Stereotypes

My grandmother was half Indian.  She was in the Fakawee tribe.  When they got lost in the woods, they said, ‘Where the Fakawee?’” Tony Soprano

President Obama has weighed in on the controversy over the Redskins’ nickname, saying, “If I were the owner of the team and I knew that the name of my team, even if they've had a storied history, was offending a sizable group of people, I'd think about changing it.”  I tend to agree, whereas in the past I thought the issue a tempest in a teapot.  Washington owner Daniel Snyder has resisted past calls for a name change. Columnist Jerry Davich sides with Snyder.  So do most of his followers, including two who said Obama should change his name.

In a “Sopranos” season four episode a protest by Native Americans in Newark on Columbus Day raises the ire of the Jersey goodfellas.  Tony’s son A.J., holding a copy of Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States,” supposedly his high school textbook, labels Columbus a villainous conquistador who enslaved and massacred Indians.  Enforcer Furio Giunta berates Columbus for being from Genoa, which historically exploited southern Italians.  Tony ends up trying to get a slick casino operator who is one-sixteenth Indian to intercede, but the guy is only interested in Tony’s help in getting Frankie Valli to perform at his place.

Toni and I drove to Grand Rapids to see Phil’s family.  Art Prize results had just been announced.  The big winner: Ann Loveless’ quilt depicting Sleeping Bear Dune Lakeshore.  Runnerups were Anni Crouter’s polar bear depiction (“Polar Expressed”) and Andy Sacksteder’s scupture of naked Native Americans titled “Uplifting.”  They were on display in front of the Gerald Ford Museum, closed due to the idiotic refusal of Tea Party Republicans to fund the government. Large crowds were on hand, but there was adequate space on the grounds for Homecoming photos.  Both Anthony and Miranda got dressed up for the event, Anthony in dress pants, shirt, tie, and suspenders, Miranda in a sexy black dress and high-high heels.  Tori had a chance to go, too, but declined.  Instead that afternoon she partook in a sports regimen that included practicing volleyball shots and softball pitching against the side of the chimney and shooting baskets.  I passed to her and hit some two-handed shots; when Tori said that Phil shoots the same way, I joked that I taught him everything he knew.

Phil and I watched a Tigers playoff game and Miley Cyrus on SNL.  When she announced she wouldn’t be simulating her naked “Wrecking Ball” video, the camera cut to Bobby Moynihan swinging naked and complaining that they were cutting his only skit.  As a sexed-up Michele Bachmann, she dirty danced with Taran Killam as John Boehner in a parody of her “We can’t Stop” video with the words changed to “We Did Stop (the Government).”  Obviously MIley’s exhibitionist near-naked twerking on the MTV awards show didn’t hurt her popularity; she performed on the “Today” show and made the cover of Rolling Stone (the caption: “Good Golly, Miss Miley”).

Sunday nine of us had breakfast at our favorite diner.  Alissa was confused over various job benefit options, including Fidelity and TIAA-CREF and joked, “I hate being an adult.”  My meal was so filling I hardly ate the rest of the day.  During the first half of the Lions game I bantered with Phil, Josh, Derrick, and Anthony, then drove home through intermittent rain, listening to the end of the Bears’ loss to New Orleans. On the bright side the Eagles won over the hated New York Giants, however, and Peyton Manning’s stellar performance against Dallas assured a win for me in my Fantasy league.  In the NL playoffs Pittsburgh managed to beat St. Louis despite a blown call at third base that led to two Cardinal runs.

Indiana Governor Mike Pence callously rejected Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson’s request for state troopers to help fight crime in Gary.  Instead he released a report castigating the city’s police force and in particular SWAT team commander Sean Jones, convicted 20 years ago of receiving $150 in a marijuana deal while working as a corrections officer at a state prison. Governor Frank O’Bannon pardoned Jones, but ten years later Republican Attorney General refused to expunge the conviction from his record.  Republicans can be Holier than Thou when it comes to African Americans but compassionate and forgiving when it’s one of their own.

