Thank You Mr. King -- Installment 3

In the 'news' of late, sad to say, there has been a lot of talk, many reports about, a plethora of accusations against a number of fairly famous men (some by scores of women, some only by one or two or three) of being, in effect, 'serial sexual harassers'.  And, oh, there are some men accusing other men of sexually harassing them.  And, as you'd expect, there is a man, the City Manager/Clerk of a city in the great Commonwealth of Virginia, accusing the female City Attorney of that same City, of the same thing.  So, as 'you'd expect', mostly is is women accusing men, but, not to be out done, men are accusing men and men accusing women; so far as I know, no woman has accused a woman, however.

We're not just talking about the likes of one of the most unlikeable public figures in modern times, Harvey Weinstein.  No, certainly not.   Dustin Hoffman has been accused (and all but admitted it ... although it's unclear if he was sincere, or just wante to deflect further investigation.)  And, then, in a very interesting case, to this writer at least, a man accused another man, who is very famous and a very famous Scientologist to boot, John Travolta, puting his hand, without an invitation, in a place that no one should without one. in one case, at least, the accuser is a man, who alleges that another man, a very famous Star, and prominent Scientologist, John Travolta, put his hand, without an invitation, in a place that no one should without one.  We've had famous morning TV hosts, actors and politicians ... even a sitting Judge ... called on the public carpet for having done things which (whether or not these things are illegal is pretty much beside the point, actually) no decent person would have done.  In the case of the Judge, what he is accused of having done, took place, allegedly, some 32 years ago, in 1985.

Now, frankly, I do not know what to make of all of this.  If what 'they say' about Harvey Weinstein' is true, he's a foul and disreputable character, and anyone would be justified in never soliciting his company, in any context, any more.  At least not until he really, reforms.  Everyone, really, even murders, get a chance to reform in our society.  At least that is how we used to do things.

So, I, for one, am confused.  Apparently, 'people' knew about Harvey Weinstein for YEARS and did nothing.  Same, apparently, is true of John Travolta ... people who knew him have known for years of his inclinations.  And, in the case of one famous TV star, Matt Lauer, not only was his piggishness well known, but it was joked about on national TV when the TV network who just fired him for doing it, 'roasted' him a few years ago.

So, what has changed?  Well, before we consider that, consider a rumor that I heard one time, from an old friend of mine who 'was there', so to speak.  It is reported that the woman we all know and love as being the epitome of sweetness and light, one Debbie Reynolds, was, in fact, the dirties, foulest mouthed, person one could possibly imagine when she wasn't "on".  Now this is all hearsay and innuendo, and certainly not fact.  But, let's imagine that the rumors have some basis, and in fact, she was capable of, and in fact did, 'make her (men) sailors/band-members, blush with her foul-mouthed, sexually laced, bawdy parodies of this and that, one moment ... and the next moment, opens the curtain and, Voila'!  Sweetness and light.  So, what if this were, in fact, true, or even partly true.  What is to be done about it?

Shall "we" launch an investigation into the (alleged) awfulness of Debbie Reynolds?  And, if we find that some, even a little, of this is true, do we then find some lawyers to bring long stale sexual harassment suits against her Estate?  On behalf of the men who were subjected to her, alleged, foulness?  Shall we, employing 'today's standards' take away whatever honors she was given for her performances, because, allegedly, she earned these honors whilst displaying appalling sexual inappropriateness in 'mixed' company?

I don't know, to be honest.  I hope that these rumors are just that, and Debbie Reynolds was everything we see on the screen.  I do.

Because, I am still very confused and I don't want to have to retire one more thing I loved into the embarrassment bin, along with these tarnished memories from my own childhood:

My Daddy and Mama were divorced in 1959 when I was 6 years old.  So, I didn’t spend much time with my Daddy.  But, when I got older, he gave me a job working for him in his house building business -- which, of course, was then populated by foul-mouthed men.  No women working in construction in those days.

Well, one day, after my junior year in college, I guess I couldn't find a paying job anywhere else, I went to work for my Daddy over the summer.  One day -- I think on the way to lunch -- we were driving some place, and I happened to observe something using the “F-word”.  Well, you could have hung meat in the car throughout the rest of the 5 minute-that-seemed-like-5-years ride … all my Daddy did was turn and look at me, with that look of “Where on Earth did YOU come from, with a foul mouth like that?”  My Daddy was the boss/owner of a construction company, and I’m sure that wasn’t the first time he’d heard someone utter that word.  But, you know, in his entire life, I never, not once, ever heard that word, or pretty much any other swear word, come out of his mouth – and he served in the Navy as a Pharmacist’s Mate in WWII.  My Daddy, if he'd been alive and had known Harvey Weinstein, would have taken him out, I'd dare say.

