noisily advertised their plans to subvert democracy in Wisconsin by sabotaging the recall of Governor Walker. Their plans to take baths and dress as they imagine liberals to dress and then pose as petition circulators are as grandiose as they are illegal. In the suds-sodden haze of their imagination they will collect "hundreds of signatures. . ." No! "15K to 20K. . ." No! "Twenty-five percent" of all the signatures collected!"  (Tough guys are much drawn to the use of the character K when thousand is meant) They will then dispose of them, thwarting the will of a body of voters they doubt they can beat in a fair fight. Means of disposal would include lining bird cages with petitions, shredding them, and setting fire to heaps of them by way of staying warm in the Obama winter. State law calls that specific act a Class I felony punishable by 3 1/2 years in the penitentiary with $10,000 payable to the state upon release. Van Hollen is supposed to be the principal enforcer of state laws. Will he condemn these brownshirt conspirators for promoting this scheme. Will he, if any of them actually leaves his bar stool long enough to circulate-with-intent, prosecute? And would a newspaper or broadcast journalist kindly raise that question with him tomorrow morning? Stay tuned.

Scotty Goes A-Begging-O

Wisconsin elected Scott Walker governor during an episode of political opacity, and now Wisconsin regrets it. Help Wisconsin restore its reputation for good sense by greeting our peripatetic Union-Buster-In-Chief when he comes to your state to raise cash for his shameless attempt to fight his recall. On November 15 Walker flies to Wichita to kiss the ring (is ring-shaped? can be worn over a finger?) of the Koch brother who stayed in Kansas. Occupy Wichita promises to show him that old-fashioned Kansas hospitality. Kansas was once the polestar of native American radicalism; the Little Blue Books that schooled a couple of generations in home truths about the way the world works were published in Girard - just 137 miles distant. It's 70 miles from Ponca City; I should know because the Bad Boys of my youth drove to Wichita to tank up on the hard stuff that was harder to find in dry Oklahoma. Getting to Wichita to say Hi to Governor Walker is easy. Stand-up comedy is hard.

Confessions of a Fud

I was the youngest person in my graduating class at Ponca City Senior High School, and for many years after I was the youngest person, or nearly so,  in any group that accepted me or to which I sought admission. This was so despite the fact that I looked old enough when I began frequenting beer halls, taverns, and honkytonks that I was never carded. It was the best of both worlds.

I was not, then or now, an incurious person; I was a doubter and a questioner, and often I would pursue some piddling assertion about "the way things always have been" back to the edge of recorded history if I suspected that the real story was to be found there. It was a characteristic behavior that served me well as a broadcast interviewer. My friends and family continue to find it both annoying and a marker of my identity.

It is not true, as was foretold in the Class Prophecy at Ponca City High, that I am today Professor Alan Bickley, the Man Who Knows Everything. Gaps in my knowledge as broad as the Grand Canyon and as deep as the Marianas Trench abound. I come up especially short on popular culture, a subject that has scholarly status in addition to being self-evidently something that most people imbide as effortlessly as they breathe air. I confess to have missed whole decades of popular television shows; rock bands have come and gone and their members have gone gray, and I have no memory of them when they mattered. Titles of middlebrow novels and the faces of celebrities of decades long past mean nothing to me.

The practical consequences of my spotty acquaintance with pop culture are not socially disabling; rather, my ignorance is like Tom Sawyer's limp, and it stands in droll contrast to my knowledge of, for example, working class history, Golden Age radio, and the music of Bob Wills. But there are consequences, and what I have written above is prologue to a brief mention which I hope will prove cathartic.

Every Saturday and Sunday morning for the past four weeks Suzy and I have rolled out of bed to watch UP With Chris Hayes, MSNBC's alternative to the dreary template of cable news with its disaster or scandal or celebrity disintegration-unto-death of the day. UP is miles above the average terrain because its producers value intelligence, conversation, and wit, because they believe that the attention span of UP's audience is untested, even by a two-hour commitment, and because they have shut the door to the cheerless mopes who clutter the sets of all broadcast public affairs program save this one. By this I mean the recycled political party hacks, the lobbyists, the academics-for-hire, the media has-beens, not-quites, and never-will-be's whose contributions are the stale talking points that they carry from venue to venue like the unsalable daubings that appear in "art festivals" around middle America.

Chris Hayes is an unexpected gift to audiences who have been fed mostly straw and little of nutrient value. He asks pointed questions that prove his claim to have been boning up on the subject all week, and he responds to answers intelligently in ways that inform while letting the conversation take unexpected turns.

Chris Hayes is 32 years old. His high, nasal voice would have disqualified him as a broadcaster before, let us say, 1965. His rapid speech with rising-end intonation tends to be incoherent when he wants to make a point, a condition which I have noticed in a great many people under 40 years of age. He has not been able, if he has even tried, to persuade his guests not to talk over each other. And, to get around to my point, he and his youthful guests drop pop cultural references liberally, breaking my attention, forcing me to look back to the vast, dark arroyo of my pop cultural obtuseness for a clue to what is meant by Charlie and Ents, funky cold Medina, Keith Moon, and the like. And when I say drop, I mean that their voices drop as if to exclude the dim bulb sitting in a Madison, Wisconsin living room and to solidify the Class-of-2010 bond between members of this group of five high achievers. It is tedious, it is petty, and it bespeaks an arrogance that doesn't mix well with the democratizing intentions of the UP company.

That's all I have to say about that.

The Short Memories of the Financial Flacks

Asian and European securities markets closed up more than 2% last night, and US markets opened more than 2% above Wednesday's close. Transcripts of CNN financial reporter Christine Romans' comments on the meaning of it all are not yet available, but I can say that they were obtuse, disgusting, and blind to reality. Two days have passed since the Congressional Budget Office confirmed what was no secret to anyone who cared to inquire: the rich have appropriated virtually all of the new wealth created in the United States since that appalling fraud, Ronald Reagan, was swept into power in 1981. But to Ms Romans that is Tuesday's news; it no longer describes reality. Her report this morning was a giddy celebration of the markets' confirmation of the strength of the US economy.

Many American suburbs have become depopulated and shuttered ghost towns; millions of citizens have lost the economic basis for the self-esteem that defines the middle class; state, cities, and villages are literally bankrupt or are on the edge, and an empty vessel with a job on cable is looking at a day in the life of capitalism and concluding that the economy is strong!