When Jerry Brown was the Governor of California (1975-1983) he refusued to live in the Reagan-built Governor’s mansion (Constructed in true contemporary Nouveau Riche style), preferring to live in a small apartment. He slept on a mattress on the floor and drove his own old Plymouth rather than ride in state limousines.
I have always thought that Jerry Brown was a sort of political prophet, and and as Jesus is purported to have said, “A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.” (Matthew 13:57)
For his pains, he was labeled “Governor Moonbeam” by the right, and now look where California’s Gov is at. Governor Eyebeam.(James 7:3 “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thy own eye?”) See below for more on THAT shame.
And now, in the space of just a few days, some Rove-like creature in the depths of the Ratpublican political spinshops has come up with a truly inspired anti-reformer meme which has been laid with fine effect on two of the most prominent possibilities for the DemRat presidential nomination.
First…Edwards and his truly over-the-top backwoods mansion, and now Gore and HIS bloated lifestyle.
Conspicuous consumption.
The Swiftboat of 2008.
Watch.
Read on for more.
Edwards? A HUGE, $10 million dollar palace which houses about 3 1/2 people (Personally, I think that he has all the gravitas of a gerbil. Thus the 1/2 measurement.) and several days later, Gore’s equally over the top digs and his own $1000+ monthly electric bill. (Looking at this guy, my guess is that the cook uses an electric stove and that at least $1000 of that bill is probably being used to feed his face more cream pies and donuts. But that’s just a guess.)
THINK ABOUT IT, FOLKS!!!
I mean…if you want to be a conspicuously gross consumer, that’s up to you. Atherosclerosis is God’s great leveler. But please don’t run on an I’m for the common man/Save the Earth platform while you are simultaneously scoffing up thousands of times your share of the goodies in plain sight.
Please.
Do you not see the resemblance?
I do.
The days of William Howard Taft are WAY behind us.
More Gandhi, less gross intestinal product.
Please.
I can see it, and so will the average sleeple voter.
It’s image time, folks.
That’s how Butch got there.
Paul Newman as President.
Yon Rudolph has a lean and hungry look.
As befits a wartime chief executive.
It matters not that he is swilling down the fat of the land like it’s pomegranate juice. He doesn’t LOOK like he is.
We are about to get spun again.
I can feel it.
Next?
Hillary’s wardrobe and makeup costs.
More on Obama’s land deal.
Where is Jerry Brown when you need him?
Where is Ross Perot’s ten-year-old Oldsmobile? (Another political prophet without honor in his own land. Nuts? Maybe. So was John the Baptist.)
The stock market is crashing.
People’s life savings are disappearing down the old inflation drain.
And the so-called “opposition”?
Living like it’s the roaring ’20s.
Like the gentry in 1880.
Shame on them, one and all.
Obama REALLY wants to win?
He should publicly repent, sell his brownstone or whatever the hell he owns in Chicago, buy a decent house in a racially mixed working class neighborhood (Of course…there goes the neighborhood but what the hell…it’s ALL about image.), donate the excess profit to some charity or other, and cruise to an easy victory over all of the others who literally CANNOT make such a move because they are too locked in by decades of insane acquisition.
Financial constipation is a TERRIBLE malady.
I can hear the bourgeois bloggers’ responses now.
“What!!!??? And put his family at risk?”
Brethren and sistren…he is NEVER going to go even close to broke. Win lose or draw. Bet on it.
“If they asked me, I could write a book.” (Pal Joey, Rogers and Hart)
Yup.
And they will ask him.
Bet on it.
Win, lose or draw.
THEN he can get obscenely rich.
Like every other Presidential campaign since the triumph of TV (JFK’s studliness vs. Nixon’s 5 o’clock shadow) …this one will be about image.
May the best virtual candidate win.
Just as it ever was.
Since 1960, at least.
Just as it ever was.
Have fun…
AG
P.S. Governor Eyebeam? The Schwarzenator? From the LA Times:
Depending on the private jet he chooses from NetJets – usually it’s a relatively large one, to include staff and CHP bodyguards – Schwarzenegger and his posse could dump as much as 8,700 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for a single one-hour flight from Santa Monica to Sacramento, according to data from TerraPass, the carbon retailer.
The governor has favored Gulfstream jets like the one pictured below, which he used in 1997 to promote “Batman and Robin.” Helium Report has a chart showing how much private jets like that can pollute. By contrast, a single person traveling alone on a commercial flight from L.A. to Sacramento contributes 477 pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
Schwarzenegger is the most traveling governor in California history – sometimes twice-weekly flights to Sacramento and numerous weekend trips to his Idaho estate, to Maui, Las Vegas, Washington D.C. and other out-of-state places over the past three years. (His campaign picks up the multi-million dollar tab.)
Nice, eh?
What’s in YOUR wallet?
My last offering…a fairly funny one, I thought, about a truly tragic situation (As many as 23 dead While Protecting Head War Criminal Cheney) slipped beneath the blog waves with nary a gurgle.
