<Lucy & Ricky debate the issues of the day...
Sixty-some years before we had to!>
<memegenerator.net>
<memegenerator.net>
<i.>
I don't know how much of an "I Love Lucy fan" you are, but I definitely dug it as a kid. Many of my favorite moments revolved around the lovable redhead concocting some wacky scheme or other -- sometimes with her friend and co-conspirator, Ethel Mertz, sometimes not -- either to get Ricky back (because her insecurity said so), get rich quick (being a '50s housewife was no picnic, right?), or gain some recognition well beyond her manicured little grasp (such as when she tries to join Ricky's big band, for instance).
Inevitably, though, Ricky would figure out what was really going on. Or sometimes, he knew from the beginning, and play dumb. Or he'd retaliate with a scheme or two of his own, aided and abetted by Ethel's husband, and cheap ass landlord, Fred Mertz. In any case, the moment Lucy got busted, Ricky would bellow something along these lines:
"Luu-ccc-yyy... You got...some...splainin' to do!"
Sometimes, Lucy would pile denial upon denial upon denial, until Ricky punctured her defense with a well-placed one-liner. Other times, she'd break down and cry and confess to the whole damn thing, absurd as it was; if Ethel had been recruited, she might beat Lucy to the punch. In any event, Ricky would warmly forgive the ridiculous stunt, reassure his wife how much he loved her, and return to his unquestioned status as chief shot caller and breadwinner.
Such were the joys, eh? As a 10-year-old, those moments amounted to pure comedy gold. Not so much in the wake of George Floyd's death -- where it seems to me, a whole lot of folks got a whole lot of 'splainin' to do. And they aren't doing it too well.
"Hey, Aaa-merrr-ica!
You got
some splainin' to do!"
some splainin' to do!"
<"I Can't Breathe (Take I)">
<The Reckoner>
<The Reckoner>
<ii.>
With Trump and his henchmen, that's a given, but I feel a sense of schadenfreude watching US Senator Amy Klobuchar -- Plucky Amy, as we've proudly christened her -- struggling to defend her tenure as Hennepin County Prosecutor (1999-07), one that largely escaped scrutiny from a mainstream media preoccupied with putting down the menace they saw in Bernie Sanders.
On one hand, Plucky Amy won praise as an early champion of the "innocence movement," who worked to free wrongfully imprisoned people, often through DNA evidence. Yet she also pursued harsh prison sentences for nonviolent crimes like drunken driving, failure to pay child support, vandalism...and oh yes, graffiti tagging, which might seem harder to explain in the Black Lives Matter era.
And, like many politicos of her era, Plucky Amy had no problem pandering to the drug war crowd. After data showed a local drug court sentencing offenders to probation, instead of prison, Plucky Amy blasted that outcome as "unacceptable" (see below). Instead, she simply served up the same old tired mantra: Build the jails! Lengthen the sentences! Stack them like cordwood! Keep writing the checks! As the counselor on "Intervention" would say...
"How's that
working for you lately?"
I think we all know the answer to that one.
<"I Can't Breathe (Take II)"
The Reckoner>
The Reckoner>
<iii.>
But this is the same person who turned in one cellar-dwelling finish after another in the Democratic primaries -- aside from a her third place showing in New Hampshire -- yet proudly declared, to the few adoring fans who cared, "We are punching above our weight." Such weird, self-aggrandizing puffery doesn't make a terrific leader, let alone a halfway decent dog catcher. Yeah, Amy...you've got some 'splainin' to do.
However, other players in the Biden Veepstakes, Kamala Harris, and Florida Congresswoman Val Demings, are also under incoming fire. Harris, of course, endured plenty of unforgiving scrutiny about her record as California Attorney General. Like Plucky Amy, Harris aggressively pursued minor crimes with an equally steely zeal, when she wasn't fighting to keep wrongfully convicted inmates behind bars, while declining to hold their counterparts in blue accountable. Sound familiar?
Thankfully, voters saw Harris as someone who'd moved from writing a well-received book (Smart On Crime) that argued against draconian approaches to criminal justice, to an unlikely (and unconvincing) warrior for, well..."slightly less awful" prosecution, however she vaguely defined it. Alas, there wasn't much demand for that idea at the Democratic box office, so down she went.
