Dammit Grandpa

Grandpa Duane's blossoming insanity first reported here and here.

"Kerry thinks he's Jesus Goddamn Christ. Thinks he's gonna make the cripples walk. Everyone in a wheel chair is going to just get up."

I had no idea what grandpa was talking about at first. Jesus Christ? He said it a day after the death of Superman, that should have been a clue, but I was distracted. Most of my brain was trying to will into existence the telekinetic gravity to separate his portable radio from its power source while staying seated across the patio. The patio has a short, uneven carpeting that affects the look of astroturf. "See Lukey, it's like grass," Grandpa had told me as a kid. Later I noticed the effect was diminished because the carpet is black. Also, the cigarette melt-holes reveal it for what it truly is, some kind of plastic polymer. See, It's almost like imitation grass.

This thing I do on this fake grass-like surface--spending time with grandpa during an election cycle--it's a game of inches. Deceptively tactical. You think it's just some crazy ass old man barking about what an evil sonofabitch the candidate you support is. It's that, and more. Because of the kind of person my grandfather is, I have to play the game continually on the defensive. So defensive it's almost passive. For example, I don't think grandpa knows that I'll be voting for Kerry. If he did, his efforts would be re-doubled. Rather than diffuse caterwauling, he'd begin with a, "I just don't see how you can vote for [insert one or more Sean Hannity talking points]." It would become a direct challenge on myself as a person. I'd eventually have to stand up to him. It's much better this way. Even the uber-right relatives that do know my leanings, are keeping it from grandpa. They fear interfamilial bloodshed. That's kin altruism.

From the moment I walk in the door and hear the AM band voices bellowing like a pipe organ through a large, tinny cylinder, my brain comes under siege. I have to use my mental resources conservatively. I have to play the odds. Thus I only pay him enough attention to know when to say, "Mhmm." Wait for the pauses, that's the trick. When his voice goes up in pitch at the end of a sentence, you know he just asked a question. Those are tricky.

That morning, Rush Limbaugh was on, I was wishing Rush Limbaugh was off. I don't dislike Rush. He's a bigot and an idiot, but not the biggest bigot or idiot grandpa listens to--those come on in the afternoon. He's funny at times and he serves a purpose, ideologically countering the stupidity of Al Franken with his own hot-blooded, myopic folly.

When Rush's co-host is Duane Renz, though, it's unbearable. Lately, his co-host is always Duane Renz.

There's a meanness to Duane Renz, a meanness I didn't see a year ago when I moved to Seattle. It's a meanness that isn't just confined to questions of national policy. To be fair, he's got things on his mind, like coming to terms with the fact that his spouse has effectively lost hers. Still, Grandpa is becoming an all-round asshole.

My entire life Grandpa was a compassionate man with a funny little giggle, always eager to laugh at himself and others. He was a crew chief in the Air Force, meaning he'd flown all over the world fixing spy planes during that long, chilly war. He spent time in Okinawa, Thailand and, I think, the Philippines. He was gone for most of my mother's childhood, but made it home just enough to ensure Grandma spent the better part of her 20's and 30's perpetually radiating pregnant-woman-glow.

Above all else, I think, he identifies himself as a soldier. He continued to work at Fairchild Air Force Base after he retired, becoming the civilian equivalent of a crew chief--a mechanic. Now that he's retired, he takes cruises on naval ships any chance he gets. My earliest memories of politics is my grandfather lamenting the Military cutbacks and base closures that followed the fall of the iron curtain.

I don't remember just what he said, but it was cutting, and filled with profanity.

My grandfather smokes menthols. At that time, when I was around 7 or so, he'd taken to smoking them through a long, reusable filter, in the fashion of Cruella De Vil. He never bothered to remove the cigarette from his mouth when he talked, so it would hop and pirouette, the ash growing ever longer until it drooped like a game of Jenga somehow played horizontally. That day, with his cigarette in the filter and the absurdly long filter in his mouth and the way he exaggerates his enunciation when he's angry, the lit tip of the cigarette cut insane arcs and angles the entire length of his face, bobbing, sticking, weaving inexplicably.

Politics with grandpa was more fun then. The props were better anyway.

