Miles and Robby…concussed. Their car smashed to pieces. Happier times…
Categories
Category: art
After a late breakfast I met Michael L at Mud. He was wearing a DIVINE pair of Prada shoes…an extraordinary wing tip/espadrille hybrid with Nike soles.
I LOVE YOUR SHOES.
I told him that I had seen JP at my AA meeting.
On the spur of the moment we decided to go to Savage Beauty, The Alexander McQueen retrospective at the Met. Sunday afternoon, it was OVER RUN with people. JAMMED.
Jammed with people who may or may not love fashion but certainly not enough to line up for two hours!
Thankfully we were Met members so went directly to the front of the line.
I didn’t give a damn how many people were there. I just loved the show from beginning to end.
This enchanting, inspiring exhibition gave me a great deal to think about.
Firstly, let me tell you that I hadn’t seen McQueen’s work up close like that. Why would I ? I don’t know Daphne Guinness.
Not a single photograph anywhere does his work justice. It really has to be seen to be believed. I was utterly dumfounded by the drama, the workmanship, the unexpected depth of emotion it inspired.
There were a million obvious references: Balenciaga, Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier (fucked him once after the IRA bombed The City of London). Regardless, it was uniquely beautiful. Uniquely Lee. Westwood without the bustle. Balenciaga without the cassock. Gautier without…
I loved the fabric woven for the Plato’s Atlantis collection. Fabric woven to look like the re-imagined skin of mythical serpents.
The Razor Clam dress was exquisite. The dress sprayed by ballet dancing robots…heavenly.
My most favorite costume were from the spring/summer 2005 collection, It’s Only a Game. Using burlap, hessian, raffia, leather, crude mechanical embroidery. I loved, most particularly, an appliqued Japanese inspired, floor length dress. Lilac tulle softly billowing out of the structured bodice around the feet. Sublime.
This entire collection (as curated) left one breathless.
Eshu 2000, a simple shift made of tiny yellow beads and black horsehair. The yellow beads spread like caviar on crisp toast, dripping provocatively onto the horse hair.
McQueen bejewels the constellation of dead couturier that include Christian Dior, Yves St Laurent, Paul Poirot, Madame Gres etc. Twinkling stars inspiring us from above. Isabella Blow is sitting right there beside him laughing with her protégé at how mortals now wait in line to worship at his alter. They were never meant to. The world of high fashion, like the world of high art, is exclusive by design and inclination.
I thought about the very few times we met. Check on Wire Image for the picture of me, he and Lucy Ferry. If you don’t believe me.
I thought about his suicide. How lonely being that much of a genius can make you. How protected he was by the women in his life who never really approved of any of his boyfriends because they felt ‘married’ to him. Lucy, Sam, Naomi, Kate, Isabella, Daphne, Anna etc.
No one was ever good enough for Lee so he became more and more isolated.
Too embarrassed to introduce the kind of boy he wanted to those grand arbiters of taste. How could he spend all day designing beautiful things and bring that home.
Fag hags think they are doing you a big favor by keeping trashy boys out of our lives…in fact…all they did was keep Lee McQueen lonely. I hold all of those women partially responsible for his death. If he had only been allowed to fall in love…but those kind of women are little bit too eager to have an opinion about a gay love life thinking that Lee was just one of the girls.
Straight women really don’t understand gay men as much as they claim they do.
After McQueen we stopped in at the Ben Cohen event at Boxers. Flirted mercilessly with wrestler Hudson Taylor. Will post pics asap.
Ben Cohen is a straight British rugby player who is making a name (and a great deal of money) for himself by championing LGBT causes. Beloved by the gays he has a cherubic face and huge chest.
“I can’t understand a word he’s saying…but he’s gorgeous.” One man cooed.
Ben was making an impassioned speech about bullying and homophobia. The gays just looked on in awe. Objectifying poor Ben and gorgeous Taylor. They didn’t give a fuck. “Take you shirt off!” They screamed as he appealed to them for a more tolerant world.
GLAAD gave him some award. ‘Cute Straight People Who Like Us’ award…or something. Michael (?) the head of GLAAD NY was there last night. “It’s not political.” He reassured me.
Then something rather irritating happened. Zack’s really dull friend arrived. The sort of boy who thinks he’s attractive but hasn’t got two damp sticks to rub together to get any fire started….anywhere. He pissed me off sufficiently to make me shout at him.