As for Demings, the emerging details of her tenure as Orlando's police chief (2007-11) suggests an equally problematic cocktail of shiny happy initiatives (the creation of Operation Positive Direction, an at-risk youth program) versus troubling complaints of excessive force (the breaking of an 84-year-old man's neck, leading to an $880,000 damage award from a federal jury). So, Kamala? You got some 'splainin' to do! And Val? You got some splainin' to do!
And, like we did in 1992, we're hearing a lot of the same broken records getting played: "Can't we all get along?" "The looting and the violence is absolutely disgusting." Not to be left out, Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell opined that the cops involved "look pretty darn guilty." Yup. Just another lovely afternoon in Mayberry, right? Only one spoiled with a lethal chokehold.
Here's the problem with all of the above mantras. Yes, looting is predatory behavior, and it's probably being manipulated by Trump and his minions -- what else is new? But let's think a little bit deeper. Looting is essentially a crime of opportunity: "It's there for the taking, so I'm going to run off with it, because the onlookers are either too scared or indifferent to stop me."
That sounds like a fair description of the so-called Paycheck Protection Program, where large corporations pillaged most of the $350 billion -- so quickly, in fact, that the fund ran dry after just two weeks. Poster children included the Ruth's Steak House chain, which hoovered up $20 million, though it had 5,000 employees and $468 million in revenue last year.
Where's the outrage there? I didn't hear much of it on CNN last weekend, as the talking heads largely focused on when the police might regain mastery of the various cities flaring up on their watch after Floyd's death. At one point, the LA correspondents speculated on how badly the high end fashion stores might fare, amid the expected angry mobs. "Good God," I muttered. "Are we ever in trouble."
In contrast, our hometown bookstore launched a GoFundMe campaign, because the pandemic's arrival hit them during their slowest time -- springtime. The store has lasted 21 years, and its reputation extends well beyond our community. They're a prime example of who should have gotten the PPP money, yet circumstances forced them to crowdfund their existence.
The community has rallied around the store, to the tune of $30,000, which management thinks might secure other types of longer term funding. But it really shouldn't have been necessary. As Cornel West so brilliantly told The Hill,"Looting is wrong, but legalized looting is wrong too...I look at the wickedness in high places first and then keep track of the least of those." Those kinds of imbalances has largely gone unaddressed, especially after 30 years of the "don't ask, don't tell" style of politicking that's left so many struggling to survive.
Instead, we get served what we've been served up for too long. Judges and prosecutors who show no appreciation of the fire and brimstone that they rain down so freely on the unfortunates paraded before them. Cops and corrections officers who fight for the right to live tucked away from the neighborhoods that they treat with the imperial disdain of an occupying army. Empty suits in higher offices, who stubbornly and self-righteously cling to the failed policies of the past, even as ample evidence piles up of their moral, political and strategic bankruptcy.
I'm not any crazier about random looting or violence than anybody else. But I'm also not going to join in any generic condemnations of it, especially when I consider the policy contradictions that confront me.
Here in Michigan, Governor Whitmer's extension of her original stay at home order unleashed a torrent of far right protesters, who paraded around the Capitol with guns. Never mind that it's legal. As an image, it's pretty f#cking scary, along with the nooses and extreme Nazi symbolism that these groups brought with them. Yet they were treated with kid gloves. They didn't face pepper spray, rubber bullets, or tear gas, as far as I know. The only thing they didn't get was a police escort to and from their displays of mock militarism.
A black man dies slowly and hideously, with an officer literally standing on his neck, as a crowd gasps in horror. Yet the minute people rise up to protest, they're suddenly greeted with all the fury that their local police department can muster, even as they try to make their points peacefully.
How do we explain this slight inconsistency of approach? Either it's a case of institutionalized racism, good old boyism, us-against-the-world-ism -- "Let's do it to them before they do it to us," as Sergeant Jablonski so memorably put it on "Hill Street Blues" -- or some misplaced notion of both sides-ism, which envisions a seat for racists and extremists at the table, even if their dream is to ultimately overthrow the democracy they so flagrantly despise, and foreclose those options for good.
