Marriage and Home Repairs

Throughout history, man has sought answers to explain how best a marriage can survive the rocky shoals upon which it has been known to founder:  Infidelity, money problems, illness, addiction, abuse, children -- you name it.  Psychologists, men of the cloth, marriage counselors and simply friends and family have warned young couples of the challenges marriages face and tried to prepare them as best they could.  Myriad permutations explain either the success or demise of a marriage.  Factors serious and simple combine and then it's up to the couple to face them as they will.  Sometimes they fall back on the examples they saw in their own parents, other times they rely on the advice of others, and yet again they may simply rely on prayer and themselves to see them through. 

Of all the sage advice people have given couples, of all the threats to their marriages couples can anticipate, one rarely if ever mentioned is one that doubtlessly plays out in homes throughout not only the United States but the rest of the world as well.

Home repairs.

I say this not because our marriage is on the rocks or because we've come back from the brink of divorce due to home repairs.  I say this knowingly because every time a home repair project ensues, blood pressures rise, tensions rise and tempers flare.  This is due in large part to my inexperience and incompetence crossed with my wife's experience and competence. About the only thing I have on her in the field of home repairs is brawn.  Everything else positive falls on her side of the ledger. 

It's a recipe for turmoil.

As I may have mentioned before, I grew up with a father who taught me next to nothing.  If the phrase children should be seen and not heard is true, my father would probably have suggested that not being seen was even better.  Because I was the oldest child, it fell to me to assist him whenever he took on a home improvement task  Pretty much unskilled in these matters himself, his frustration didn't take long to boil, and I was usually serving my highest and best use when it came for him to have someone on whom to take out his frustrations.  As a result, I never learned anything.

The crime in all of this is I come from a family of tinkerers.  Not Tinkers, although I suppose that's possible, but tinkerers.  My maternal grandfather, according to family lore, took apart and put back together a Model T when he was a teenager.  One would think I'd have a modicum of mechanical ability.

Not true.  For me, DIY doesn't mean Do It Yourself, it means Damage It Yourself or, in a worse-case scenario, Destroy It Yourself.    I'm always worried that I'm going to burn the house down, flood it or bring it down by unwittingly removing the one structural linchpin on which the entire house rests.

Karen is very supportive.  No one's had a more supportive wife.  But patience only lasts so long with mortal beings.  Eventually, she gets tired of my tantrums -- which are directed at uncooperative inanimate objects, a father who was worthless when it came to teaching his son anything and YouTube videos, which lie.  Still, she's not wrong.  It has to be oppressive after a while.

I've put in toilets -- one of which, contrary to YouTube's lofty promises, took me four days instead of three hours.  I've gotten a stripped piece of pipe out of a showerhead...after three days of intermittent attempts.  I've taken down the stairs to the deck, but the onset of winter and Karen's broken ribs prevented me from trying to install the new ones.  That cheery prospect awaits me this spring...

...For months, Karen's been wanting cabinets installed in the laundry room on the walls over the washer and dryer.  O', and she wanted a new light fixture to replace the old one in the entryway that caught on fire a couple of weeks ago.  Since we're in need of the space in the laundry room and we need a roof over our head, neither request was asking too much.  In fact, both made much sense.  But I faced both of these with trepidation with good reason.

The light fixture worried me on two fronts.  First, I typically swear off anything dealing with electricity or plumbing.  On the rare occasion when we've dealt with an electrical issue, fights have erupted over flipping the breakers in the electrical box.  Combine its location -- north side of basement -- with the location of the stairway -- south side of basement -- and my poor hearing and the Keystone Kops would do a better job of it.  Add to that Karen's expertise and experience with electrical matters -- long story -- and this is just a tinderbox for fights...pun unintended.  Second, Karen fancied an LED fixture.  Neither of us understood what this meant until we began the project.

Somehow, Karen opted not to try both projects on Saturday, which helped, because after we tried the light fixture, trying to put up the cabinets would have been a nightmare.  The fixture was so compressed in its size that neither of us could get our hands in between the fixture and the light box to attach the wires.  Then the screws didn't come out far enough to attach the pan to the ceiling, which necessitate a trip to nearby Lowes.