That's where, I think, my grandfather's hatred of John Kerry comes from. His identity as a soldier, not his bizarre tobacco paraphernalia. I should say that I've never talked to him about this, because to do so would be suicide, my brain would literally implode at the ignorant vehemence of his rants. Of course I say that never having experienced grandpa's ignorant vehemence. I fear it. Call me a coward.

I wasn't around, but I can wager a guess at exactly what set Duane Renz off. It was that great discourse sullying smear campaign aimed at fence-sitting ex-GIs. In this case, it worked.

Now that he's taken over the co-hosting duties for every conservative call-in show on the AM band, I can't even stand to go visit. If it's between 7am and about 5pm, you can bet there's a call in show on, and grandpa will be hooting and testifying like an evangelical. "Give it to that sonofabitch." If it's between 5pm and 7am, he's probably recounting the day's shows, lamenting all the horrible, despicable things the liberals are doing to this wonderful country.

He's rubbing off on poor diminished Grandma. I drove her somewhere the other day and remarked about the amount of Kerry/Edwards signs I had been seeing. "Yeah--I don't like that Kerry Edwards. I don't like him one bit." Sadly, her vote still counts, which means, basically, that Grandpa gets two votes.

He doesn't realize, I don't think, that all of these people are sharply partisan. In most cases they're far to the right of Bush himself. In some cases, these pundits wish they could get someone in office that was more pro(proer?)-business and wanted to really shrink the government, overturn affirmative action, close the borders, shoot people who speak Spanish, take health warnings off cigarettes and push tougher laws against drug offenders. They want to end restrictions on the flow of capital and litigate morality as rigidly as possible. They want financial freedom and a moral caste system, and they want it now.

That's fine, that's part of the political spectrum in this country. I hope it never gains more power than the moral majority it has now, but its right to exist is beyond question. The problem for grandpa is the problem for a lot of other people who listed to AM radio on the drive to work and don't bother to tune into the evening news. They only get half the story. They mistake commentary for news. The fact that the perfectly objective newshour is a myth propagated by American newsmakers and laughed at everywhere else makes grandpa the victim of a systemic problem. He's still belligerently uninformed.

Here's what I think happened. First of all, his mental capacities are diminishing--not at the rate my Grandma's are, but diminishing nonetheless.

Then the second Swiftboat ad came out, it showed Kerry testifying about atrocities that were already known, but that were classified. It then cuts to people saying how betrayed they felt and how they had been sold out by Kerry. They didn't like the truth and it made them question what they were dying for. That hurts.

Grandpa, ever the military advocate, saw this as an act of unAmericanism, aimed at sabotaging the military. Fair enough. In his increasingly senile state, that thing he most identified with, his military service, long in the past, was dredged up. He felt personally attacked. He felt those thirty-year-old words cheapened the sacrifice of his dead friends. That's hard to take, especially when it's so immediate. What he didn't do, though, is look at the other angle, that Kerry was trying to prevent any more of Grandpa's friends from dying. That's a dangerous lack of objectivity, but how can a person be expected to be objective when so many of your friends have just died . . .

He then sought out the people who played to this feeling: Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mike Savage, et al.

So that's that, and I can't begrudge a crazy old man deciding his vote based on satellite non-issues and 30 year old film stock. But now the AM gurus are starting to influence Grandpa in other ways. The bigotry and blatant racism that has propelled Mike Savage to the number 3 radio show in America is rubbing off. The other night, at my cousin's birthday party, he made some crazy remarks I only half-heard, about the number of virgins he'd receive in heaven after having his throat slit. He hates Muslims now. This was a non-sequitur of the most insane variety. The conversation had nothing to do with politics or Iraq or anything, it was the inane drivel that families have when they get together.

So I don't know, at first I just thought I'd wait until after the election to go over there, let the situation diffuse itself. Now it looks like the Swifties have turned an impressionable dotard and former Roosevelt Democrat into a vehement and bigoted psychotic. Unless he loses interest post-election, I won't be seeing much of Grandpa anymore.

QED guys.

Read the full thing here.

Family politics and knee-jerk signage

I noticed something this morning driving through Spokane. Campaign signs litter roadways. Some are neatly spaced on front lawns, many explode organically from city-owned land, multiplying exponentially*. I'd forgotten just how hyped people around here get.

