Memoir, from just outside the box
Real Men Don't Eat Quiche
Catastrophic rhetoric is omnipresent on the Right. The right-wing media argue that the U.S. is plagued by a masculinity crisis, and that feminism is threatening to emasculate men. Tucker Carlson warns of collapsing testosterone levels. Senator Josh Hawley decries what he calls the Left's project to define traditional masculinity as toxic. Right-wing jerks and trolls believe it shows courage and strength to be coarse and bigoted, to win power and dominance through bullying and intimidation. Theoretically, right-wing reactionary masculinity has a rugged, militant quality, the provider and protector as warrior... courageous, independent, aggressive. All of this masculine muscle and bluster reeks of desperation, insecurity and sexual frustration... just another chapter in the Right's collective whine.
Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche: A Guidebook To All That Is Truly Masculine (1982), by Bruce Feirstein, was a best-selling tongue-in-cheek book satirizing stereotypes of masculinity. The title alludes to the gender association of quiche as a “feminine” food in American culture, which causes men to avoid it.
M Squad (1957-1960): My father and I watched "M Squad" on the console TV in the basement rec room. My father was not a hardboiled tough guy like Lee Marvin’s detective, Frank Ballinger. Dad’s cinematic doppelganger was the affable Jack Lemmon. My father served on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific in World War II. He felt the fear that suffuses the soul during a Japanese air attack. Lee Marvin was a Marine scout sniper in the Pacific Theater of Operation. He participated in 21 amphibious assaults on Japanese-held islands. In 1944, a Japanese sniper’s bullet severed his sciatic nerve. Another bullet hit his foot. He spent a year in recovery. Lee Marvin is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Point Blank is a 1967 neo-noir American crime film directed by John Boorman and starring Lee Marvin, with Angie Dickinson, Keenan Wynn and Carroll O’Connor. The film has gone on to become a cult classic. In 2016, the film was deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in its National Film Registry.
This young crewman, the blister gunner aboard an amphibious PBY search and rescue aircraft, had just jumped into the water of Rabaul Harbor to rescue a badly burned Marine pilot who was shot down while bombing the Japanese-held fortress of Rabaul.
letter from a friend / 1971
"At our outpost in West Germany, twenty miles from the terrifying Soviet menace, the living quarters at Michael Barracks are not bad by military standards, in most cases two soldiers living in spacious, high-ceiling rooms. In a former life, the buildings housed a Nazi military police company. Most evenings there are parties ongoing at multiple locations within the four buildings housing the enlisted men. Expensive, best-of-breed stereo tape decks and enormous speakers purchased at the Frankfurt PX thump out our favorite rock and roll as we sit entranced, drumming on our beer cans, our heads bobbing, having a loud and wonderful time. On the best of nights, the Puerto Ricans and the black guys join us. They are the other world, the cooler place we aspire to. That cooler place suddenly seems within reach as we rock through the night."
homily / 2018
I did not have cause to question the establishment until the day JFK was murdered. I was 16. From there, things only got worse, and I became more and more a renegade. JFK, MLK, RFK. "Kent State" was the last straw. Since May 4, 1970, my distrust and disdain for politicians has never wavered. I owe our leaders no allegiance. I refuse to play the patriot game.
In my life, "the one chance we have" always begins close to home, family and friends. When the propagandists tell us that we should be afraid, all I have to do to call bullshit on this calculated manipulation is to think first about family and friends.
I am tired of the doomsday propaganda from both sides. Trump and the Republicans are mired in doomsday. Anti-Trump Democrats are mired in doomsday. The doomsday shit doesn't work on me because my first consideration is always family and friends. It is in this intimate realm that it becomes obvious to me that humans can live with high regard for each other, and that the high regard for each other is the way of the future.
The obscene political realm is contaminated by money and power. Money and power attract sociopaths, psychopaths and criminals. "We the People" try to live a good and decent life in spite of the creeps and poseurs at the top. There are thousands of unmitigated pricks, schmucks and asshats out there, manipulating and exploiting for personal gain. The upper echelon are not good people. They have no desire to come clean and tell the truth. You know our government is a crime family when there are too many secrets. Just say NO… over and over… just say “NO!”
current politics
Thanks to Trump, suicide hotlines are reporting a substantial uptick in calls. Psychologists have noted the following complaints that their clients trace back to Trump: insomnia, panic attacks, irritability, malaise, anti-social behavior, depression, loss of libido.
"Humans are vulnerable to snake oil salesmen."
"Liberals are notoriously uncomfortable with fighting fire with fire."
“For the masses, virtue follows security; for the heroic, virtue follows action.”
"Honesty is a good starting point."
Thank you for this. After the tariffs/no tariffs jerk around, I thought, “I’ll spend the next four years knitting.” But this from your newsletter is better “humans can live with high regard for each other, and that the high regard for each other is the way of the future.”
My father was a good man. His masculinity was to take care of his family, respect others, help his neighbor, serve at church, speak the truth, stand up to bullies, protect the weak. He suffered hard times and heartbreak and he never gave up on anyone. He was a democrat, a street cleaner, a teamster, a survivor of polio. He served in the Korean occupation and lost a 22 year-old son to motorcycle accident. He was full of courage and it came out as kindness, not bluster.
Lee Marvin was one of my favorite actors in my early years. My father also loved him. When I was young we watched war movies together. My father was the best man I ever knew. He valued family first. And if he was still alive he would call out these new republican politicians as bullies and thief’s.