Superstar

I finally figured it out.
I have, for a while now, and more often in my head than out loud, refered to the relationship that FOX, Tea Partiers, et al have to President Obama as "he's the star of their show."  But the way to expound on that, if ever I should need to, had eluded me.  It came to me as I was driving to work the other night.

Who was the star of "Superman: The Movie" (1978)?

Obviously, Chrisropher Reeve, right?  Someone might say Gene Hackman.  If they give a list it would probably include Margot Kidder.

But who got top billing?

The surprising answer to that question is Marlon Brando.  Marlon Brando?  Seriously?  Was he even in that movie?  Oh,yeah; he played Superman's real father.  Yeah,that guy.  Top billing seriously?  Musta had a good agent.

Despite having top billing, no one who's seen the movie would ever think of him as the star.  Yes, he played an essential character, but no one would judge the quality of the film based on his performance.  He wasn't even part of the ensemble.

I have friends on Facebook on both the right and the left, and it's interesting to me to see how each side views Presidential power.  Those on the right see President Obama using his power for evil.  One of the things that the right gets ridiculed for is their assertion that things are all going wrong in this country because Obama.  No other explanation needed.
(Facebook is reporting that Obama is closing the Vatican Embassy.  A quick Google search revealed that the Embassy is not closing; it is moving to a place with cheaper rent, better security, and it's closer to work. A lot of people and businesses move for the same reasons.  But Google is obviously wrong because, you know, Obama.)
    Meanwhile, those on the left think he's failing to use his power for good.  The President was speaking at an immigration reform rally recently, and was heckled by a student who asked why he didn't use his executive power to change things.  The President had to remind him that he is constrained by both the Constitution and the balance of powers.  There's only so much he can actually do without the consent of Congress.  It's been pointed out before, usually in discussions about gas prices, that he's the president, not the King of the World.
    I read recently that George Bush was asked what surprised him most about being President.  His answer was, "How little power I actually have."  Of course George Bush didn't have to deal with a Congress where a substantial portion of its members had decided to block everything he wanted to do -- not because they were opposed to the policies in question, but because he was George Bush.  When he was President, the filibuster was a tool to give the minority in the Senate a strong voice.  It was not a weapon to oppose and block anything and everything the President might support like it is now, and has been only in the last five years.  As a result of such tactics, President Obama has been effectively marginalized since just after the passage of the ACA in 2010.  As President, he still gets top billing, but he's no longer the star of the show because all of the action is taking place (or not) in Congress.
    So in my opinion, all the railing against Obama for the last few years has been pretty pointless.  Maybe things will change in 2015, but that's still a year away, and anything can happen between now and then.  In the meantime, pay close attention to what's going on in Congress.  They're the real story, and that's where you'll find the real stars of the show.
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Birth, Death, and the Inadequate Social Media.

My friend Brittany recently had a baby.  Jason was born several weeks early, and for a while it didn't seem he was going to make it.  Brittany was making several anguished Facebook posts about her suffering child, and so many of her friends and family were offering words of support and encouragement.  I was not one of them.  I wanted to be, but I just wasn't.
    This past Saturday night, my friend Michael came home from an outing with friends and found that his boyfriend, also named Jason, had died.  From the second hand information I got from a friend of ours, and a few Facebook posts, we learned that Michael had found Jason wrapped in a blanket on the couch where he had been napping.  Michael is quite devastated.  Again, there was an outpouring of support and condolences from so many friends on Facebook.  I was not one of them.
 Actually, that's not entirely true.  But my attempt looked, at least to me, terribly tacky.  In fact, I have fears that this blog post may make me look terribly tacky because I can't seem to shake the idea that I'm making their pain all about me.
    The problem is that I can't seem to find words when someone I care about is going through pain.  I'm ashamed of that.  I really want to be there for them, but by "be there" I mean actually with them so I can touch them, hug them, hold their hand.  I still probably won't have anything to say, but I'm a good listener, and I have comforting shoulders.  Electronic media just seems so inadequate, and that's exacerbated by my own lack of meaningful verbal expression.
    Michael was in chat last night on Facebook.  I wanted to let him know I was thinking about him, so I found a crying depressed looking emoticon and sent it to him as a message.  When I posted it, it was huge.  When you look at them in the menu, they're about the size of  a 12pt font.  This was like 72 or bigger.  It was awful.  When they're small, you can't see how cheesy they really are.
    I don't know when I'll see Brittany again.  I'll probably see Michael at the funeral.  Till then, I'm wishing my arms could reach out through my computer to say "I love you, and I'm here for you.  And I wish I could make the pain go away."