Apparently my present anger is quite healthy. I am so…fucking angry. With myself. I have NO ONE else to blame. I used to be angry with The Penguin. Now I am angry with me.
Livid that I let myself be duped. Blinded by love. Blinded by compassion. I don’t blame him. I can’t blame him. There’s nothing to blame. Other than the CON. I don’t blame him for making me fall in love with him…he is just a child, as was evidenced when I saw him with his parents. Bouncing on his mother’s knee.
Enmeshed.
A sad situation existed in that house. I realised why I found the father so interesting…he reminded me of someone. Rather than concentrate on his son and wife, he was staring at us. Not because he was trying to intimidate…he was just…more interested.
Emotionally absent father, more interested in solving his patients problems than focusing on the needs of his son. The Penguin wanted his father’s love so badly. It’s not his fault. Shame on them! I can imagine that he wasn’t just absent for The Penguin but for the entire family.
Mother and son thrown together in some emotionally incestuous swamp. Hanging onto each other for dear life.
If I can’t have you my husband….I will have him. My darling son.
Enmeshed.
He looked…like an aspergers boy when he was with them. Which is odd because isn’t that his father’s speciality?
Let me tell you how things have changed since I saw him. I blame myself for being so damned stupid. I blame myself for letting a petty conman/thief run rampant through my life. I blame myself for constantly letting him off the hook. I blame myself for convincing anyone who would listen that I loved him. I blame myself for thinking he was beautiful. I blame myself for not running out the door the moment he took heavy drugs from under his bed and asked if it was ok.
I have been a fucking idiot….and I am really, really pissed off with myself.
Categories
Rem Koolhaas
Too busy to write 500 words.
Briefly, yesterday was spent with my yoga/park friend Alex. We walked…and walked.
Lunch at Northern Spy on 12th St between A and B. Appalling food. I will eat pretty much anything but the watercress and potato soup was so bitter I had to send it back. My friend’s risotto was bland and uninspiring. The grilled cheese was ok but I couldn’t get the bitter taste of rancid watercress out of my mouth.
We chipped before the desert and the entire fiasco still cost $70.
After lunch we walked via Soho past my old apartment on Varick St to the Chelsea piers and looked at the sweaty runners. Oh yes…we also popped into the Rem Koolhaas show by The New Museum on The Bowery. It was like an art school architecture demo. I suppose that’s what he wanted. I was underwhelmed. The theme was RESTORATION.
There was one photograph that really moved me. A table in the St Petersburg summer palace groaning with gilded paste figurines. Each one worth a fortune but each a nightmare for a conservator. What to do with so much stuff?
I shopped for granola. Watched TV. Still can’t write. Still unable to think about anything creative. Just enjoying the wind on my face. My feet ached from the long walk.
Met Donovan later that night and we hung out at Eastern Block with a bunch of moderately ok looking gays. I looked good again…so garnered more unexpected attention. Thank God for drunk boys with beer goggles.
It always helps to have a hugely attractive, similarly aged man with you…as bait.
Dan returned from LA. He looked exhausted.
Categories
Malcolm’s Hats and Knickers
This is how we spend our time up on the mountain.
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43 minutes to write this post.
14 days left to enjoy this month.
33 days until I face The Penguin in the court.
83 degrees at the beach club.
811 emails from him.
16 days left in California.
7 is a beautifully directed film.
10 feet of Bougainvillea to chop down.
3 loads of organic matter carried to the end of the drive for composting.
7 dollar sandwich for my lunch.
3 dolphins swam past us as we lay on the beach.
1 of the twins helped me with the garden.
4 of us sat in the sun.
23 dogs past us as we sat in the sun.
9 minutes to write this so far.
2 visitors from LA.
460 dollars owed to a renter.
6 months on the market and I didn’t sell the house.
13 years spent in my last house.
3,582 blog views on my busiest day.
531o days sober from drugs and alcohol.
2 days content.
1 day is all I need to think about.
24 hours is all I need to get through.
10 pages a day.
1402 Facebook friends.
90 days I want of sexual sobriety.
1 room with a perfect view.
I thought that you might enjoy this picture as much as I enjoyed creating it. Inspired by Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn. My Hasidic Easter Bonnet.
Spent yesterday planning my trip to Cannes. Of course, I love Cannes when everyone is there for the film festival. I am deliberately revisiting all the places that we visited together so that I can expunge him from the memory of the locale.
As NYC becomes less emblematic of those painful days with him and more joyful as I remake this city with the other. The streets are no longer associated with those miserable days of fruitless longing.
