* RADIO RANT: Glenn Beck, Francophobe

So there he was, a few days ago, slamming "LE CAR"--as an epitome of France, he claimed, and ergo his entry into the predictable stereotypes of hairy female armpits and effeminate men. (Yeh, Glenn's really got some cajones, I can tell, by his high-pitched squeal of a voice. I'm not claiming that said criterion is valid, but it's sure one that Glenn's conservative co-patriots like Michael Savage inveterately apply, when judging "man-ship.") First of all, no French person would pronounce le as "LAY"; second of all, no self-respecting French person would choose a name that combined a French article with a "vulgar" Germanic word: in sum, "Le Car" occurred on the AMC (American Motors Co.) side, and Beck is unwittingly railing against the very corporate-American-consumerist bastardization of anything non-U.S. that characterizes his own woe-begotten ignorance.

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* RADIO RANT: Indian Wars (Still Going On)

Billy Cunningham is the "new" conservative talkshow host in these parts, replacing Matt Drudge on two local radio stations. Last Sunday night (11/25/07), I tuned into a discussion (or rant) regarding the "Indian Wars." To one caller's allegations of land theft & immorality, Cunningham replied [not verbatim here, but close], "It was war. We won. Get over it!" (I'm reminded of Paiute poet AC Louis's anecdote about a white student who told him, "We shoulda killed you all when we had the chance"!) "If the Indians had won," Cunningham continued, "they'd have done worse to us." No. We especially wouldn't have forced you to follow another culture's jealous monotheistic deity. But this radio guy is adamant that the Natives were apparently in need of a little good ol' Western Civilizing: "Why do you think they call them savages?" (And the phrase "Stone Age" was also tossed around liberally—er, conservatively.)

Hell, if these "GET OVER IT!" people (including some of my own students) were JUST talking about a survival-of-the-fittest social Darwinism, then I wouldn't be so upset. But if this "might makes right" is what you folks ultimately meant, it also means that you have to surrender any lofty pretensions regarding your Western ethics & religion, and acknowledge Christianity as a hypocritical & bankrupt enterprise, as mere prop and rationalization for capitalism & colonialism [cf. Vine Deloria, Jr.].

* RADIO RANT: Savage Ignorance Encore

An apparent true believer called Michael Savage and asked, seriously, for a history lesson from the good Doctor "for us" listeners, on how the Christian monks of the Middle Ages saved Western Civilization. Now, I haven't had time these last few months to ride herd on all of Savage's assertions of ignorance, but this one blew me away. His one lone example of an answer? Gregor Mendel!—a "monk" who was, he claimed, of "THAT PERIOD"!?!—who did some things with peas and thereby "discovered genetics." (Uh, Mendel lived from 1822-1884. The medieval period ended approx. half a millennium before the beginnings of genetic science.)

* Children & Animal Extinction

* SPEAKING of EXTINCTION (and morbid children's books)--here's an ad from the BITS & PIECES gifts catalogue (Holiday 2007). How casually the young are indoctrined into an "everything's-all-right" attitude regarding the extinction of other species. The phrase "don't exist in the wild anymore" even intimates that these animals are still safe, in zoos or in rich people's backyards, perhaps. The Dodo on the cover is especially ironic in this regard, as perhaps the most famous species driven to extinction by humankind's own handiwork. But, "whatever": it's "Hours of dot-to-dot fun," all the same!

* Call Me Ishi. Or Buddy.

Ishi (the last Yana Indian) has been best memorialized by Native critic Gerald Vizenor, I think, in an essay called "Ishi Obscura." The marvelous first sentence is —"Ishi was never his real name." Ergo my serendipity here, dog-loving as my whole life has been:

* RADIO RANT: Cheap Labor Through the Centuries

One of my local talk radio stations now has a new conservative radio talking head, a certain Bill Cunningham (yes, one "great American"). He was trying to be clever and ironic last night (10/14) in wondering aloud how our American economy ever "managed," from 1776 on, before the heavy 1990's influx of illegal labor. (Conclusion: we don't need 'em!) Of course, for almost a hundred years, we had—uh—SLAVES to help out w/ all that lowly menial labor. After that, we had waves of legal immigrants poor enough to willingly be degraded themselves as cogs in the capitalist machine until labor unions alleviated their plight to some extent. And hey, I've taught (legal-immigrant) ESL students who've told me horror stories of meat-packing plants: no, it ain't worth $20/hr. an hour to be disabled (i.e., one's hands) by the age of 40.

* U.S. Pontificates on Genocide

So—the U.S. House of Representatives wants to "declare" the "slaughter" of Armenians by the Turks during WWI "genocide." Gee, that was less than a score of years after the Wounded Knee massacre. I don't care how many times "our government" has apologized for its own attempts at genocide; "we" shouldn't be allowed, even today, such a facile moral high ground.

* It's a Hormonic Imbalance

So George Bush fucks up again: "childrens do learn. . . ." There's plenty of Hopi, and Lakota, elders who say that a precise use of language = a healthy culture. I fear for "ours."

John & Martha XI

* "Name the Four Oceans"

. . . to quote some game they're playing on a call-in radio show right now. But it occurs to me: there's really only ONE ocean, or else they'd just be REALLY BIG LAKES.

* "Beat Me, Daddy-O"

It beats me how public television can consider itself educational sometimes. So I'm surfing by this "educational" show set in a bookstore—and stop because the bookstore person is talking about the fact that the Beat writers used to frequent the place. When the interviewer asks what "Beat" means, our literary expert explains, "It was called Beat poetry because it had a rhythm to it"!?!? (Yeh, sure; hit that bongo, man.) Jack Kerouac, that beatific hipster, must be rolling in his grave.

* RADIO RANT: Michael Savage on Ecofeminism

Thanks, Mr. Savage—you've given me a better title for my ENGL 945 course. Last night (9/5), you made reference to "wackjob moron feminist treehuggers." What an interesting appellation! Henceforth, then, I think I should call my Native Ecofeminist class "Wackjob Moron Feminist Treehugger Squaws." Okay, maybe squaw isn't a word you'd be brazen enough to utter on the radio, but I assume it's an epithet that swims around comfortably in your consciousness.

* FOX NEWS & Vivid Analogies

One of the Stepford-blonde newsreaders on Fox News describing Mt. Aetna's 1,000-feet-high lava eruption: "Look at that! Kinda reminds me of one those lava lamps." Okay, yeh. Nice original & effective comparison, there. Sure. (Her description kinda reminds me, actually, of a sentence from an old web list of worst student figures of speech: "The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon." You bet.)

* RADIO RANT: Savaging the "Noble Savage" Now

Last night (9/4), Michael Savage was slamming a San Francisco "hippie reenactment" of the 1967 Summer of Love. The event began with "some Native Americans shamans" [sic], Savage said, or read—adding, "Shamed men, you mean. Ashamed to go back to their reservation!" This may have been true, actually, on a level beyond our commentator's ken (and shaman is a dangerous & problematic word itself); but no, Michael was just offering another gratuitous knee-jerk insensitive racist dig at a minority group, the kind of kick in the side his audience has grown to know, love, & expect.