Failure To Attend

when you swallow
a bottle of pills
and you feel them
begin to take hold

 it is possible to have a second thought
it is possible to think maybe I was hasty
and...
that
dizziness
and the tingle
grow stronger

and consciousness
begins to
transform
into
a
greasy rope

it is possible to assemble the ideas
together and motivate your brain
to regret,
not the past,

but the exact moment
you're swimming in

as the realm of light
becomes dimmer through
half open eyes

and
my
hiding spot
next to my
childhood home
became
an awfully poetic
place to

decide
to
abandon
a very foolish
(no longer twinkling)
conclusion

so I sent a text

a car arrived
as I stumbled to
the driveway

and there my memory
becomes intermittent
for a bit

I remember a step;
I remember a dashboard;
traffic;

a voice saying,
"Ted, don't go to sleep"

I remember telling a nurse,
"I changed my mind"

BLACK CHARCOAL
LIKE BURNT MUD
SUCKED THICK
through the straw

you feel it lining the grooves between teeth
and the backsides beneath tongue

SO BLACK
SO REPULSIVE
YOU JUST WANT TO REJECT
you just want to vomit on your lap

so,
you gag

"Ted, you have to drink it all"

you stiff the gag
you have no choice
you suck
it in
and it licks your throat

you gag again,
some comes up,
and you swallow that back down

it takes so long

when you finally lay back
you feel ashamed

black grainy fluid dripped
over lip,
down chin

like you've been slurping
from a sewer pipe

an officer came grinning
beside the gurney


 and I just asked him, "Please, before we go away, let
me
have
just one cigarette."

but no,
not even a suicide attempt
is enough to grant
such a kernel of kindness

when you swallow
a bottle of pills
and begin to feel
them take hold

it is possible to have a second thought

but even so

the nurse called my father
and I lacked the
importance for him to appear
-----------------------------------------------------------
An original poem by my friend Ted Vanderveldt,
 published on Facebook, 9-22-13                                       

Blue Plaid Memories

 



I'm going through old photos and I come across this one of me in the third grade, shortly before I got my first pair of glasses.  The photo was taken on Christmas day, 1970, in the house on East First Street in Edmond where we lived until the summer of 1973.  I'm sitting at the desk that my Dad refinished for me, working on a model of a souped up 1911 fire engine called the Firecracker by Monogram.  I had begged my parents' to get me that particular model for Christmas for weeks.  That year, for some reason, we had celebrated Christmas on the evening of the 24th, so I didn't get to start building the model till the next day.  I still have that model in the china cabinet in my dining room.  The antique globe sitting on the desk is also in my dining room, on top of the china cabinet, and the desk itself is at my parents' house.
    Other things in the room also bring back some rather random memories.  My mother made the curtains.  My Dad had laid the orange carpet squares as part of the process of remodeling the house into a quadraplex.  That orange thing with the black handle next to the desk is the Sears typewriter with the snap on cover that I had gotten for my eighth birthday the previous summer, and the turquoisey container I was using for a trash can was actually a Lucerne potato chip canister from Safeway.  I loved that belt I was wearing, and was disappointed when I outgrew it.
    But what stands out to me now are the pants that matched the curtains, and the bulletin board full of pictures of Donnie Osmond.  How is it possible that no one knew I was gay?

Rules of Engagement.

I messaged my friend Mark, "Have I told you how much I appreciate you?"  I haven't heard back from him yet, but I really do, and the reason makes me sad and a bit frustrated.

Mark and my best friend from high school, Jeff, were a trio in my early college years.  Since then, we've gone separate ways.  Jeff was around our home town for a long time into my adulthood, but about a decade ago he moved to a small town on the other side of the state, and my only contact with him is via Facebook, and even that is rare.  Mark moved to Chicago, and only recently moved back to a town about an hour away.  I haven't seen him in nearly 30 years, but we talk on Facebook frequently.

Mark and Jeff are both FOX-style consevatives, and I'm... not.  That makes for some good conversation, but only between Mark and me.  I've learned from past experience that that Jeff is not so easy to engage, and that frustrates me.  I'd like to be able to have an opposing opinion without being unfriended, but I'm afraid to test the boundaries for fear of never hearing from him again.