If you like a post…or even if you do not “like” it but wish to see it debated…please recommend it.
It’s not so hard to do.
Just go over there on the left and click the little box.
You want good content on your blogs?
Use the recommend button.
People who spend…let me see, I started this 1 1/2 hours ago…who spend unrecompensed time trying to get some thoughts out there will eventually give up if they feel that only 5 or so people are reading their stuff.
I could get a bigger audience than that talking shit on a street corner in the Bronx.
In fact…
Naaahhhh…
Fuggedaboudit.
Half the audience would be Bloomberg undercovers.
Nevermind…
AG
P.S. Come to think about it…I wonder how many undercovers are frequenting THESE street corners.
OOOOOooooo!!!
Scaaaaaary !!!!
don’t worry AG, you always have more than 5 readers.
Yeah?
Do you have a hit meter?
How many people read my last 2 hour attempt?
AG
is that he practices Zen. If you get seriously engaged in zen and buddhism material things become irrelevant and a distraction.
It’s a difficult standard to apply to others though. That’s why there are no buddhist evangelicals!
I am a big Jerry Brown fan however. I volunteered on his 92 campaign.
I really like Al too, though I think you’re right, the republicans are gearing up for a consumption/hypocrite meme that will go something like this:
Then they’ll follow that up with wave after wave of salary and stock info for democratic i-bankers, CEOS, and Hollywood types. See how different they are from you and I!
Rudy does indeed have a lean and hungry look. And we are living in wartime, though not the war the necons would have us believe we’re waging.
I wouldn’t be suprised, wouldn’t be suprised at all if Rudy’s the fella who takes us to the fascist point of no return.
You write:
Or..if you get seriously seriously engaged in zen, buddhism and any number of OTHER spiritual, physical and mental disciplines…the real ones, not that jive New Age shit…so-called material things become more relevant and less of a distraction.
Because youf ind that they are all a part of the same continuum.
Neither less nor more important than anything else.
The universe in balance.
That is EXACTLY what we are missing in this culture.
It was once given to us…in little baby tastes, mostly, in tastes that had been progressively corrupted by the centuries that followed the establishment of the major religions, but nevertheless the information existed and worked on people…it was given to us by out various faiths.
The rock-solid honor of the good Catholic. I have seen it. The real thing.
The erudition and morality of good Jews.
The charity and faith of good Protestants.
And so on.
It existed.
Bet on it.
And it existed on enough levels and among enough people to help keep the ship of state on SOME sort of righteous course.
But…except among the Hispanic population of this country and the few remaining truly functioning Black, Jewish and White Christian churches, that faith, that teaching, simply does not exist.
Not strong enough to instill honor among our young.
To prevent Abu Ghraib.
Vote theft.
Massive divorce rates and the concomitant breakup of the family.
The cynical acceptance of a kleptocratic system.
It is GONE.
Replaced by the situational morality of television, where all things are equal if they get TV exposure.
Rush Limbaugh cheek to jowl with Keith Olbermann.
Akira Kurosawa on one channel, right next to him some slasher film.
“It’s a difficult standard to apply to others?”
Maybe we oughta start trying to do so again.
Because THIS shit ain’t working.
On the evidence.
Believe it.
AG
AG wrote:
Youre’ right on this. From the Heart Sutra:
Two sides of the same coin. Balance.
My point about Jerry Brown was that his day to day needs are simple because of what his practice awakens him to. But his engagement in the broader world is broad because of what his practice awakens him to.
It’s difficult to demand that level of ascetism from others. Each of us must come to it in our own way and own time.
You’ve obviously come to that.
I’m struggling every day to move closer and closer to a radical simplification of my needs and my lifetsyle. And compared to most other burb living white boyz with high school age children we live pretty simply. But its not enough.
Others not yet, or maybe struggling too.
I miss the social justice catholics but they’ve been driven out of the church of my youth, along with so many of us who are victims of a priesthood run amok.
AG I’d love to see a dairy from you on what you see among American Hispanics that you believe may be lead us to salvation or a movement that will get us back to first principles. I’ve been intuiting something there for a while, but I don’t really have any exposure to the culture anymore.
I see the undiminished capacity for joy among more of that group of people than any other here.
I see it in South/Central/Caribbean America as well.
AG
THANK YOU, oh recommenders.
I’ll tell you the truth…when I write something that takes a couple of hours out of my already crowded day and then see it sink like a stone, time and again the next couple of instances that I run into the beginnings of a good idea I just end up saying to myself…”Ahhh, the hell with it.” and going back to practicing or writing music.
Why do this if it doesn’t get read?
Thank you.
AG
Thank YOU, Arthur. Like Maryscott says
You should know there’s at least one little old lady sitting out in the woods who loves what you write. Don’t even think that it’s not worth the effort – you gotta keep on playing music, right?