The sunshine is mine and mine alone. I love the streets!
Could you imagine anything more ghastly than sitting in an office day after day for thirty years with minimal vacation? Looking forward to retirement? Eww.
My therapist and I are planning my escape. An escape that will include the possibility of a return to what I used to enjoy: peace of mind.
On Saturday morning I saw a young mother drop her baby on its face. The baby was fine. Mainly made of gristle they are more resilient than they look. Sturdy little things. The young mother, more from embarrassment, screamed out “My baby!” The restaurant hushed, her other child started crying, her own mother with whom she was having breakfast, sat immobilized by fear. There was, however, something about her scream that reminded me about the moment the Big Dog was hit by the truck.
The trauma associated with that ghastly moment lives with me, shapes my thinking and holds me hostage to the notion that I must never be hurt like that again.
When we were interviewing old people last month we met an old man who told us that he couldn’t own pets any longer because he fears the depth of emotional pain that comes with a beloved pets death.
I know what he means. The pain felt around the death of anything you love, the loss of anything one cares about (as one gets older) is without parallel.
In many ways I am more numb now than I have ever been. Less able to feel for fear of being badly hurt. How could I have got this far without…and then I thought back. I remembered the excruciating pain of being dropped again and again as a small baby/infant/child. Suck it up Duncan.
Sunday. Birthday party with friends. I ate too much cake. I was wearing a lilac cashmere sweater that garnered some reaction. “That’s risky.” A rather bland looking woman commentated. I smiled and thanked her as if she had just complimented me.
The baby was fine. A little redness on the forehead but after a few moments of crying he/she was smiling and gurgling.
Incidentally, after all my Jay Jopling bashing for not being political there is a show at Mason’s Yard called NEW ORDER that looks very promising. This work looks very impressive though a little austere. Where is Max Beckmann when you need him?
I am desperate to see this. I hope it is as subversive as it looks.
I have included the gallery’s incredibly verbose description below. Who writes this shit? Look at the way they over use/mis-use the word polemical.
Masons Yard 8 Apr—14 May 2011
‘The dream of a suitable political work of art is in fact the dream of disrupting the relationship between the visible, the sayable, and the thinkable without having to use the terms of a message as a vehicle.’
Jacques Rancière, ‘The Aesthetics of Politics’ (2006)
The relationship between aesthetics and politics has been a polemical issue for much of the history of art. In particular, the late twentieth century saw an overt politicisation of critical discourse amidst collapsing colonial hegemonies, global wars and the emergence of civil rights movements across the world. This was coupled with artists questioning the principles of modernism opening up the debate as to what constituted a work of art. A number of key figures emerged on the international art scene, whose practice specifically dealt with issues of power structures, race, injustice, gender and dissent. The works featured in ‘New Order‘ share a focus on the transformation of social or ideological structures that shape experience, and in different ways they explore existing communal, political and physical constructs of the everyday.
The formal geometry and commonplace materials of Miroslaw Balka‘s ‘Kategorie’ (2005) lend the work a pared-down aesthetic generally connected with Minimalist and Conceptual art. A six-metre long, two-metre high tunnel is interrupted by five fine coloured threads, suspended from rotating motors on the ceiling. The work is rich in associative historical and political references, such as the traumatic memory of wartime atrocities in his native Poland which Balka has addressed throughout his practice. The colours of the strands – red, violet, green, pink and black – are the colours assigned to uniforms identifying different categories of prisoner in the concentration camps (red for political prisoners; violet for Jehovah’s Witnesses; green for criminals; pink for homosexual and bisexual men; and black for Romany people, alcoholics and individuals with learning disabilities, among others).
Part of Doris Salcedo‘s ongoing series in which found domestic furniture is used as a vehicle to explore the traumatic political history of her native Colombia, ‘Untitled’ (2008) features tables and wardrobes, conjoined and partially entombed in concrete. The re-assembled components of the hybrid form of the sculpture, each through use embedded with a material history, function as silent witnesses to implied personal and collective narratives.
Rooted in black urban experience, David Hammons‘ practice comments on the iniquities present within social, political and economic systems. Critiquing the relationship between high art and the street, his sculptures often feature found objects laden with cultural association. Hair clippings swept from the floor of a Harlem barbershop are fashioned into a cornrow hairstyle upon a smooth oval rock in ‘Rock Head’ (2000), while in ‘Which Mike Would You Like to Be Like?’ (2001), Hammons takes three vintage microphones that serve as surrogates for three prominent figures in recent popular culture – Michael Jackson, Mike Tyson and Michael Jordan – referencing the limited range of role models for young African-American men.