(I forgot to mention that I'm one of Lowe's favorite and least favorite customers.  Many of its patrons that I see there are clearly tradesmen or people who have tried these things a time or two.  At least they know the difference between a lug nut and a hex nut.  Lowe's must like me because I'm always there to buy things from them because I don't know what I have or what it's even called.  They must hate me because they have to explain things in idiot friendly terms that they don't have to use for most of their customer base.)

After I returned with the screws of the right length, we struggled mightily to get everything attached and put together.  The LED light looked more like something that could go inside a computer.  There were no lightbulbs whatsoever.  The instructions, which we did read -- more of those anon -- told us to keep our mitts off the "lights," but that was well nigh impossible unless we'd been born Japanese.  So when we finally got the light in and were starting to feel exultant, our ecstasy soured when after turning the power back on we got a whole lot of nothing.

Instructions written for these things border on the meaningless.  Because of the heavy emphasis on STEM teaching, simple communicative skills have deteriorated to the point where we're barely ahead of cavemen.  Written communication is almost worse.  The instructions written for products DIYers are to use are so vague and/or contradictory and assume an understanding of basic mechanics as to be positively osmotic.  Trying to decipher the instructions sometimes takes more time than the actual installation.

That ended a noble but failed attempt on the next to last day of 2017 to install a light fixture.  We salved our wounds by watching Game of Thrones out of order because the rental place gave us the wrong disc.

The last day of 2017 found us installing cabinets.  Karen was positively giddy as she disconnected the dryer and washer and moved them away from the wall where we'd be trying to hang the cabinets.  Karen'd found them at Habitat For Humanity and got a great deal on them.  Stylish they're not; function was all we were going for.  Part of her giddiness was rooted in cleaning up underneath the moved appliances -- who are we kidding?  Karen is in love with Mr. Clean -- but also because her long-held dream of cabinetry in the laundry room was one small step closer. 

I watched the video she'd been pestering me to watch -- aside from my lack of confidence in YouTube videos, I've found that unless I watch them shortly before I start the project, I forget crucial steps in the process (not that it matters, ultimately) -- and dutifully put up the 1" x 4" as a guide.  We got it level and then started finding the studs.

Studfinders have come a long way, apparently.  This first cabinet's installation worked like a charm.  Even with two math-challenged DIY'ers at the helm, we were able to figure out not only where the studs were, but also where to drill the pilot holes in the cabinets.  In fact, the first cabinet went up deceptively easily.  About the only thing that went wrong was that I didn't follow directions (remember, I always miss something from the video) and screwed the screws in all the way instead of leaving them just a little bit out.  I also may have stripped one screw.  I was waiting for the inevitable crash but surprisingly, it never came.  Add to that that few cross words passed between us and one would have thought we'd just finished building the pyramid of Cheops.

We took a break and then resumed.  The second and last cabinet would be more of a challenge because the pipes for the water were eerily located in the vicinity of where we expected a stud to be.  There was also the prospect of electrical wiring in the neighborhood, because an outlet was only a few inches to the right of the hose hook-up. 

Karen was in charge of the stud-finding (I could insert a pun here...but who'd believe it?) because of her experience and expertise...or my inexperience and incompetence, take your pick.  It shortly became worrisome, because the studfinder that had worked so magnificently on the first cabinet was mysteriously failing us now.  If this had been me, the studfinder would have been in a thousand pieces, dashed against the far wall for failing me.  Karen's patience won out and she eventually found a stud.  But to do this, we had to use our lifeline, her cousin's husband and DIYer extraordinaire Robert, who guided us from Kentucky as to how to locate the errant studs. 

No good deed goes unpunished, and our good deed of getting the first cabinet installed mostly without a hiccup came back to haunt us.  Words were exchanged -- well, not really.  I cursed myself and my incompetence while Karen fumed at my childishness -- and we finally located the studs, using a method that I can only call the Swiss Cheese Method of stud finding.  By the time we got done spelunking for studs, our wall resembled Swiss cheese.  Robert's method of locating studs had guided us to drilling pilot holds a quarter inch in either direction until we hit paywood.  Well, eight or nine holes later, we had our studs, and a perforated wall.  Thankfully, the cabinet would cover the holes. 