I write from seeing oversized pickup trucks bearing Proud Boys flags zipping past me on several occasions. (And you thought Proud Boys would give hybrids a chance...) I write from seeing a similar flag hanging from a house only a block away from the ice cream parlor (though it's since gone MIA).
There you have it: two symbols coexisting side by side, one as All-American as you can get, one as ugly as it comes. Four years ago, we wouldn't have seen that happening. How did we get here, and how do we get out of the quagmire? Right now, the answers look anything but simple, or comforting. Hey America, you got some splainin' to do. --The Reckoner
CBS News
Paycheck Protection Program
Billions Went To Large Companies
And Missed Virus Hot Spots:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/paycheck-protection-program-small-businesses-large-companies-coroanvirus/
The Appeal
Kamala Harris's Criminal Justice Record
Killed Her Presidential Run:
https://theappeal.org/kamala-harris-criminal-justice-record-killed-her-presidential-run/
The Hill: Cornel West:"We're Witnessing The Collapse
Of The Legitimacy Of Leadership":
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/500325-cornel-west-were-witnessing-the-collapse-of-the-legitimacy-of-leadership
The Orlando Sentinel
Val Demings' Orlando Police Career
Could Hurt -- Or Help -- Her Chances
To Become Joe Biden's Running Mate:
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/os-ne-val-demings-profile-biden-running-mate-20200605-zmgqqhgpxrbcbhws4l22b66uaa-story.html
Thankfully, voters saw Harris as someone who'd moved from writing a well-received book (Smart On Crime) that argued against draconian approaches to criminal justice, to an unlikely (and unconvincing) warrior for, well..."slightly less awful" prosecution, however she vaguely defined it. Alas, there wasn't much demand for that idea at the Democratic box office, so down she went.
As for Demings, the emerging details of her tenure as Orlando's police chief (2007-11) suggests an equally problematic cocktail of shiny happy initiatives (the creation of Operation Positive Direction, an at-risk youth program) versus troubling complaints of excessive force (the breaking of an 84-year-old man's neck, leading to an $880,000 damage award from a federal jury). So, Kamala? You got some 'splainin' to do! And Val? You got some splainin' to do!
<"I Can't Breathe (Take III)"
The Reckoner>
The Reckoner>
<iv.>
What's really depressing here -- as the inconsistencies in these records suggest, along with the fallout of Floyd's death -- is how little has changed since the early 1990s, when police brutality debates lit up in the nightly news, especially when Los Angeles exploded (literally and figuratively) after the filmed beating of the late Rodney King, an event that my father, the World War II buff, described as "something that looked it could have happened in the Warsaw Ghetto."And, like we did in 1992, we're hearing a lot of the same broken records getting played: "Can't we all get along?" "The looting and the violence is absolutely disgusting." Not to be left out, Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell opined that the cops involved "look pretty darn guilty." Yup. Just another lovely afternoon in Mayberry, right? Only one spoiled with a lethal chokehold.
Here's the problem with all of the above mantras. Yes, looting is predatory behavior, and it's probably being manipulated by Trump and his minions -- what else is new? But let's think a little bit deeper. Looting is essentially a crime of opportunity: "It's there for the taking, so I'm going to run off with it, because the onlookers are either too scared or indifferent to stop me."
That sounds like a fair description of the so-called Paycheck Protection Program, where large corporations pillaged most of the $350 billion -- so quickly, in fact, that the fund ran dry after just two weeks. Poster children included the Ruth's Steak House chain, which hoovered up $20 million, though it had 5,000 employees and $468 million in revenue last year.
Where's the outrage there? I didn't hear much of it on CNN last weekend, as the talking heads largely focused on when the police might regain mastery of the various cities flaring up on their watch after Floyd's death. At one point, the LA correspondents speculated on how badly the high end fashion stores might fare, amid the expected angry mobs. "Good God," I muttered. "Are we ever in trouble."
In contrast, our hometown bookstore launched a GoFundMe campaign, because the pandemic's arrival hit them during their slowest time -- springtime. The store has lasted 21 years, and its reputation extends well beyond our community. They're a prime example of who should have gotten the PPP money, yet circumstances forced them to crowdfund their existence.