The densely-layered, collaged paintings of Mark Bradford also incorporate materials salvaged from an urban setting, including torn bill posters or newsprint. The abstract compositions reference alternative cartographies that burgeon within cities, such as the spread of an economic underclass, the movement of immigrant communities and race relations. In ‘Strange Fruit’ (2011), fragments of text drawn from the local ‘merchant posters’ Bradford frequently uses echo across the painting, while the title is taken from the protest song about the lynching of African-Americans in the 1930s, sung by Billie Holiday.
In Julie Mehretu’s ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ (2008), a swirling vortex of shapes and marks on a grey ground, overlaid with architectural passages, give the sense of a gathering storm. Made on the occasion of the inaugural New Orleans Biennial in 2008, the painting conveys the destructive power of uncontrollable nature within a stricken cityscape, mired in bureaucratic chaos.
In 1969, Anselm Kiefer photographed himself in a variety of imposing locations (often in settings evocative of German Romantic imagery) making the Nazi salute. The resulting series, entitled ‘Besetzungen’ (‘Occupations’), provocatively confronted the blanking out of history and questioned the collective guilt of an entire post-war generation in Germany. In the works presented in the current exhibition, ‘Heroische Sinnbilder’ (2011), Kiefer revisits the iconography of his own art history, as a means of investigating the resonance of totalitarian symbols across the passage of time.
Categories
New Museum
Aaron, my happy-go-lucky NYU side kick and sweet friend met me for breakfast at Veselka. We ate scrambled egg and sausage. I had the Chinese brew to fortify me.
We walked to The Bowery, stopping in at the Bowery Hotel for a nose before heading to the New Museum where I bought an ‘artists membership’. We made our way to the 5th floor by elevator to the education suite then walked down the elegant stairs from gallery to gallery.
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George Condo:Mental States. George, never a great favorite of mine. Too prolific. Too gimmicky. Unfocused.
I was wrong.
I actually really loved the great wall of work on the 4th Floor. A huge salon type hanging, magnificent, bold and confronting.
I adored the Queen paintings, loved the monochrome line paintings, loved the magnificence.
Perhaps he deserves the great wall of work? Few artists do.
Salon hanging? What’s that? You may well ask…
The Salon de Paris, established in 1725, was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Between 1748–1890 The Salon de Paris was the greatest annual or biannual art event in the Western world.
Called `Salon hanging´or `Petersburger hanging´ pictures of all sizes are hung closely side by side and above each other, sometimes in several rows from the ground to the ceiling with no obvious curatorial rational.
This exhibition style was fashionable until the first decade of the 20th century when curators and academics like Julius Meier-Graefe suggested a more reduced and conceptual hanging method – leading to the gospel of the`white cube´.
Salon hanging never disappeared completely.
Nowadays curators choose it from time to time for specific presentations like the upper gallery of the George Condo show.
The lower gallery showed the work of Lynda Benglis. I enjoyed this unusual, eclectic show presenting mostly work from the 1970’s. I will go back and look at it more closely next week.
My great friend Maury Rubin has one of his very popular Bird Bath bakery/coffee shops at the New Museum. We drank his coffee and ate his pretzel croissant.
On the way home we stopped in at Salon 94 to see the remarkably over priced work of SoCal photographer Katy Grannan.
I was moved by the video installation in the basement, by far the most interesting work in the gallery.
The woman who plays Marilyn Monroe lived near me in Hollywood and I would see her daily, pulling on her tatty wig, wearing her sad, soiled, Seven Year Itch dress, pan handling outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.
If the picture of her as you enter the gallery wasn’t so absurdly priced I would have bought it. The best thing about this show is just how much dignity art has bestowed upon these little more than fancy dressed vagrants.
The gallery boy…Jacob. So sweet. Worth going back for.
Later, Dan and I headed up town to see a preview of The Motherfucker With The Hat. A very poorly staged, almost televisual play about Alcoholics Anonymous starring Chris Rock and that guy from Station Agent. There were some good lines…when you could hear them.
The problem with these ‘actors’ from TV is that none of them can project. All of them perform from their throats and I predict none of them will have a voice by the end of the week.