The gods of DIY weren't done with us yet, however.  In exchange for making the first cabinet's installation relatively easy, the second one would be filled with travail.  After doing so well -- and ingeniously, if I do say so myself -- in marking where our pilot holes should be drilled in the cabinet to affix it to the studs, this process mirrored our attempts to find the studs in the wall.  By the time the two remedial math students finished with this cabinet, it had a surfeit of markings and holes to remind us what amateurs we really were.  Despite this, and full in the knowledge that this cabinet was destined not to hold fine china but doggie diapers, we pressed on and got the thing up on the wall.  Miracle of miracles, it held!  Nothing came crashing down, no wall peeled from the studs.  DIYers of the World Rejoice!  We had our cabinets.

Almost. 

Being the perfectionist that she is, Karen noticed a couple of (smallish) gaps that existed between the cabinets and between the first cabinet and the wall.  Had this been a bachelor pad, I'd have called it good.  Because Karen wants it to look not so icky, we made plans to remediate the gaps, but mercifully Karen decided it could wait until another day.  We still had to shim the cabinets to make them even and, although they ain't perfect, they ain't too bad.

Karen's happy with the result (imperfections notwithstanding).  I'm relieved.  It's been two nights since they were installed and I haven't heard a crash in the night like I was anticipating. 

We cleaned up the area and put back the tools that were only for this project and then resumed playing catch-up with Game of Thrones.  At least now we knew how the season ended.  How they got to that point was still a mystery.

The new year for us is as intrepid as ever.  We visited Lowe's again, who weren't happy to see us because we returned the LED light without a receipt.  The store credit was fine, because we found a conventional light for twice the cost and stuff to fix the cabinet's gaps.  We may even have gotten more for the return than we were entitled -- shhhhhhhh -- and returned to the Casa de DIY to put this up.

For as difficult as the first attempt at installing a light fixture was, this was comparatively easier.  This fixture was built for people from the West to install it.  I'd say we had that sucker installed inside of a half hour.  With the first installation, we didn't have the wires connected for over an hour.  Sometimes, the old ways are better.

Power was returned and the light worked so well it can be seen from outer space. 

The tally of our weekend, therefore, amounts to this:

                One set of cabinets installed.

                One wall preserved.

                One light fixture installed.

                One house not burnt down.

               Game of Thrones caught up. 

               One glorious fire in the fireplace on New Year's Day.

               One Rose Bowl watched.

               One marriage still intact.

In truth, were it not for the LED lights, the fuse box's location and the wandering studs in the wall, the projects would have been infinitely easier.  Unfortunately, the faithless YouTube videos don't give any such warnings.  Much like pre-marriage counseling, YouTube only covers the foreseen, and precious little of that.  It's a testament to Karen's patience and experience that these things got done.  I actually enjoyed myself putting up the cabinets.  Before this triumph, my signal accomplishment was getting that piece of stripped pipe out of the showerhead pipe.  This feels better because there's more utility to the finished project.  I also have a better understanding of what can be done and what should be done.  In fact, I'm looking forward to the next project that doesn't involve electrical work or plumbing.

Besides, it's a lot less confusing than trying to keep track of who's who on Game of Thrones. 

So my beautiful wife is still my beautiful wife, and our beautiful home continues to improve with her vision and knowledge and my brawn.  I figure by the time we leave it it'll be in far better shape than when we bought it.  I'll take some pride in the fact that we put the improvements in ourselves and didn't just pay someone to do it.  Sure, Robert helped with his guidance.  Without that we'd have been lost.  And I don't feel like Tom Hanks in Cast Away after he made fire.  But there's something satisfying about DIYing it, fear or no fear.

And what's best I did it with my wife.  With whom I'm still married.

(c) 2018 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Open Letter to Jodie Foster

Last week, Oscar-winning actress and Yale graduate Jodie Foster jumped on the Hollywood lecture circuit to make the following declaration:

"Pretty much every man over 30 has to really look and start thinking about their part. And I guarantee, lots of it is unconscious. When you’ve been in a privileged position where you haven’t had to look at your part, you didn’t 100% understand you were in a bubble. It’s an interesting time for men.

"I have two sons (ages 16 and 19), and I know their perspective," she continued. "They go to a great school that has put them through the wringer about what consent is, what is humanism, what’s integrity. I just wish my generation had the benefit of that, and that everybody had the benefit of that."

 

Well.

 

Where do I begin?

 

In the law there is such a thing as broadness, for which a statute can be stricken because it is overbroad, meaning that it affects people or actions beyond the stated goal.  An example of this, ironically in this case, is President Trump's initial immigration executive order which, in truth, needed to be scaled back -- and it was, rightfully.  That doesn't mean the law as originally intended was bad, only that its reach affected too many people or actions incorrectly.