The community has rallied around the store, to the tune of $30,000, which management thinks might secure other types of longer term funding. But it really shouldn't have been necessary. As Cornel West so brilliantly told The Hill,"Looting is wrong, but legalized looting is wrong too...I look at the wickedness in high places first and then keep track of the least of those." Those kinds of imbalances has largely gone unaddressed, especially after 30 years of the "don't ask, don't tell" style of politicking that's left so many struggling to survive.
<Coda>
The fallout over Floyd's ugly death reflects an equally ugly reality in America today: who has power, and who doesn't. Who gets the funding to survive, and who doesn't. Who gets their phone calls returned, and who doesn't. The protests are just the latest twist in that reality, because we've heard that same old pious song and dance for so long -- "We feel your pain. We hear you. We'll do something about this." But that never happens. Instead, we get served what we've been served up for too long. Judges and prosecutors who show no appreciation of the fire and brimstone that they rain down so freely on the unfortunates paraded before them. Cops and corrections officers who fight for the right to live tucked away from the neighborhoods that they treat with the imperial disdain of an occupying army. Empty suits in higher offices, who stubbornly and self-righteously cling to the failed policies of the past, even as ample evidence piles up of their moral, political and strategic bankruptcy.
I'm not any crazier about random looting or violence than anybody else. But I'm also not going to join in any generic condemnations of it, especially when I consider the policy contradictions that confront me.
Here in Michigan, Governor Whitmer's extension of her original stay at home order unleashed a torrent of far right protesters, who paraded around the Capitol with guns. Never mind that it's legal. As an image, it's pretty f#cking scary, along with the nooses and extreme Nazi symbolism that these groups brought with them. Yet they were treated with kid gloves. They didn't face pepper spray, rubber bullets, or tear gas, as far as I know. The only thing they didn't get was a police escort to and from their displays of mock militarism.
A black man dies slowly and hideously, with an officer literally standing on his neck, as a crowd gasps in horror. Yet the minute people rise up to protest, they're suddenly greeted with all the fury that their local police department can muster, even as they try to make their points peacefully.
How do we explain this slight inconsistency of approach? Either it's a case of institutionalized racism, good old boyism, us-against-the-world-ism -- "Let's do it to them before they do it to us," as Sergeant Jablonski so memorably put it on "Hill Street Blues" -- or some misplaced notion of both sides-ism, which envisions a seat for racists and extremists at the table, even if their dream is to ultimately overthrow the democracy they so flagrantly despise, and foreclose those options for good.
I write from seeing oversized pickup trucks bearing Proud Boys flags zipping past me on several occasions. (And you thought Proud Boys would give hybrids a chance...) I write from seeing a similar flag hanging from a house only a block away from the ice cream parlor (though it's since gone MIA).
There you have it: two symbols coexisting side by side, one as All-American as you can get, one as ugly as it comes. Four years ago, we wouldn't have seen that happening. How did we get here, and how do we get out of the quagmire? Right now, the answers look anything but simple, or comforting. Hey America, you got some splainin' to do. --The Reckoner
CBS News
Paycheck Protection Program
Billions Went To Large Companies
And Missed Virus Hot Spots:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/paycheck-protection-program-small-businesses-large-companies-coroanvirus/
The Appeal
Kamala Harris's Criminal Justice Record
Killed Her Presidential Run:
https://theappeal.org/kamala-harris-criminal-justice-record-killed-her-presidential-run/
The Hill: Cornel West:"We're Witnessing The Collapse
Of The Legitimacy Of Leadership":
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/500325-cornel-west-were-witnessing-the-collapse-of-the-legitimacy-of-leadership
The Orlando Sentinel
Val Demings' Orlando Police Career
Could Hurt -- Or Help -- Her Chances
To Become Joe Biden's Running Mate:
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/os-ne-val-demings-profile-biden-running-mate-20200605-zmgqqhgpxrbcbhws4l22b66uaa-story.html
Vox.com: Amy Klobuchar's Record
As A "Tough On Crime" Prosecutor, Explained:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/25/18225011/amy-klobuchar-president-prosecutor-criminal-justice-record
Very good observations.
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