Live performance in a theatre (without a microphone inches from the mouth) needs technical training and rehearsal. None of their voices were warmed up. Consequently, many of the adequately written lines were lost.
Odd listening to a play about sobriety. Odd.
Dinner at Italian restaurant.
Met up with Aaron and Woody and ended up at Bedlam on Ave C where Bravo’s Andy Cohen (of all people) was ‘spinning’. Met Dana and her hot friend Matt who has a web site called www.fridaypuppy.com. Had a great time. Many intriguing men to chat with.
In bed by 3am. I drank 4 (not very good for me) Red Bull.
I love New York!
Categories
jekyll/hyde
Yesterday: an interesting day of fascinating contrasts. At 5pm I had the first of what I am sure will be many conversations with the mean (read aggressive) litigator.
Regardless of what I now feel about The Penguin I don’t really want to see this strange litigator man unzip his Penguin belly and scrape out the rancid innards. But, I suppose, that’s what has to happen if we are going to get me some settlement. Evisceration.
I woke up feeling like Dr Jekyll and went to bed as Mr. Hyde. Or vice versa. One wonders, when one wakes up, who will be driving the bus. Will I be in a good or bad mood? Will I feel vindictive or conciliatory?
Earlier in the day I had a brief conversation with CP who thought I was grumpy and urged me to go to a meeting. I went to the 12.30 University Place AA meeting and felt markedly better. Good call CP!
Derek Lloyd Saathoff and I met with ‘A List’ Executive Producer at Elmo. Charming man. He drank lychee with vodka which was a somethingtini? Can’t remember the name. I drank 5 double espresso. It was the first time I had publicly stated or engaged publicly with D. I will, unless told otherwise, start writing about this oddly satisfying, burgeoning ‘fake’ relationship.
By the time we got to the Joyce Theatre to see the premiere of Underland we were all over each other. Well, he was all over me. He is a really good kisser. Though, I must admit…public kissing is not really my thang. In this rarefied NYC milieu we seemed to know just about everyone. Kim Light, Hamish Bowles, Cyndi Stivers…and others.
Stephen Petronio’s Underland is a vividly surging work, inspired by the dark, bittersweet songs of Australian balladeer Nick Cave. Dancers hurl through space with razor-sharp precision, fiercely energized one moment, sensually lyrical the next.
After party at Hotel Griffou organized by old friend Mandie Erickson. “Everything I touch turns to gold!” She poked me in the chest. Delicious dancers from the show and glamorous men with names like Tito and Phillipe.
Derek drank two cocktails and became immediately drunk. I pushed him into a cab and went back to the party. What a mess.
The food at the Griffou was excellent though the roasted cauliflower made the dining area at the back smell like farts.
Stephen Petronio on good form. I told him that the show obviously reminded one of Michael Clark’s work from the 90’s and he told me that they dated for 4 years. I didn’t know that!
I refered to Stephen’s BF but was corrected…”My husband…”
Hamish and I discussed the Balenciaga show in San Francisco. He seems really happy with it. More space and access to better gowns. I will make the effort to see it and take my poet friend Randall Mann.
A sparkling night out. D home early to bed as has to work final day today.
Dropped in at Bowery Bar on way home.
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Categories
Preparation X
I should have called this post: Pre-Existing Condition.
I have always been embarrassed by my piles. Hemorrhoids. I have always had them. Ever since I can remember. Thank God I was never a bottom.
Whilst the rest of the world looks on in horror at the inevitable nuclear meltdown in northern Japan, the brutal attacks on protestors by the Bahrainian police force, the Libyan civil war I spent this evening with a complete stranger from the internet who arrived at my home with a bag of groceries and cooked me dinner.
Whilst he did that: I fainted. Very, very Jayne Eyre of me.
The upshot being that I badly bruised my back on the fucking chair Michael Temple made for me. The chair looks nice but it’s a FUCKING DEATH TRAP.
That’s what we do in LA. Strangers come to our mountain top mansions and prepare Penne Carbonara. I served coffee in delicate Sevres coffee cups. The dog was FREAKED OUT when I fell over. He ran away from me when I tried to placate him.
This morning Charles left in his neat black suit and freshly pressed shirt and tie. He looked so sweet. I had film stuff to do after he left. After a few film related conversations on the telephone I walked to the PCH. All the way there and all the way back. He chased many ground squirrels.
I sold some art.
