Saturday, October 25, 2008

Webster Groves is leaving the Republican Party--Bush's Legacy



"The Queen of the Suburbs."




Even City Hall looks straight out of Central Casting.


Webster Groves Who?

Welcome to my hometown. It is so singularly itself that in 1966 , CBS did a documentary called, "16 in Webster Groves." It was the year we moved to a modest American Dream on a teacher's salary, and I was nine years old. I had my own bedroom for the first time, it was pink, there was satin involved. Frankly, I couldn't wait to be sixteen in Webster Groves.

The community was pained by the documentary. They were outraged at the way their children had been depicted as superficial , culturally incoherent, avaricious, small-minded, racist and perhaps most disturbing, way down deep, the kids were shallow. No angst aside from growing up and being just like their folks.

Those kiddoes didn't "show" well, it turned out. It took a few years for existential angst to hit the 63119. Most of that original crew have grown up to be just like anyone: just as out to lunch, image obsessed and dysfunctional or not.

But having been bred by Republicans, and disciplined by authoritarians, lines were toed and bales were lifted with frightening regularity--while they were being watched, of course, and that was a lot less often than kids get watched today. Benign neglect is the best kind. Their parents never, ever, ever knew. And never knew they never knew.



Surrounded by beauty.


These children were the me-generation whose every whim was attended to strictly. They were rotten to the core when given a chance, and to this day, need little encouragement to wax incessantly about their teen years. A recent study showed our teen years retain more permanence in our memories than other times of life, and St. Louis has been on to that for a long time.

St. Louis is the place where locals size you up socially by asking where you went to high school. In the 314 area code, "hoosier" is an insulting term for a redneck lowlife. Who knew anything about Indiana?

We eat Imo's Pizza, Ted Drewes' Frozen Custard and toasted ravioli. Add a few beloved teams, the high school question, rinse and repeat. That's St. Louis. Webster Groves is mostly an scenic place to live the St. Louis life. We're as hoosier as anybody, but we know enough to hide it.

Webster has always been a Republican stronghold, and as a child whose parents campaigned for McCarthy in '68, I honed debating skills that serve me to this day. But it was a place whose society was essentially stable, the "fundamentals" were good, and some things still hadn't been questioned. CBS was disappointed to learn these kids just wanted to grow up and be rich.

These were WASPish, country-club white folks who said they loved Sammy Davis Jr., Charlotte Peters, cocktails and foursomes of bridge at Algonquin until they died of cirrhosis of the liver still smelling like Patou's Joy.



Block after block of well-kept gardens and fresh paint, but the families inside are just as screwy as everybody's, many are terrible housekeepers with terrible animals. One I know for sure is full of dirty diapers from their diaper service. But from the outside, it's all good. They just consider appearances important.

Within a short time, though, things changed out there where people could see it. Their kids grew their bangs out until they covered eyes and caused arguments. My best friend had sex at 13. I had purple microdot at 13. If only CBS had come back during MY adolescence. Stories would be told.

Change was everywhere. Webster College went from all girls and nuns to a make-your-own-gravy tangle of coed sex, chemical experimentation and protest. There was little bathing and less shaving. And that's how they liked it.

The area's earliest and most famous head shop opened up just down the street in Old Orchard. The Spectrum was a magnet for the entire counter culture in the bi-state area. I still can't smell patchouli without thinking of those psychedelic black light posters I never had money to buy.

My childhood neighbor up the street, Edna Maude, (of course we still believe in family names), spearheaded a group mural, painted by hippies and freaks, on the parking lot side of the local Velvet Freeze. She and her husband have since made their fortune selling tanning beds. They're also evangelical right wingers, which causes Edna Maude's parents no end of pain. No matter what you do, sometimes it isn't enough.

The high school had a courtyard for smoking and we did. We inhaled. Prodigiously.

I give you this background to provide context for the sea change taking place right here in Skippy Groves. Our local free paper, The Webster-Kirkwood Times, has an energetic corps of articulate letter writers. I've made my living by writing, yet have submitted many lovely letters that went unpublished because the competition was better. In fact, the paper devotes two whole spreads to letters to the editor every week.

Last week's Webster-Kirkwood Times printed not one endorsement for McCain, because none had been received.

Around town, Obama signs outnumber McCain's at least 2:1. I don't know anyone voting for McCain, which is my privilege at my age, but still.

I guess we can thank George W. Bush for that. What a perfectly tortured back-handed legacy to be responsible for having delivered our forlorn country. It's been pillaged of its soul, without posse comitatus, without habeus corpus, without Geneva Conventions, owner of two intractable wars, our bankrupt, spy-infested union has been war mongered and privately profiteered past recognition. We misunderestimated George.

And now, as it looks hopeful that Obama will win the presidency, we hear him cautioning us that it won't be easy. It will take time. It will take all of us.