It's strange to see people taking sides when the most common political conversation I usually get involved in is this:

Grandpa: Hate them lyin' sons've'bitches
Me: Yep, they lie alright.
Grandpa: Mhmm, they all lie. Every single one've'm
Me: Yep, sure do.
Grandpa: All've'm

I guess I should talk to someone besides grandpa about this, but all my friends are just a smidge right of rabid Marxism, so I know they're not representative of a region I consider a trans-mountain extention of the Bible Belt either.

Then again, maybe they are.

I've seen a disproportionately large number of Kerry/Edwards signs. They're around 7 or 8 to 1 over Bush/Cheney signs. Even in rural Elk, home of my parents, I see many more Kerry signs. Have our farmers and Walmart greeters gone crazy? Maybe, but I doubt it.

In a region where ultra-conservative George Nethercutt was a good ideological fit and an absurdly popular Congressman, I just think everyone assumes that everyone else is voting Bush. After all, campaign signs are meant as arguments from common consent. So, if everyone agrees, why risk tearing up your sod?

Besides, if Spokane isn't voting Bush, I don't know where his 40+ percent in Washington is coming from. Yakima maybe, or the outskirts of Tacoma . . .

I'm pretty convinced that those Kerry/Edwards signs are the voice of dissent, not the majority. I'm sure they also serve as markers for Aryan Nations brick-throwing contests and cross-illumination relays as they wind their way into town.

Oh, I left this out: All those Kerry signs in Elk have been tagged or otherwise defaced. Dark country roads, idle hands.

But even this degree of liberal sentiment is surprising, I'd always thought Spokane was far more conservative.

I thank my family for that. Until I developed a political conscience of my own, I didn't realize just how right wing my [mom's] family is. I remember my uncle wringing his hands a few years ago about voting for a very good friend of his who was a very moderate [non-segregationist Zell Miller type] Democrat. We want free enterprise and small government. Taxation is robbery etc, etc. That's us.

And we start 'em young. Eight-year-old cousin Stanley, freshly adopted from the wretched streets of Port au Prince to a better life with a loving family and three squares daily, is now the token black child in a George Nethercutt attack ad*. For years my grandpa was the lone dissenter, a Roosevelt Democrat through and through. That is, until those Swift Boat Ads came out. Now he's the most fervent and irrational Bush supporter the Renz clan has.

Those weren't polemics, I don't think supporting Bush is irrational in itself. He's irrational. Bat shit crazy, I think, is the term. I overheard him say, "Kerry thinks he's Jesus Goddamn Christ. Thinks he's gonna make the cripples walk." Fanatical. I'm going to devote a whole post to this I think..

Back to the original subject--I noticed something interesting this morning, remember? Come on, focus.

Driving at this time of a four year cycle is like sledding through a three-color kaleidoscope. Almost all of the thousands of campaign signs are variations on that austere red, white and blue theme. This morning though, despite the epilepsy-inducing homogeneity, one yard stuck out. It too was festooned to overflowing with tri-colored signs, but something was different. One sign said Bush/Cheney. Another was for a local race. It advocated Laurie Dolan. She's a Democrat.

People vote independent all the time, I know. I've done it myself the one time I voted. Today was the first day, though, I'd ever seen a non-partisan lawn. I'll have to keep my eyes out, but I'm pretty sure every lawn I've seen before and after the Bush/Dolan lawn was uniformly Republican or Democrat.

So it's [is it?] overwhelmingly party-line clingers that put signs in their yards--knee jerkers. Why is this? What do you guys think? Is it just this area, or is there something about partisanism in general that makes people want to transform the solemn duty of electing our officials into a pep rally?

Your words. Here. Now.

*Why you're allowed to put signs on public land is puzzling to me.
*Incidentally, it turns out Nethercutt is pro stem cell research--but only for diabetes treatments. His daughter, in a campaign ad, proudly announces she has diabetes. Nothing like Kin Altruism.

Read the full thing here.

11th hour heroics

It's late, in the 4:30AMs to be exact. I'm half asleep currently, but have found full asleep impossible for the last few hours. I'm not firing on all cylinders. I'm dog-ass-tired, yet jittery. I'm really anxious about the GREs/Grad School/My life. Stress, I think, is the word. If only there was a The Pill for general unease, rather than just unease born of accidental egg fertilization.