This embarrassment was not, however, quite so bad, nor did it teach me quite as much as what happened a few years earlier when I had been bullied.  I was about 12-13 … and I was walking home from junior high school, and some crass, loud and foul mouthed bullies started following me, calling me names and throwing snow cones on my new London Fog jacket, inviting me to fight them.  Well, I didn't.  I just took it and walked on, and when I got home, crying, I was in the bathroom washing off my brand new jacket (this was at a time when new jackets meant something, and you did not spend $150.00 for a pair of tennis shoes), and my Mama came in, demanding to know what 'is the matter'.  Well, stupidly, I told her ... expecting the sympathy we now find everywhere for everyone who's ever suffered any of the slings and arrows of civilization ... and much to my astonishment, my Mama started yelling AT ME, asking me how could I walk away like that?  Why didn't I stand up for myself and fight???

It never occured to my Mama to go to the Principal and plead my case, or to tell me to 'tell on' the bullies.  Bullshit.  What I should have done, was stand and fight, and, as she put it, 'take your lumps', if they were bigger than you.  A 'real man' would have done that, and we know what the opposite of a 'real man' is ... not a woman, mind you, but a coward.  So, there I was, in the same day, having lost my dignity by having allowed myself to be bullied by a bunch of neanderthals, and having lost my Mama's respect for my cowardice.  Well, my Mama didn't stay mad at me for long, and I think she realized that there could have been a better way to deliver her message.

But, what I learned from these two incidents is that no one likes a foul-mouth coward.  Period.  Not when the coward is a man, and not when the coward is a woman.  And, it doesn't matter that you are being bullied, or harassed, whether in the 'ordinary' way or otherwise.  A victim gets what a victim gets.  When you refuse to be a victim, you might get beaten up, you might get snow cones thrown on you, you might be 'treated' to the disgusting antics of Harvey Weinstein.  Once.  But, what you get, from putting aside your worries about your 'bodily' or 'mortal' safety, or thoughts of 'what will this do to my career', and, instead, standing up for yourself, is what we call Personal Integrity.  By refusing to let the harassers of the world 'get away with it', because 'there is a hostile environment' in the workplace, or in Hollywood, or wherever, is a civilization and a society and a culture in which all can hold their heads up high and strive for their goals.  Oh, sure, some people will stand up for themselves, and never see the light of day.  Those people the ones we should salute.  For the ones that just allowed themselves to be victims, never saying anything for 'fear' of 'what might happen to them', those who settled their lawsuits for money?  Well, my Mama would ask them, Why didn't you stand up for yourself?  Why didn't you fight?  Why didn't you take your lumps?

Thank You Mr. King - Installment 2

     There are some (and some very smart, very 'aware') people, some with some very long tracks, who are of the opinion that Lee Harvey Oswald -- while involved -- was either a dupe or programmed; and that there was actually another shooter on the "grassy knoll" who murdered John Kennedy.  And, this may be so.  I don't know.  All I know is that when God brought home Lee Harvey Oswald, God didn't care that someone else may have had something to do with it.  Responsibility is not something that you can divide into pie pieces -- regardless of what certain legal doctrines of 'comparative' fault may say.

     To the extent that, at your 'Judgment Day', you try to deflect YOUR responsibility by pointing out (however truthfully) that it was not "all" your fault, that someone else 'did it too', and that, if it hadn't of been 'for him' (or 'her'), you would not have 'done it' ... if you don't just stand up straight as a board and say:

     "Yep, I did it.  I decided to do it.  It was my idea.  I wish I hadn't of done it."

If that is true ... never lie about what is within your heart, because every time you do, you die just a little until at some point light-years into eternity you become a solid 'rock' (for lack of a better term); you can no longer move; you can barely think; lies seems to be true; you are, for are essentially a mass of darkness -- darkness you yourself created because you turned away from the light just a few times too many.

     We have all heard about the 'laudable omission' or the 'white lie', and there are those times when avoid the bald unflattering truth is the best policy, not to mention the mortally safest route -- if a gang banger has your nuts in a vice and a gun to your head, that would not be the time to observe that he needs a Tic-Tac.  And, if your wife, or husband, ever ask you "Does this make me look fat?", the only answer you should EVER give -- and with no delay -- is "No!" ... [astonished expression] ... "Absolutely NOT!".  

