Category Archives: Politics

Micro Drama

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Cocktail Roses

Last night, our heatwave was broken by a thunderstorm. It wasn’t a violent storm, but it was still spectacular to see, hear and fall asleep to. The heat is gone, but after last night’s rain, the humidity still persists. With this break in the weather, I was able to get out, at least to shop for food. I listened to NPR on my drive to the store and heard an article that introduced the concept of micro dramas, which are ultra-short, vertical format video series with 1-to-3-minute episodes designed for mobile phone binge-watching. This concept is derived from Tik-Tok. Apparently, they are the new-new thing in Hollywood. Though each episode is tiny, a season of about 100 episodes scale in duration to that of a Netflix miniseries. Their viewer cost is an order-of-magnitude greater though. They are marketed much like video games, with opportunities to level up and save money, but fundamentally they are a profit driven vehicle.

Similarly, President Trump in the latest episode of his never-ending serial soap opera this last weekend banned CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the Whitehouse. Trump was upset with these three outlets for their editorial content. Payback is a bitch though. Today, CNN was the designated news agency responsible for hosting all network’s pool reporting. So, there was no network feed today of a photo-op for the new helipad’s ribbon cutting. Unprofessional bloggers tried to fill-in, but lacking the real pro’s skillset, nothing said was heard. How long this solidarity lasts is anyone’s guess, but at least for one day the Whitehouse press corps showed a backbone.

Wedding at Sodom

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Wedding at Sodom, Kent Monkman, 2017

From the earliest days of his career, Kent Monkman has been a master of pastiche in many media, borrowing from the tropes of art history, including the landscape paintings of the Hudson River School, early cinema, and the nineteenth-century daguerreotypes of Indigenous touring performers in the popular Wild West shows. This painting is part of Monkman’s ongoing reimagining of the history of North America. The artist’s alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, rides in on horseback to deliver the arrow of desire to a hunky cowboy, while a gay marriage unfolds in the foreground. Monkman’s Wedding at Sodom commemorates the early nineteenth-century “rendezvous” that took place in the American West in which settler and Indigenous merchants, ministers, traders, and fur trappers would meet to trade and mingle, sometimes for rowdy weeks on end. Monkman gives the rendezvous a two-spirited spin, suggesting that these gatherings offered many settler men liberation from the repressive confines of European gender and social roles. A subtle note of tragedy is struck in the figure of the young Indigenous woman being carried off at right, an early victim of the smallpox epidemics that swept through Indigenous communities following contact with settlers.

Bring Out Your Dead

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Today, I was walking among the flags in Forest Park when a stranger approached me and said, “Sad.” I did not respond and he walked away. I did not know how to respond to him, and I certainly did not want to enter into a discussion with him. No thank you very much. I must say that I have been ambivalent about all of the hoopla surrounding this week’s 25th anniversary celebration of Nine-Eleven. In the 25 years since the events of that horrible day, we have changed as a country. After 25 years of constant war, we have mostly changed for the worse. Fear and paranoia continue to run rampant. There are now 7,500+ flags planted on Art Hill, covering it. Yet, there is still room for more. Trump’s new Iran war will likely fill the voids.

A House Divided Cannot Stand

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A Perfect Metaphor for Our Country

Bill’s flag, opposite Bill’s bench is in need of repair. Anne has offered to resew it for him, but I do not believe that her efforts will repair the rift in the fabric of our country. Such is the damage that Maga has wrought. Their blind-sighted pursuit of policies that are fundamentally racist, which they choose to pursue without regard to reason, the law or even commonsense. Their reckless immigration policy is destroying the economy, along with a fruitless war against Iran.

Somber Helmet 

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Somber Helmet with Horses, Donald Robertson, 1952

Early this morning, in a fit of indigestion induced insomnia, I was up reading the NYT. The opinion lead at that time was, Susan Faludi’s marvelous essay, The Barbie Backlash. I was doubly impressed, both with her writing and what she had to say. In her piece she drew upon this summer’s hubbub over Chris Nolan’s Odessey. Using it to introduce the hero’s journey, Ms. Faludi launched a thousand ship conveyance that brought her argument to the present. From Odysseus to Pete Hegseth, history has seen misbegotten men stumble through life, making a mess out of everything. The problem is that as they stumble forward, they ruin other’s lives.