This afternoon I watched Sophia Coppola‘s film Somewhere. I really enjoyed it. The language and locations of our Hollywood lives. Too many afternoons floating on the pool, too many hasty hook ups. Too many facile conversations. Too many text messages from people who either want to fuck you or fuck you over. Not enough substance. Set against a back drop of elegant hotels with fancy toys to play with.
I once lived in the Chateau Marmont for a month. I moved there when the mountain burned. I have spent many hours there making new friends.
I remain isolated.
Most of us are isolated here. However successful we are or we are not. However many parties we are/are not attending, however ‘connected’ we are.
Sitting around.
Waiting for a great idea.
So now the next great idea has come upon me and I have convinced others to work with to make a dream come true. Suddenly this town makes sense.
Los Angeles, oh you strange and terrible place.
The christian twins are coming to stay. The beautiful, twenty-year-old twins are coming to live with me at the house, live at the house whilst I am in NYC. When they return from Utah. My born again beauties.
I ate the pasta/caprese salad/garlic bread and he left soon after we finished our coffee to my strange, secluded mountain top life.
He was perfectly nice.
The bruise on my back is worth photographing.
…which was how somebody found the blog yesterday. Nothing worse than a tranny with buyers remorse.
Resting my lap top on my ball. Did I learn nothing? I can feel it burn my thighs.
NYC. Why so secretive? Secret love? Maybe. Secret litigation. YES! Not so secret. Secret parties after the Armory? Well…of course. Secret drama at my favourite places? Definitely. Secret film stars at NYU. Secret fuck buddies who don’t want to wear condoms.
Secrets…and I am on the verge of giving birth to this huge secret shit.
A love affair? maybe.
Walking the dog as usual. Selling art. Not selling art. Fuck!
Met up with a gay friend who is just so pissed at Obama and the HRC and can’t imagine how things are going to change for him and his lover. How are things going to change?
It’s only a matter of time.
Don’t give up. Read this:
Speech Michael Moore delivered at Wisconsin Capitol in Madison, March 5, 2011
America is not broke.
Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It’s just that it’s not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.
Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.
Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer “bailout” of 2008, now have more loot, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can’t bring yourself to call that a financial coup d’état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.
And I can see why. For us to admit that we have let a small group of men abscond with and hoard the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we’d have to accept the humiliating acknowledgment that we have indeed surrendered our precious Democracy to the moneyed elite. Wall Street, the banks and the Fortune 500 now run this Republic — and, until this past month, the rest of us have felt completely helpless, unable to find a way to do anything about it.
I have nothing more than a high school degree. But back when I was in school, every student had to take one semester of economics in order to graduate. And here’s what I learned: Money doesn’t grow on trees. It grows when we make things. It grows when we have good jobs with good wages that we use to buy the things we need and thus create more jobs. It grows when we provide an outstanding educational system that then grows a new generation of inventers, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and thinkers who come up with the next great idea for the planet. And that new idea creates new jobs and that creates revenue for the state. But if those who have the most money don’t pay their fair share of taxes, the state can’t function. The schools can’t produce the best and the brightest who will go on to create those jobs. If the wealthy get to keep most of their money, we have seen what they will do with it: recklessly gamble it on crazy Wall Street schemes and crash our economy. The crash they created cost us millions of jobs. That too caused a reduction in revenue. And the population ended up suffering because they reduced their taxes, reduced our jobs and took wealth out of the system, removing it from circulation.
The nation is not broke, my friends. Wisconsin is not broke. It’s part of the Big Lie. It’s one of the three biggest lies of the decade: America/Wisconsin is broke, Iraq has WMD, the Packers can’t win the Super Bowl without Brett Favre.
The truth is, there’s lots of money to go around. LOTS. It’s just that those in charge have diverted that wealth into a deep well that sits on their well-guarded estates. They know they have committed crimes to make this happen and they know that someday you may want to see some of that money that used to be yours. So they have bought and paid for hundreds of politicians across the country to do their bidding for them. But just in case that doesn’t work, they’ve got their gated communities, and the luxury jet is always fully fueled, the engines running, waiting for that day they hope never comes. To help prevent that day when the people demand their country back, the wealthy have done two very smart things:
1. They control the message. By owning most of the media they have expertly convinced many Americans of few means to buy their version of the American Dream and to vote for their politicians. Their version of the Dream says that you, too, might be rich some day – this is America, where anything can happen if you just apply yourself! They have conveniently provided you with believable examples to show you how a poor boy can become a rich man, how the child of a single mother in Hawaii can become president, how a guy with a high school education can become a successful filmmaker. They will play these stories for you over and over again all day long so that the last thing you will want to do is upset the apple cart — because you — yes, you, too! — might be rich/president/an Oscar-winner some day! The message is clear: keep your head down, your nose to the grindstone, don’t rock the boat and be sure to vote for the party that protects the rich man that you might be some day.