     But, laudable white lies -- so-called 'social lies' -- are few and far between and about as rare as hens teeth (ok, ok, ok, Mr. King would disapprove of my vernacular, especially as I don't employ it all that good, and often mix my methaphors -- so sue me).  You've all heard the example bandied about in "situation ethics" courses all over creation of the fellow in World War II Nazi Germany who answers the door, to find the Gestapo asking him whether he's hiding any Jews?  It's always wrong to lie, right?  So, he has to tell the truth, in order to be a moral man, that, yes, he's got ten of them hidden behind that fake partition?  Right?  If the does not, he's SOOOOO respectable, the Gestapo will never question him and he'll never get caught, and the Jews will be safely out of Germany the next day.  If he does, the Gestapo will thank him for his honesty, and will immediately execute the family of 10 Jews ... right down in the street out in front so that everyone will know the evils of hiding Jews.  So, his choice is to either lie, with no chance of ever getting caught, and save the life of 10 innocent people from the criminal insane known then as the Nazi's, or to be a 'moral' man, tell the truth, have a 'clean conscience' and be causally responsible for the murder of 10 of his friends.

     THIS is one of those few and far between 'laudable' or 'white' lies.  Obviously.  And, all the 'discussion groups' that have considered some version of this apparent conundrum in college campuses across the United States, haven't got the slighest chance of 'proving' that the fellow ought to tell the truth.  Of course he shouldn't.  He'd be an asshole, with no chance of redemption, if he allowed his friends to be slaughtered by the Nazis.  

     But, in talking about personal responsibility -- the kind that gets you into Heaven (if that is where you prefer to go, instead of to the third galaxy at a vector of 28.7 degrees South of the pinnacle of Eiffel tower, for example) -- and not lying to yourself, or to others, about your crimes, transgressions and stupidities, we're talking about seeing clearly what there is to see, without agenda, without alternation, without goal.  Just seeing.  And, about not lying to yourself about what you see. Because I'll tell you a secret, which is really not secret when it comes down to it.  You can see everything.  Just like I can.  I'm just a little better at seeing trends than you are, right now.  If fact, you cannnot not see everything.  Seeing everything is built into what you are; it's the self-deceit that is not you.  So, every time you pretend that you didn't fart on your sister's birthday cake; or every time you pretend that your husband is stronger than you are, when he isn't; or every time you pretend that you didn't know that you'd hurt your wife's feelings by dismissing her worries about how fast you are driving after she asked you to slow down, you're lying to yourself and your throwing your personal responsibility down a little farther down the toilet.

     The happiest, most fulfilled, most joyous and most hungry for life among us are those who do not lie, who take responsibility for everything they perceive and who admit it when they have fucked up.  No matter how badly.  No matter how embarrassingly.  These fine folk are happy because they are not lugging around in their spiritual suitcase all of that CRAP that THEY created.  They recognized how stupidly they acted, admitted it, and it then does not hang around to bother them.  But, if they had 'overlooked' it, and 'swept it under the rug', or tried to blame in on their mothers, their husbands, their kids, their bosses, the police, Donald Trump (!!!), then, by God, until time immemorial, that lie would follow them around.

     Where are we (me at least) going with this?  Basically, no where except to note that -- if he had lived -- Lee Harvey Oswald's only salvation would have been in admitting his role in murdering John Kennedy.  And, if he happens upon God while he's floating out there somewhere in the ether, waiting to find another body, he damn well better admit his transgressions or he'll be saddled with them for some time to come.

Thank You Mr. King - Installment 1

Scott Weible

July 21, 2017

Thank You Mr. King

A Testament.

I have always seen things that others cannot.  Trends.  Facts.  Mainly consequences of the present leading into the history we are going to make.  I didn’t practice.  It - whatever it is - is not a skill.  It cannot be taught or learned.  But, it can be honed, developed.  The latter — the honing — however is pretty much just being willing to accept, believe, see.  And, you have to be willing to imagine the truth, instead of "find" it.

The first time I was acutely aware of knowing something that everyone else seemed to be unable to know, was the day that John Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Texas.  In front of God and everybody.  If you want to know the true definition of a ‘terrorist’, the man (or men, if you believe the conspiracy theorists) who took JFK from us was the very first terrorist.  He was even worse than Hitler.  Hitler at least played by the rules until he did not have to any more.  He played the game of pretending to be something you are not, distracting us with one hand, whilst the other hand drew out the dagger.