 

The same holds true here.  Foster's point -- that men should take a look at themselves when it comes to their behavior with women -- is a valid one.  Where she goes off the rails is by stating that "pretty much every man over 30" has to really look at himself and the part in sexual harassment.  Really?  Pretty much every man over thirty? 

 

I don't know how many men in this country are aged thirty or older and I'm too lazy to find the latest numbers on that.  But let's stipulate that there are a few millions out there of men that fit into that category.  How do we quantify "pretty much every man" of that group?  If we assume there are fifty million, does pretty much equal forty-nine million, forty-eight million?  And if that's the case, how are we do know that those forty-eight or forty-nine million men are truly deserving of our condemnation?  Do we know that they have either been actively engaged in sexual harassment or complicit by their silence in such behavior?  Come to think of it, how do we even know that "pretty much every man over thirty" has been engaged in such conduct?

 

This is a typical liberal ploy.  We see it most notably when there's a shooting.  Despite the fact that there are over 300 million privately-owned firearms in this country (or at least that's the figure I saw most recently), only a minute fraction thereof are used in mass shootings, yet gun-control advocates' arguments range from the total confiscation of privately-owned firearms to background checks and other rules that would make private ownership nearly impossible.  Here, there are countless men who combat sexual harassment or do not countenance it on a daily basis, yet Foster believes that we're unconscious men guided by our penises and not our minds.  To suggest that this is patently offensive is obvious, because were a man to make a statement that when distilled suggested women were guided by their vaginas there would be a hue and cry so loud...

 

...but I digress.  The next part of your statement that's severely flawed is the part about being privileged.  To what exactly are you referring when you say that men are in a privilege position?  Is that being an executive?  Or is it simply by being male we're in a privileged position?  If it's the latter, how non-white men feel about being lumped into the privileged group, especially when there's an argument about white privilege?  Should non-white men over thirty be subtracted from this equation?  If so, does that render the "pretty much" portion of your argument null? 

 

I'm not sure what living in a bubble even means.  Is that like living in Hollywood, where surreality is the new reality?  Or how about attending an Ivy League school?  Is elitism a bubble?  To just what kind of bubble are you referring?

The most egregious portion of your proclamation is the second paragraph of the quote.  Because you have two sons who are attending a "great school" (is that a bubble?), you know their perspective.  If that's true, good for you.  But logically, because you have no idea about my origins, about how I was raised and about my Mother, you have no frigging clue about me or how I treat women to make the statement that lumps me in with sexual harassers.  It's patently offensive for you to claim the moral imperative when you know nothing about me or my situation.  And the same goes for virtually every one of those men over thirty whom you've lumped into the same category with Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer and Roger Ailes.  That you can't see the logical inconsistency in your own statement puts your Yale degree to shame.  Just because I didn't attend a "great school" doesn't mean I wasn't taught the necessary virtues of consent and integrity.  Because I didn't attend Yale, I eschew the notion of humanism and replace it instead with a word that is notably absent from your screed: Respect.  I was raised by a Mother who taught us to respect every person regardless of social standing.  It's something that's sorely lacking in every sector of society, but it's something with which I was imbued and have never forgetten, despite the fact I went to public schools after graduating from Catholic grade school.  This notion that only those under thirty years of age have been raised with a solid grounding is ludicrous.  It is entirely possible that men over the age of thirty were raised with the same lessons as those under the age of thirty and, for various reasons, eschewed them, just as it's possible that there are those under thirty who will do the same.  After all, look at those men who have been caught, finally: Weinstein, Lauer, Ailes.  One thing they have in common is great wealth.  Is that not a lure for some people to do wrong?

But one glaring omission from your lecture is the glass house phenomenon.  Have you lectured Hollywood?  I mean, Meryl Streep's protestations notwithstanding (is cognitive dissonance a required class at Yale...?), it is well-nigh impossible for people in your industry to have been so ignorant of the misdeeds of such powerful men.  Don't women share secrets?  Where are the newly empowered women of the world standing up and demanding justice and equality?  For what did Anita Hill risk her career if not this very mistreatment?  That took place over twenty-five years ago, yet that fellow Yalie's strength was wasted on you actors.  Whether she was right, she stood up for her beliefs.  Where was Meryl Streep when her pal Harvey was denigrating fellow actresses left and right?  What part did the women of Hollywood, many of whom have now come out of the woodwork to tell their own horror stories, not glean from Ms. Hill's bravery?  If anyone had something to fear by telling her story, it was a black woman in a predominantly white male industry.  Yet, it is incumbent on millions of American males, many of whom know not privilege or bubbles or conduct similar to that displayed by Weinstein, Lauer and Ailes, among others, to look in the mirror and ask what role, if any, they have had because a pampered, elitist actress fails to do the same thing?