2. They have created a poison pill that they know you will never want to take. It is their version of mutually assured destruction. And when they threatened to release this weapon of mass economic annihilation in September of 2008, we blinked. As the economy and the stock market went into a tailspin, and the banks were caught conducting a worldwide Ponzi scheme, Wall Street issued this threat: Either hand over trillions of dollars from the American taxpayers or we will crash this economy straight into the ground. Fork it over or it’s Goodbye savings accounts. Goodbye pensions. Goodbye United States Treasury. Goodbye jobs and homes and future. It was friggin’ awesome and it scared the shit out of everyone. “Here! Take our money! We don’t care. We’ll even print more for you! Just take it! But, please, leave our lives alone, PLEASE!”
The executives in the board rooms and hedge funds could not contain their laughter, their glee, and within three months they were writing each other huge bonus checks and marveling at how perfectly they had played a nation full of suckers. Millions lost their jobs anyway, and millions lost their homes. But there was no revolt (see #1).
Until now. On Wisconsin! Never has a Michigander been more happy to share a big, great lake with you! You have aroused the sleeping giant know as the working people of the United States of America. Right now the earth is shaking and the ground is shifting under the feet of those who are in charge. Your message has inspired people in all 50 states and that message is: WE HAVE HAD IT! We reject anyone tells us America is broke and broken. It’s just the opposite! We are rich with talent and ideas and hard work and, yes, love. Love and compassion toward those who have, through no fault of their own, ended up as the least among us. But they still crave what we all crave: Our country back! Our democracy back! Our good name back! The United States of America. NOT the Corporate States of America. The United States of America!
So how do we get this? Well, we do it with a little bit of Egypt here, a little bit of Madison there. And let us pause for a moment and remember that it was a poor man with a fruit stand in Tunisia who gave his life so that the world might focus its attention on how a government run by billionaires for billionaires is an affront to freedom and morality and humanity.
Thank you, Wisconsin. You have made people realize this was our last best chance to grab the final thread of what was left of who we are as Americans. For three weeks you have stood in the cold, slept on the floor, skipped out of town to Illinois — whatever it took, you have done it, and one thing is for certain: Madison is only the beginning. The smug rich have overplayed their hand. They couldn’t have just been content with the money they raided from the treasury. They couldn’t be satiated by simply removing millions of jobs and shipping them overseas to exploit the poor elsewhere. No, they had to have more – something more than all the riches in the world. They had to have our soul. They had to strip us of our dignity. They had to shut us up and shut us down so that we could not even sit at a table with them and bargain about simple things like classroom size or bulletproof vests for everyone on the police force or letting a pilot just get a few extra hours sleep so he or she can do their job — their $19,000 a year job. That’s how much some rookie pilots on commuter airlines make, maybe even the rookie pilots flying people here to Madison. But he’s stopped trying to get better pay. All he asks is that he doesn’t have to sleep in his car between shifts at O’Hare airport. That’s how despicably low we have sunk. The wealthy couldn’t be content with just paying this man $19,000 a year. They wanted to take away his sleep. They wanted to demean and dehumanize him. After all, he’s just another slob.
And that, my friends, is Corporate America’s fatal mistake. But trying to destroy us they have given birth to a movement — a movement that is becoming a massive, nonviolent revolt across the country. We all knew there had to be a breaking point some day, and that point is upon us. Many people in the media don’t understand this. They say they were caught off guard about Egypt, never saw it coming. Now they act surprised and flummoxed about why so many hundreds of thousands have come to Madison over the last three weeks during brutal winter weather. “Why are they all standing out there in the cold? I mean there was that election in November and that was supposed to be that!
“There’s something happening here, and you don’t know what it is, do you…?”
America ain’t broke! The only thing that’s broke is the moral compass of the rulers. And we aim to fix that compass and steer the ship ourselves from now on. Never forget, as long as that Constitution of ours still stands, it’s one person, one vote, and it’s the thing the rich hate most about America — because even though they seem to hold all the money and all the cards, they begrudgingly know this one unshakeable basic fact: There are more of us than there are of them!