American Deliquency

Congratulations to Iowa's own Rep. Steve King on putting together a terrifically frightening piece on "A Day Without Immigrants." (Personally, King has always struck me as the kind of guy with a secret room in his basement full of kiddie-porn; but the folks in Western Iowa seem to really like him.)

Though full of racist undertones and lacking any real logic or effort at reason, he uses fear to make his argument. And that's all he really needs. Too many Americans are too lazy to think about any of his arguments, let alone research them, and he knows this.

Were the thousands of meth labs in Iowa shipped up from Mexico? No.
Are the sex offenders featured on our local newscasts immigrants? No.
Is the May 1 "Day Without Immigrants" being built around an "anti-Gringo" mission? Absolutely not.

But Rep. Steve King would probably also have you believe it was the Native Americans who gave the Europeans smallpox. And he would probably succeed in convincing a majority of the American public (these are, after all, the same people who likely would not be able to name the current President of the United States, their own state's governor, or the capital of California). By using fear he could move the sheepish and callow American public into their corner to protect themselves from the dangerous brown people.

What's most sad is not that Rep. Steve King thinks these things (it is his right, after all); but that we have forgotten what it is to be "civilized" and allow fear-based arguments like King's to propel people into defensive reactions. We should demand more, but we don't appear to be up to the task.

And it shouldn't surprise anyone who actually gives a damn. We (the American people) are living off our reputation. I'm not sure where it came from, but we've done a great job of convincing ourselves that we are a country of hard working, honest people who believe in fairness and justice. But our country's history seems to expose the opposite - a country of lazy greed-heads obediently marching the next minority on the list to their internment camps.

We are a "democracy" where the majority rules. And the majority are bigots and buffoons who would rather watch "Fear Factor" than read a book. We'd like to believe we are better, but Steve King and his kind are a large segment of the populace in this country. They believe we did enough by giving Martin Luther King Jr. and "his kind" a few more "special privileges" and we shouldn't have to prove anything else. Christ, in the 60s the radicals may have been brown, but at least they spoke the same language. Really, how much do these minorities expect?!

Wandering from recovery

Recovering from any serious bender can become a major endeavor. I have known this for quite some time and still it never ceases to amaze me just how much work can be involved.

But a truly serious bender involves more than the typical physical recovery period. With the true deliberate freak out, there is required a designated time for readjustment to society.

The first step toward recovery is to realize what did not happen. In the case of my most recent trip to the east coast, there were no major injuries, no arrests, and no felonies committed. That's a damn fine start. So we know we can walk the streets without looking over our shoulders. It's highly unlikely that there is anyone lurking in the shadows waiting to get their revenge. It's still possible, just not that probably. So don't waste your time.

The second job is to find the sheer delight in the stories that will frighten teetotalers. Screw them anyway. Life is short and we need our vices. And if there were no felonies committed, then what's the problem. You may sacrifice a few tree limbs, question the promiscuity of absolute strangers, or even loudly declare the need for someone to have explicit encounters with a fist; but these are not things to be ashamed of. Be ashamed if you hold yourself back from madness. Be ashamed if you stand outside the boundaries and watch it all happen. Life is for living. Try telling the story from the outside and people will know - people will smell the fear in your soul.

So in the end my advice is to not readjust to society. Use your experience to pull others into your world. What we see in the papers and on the news is a farce, a perverted power struggle between evil and more evil. So find your fun and swim in it. And don't ever blame yourself for the fact that the meek cannot understand.

The newspaper Iowa can do without

My local newspaper is not good. It's really a horrible disappointment. How bad is it? They once ran as the headline and feature story the winner of CBS' Survivor. I'm dead serious. I woke up one morning and the front page was plastered with news of who had been the last one on the island. At that moment the Des Moines Register sealed the deal for me. It was officially dog shit and has only continued to get worse. And I was comforted by a story last week on NPR that used the Register as an example of greater concerns.

But before that story I had major concerns. And since the start of this year's Major League Baseball season I have been teetering on the edge of sheer rage. You see, the Register now has decided that it only needs to cover baseball teams in the Midwest. Anyone who is a fan of a team other than the Cubs, Brewers, Twins, Cardinals, or Royals is on their own for information. Unless your boys happened to play a game against one of the Midwest teams you are shit out of luck. Yesterday the Mets, my favorite team since I was child, improved their record to 10-2 with a win over their rivals the Atlanta Braves. It was also Pedro Martinez's 200th career win. The Register gave me one sentence about the game, one lousy sentence. And it was the same for every other non-Midwest team. This is a crime. I'm a fan of the game. I want to know what happened throughout the league. But I guess I'm supposed to be grateful to get anything at all from this rag.

This has been the trend for the last few years but it has gotten ridiculous. Midwest teams get a paragraph and every other game gets one sentence. Real newspapers seem to find a way to give you good solid information about all major league games. I recently was in Baltimore for a bachelor party and was blown away by the coverage the Baltimore Sun had of the ENTIRE MAJOR LEAGUE. Obviously there are two MLB teams in the area, so I understand the in depth coverage of the Orioles and Nationals. But the Sun found a way to give me at least one solid paragraph about every game played the day before. And the really interesting games got two paragraphs of coverage.

The Register this year also drastically pared down the amount of information provided in the league standings and day's pitching matchups. Not so the Sun and numerous other papers across the country. And what truly amazes me is that the Register is owned by Gannett who also owns USA Today. The only thing I have ever liked about USA Today was the sports section. What the hell happened? The Register doesn't even list a team's win/loss streak anymore. They sometimes never run the box scores of late west coast games.

The Des Moines Register, of course, still claims to be the newspaper Iowa depends on. Don't believe it. We can do without it. The Register publisher interviewed by NPR used the recent contrversy in Iowa over Touchply machines as an example of their hard hitting journalism. She claims they broke the story and changed Iowa's laws. But the gambling industry broke the story; and their campaign contributions changed the laws.

But I'm getting off track here and I have to get going. There's a lot I don't know about what happened in baseball yesterday. The Des Moines Register wouldn't tell me.