Today, Mark posted a link to an article about a pair of photographers who had declined to photograph a gay wedding based on their Christian beliefs, and were subsequently sued.  The photographers were "found guilty and ordered to pay thousands of dollars in fines."  The slant of the article was that the religious liberties of the photographers were being violated, and, y'know, dictatorships, coersion, authoritarianism, and other hyperbolic language.  (Side note:  the other point of view was presented without hyperbole.  For an article with the other point of view, click here.)

The post got the following comments:



 My first comment was a Biblical reference, to Luke 16:18.  I'm sure Mark is familiar with the passage, but either he missed my point, or he was being deliberately obtuse to make his own point, which is acceptable. However, building it around the archaic idea of a "gay gene" is a bit odd, so I think his point failed.  Also, one does not become an adulterer until one commits adultery, whereas one is gay or straight regardless of whether one has engaged in any sexual activity at all, so that comparison failed as well.

My own point was that if the couple's refusal to work with a gay couple was really based in moral conviction, then they should also refuse to work with couples marrying a second spouse, and for that matter, any couple engaged in amarital sexual relations.  Otherwise, they're just using their religion as an excuse to express a personal predjudice.

Jeff's last comment was the one that got in my head, however.  What he said is something he fervently believes.  I find it utterly ridiculous, and I was mentally trying to choose between a couple of snarky responses:

• Oh yes.  The "L" word.  I'd forgotten about that.  That's terribly important.
• That's funny.  That's exactly what liberals think of conservatives.

But it's Jeff, not Mark, and I can't say anything.  That makes me sad.  And it makes me appreciate Mark.

The Thaddus Factor

"So, ask the following question: how is it that many Americans with preexisting conditions have health insurance now? The immediate answer is, they get it from their employers. But why do employers do that? Well, employment-based health insurance is tax-advantaged: it’s a benefit employers can provide that isn’t counted as taxable income, which makes it better, in some cases, than offering higher wages instead.
But for company health plans to receive this tax-advantaged status, they have to obey ERISA rules, which essentially require that the same benefits be made available to all full-time employees — no discrimination based on health history, and you can’t provide benefits only to your highest-paid workers. So employer-based insurance is, when you come down to it, a lot like Obamacare, with enforced non-discrimination and a fair bit of subsidization of less-well-paid workers.
Now comes Karl Rove, and his big idea is to make the tax break on health coverage available to everyone, not just beneficiaries of employer plans. Great! Now employers can say “Here, we’ll eliminate your coverage, but we’ll pay you more, and you can use the money to buy tax-deductible insurance on your own!” Except that employees with preexisting conditions won’t find insurers willing to offer them affordable coverage — oh, and lower-paid workers won’t be able to afford coverage even if they’re healthy." -PK

---

It's true that under the preferred Republican system -- the U.S. system before the Affordable Care Act became law -- if you were uninsured and get sick, you could probably find public hospitals that would provide treatment.
It is, however, extremely expensive to treat patients this way. It's far cheaper -- and more medically effective -- to pay for preventative care so that people don't have to wait for a medical emergency to seek treatment.
For that matter, when sick people with no insurance go to the E.R. for care, they often can't afford to pay their bills. Those costs are ultimately spread around to everyone else -- effectively creating the most inefficient system of socialized medicine ever devised.
Indeed, since hospitals can't treat sick patients for free, the bills can bankrupt those who get sick, and the costs are still passed on to everyone else.
But wait, there's more.  For those with chronic ailments, DeMint's position is laughable -- is anyone going to stop by the emergency room for chemotherapy or diabetes treatments?
The reality is plain for anyone who cares: Americans die because they lack basic coverage. The Republican plan to deal with this national scourge doesn't exist -- the plan is to destroy what took generations to approve, and then hope for the best.
Obamacare's critics are offering a cruel joke, and little else. -Steve Benin

With Apologies to Fats Waller

♫ I'm gonna sit right down and text myself a message
And make believe it came from you.
I'm gonna type words oh so sweet
They're gonna knock me off my feet.
Emoticons at the bottom,
I'll be glad I got 'em....
I'm gonna colon parenthesi and say, "I hope you're feelin' better,"

And close with less than three the way you do.
I'm gonna sit right down and text myself a message
And make believe it came from you. ♫