Amazon posted the awesome cover of Anne Baley’s “Steel Closets” and listed the release date as April 7, 2014.  Reviewer Steve Estes, author of”Ask and Tell: Gay and lesbian Veterans Speak Out,” wrote: “This book is a great pleasure to read.  It stands at the forefront of labor studies and queer studies.  More important, it chronicles the amazing stories and reveals the hidden worlds of gay steelworkers.”  E. Patrick Johnson, author of “Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South,” added: “Covering a multi-generational and cross-gender segment of this workforce, this book contributes to the ever-growing body of scholarship on working-class queers who exist outside the metropole but whose life histories are nonetheless a critical (but often missing) part of the queer historical archive.”

In a Traces article by Richard Pierce about African-American protest in Indianapolis I learned that a hundred years ago the United Daughters of the Confederacy attempted to donate funds for, of all things, a “mammy monument” (“in memory of the faithful colored mammies of the South”) to be located on the Mall in Washington, D.C.  Due to protests by African Americans, the monument was never built.  Had the plan been implemented, Pierce writes, “undoubtedly she would have been depicted as overweight and wearing an apron.”

In “Scoundrel Time” New Orleans native Lillian Hellman eulogized her wet-nurse Sophronia: “It was she who taught me to have feelings for the black poor, and when she was sure I did, she grew sharp and said it wasn’t enough to cry about black people, what about the miseries of poor whites.  She was an angry woman and she gave me anger, an uncomfortable, dangerous, and often useful gift.”

In her Sixties class Nicole Anslover played three more music selections, Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” at Woodstock, the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” and a Jackson 5 appearance on “The Dick Clark Show.”  Asked why I recommended the latter, I mentioned the group being from Gary, the popularity of Motown during the 1960s, and Papa Joe Jackson being inspired to groom the boys for stardom by the success of the Spaniels on Vee-Jay Records.

Director of Development Diana Virijevich was collecting info on former Fine Arts chair and Dean of Students Bob Foor, an IU donor, in advance of meeting him later in the week.  I had thought of Bob at “Our Town” last Friday.  I’m pretty sure he played the Stage Manager in an IUN production, but his most memorable recitation was Carl Sandburg’s “The People, Yes.”  Diana had a class with me 40 years ago and recalled that I was quite thin, had long hair, and was interested in Gary history.

Disrespected

“I believe in a lively disrespect for most forms of authority,” Rita Mae Brown

Author of “Rubyfruit Jungle” (1973), which dealt openly with lesbian themes, Rita Mae Brown had resigned from the National Organization of Women three years before when founder Betty Friedan made remarks insulting to gays.  Rit went on to form the Lavender Menace and The Furies Collective.

IUN is hosting a two-day Rainbow Diversity Symposium with sessions on such topics as Coming Out of the Closet, Bullying, Harassment, and Suicide Prevention, LGBTQI Marriage, and Homosexuality and Religion.  A Safe Zone Project provided Advocacy Training workshop for those interested in providing support for LGBTQI people at identifiable Safe Spaces. Brandon Wagman, below, a founder of Rainbow Serenity, hosted a recent music and arts fair in Hobart.

Hoosier Congressman Marlin Stutzman made the moronic statement that Republicans were “not going to be disrespected.  We have to get something out of this.  And I don’t know what that even is.”  Robert Blaszkiewicz wondered if Obamacare covered foot in mouth disease.  Republicans, playing to their racist base, have been disrespecting the President for five years now with no end in sight.  Ray Smock feared the public would blame both political parties equally and say, in effect, “A plague on both your houses.”  He recommended Norman Ornstein and Tom Mann’s “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism.”

