Category Archives: Rants

You kids get the hell off my lawn!

Coca-Cola vs the Wretched Refuse

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In 1971, Coca-Cola produced the multicultural (and overly saccharine) “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing” commercial and no one said anything.Coke hilltop7

In 1979, Coca-Cola jerked our heartstrings with the inter-racial Mean Joe Green ad, and in 2009 used Troy Polamalu in the parody hawking Coke Zero.  It wasn’t a big deal.coke-mean-joe

In 1990, Coke resurrected the 1971 Hilltop ad, this time with the original singers and their families.  Some of us groaned after hearing “that song” again, but no one complained.

In 2014, Coke aired a beautiful multi-lingual version of America the Beautiful.  And the right wing knuckle-draggers went ape shit, saying that singing “our national anthem” in anything but English was a travesty.Coke 2014

What the hell is the matter with you people? First, our national anthem is The Star-Spangled Banner and the tune is To Anacreon in Heaven ,an English drinking song.  Second, Katharine Lee Bates, who wrote America the Beautiful after hiking to the top of Pikes Peak, also wrote a collections of sonnets for her lover, Katharine Coman.

English may be the predominant language in the U.S., but it is not the official language. Unless your ancestors came from England, they spoke French, German, Dutch, Russian, Yiddish, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, Gaelic, and whatever passes for English in Scotland. And the native tongue was anything BUT English if your ancestors were here before Columbus.

And when did we become the United States of Exclusively White People?  Which white people? The Irish were once scorned, partly for being Roman Catholic.  In 1889, the Bennett Law tried to make English the official language in Wisconsin, pissing off the Germans and Norwegians. So we’ve all been shunned at one time or another.

I live in the Chicago suburbs and we love our multicultural heritage. There are Asian, African-American, Hispanic, South Asian and Middle Eastern families within three blocks of my house. The son of the old Pakistani man drives a big-ass Dodge Ram pickup with a Chicago Bears sticker in the rear window.

Chicago has arguably the largest Polish population in the country and in a month we’ll be celebrating Fat Tuesday with P?czki (pronounced POHNCH-kee), a jelly doughnut on steroids. paczki The city has ethnic festivals all summer long: Italian, Greek, Chinese, Thai, German, Hispanic, Irish, African, and Korean. There are African-American, gay, St. Patrick’s Day, Southside Irish, Northwest Side Irish, Chinese, Greek, Mexican, Polish and Puerto Rican parades every year.

No one is “shoving multiculturalism down our throats.”  It’s been here as long as we have.  No one says you have to participate, but you do have to tolerate it just as they tolerate you. I realize some of you resent having to sharing the pie, but that’s the price you pay for living in the melting pot. The Pledge of Allegiance reads, “…liberty and justice for all,” not “for some privileged people.” If you don’t believe me, maybe John Winger can convince you

“We’re all very different people. We’re not Watusi. We’re not Spartans. We’re Americans, with a capital ‘A’, huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We’re the underdog. We’re mutts!”

Oh, and for those of you boycotting Coke, Pepsico backs gay rights and its CEO and Chair is Indra K. Nooyi, an Indian-American woman.  Just thought you should know.

What do my taxes buy me?

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Inevitably I find myself arguing with someone who thinks taxes are (a) illegal, (b) theft and (c) a liberal scheme allowing me to give their money to someone else.  For some reason, they don’t think liberals pay taxes, or they think the Treasury Department singles their tax dollars out for welfare recipients just to piss them off. I don’t know of any civilized country that does not tax its citizens and when I suggest finding one, the silence is deafening.

Uncle-Sam-TaxesNow, I actually LIKE paying taxes because, among other things, it means I’m gainfully employed.  I see federal income taxes as the rent I pay to live in a country that allows people to become filthy rich if they so desire.  In other words, I feel an obligation to support my country.

So, when someone asked me, “What do your taxes buy for you?” I came up with this list.

  • Military protection
  • Benefits for those who protected me, some of whom lost limbs, others who lost their minds.
  • People who talk to other countries to avoid wars
  • Cops
  • Firefighters
  • Good roads
  • Libraries
  • Museums
  • National parks to enjoy
  • My primary and secondary education
  • My medical school education, making me a productive member of society
  • My kids’ and other people’s educations so I don’t live in a society of morons
  • Money for research for things that make my life better
  • The opportunity for poor people to get an education without going bankrupt
  • People inspecting my food
  • People making sure my drugs are safe
  • People making sure my flight doesn’t collide with someone else’s
  • Aviation security
  • Health care in my old age
  • Cheaper drugs in my old age
  • Some income security in my old age
  • Some income security if I lose my job
  • Food assistance so other people less fortunate than me don’t starve because I’m not heartless
  • Help if a tornado or hurricane destroys my house/community
  • Watchdogs to chase polluters
  • Someone to cheaply deliver letters
  • Border patrol
  • Customs inspectors
  • A civilized existence

I remain grateful and unapologetic.

The Devil’s Tools

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Social networking is a tool of the devil made for cowards and narcissists.

Now, don’t think I’m a total Luddite.  Social networking has become the great equalizer of the 21st century.  You Tube provides a virtually unlimited audience to the talented; it also attracts the terminally stupid who find infamy (but no fortune) in the parade of idiotic stunts.  More job-seekers find employment through Facebook connections than by shot-gunning e-mail résumés.  The Egyptian people used Twitter to communicate after the government shut down the Internet.

But social networking has its dark side.

GM did a commercial for the Chevy Cruze. Boy drops off girl in front of her apartment; they exchange a quick kiss.  He drives off in his Cruze and summons the Online Genie, asking for his Facebook update. The result (in a woman’s voice, naturally) is, “Best first date…ever.” What?  You couldn’t tell him that to his face?  And he didn’t have the balls to ask you, “So, whaddya think?”

My 19-year old nephew broke up with his girlfriend via text messaging. That is tacky but more distressing was – neither one of them saw anything wrong with this! Texting, Twittering, Facebooking and all the other “verbified” means of communication are creating a generation of morons deathly afraid of interpersonal relationships and rejection.  It reminds me a book in Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot series; people lived alone, tens or hundreds of miles apart, communicating only via what we call webcams, as actual physical contact had become culturally unacceptable.

Several people I knew in the past as actual flesh-and-blood humans have “friended” me but substituted Facebook posts, pokes, nudges, winks, whatever, for e-mail, but we still interact. It’s a great way to show your friends pictures of the human or canine grandchildren or your vacation halfway around the world, or to commiserate about how your adult children who haven’t matured are driving you to drink.  In other words, our relationship is still a dialog.

But Facebook Fanatics rave about the hundreds or thousands of “friends” they have; friends who wouldn’t know you from Mickey Mouse if they ran into you on the street.  Or, as Wiley Miller observed:

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Life is rough and relationships require constant work.  Sometimes one gets hurt, but sometimes one finds reward far greater than ever imagined.  I’ve been through both; what doesn’t kill you really makes you stronger. But a real friendship goes two ways.  That’s what friends are for.