I always like your Biblical references, which are ususally right on point. But I wonder sometimes…
Are you actually buying into the whole ascetic principle? I mean, it’s an argument, but there is at least as good of an argument that people will vote for someone they see as successful, and that conspicuous consumption is attractive.
You bet your ASS I am.
Listen, Booman…we simply cannot keep on bogarting the world’s joint.
Please go here for directions to a multitude of studies done at the United Nations University about who controls what amounts of the GNP of this good green earth.
Shocking.
Really.
Shameful.
Here is a little bit of what they found.
The scales are shifting now that the rest of the world is arming itself and uniting against that richest 10%…that’s US, Booman, The United States of Scamerica, bet on it…and we had damned well better realize it before we get bullrushed right off the face of the earth.
You write:
Time for us to wake the fuck up.
Conspicuous consumption is not attractive.
It is selfish, pig-like, and violates about twenty of the Ten Commandments when you get right down to it.
Or the one overarching commandment.
Because if there is one thing that history teaches us, it is that if what you “do unto others” is in any way negative, it is absolutely CERTAIN to come back around eventually and bite you right on the ass.
“People will vote for someone they see as successful?”
Yes, they will.
But if we…and by “we” I mean well-meaning people like those who spend time on the blogs…do not successfully change the parameters of what is generally considered success, then this culture is doomed. And before they…we…can do that, WE MUST CHANGE OUR OWN DEFINITIONS.
And here we are, right back to the question of whoi…what…controls the media.
The MEDIA define “success”.
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
Starfucking on every level.
And so the sleeple vote as they have been taught to vote.
So it goes.
Solutions?
I have none.
I wish that I did.
Caught in a net of Catch 22s, I often think that perhaps a .45 is the ONLY remedy for Catch 22-ism.
Much of Islam appears to have come to that conclusion, as have successful revolutionaries from time immemorial.
INCLUDING the people who founded this republic.
We shall see.
Soon.
Bet on it.
Meanwhile…we must all do what we can.
I live as simply as is humanly possible and still remain capable of doing my work.
What’s in YOUR wallet?
We will ALL have to answer that question…posited in all the languages of the earth…before very much more time elapses.
We are poised on the brink of ruin, watching fat men jerk off in public while we applaud their technique.
Message to Fatmerica:
Time to lose some weight, Porky.
Time to lose some weight or die.
Bet on it.
AG
I’m only talking about how people vote, which is what I took to be your point.
I am speaking of trying to CHANGE how they vote
Is that not the root principle behind all of these blogs?
Look what happened in the last election.
We have been instrumental in turning this thing around, to some degree. Of course the sheer stupidity, greed and incompetence of our opposition has helped no end, but…
Why not keep pushing?
AG
Interesting post. My question is though, how much should we expect from the folks that are elected. I know that here in Canada, many of our provincial and federal politicians are of relatively moderate means. They don’t live in giant houses and came from a fairly “normal” job, ie, a comfortable middle or upper-middle class job. I appreciate that because it feels a lot less like being a serf and looking up at the lord’s manor. For example, I used to live about 5 minutes walk from my provincial representative, so I knew that he knew exactly what our local concerns were and that he was just as affected by things like property taxes, local schools (I went to school with his kids) and zoning issues.
However, let’s say you were to elect Edwards as President. He’s a multi-millionaire, but if he enacts policies that are relatively progressive, do you give him a pass on his private consumption?
The question is…will he walk the walk that he talks once he is in office? (Not that I think he has a chance to get the nomination, let alone win,…)
Will ANY of them walk that walk?
However…an elected official who has already proven that he understands what is up, on a personal level?
That’s a whole ‘nother ball of dough.
Even on a symbolic level.
If American electoral politics is based on symbolism, on mythic qualities rather than record or platform…and a good argument could be made that image is everything in presidential politics, and has so been since JFK and the advent of TV as a major force in the culture…then merely DOING something like moving to a working class neighborhood…even if the candidate kept his millions…would resonate big time, if done right. From the heart, with the right attitude. Not as just another slimy politician trick.
But nobody has that much vision.
Jerry Brown did.
But he was too early.
Ross Perot did also…but he was too squirrely.
So it goes.
Prophets are often not very attractive people.
But PROFITS?
EVERYBODY loves a profit!!!
So it goes…
Time will tell.
And the time will come, as well.
One way or another.
Watch.
The chickens always come home to roost.
Watch.
AG
True, I think that’s part of the reason people found the Tester story so compelling. The guy is probably the poorest Senator in a long time and he could really speak to issues like the destruction of rural communities. He might not be the most liberal guy in the world, but he probably gets economic issues on a level that no other Senator does.
Speaking of prophets and profits, the irony is that Jesus would be routinely mocked on Fox News if he was alive today.
“Why is this guy advocating class warfare, is he some sort of communist?”
“Put on some damn shoes, you dirty hippie!”
“What kind of family values does this guy have, hanging out with a prostitute!”
“What sort of son of God looks like an A-rab terrorist!”