Jacqueline Foertsch’s “Reckoning Day: Race, Place, and the Atom Bomb in Postwar America,” though mainly about films and novels, analyzes such tunes as “Atomic Love,” “Atomic Baby,”and “Atomic Nightmare.”  The genre includes novelty songs (“H-Bomb Rock”), gospel-oriented (“Jesus Hits Like an Atomic Bomb”), or sexually suggestive (“You Hit Me Baby Like an Atomic Bomb” has the line, “a radioactive feeling in my knees”).  Foertsch mentions the Cuff Links’ doo-wop song “Guided Missiles” but not “Sh-Boom” by the Chords.  In 1962 Charles Mingus recorded “Oh, Lord, Don’t Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb on Me.” Twenty years later Sun Ra and His Outer Space Arkest’s “Nuclear War” contained these lines: “Nuclear war it’s a motherfucker, don’t you know If they push a button, your ass must go.”

East Chicago lost a Sectionals heartbreaker to the Hammond Morton Governors (the school is named in honor of Civil War governor of Indiana Oliver P. Morton).  Each team won two matches, so the contest came down to which number one singles player would prevail. Fabian Garcia lost the first set 6-1 to his Morton opponent, who hit virtually everything back, and was losing the second when rains came.  After a delay he rallied to win the set.  With the third set tied 4-4, Fabian was a point away from taking the next game, only to see his opponent hit a ball that went into the net but dribbled over onto his side.  He lost that game and the next but received a big ovation from fans for his valiant effort. Dave was proud of his players, none of whom had tennis experience before going out for his team. It was quite a busy week for Dave, below left, who as Senior adviser was involved in Spirit Week, which coincided with Homecoming (he also announced the football game against Lew Wallace).  

Driving home on 80/94, I spotted a brilliant rainbow to the southeast.  As I got closer to Chesterton, the sky darkened and it started pouring.  Earlier we had lost electricity, but lights were on and a ribs, rice, and string beans dinner awaited.

Ray Boomhower’s Traces article on Herbert O. Yardley entitled “The Hoosier Decoder,” concentrated on Yardley’s years with the secret American Cryptographic Bureau.  Yardley wrote an adventure novel called “The Blond Countess,” whose main hero was a cryptographer.  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio bought the rights to the two books and in 1935 released the spy movie “Rendezvous,” starring William Powell and Rosalind Russell.  The film, Boomhower wrote, “had little to do with Yardley’s experience with the Black Chamber.”

In his “Editor’s Page” essay, entitled “The Gentleman,” Boomhower admits to an adolescent fascination with classic films while growing up in Mishawaka.  Seeing William Powell in “The Thin Man,” he thought he might want to become a private detective.  The consummate gentleman, Powell was witty, brave, and unflappable.  My movie icons as a kid were Jerry Lewis and the Roadrunner.  My heroes were pitcher Robin Roberts and leadoff hitter Richie Ashburn, “Whiz Kids” on the 1950 Philadelphia Phillies. A fierce competitor, Roberts would sometimes steal bases when the situation called for it; Ashburn sometimes fouled off more than a dozen pitches at the beginning of a game.  Both were class acts off the field.  Dodger pitcher Don Newcombe called Roberts “one of the nicest men I’ve ever met.”  Following his playing career, Ashburn was a Phillies TV commentator for 34 years until succumbing to a heart attack following a broadcast at Shea Stadium in New York. Once describing how he’d keep baseball bats with him during hot streaks, Ashburn, known for his dry wit, told TV partner Harry Kalas that “he’d slept with a lot of old bats in his day.”

Frederic and Blandine were waiting for permission to film at Wirt Emerson School, which they visited two weeks ago.  Several people have told them about the innovative things going on there, so they think it’s imperative.  I called up Principal Adrian Richie, and he suggested they come next Tuesday morning when performers from China were scheduled to perform.  Just 12 more days before the filmmakers return to Paris.

Friday we attended Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” at Memorial Opera House.  First performed in 1938 with no set and few props, it takes place in the fictional small New England town of Grover’s Corner in the early years of the twentieth century.  While the acting was impeccable, especially John Larrabee as Stage Manager, the plot didn’t much interest me; I prefer musicals.