It seems you and the Hollywood elite feels that the glass house analogy doesn't apply to you because your houses are made of bulletproof glass.

For as much obliged as I may count myself to have received your lecture, I'll take a pass.  I was raised by a Mother who preached respect, not just for elite people but for the lowest of the low.  I was taught to respect women and treat them as ladies.  I was raised to behave like a gentleman, not a privileged cretin entitled to act on troglodytic impulses. 

And I was taught to spot a hypocrite from miles away.

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Why I No Longer Consider Myself Catholic

Yesterday news surfaced that Bernard Cardinal Law, the disgraced prelate from the Boston Diocese, died in Vatican City.  His death wasn't shocking; after all, he was eighty-six-years-old.  Still, it marked a milepost in the discussion of sexual predation by Catholic priests. 

Law had been in charge of the Boston Diocese at the time priests were abusing young male parishioners.  When confronted with accusations against his priests, Law started playing pedophile musical chairs, switching one pedophilic priest with another in a different parish.  The parishioners were none the wiser until years later the stories about the abuse came out and the names of the accused were made public.  Then Law's cynical game was up and the Church, always anxious to preserve its position, removed Law to Rome in an equally cynical move.  Officially, Law was going to Rome to help the Vatican.  In truth, his departure put him beyond the reach of American justice, which would have involved Law in extensive litigation against the priests and the Church.

It is possible, certainly, that some accusations against some priests were false or overblown.  But the overwhelming majority of accusations, sadly and tragically, were true, and for them, the Church owed the State its cooperation, no matter how hard.  Give unto Caesar what is Caeser's, after all.  But the Church decided that the best course of action, as it has done, historically, is to determine how best to protect the Church, even at the cost of the parishioners.  Or to put it a different way, the shepherd decided that it would be best to leave the field after the wolves went after the flock, because the shepherd might be hurt by staying on the field...even after the shepherd turned his back on his flock while the wolves went after it.

It's disgusting.  What moral high ground can the Church claim after taking the position that it did with respect to Law?  Sure, it paid out millions to the victims, but did that really compensate them for their injuries? What's more, what about the consequences for Law and his employees?  Sure, the employees were put in jail -- at least those who had the misfortune not to die before their crimes were discovered.  But Law suffered no consequences but those to his reputation; instead, he got an all expenses paid trip to Rome to live out his life in luxury and style. 

Many Catholics are outraged at what happened.  I know I am.  It's yet another case of the Church using sophistry to justify its actions to protect the Church against righteous accusations of misconduct against its congregation.  But this alone wasn't enough to turn me away from the Church.

I read a lot.  Some would say I read too much.  Perhaps.  But because I didn't take any history courses in college that weren't related to Spanish or philosophy -- my majors -- I missed out on a lot.  Even since taking the bar exam, I've been playing catch-up.  One of the areas in which I've concentrated is the history of the abuses brought upon the Irish people by the Brits.  Perhaps the most shocking thing I learned is that the Church -- not necessarily individual priests but the monolith the is the Holy Roman Catholic Church -- oftentimes was complicit with the British government in suppressing the Irish populace so that it could remain as an institution in a land that the British would have preferred to turn Protestant.  In effect, the Church, as happened so many times in British history, cut a deal as part of the British strategy of dividing and conquering, so that it would retain its position, however tenuous, at the expense of the individual Irishman.  Then, after the Brits were gone, the Church tried to return its hegemony over the Irish populace with draconian measures that meted out punishments almost worse than those the Brits doled out.  As with the Law mess, the Church did what it needed to do to protect the Church's position at the expense of the ordinary Catholic.