Nice trick they've pulled on us, return the mangled remains of the body politic to the opposition party, then you can blame them for not fixing it quickly enough, or in the right fashion, or anything they think up. Their time in the shadows will no doubt be spent gaining strength like Voldemort. If our coffers are ever full again, they'll be back. Had he set out to ruin a country, he couldn't have done a better job because he's as incompetent as buttered toast.

This has become so obvious that lifelong Republicans are voting for Obama. One thing Webster schools taught well was Constitution.

A dear friend, from a long line of classy Republicans, made the comment in 2003 that if W invaded Iraq, we'd never elect another Republican president.

I'm just sayin'.

Creationists Declare War on the Brain


Mind Hacks has a great post about creationists' excitement over their latest argument for the soul. It runs something like this: because we can't explain every aspect of the brain through neuroscience, some portion must be outside the natural world. Science isn't too worried.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Wasssssup?

Times have changed. Good work.

Rives, again, spinning Brownesque webs of time and tempo

This guy is brilliant. Rives:

Rives Ramble Robusto

This made me smile a rainbow and half a pony.

Enjoy.

46-year old baby calcified, never born

Holy crap.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

James Trout is a Good Man to Put in Charge: He Brings People Together and Sends them off packing to work tirelessly for peace and justice.


Here's my buddy Jim Trout. He's running for State Senate in a district that has likely never elected a Democrat. I don't know that, but having grown up here, it's a fairly safe assumption.

Frank Popper, the award winning documentarian, has created this short film about Jim:



The thing that inspires me about Jim is bigger than his fine mind, his tireless energy, or his command of the facts and personalities at work. It's not his lone wolf court case to reinstate campaign donor limits in Missouri, it's not his command and commitment to green construction and renewable energy, and it's not in the way he treats his boys, eminent domain legislation, or his fun girlfriend. It's his basic goodness and heart.

As some of you know, I've been dealing with a disease that will one day take me out feet first. When all this was developing, I was writing for Jim--perhaps NOT writing for Jim is the more apt phrase. This hole in the team had to be filled, and they kept waiting for me to step up and get it done. He gave me every chance to do so until it became apparent to us all that I wasn't thinking or writing worth a hoot.

When we spoke, though, rather than nailing me to the wall about how I'd let him down, he sincerely asked how I was doing, anxious for all the details sick people love to dwell on. He took time he didn't have to talk to someone definitely not helping him at the moment. But that's how he is about everything. It's always about people. It's always about good grace, judgment, justice and doing things better than before.

Jim's opponent, Eric Schmitt, seems to have big bucks (Republicans love NO campaign finance limits so much they made a new law getting rid of them all over again!). The attorney has risen as far as local alderman, vaguely promises to bring business to Missouri, attend to healthcare and fix the "Hold Harmless" provision that gyps suburban school districts out of all kinds of money and is central to our property tax dilemma.

Never mind that he's never pushed through legislation, doesn't know the players in Jefferson City and the labarynthine process of gaining consensus and getting others on your band wagon to shake things up. That he's chosen to tackle "Hold Harmless" is as indicative of his inexperience as anything. It's a bad idea that will likely be with us forever as it's existence creates the financial backbone most rural school districts depend upon, and there are a lot more rural legislators than urban/suburban.

Mr. Schmitt is also distancing himself from Matt Blunt's slimy and opportunistic M.O. with its ethics-impaired who have run amock these last four years. But who will he caucus with?The same ones who gave license offices to cronies, cut 100,000 from Medicare and other things that served the legislators more than their constituency. Sen. Jeff Smith told me that the average person thrown off Medicare by Republicans is a single mom with two kids making about $11,000 a year. As lily white as he may be now, once Eric starts caucusing with these characters, how long before he joins the reelection club and loses his moral center?

While guilt by association can be a straw man, I thought it interesting that Eric Schmitt's name falls right under anti-feminist pariah, Phyllis Schlafley, in a Republican attorney's association list of members.

Other than that, he's got an agenda that isn't offensive at least. Well, huzzah Eric. You're not an evil doer. But if you want to get someone in Jeff City with the cojones to get these issues addressed for our district, vote Trout, Nov. 4.

Jim is an accidental politician whose experience poises him to tackle a wide range of important issues with the clarity of thought to make a difference.

Eric? Not so much, but then, his agenda is less ambitious than Jim's. How big you dare to dream is related to what issues you tackle. Jim's background will make this a big job. Eric's takes a nice picture, though.

A note on the video: this is our famous and award-winning local documentary maker, Frank Popper. He received worldwide acclaim for his 2006 film about Jeff Smith's uplifting campaign for Gephardt's seat against Russ Carnahan, Missouri's brand name boy. "Can Mr. Smith Get To Washington Anymore?" is a tonic to anyone wondering if grassroots efforts are still strong enough to get things done.

Frank, Sen. Jeff Smith and Jim Trout--of a piece.