I think this strange and unsettling feeling is common in many people. It must come with the part of life that doesn't involve being unemployed in your parent's basement--the part of life I'm not used to. I hope I acclimate quickly.

So I can't sleep. Instead, I'm dialup surfing, researching the Arab-Israeli conflict to get my mind off the unbelievable amount of crap I have to do. I'm reading watchdog reports about ethnic stereotypes in Palestinian and Israeli school books. I'm desperate.

Quiz: If this were a school night and I were still up, it would be because I have to write a paper of some kind on a topic I (A) Haven't read (B) Don't understand (C) Fell asleep through/missed lecture for (D) All of these.

The answer is (D). The answer is always (D).

If this were a school night, now would be about the time my brain--in one of the displays of fortitude that I've really come to depend on it for--would be engaging in some 11th hour heroics*. While wonderful, this is usually the only time I can count on my brain for much of anything.

In the larger scheme of things, I suppose I'm more or less at the 11th hour right now as well. I have like a month to wrangle letters of recommendation, take the GRE and maybe the subject test, find schools that do Contemporary Lit, narrow those schools down, apply to those narrowed schools, pay fees, do paperwork, find a job, etc, etc. And I'm also probably going to have to write a 20 page example paper to include with each application. This last thing is of vital importance because it's now painfully clear that my GRE score is going to be several orders of magnitude lower than I'd anticipated.

Shit.

Fitting then, as I sat in bed after tiring of the horrible atrocities being lobbed across a squiggly imaginary line in the desert, that an idea should come to me. An idea for a paper. A paper about a particular movement in contemporary literature.

Sweet.

I wrote this kind of hastily in Word, so it's probably not going to format correctly or make much sense, but here it is (keep reading because I have a question at the end):

Can Magic Realism exist outside the context of the culture that spawned it?

Is Garcia-Marquez for Americans a Magic Realist or just a fabulist, a fantasist?

Idea: Taking as a starting point that Magic Realism could not exist without Realism itself, we have to assume that certain broad fundamental assumptions made in the context of Realism do, and in fact must, carry over into Magic Realism.

So, when realism purports to, "concentrate on 'ordinary people', and feature stories either based on, or similar to, real events," we should (should we?) assume that Magic Realism too will concentrate on ordinary people and be based on, if not actual events, then at least 'reality' as it exists for the work's inhabitants.(?)

Certainly, for Morrison, Garcia-Marquez, et al, their characters exist in a world where ghosts, curses, miracles and unfathomably improbable coincidences are not only common, but, have a fantastic power to shape that world.

So, if this is realism, then whose reality is it? Is it a reality that exists only in the literature itself, or does it also exist in the mind/culture of the Author? If the former, can it even really be called realism at all; if the latter, can anyone outside the mind/culture in which the book is written truly consider it realism?

If it exists only on paper then is it just fantasy? If it exists solely in an isolated culture, with there be/are there barriers to understanding by other cultures who do not share that fundamental reality?

Basically: Can you understand a work of Magic Realism AS a work of Magic Realism if you have no link/connection to the reality from which it is created? Consider someone (Oprah's Book Clubbers, myself) who doesn't know Macondo, who doesn't live the folklore, who doesn't see ghosts, who isn't steeped in just that reality, can that someone call it realism, or is it just fantasy?

Is Magic Realism even supposed to portray reality as it actually is? Riddle me this.

I'm including links in case you don't know what any of this is. Wikipedia isn't the best source for defining literary movements, but it's good enough for conceptual work.

I'm not so much interested in defining a movement as I am in exploring the way that movement impacts upon the perception of reality, or rather, how the reality of a book is affected by the reader's orientation to that reality.

YOUR TASK:
Comment, please. Anyone (Aleah especially) who has some insight into Magic Realism as a genre or anyone (Alphabetically: Don, Mike, Omni) who might have some ideas about collective perception and group reality are encouraged, nay implored, to voice your opinions.

And for God's sake cite sources.

*11th hour heroics are similar to 4th quarter heroics. 11th hour heroics, however, have more loosely defined temporal constraints and lack any athleticism at all.

Read the full thing here.