But, the man who killed Kennedy, and I really do think it was that fellow (I don’t remember his name, and I’m too lazy to look it up on the marvel we now call the “internet”) who had been found to be in the library building with the rifle and such (interesting, isn’t it that Kennedy’s murderer had stayed, for a time in Germany?) who murdered our President, simply rose up one day, with some kind of design in his soul and (some say) singlehandedly destroyed the world.

"Destroyed the world" is a bit dramatic, I suppose.  But, that is how it seemed to me, at 10 years old, at the time.  Sitting there on the wooden gym floor of my grade school (I think it was called Longfellow Elementary -- so named for a man (Henry Wadworth Longfellow) of letters, of accomplishment, merit and production, and not, as so many schools are named these days, for the local roads, mountain peaks, valleys, streams or, God Forbid, eventually, a corporate sponsor) listening to events unfolding, uncertainty in the voices of the news announcers (we didn't have video feeds in those days), the terror in their voices, trying to be brave adults ... I thought to myself "Oh, now it starts."

I could see what was going to happen.  Not, of course, like the modern 4K UHD cameras can see the detail of each pore and blemish on the actor's skin, illuminate all imperfections so that we do not concentrate on the story, but on the annoying and ultimately unimportant details.  More like an imprint, a trend, a world wide disintegration that would be attributed to this financial trend, and that dictator and this loss of that natural resource ... to anything but the promixate causes:  Lee Harvey Oswald & The Texas School Book Depository.UIKeyInputDownArrow

America, for since at least about 1940-something had been the model of worldly honesty, freedom and bravery.  If you ignore for a moment, anyway, the continuing, nay worsening, racial inequities.  And now, however, in an instant, on national TV, America became the model for mayhem, insurrection, (what would come to be called) terrorism and destruction.  My God.  If THIS could happen in THIS country, then nothing could be held sacred.  We're all down the chute.

And, that has come to pass.  America, from that day forward, November 22, 1963, from my 10th year, 5th month, and 20th day, has led the people of Earth into hell-fire and damnation and a future in that State of Nature which Hobbes rightly described at 'nasty, brutish and short'.  Hurried along by the internet, Steve Jobs' iSpyOnYouPhone, Bill Gates' appallingly conceived and designed "Windows" platform (whether he stole the idea from Steve Jobs, as is often repeated, is really beside the point -- the point being that Bill Gates, mirroring the irresponsibility of Lee Harvey Oswald, has led the computing humanity down the garden path of destruction, destitution and isolation by foisting upon the world a (legally defensible) distant copy of something valuable, thereby wasting our time, wasting our resources, wasting eternal mountains of energy and ingenuity in trying to use his overt product for good and productive things), and Mark Zuckerberg's sinister evisceration of humanity and decency, Facebook, America has run aground on the strength of one 'modern advance' after another ... welfare ... foodstamps ... HB-1 Visas ... "undocumenting" illegal criminal foreign aliens ... elevating the fine art of financial fraud to a high art.

You may think me too harsh in my indictments of Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg (and for that matter Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Elon Musk).  But, I'm actually being easy on them.  Instead of using their technology to put men and women of letters, of thought, of intellect, or artistic merit into the hearts and minds of the masses, these men have used the lowest possible common denominators appealing to the most stultifying amongst us, to capture and monopolize our money, our time and our souls.  We think it’s cute Alexa can render us soft, vapid and incompetent by recording our grocery list for us.

Bill Gates contributed as much to the end of the world as Lee Harvey Oswald, just in a different way.  He replaced Steve Jobs consummately valuable product with a piece of shit, apparently realizing that if he could sell his piece of shit (Windows) cheaply enough, the unwashed masses would seize upon their "savings" and ignore the fact that Gates had created a monumental waste or everyone's time and energy.

It does, absolutely does, matter what you do, and how you do it.  The ideas, borne of Lee Harvey Oswald's influence over the flower children of the 1960's and 1970's, that 'it doesn't matter what I do' ... 'it's my life and I have a right to live it as I want'.  These selfish, self-centered and ultimately ruinous reflections of the timbre of the 1940's and 1950's when the individual was sacrificed (or so it seemed) for the good of the whole, the 'free love' that went along with them, and Timothy O'Leary's "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out", are a salute and surrender to the statement made by Lee Harvey Oswald the day he murdered John Kennedy:  It doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter how it will affect others, and it doesn't matter what will become of me, it is my right to do any damned thing I want to do, no matter what.  No responsibility.  No sense of the future.  No understanding of what might be worthwhile outside one's own pitiful monadistic existence.