Then there's the one issue that proved to be the tipping point for me, personally.  My ex-wife was unable to have children naturally, so we went the IVF route.  It was unsuccessful for a variety of reasons, but one thing I discovered is that the Church finds use of IVF to be immoral.  This makes absolutely no sense to me for the following reason:

St. Thomas Aquinas, the doctor of the Church, declared that there is such a thing as a just war.  That being the case, man can use the genius to create implements to use in war and take life, which is in direct contravention of a commandment.  I don't recall there being an exception to the commandment Thou Shalt Not Kill.

But the use of IVF, which is the fruit of man's God-given genius, to bring into being life is immoral because it's against the law of nature -- something that man has judged, not something that God decreed, but not something that violates a commandment.  That's illogical, non-sensical and simply wrong.  So if I understand this correctly, it's perfectly fine for the Church to hide a person who had knowledge of and was complicit with pedophilia, and that burdened a people for over a millennium in the interests of political viability, but I'm immoral because I tried to bring life into being??????

Enough.

I'm no longer a practicing Catholic and I don't even consider myself lapsed.  I'm no longer a Catholic.  I'm a free agent Christian.  There are surely some things I adhere to from my past as a Catholic insofar as faith and the Mass is concerned (mostly involving the hymns), but I no longer defend the Church.  Have at it.  For all its hypocrisy and sophistry, I'm done.  I'm not some serf who stands in awe while the educated priest drones on in Latin and cows me with his mystery.  I'm an educated, sentient, thoughtful being whom God has created in His image, not in the Church's image.

In some ways, because I'm protesting, it almost makes me a Protestant, but I'm unwilling to go that far.  Protestant faiths have their own problems.  Check that:  Organized religions have their problems.  I prefer to worship God as He would want it and in my own fashion.  For too long I've been told how to worship by people who have (biased) training on how to worship.

I'm going to live out my life worshipping God the way I believe He wants me to. 

And good riddance Bernard Law.

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles.

Et tu....?

And the drumbeat goes on...

Over the last fortnight, we've been treated to the revelations that Charlie Rose, Garrison Keillor and Matt Lauer, not to mention congressman John Conyers, were also doing horrible things to and with women.  The floodgates are now truly open to the point that when we wake up, we wonder who the next deviant to be unmasked will be.

People in the public eye are tripping over themselves to condemn the miscreants while trying to understand how their good friends and colleagues could have been such bad actors right under their noses.  At least, that's how some are portraying their angst.  Of the named wrongdoers, the only one that really surprises me is Charlie Rose.  Not just that he was involved in doing such things to women, but what he did to them, which don't need to be retold here.  I suppose Garrison Keillor might raise an eyebrow as well, but given that he tried to exculpate Al Franken -- another recent pervert outed -- it's not that surprising. 

There are a number of different takeaways from this.  First, how was it that so many women were harassed or abused and complaints made about the harassment and abuse yet no action was taken on any of these men until now?  Was there no one of authority with a moral bone in his body?  From what we know at this point, executives are scrambling to do the best impression of the Three Monkeys and thereby insulate themselves from criticism and legal action, not to mention dismissal.

How is it that some of these men -- Rose, Lauer and Keillor, principally -- were able to sit there with a straight face and criticize the President for his improper behavior when they knew that what they were reporting paled by comparison to their misdeeds?

Reports are emanating that everyone knew about the Lauer misconduct.  If so, was there no journalistic Ronan Farrow or Rose McGowan who had the testicular fortitude to reveal this?  If not, what's the point of being a journalist?  In Charlie Rose's case, his producer is a woman, and women complained to her...and she laughed, or shrugged her shoulders, and did nothing. 

There is, of course, a risk, however small, that such accusations can be used falsely by a vengeful woman who was either scorned, passed over for some job-related promotion or another reason.  So far, that doesn't appear to be the case.

Yet people are ready to storm the castle because Donald Trump made inappropriate comments twenty years ago...

...The Left's mentality is puzzling.  There's no rationale for its action and inaction.  Hypocrisy is its byword. 

Savannah Guthrie, Lauer's latest feckless sidekick, did an interview of one of Conyers' accusers the day after the Lauer story broke and she was roundly condemned for the interview's tone.  People also wondered whether she would do an interview with any of the women her former partner harassed and abused and whether she would be harder on them because of her relationship with Lauer.

The one that baffles me is Rose.  If a deviant ever hid in plain sight better than Rose, I'm unaware of him.  I suppose John Wayne Gacy did, but he was an entirely different kind of deviant and wasn't in the public eye nearly as much as Rose. 

Will there be a much-trumpeted interview with one of these guys months down the road, a la Barbara Walters?  Dr. Phil has to be hyperventilating at the opportunity to get any of these on his show.

All in all, it's a tawdry, reprehensible situation.  Those who are now crying in self-righteous indignation about these men who knew about their behavior before it came to light should be ashamed of themselves twice:  First, for not taking any action before it became popularly acceptable and second for raising a stink after the news broke.  The men, of course, should never be in the public eye again. 

One final observation:  At the rate we're going, the number of men in the public eye to be accused of sexual misbehavior may start to challenge the number of female teachers bedding underaged male students. 

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

In Defense of Whiteness

I'm a white guy.  I'm neither proud nor ashamed of the fact.  To use a worn out expression, it is what it is...or I am what I am, to quote Popeye.  To be honest, I never thought much about being white.  The only time I do is when racial discussions reach a fever pitch.  Then I examine myself to see whether I've acted in a racist manner.  Otherwise...I'm just a white guy.

There's a lot of yelling about white privilege, whiteness and the obvious negative connotations of being white.  A lot of it is folderol, a theme concocted by tired academics who need to gain the spotlight to make themselves seem relevant.  Having once been in the near upper reaches of academia -- I was a graduate student in my dissolute youth -- I'm a little familiar with how academics gnash their teeth and rend their garments about otherwise meaningless topics.  If only convection and microwave ovens heated up as quickly as academics...it would be rather entertaining if it weren't so terrifying.

I'm not sure I understand the logic behind the calls that demand whites divest ourselves of our belongings because some whites in a bygone era acted badly to other races, namely blacks.  I understand the iniquity of what happened, sort of.  But I don't know how an entire race can be called upon to account for the actions of a segment of that race, especially when the race is as diverse as whites are.  I mean, if British slavers benefitted from slavery, why should Romanians be forced to cough up their wealth?  That hardly seems fair.

And just how far to we take the responsibility?  I mean, obviously crimes like slavery, murder and rape demand recompense.  But what of battery?  What of adultery?  What of torts, such as negligence?  How about copyright infringement?  What's more, how does one apportion damages? 

 
What if, as happened, whites (the Irish) were enslaved by other whites (Brits) and forced to breed with African slaves?  Does that entitle those of us of Irish heritage to share in the divestitures, or is it merely an offset because other Irishmen were slavers themselves?

The slippery slope is in plain view.

Yet, there's something else that's troubling to me about this debate.  Why should whites be forced to apologize for the obvious contributions they made to humanity?  I mean, even assuming that whites did horrible things to other races -- which they did -- do their accomplishments for the betterment of mankind count for naught?  What about the struggles that whites shared with blacks to make all men equal?  How are those factored into the equation?  Moreover, if we assume the premise that all men are created equal, why didn't other races achieve the things the white race did?  Blacks, Latinos and Asians all accomplished things, but whites accomplished so many things that lightened humanity's load, yet instead we're supposed to believe that but for slavery, blacks would have accomplished these things?

I have an imperfect memory when it comes to dates of things, but as a general argument, when exactly did the slavery begin that begets this grievance?  Were whites unable to progress until they started enslaving Africans?  Is that when progress took off?  Or were whites doing things irrespective of slavery that Africans and Asians simply weren't doing?  To be sure, there were things whites accomplished because slaves took on burdens that freed up whites to engage in other pursuits.  But not every advance made by a white person is rooted in slavery.  And ignoring slavery for a minute, what about the black and Asian races making similar gains on their own?

The notion that there exists such a thing as white privilege is poppycock.  There is privilege, plain and simple.  Although I come from a middle class background, there is no way I had a privileged life.  And I can point to several people of color who have it far better than I do due to privilege alone.  Where someone has outworked me, that's one thing.  But where someone was born into the lap of luxury and happens to be a minority...how is that any different than white privilege, except for the race involved?  There may be more white people of privilege, but to suggest that only whites have privilege is ludicrous.

One thing I always remember is that certain people complain about how they were kept down by the evil white man -- and they were -- there were whites who did not share that mentality that worked hard to upset that dynamic.  And it's not just lower class whites who fought on behalf of minorities.  Take the seminal Brown v. Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court.  Here's a picture of the SCOTUS justices who ruled unanimously in favor of blacks:

Is there anything noticeable about this photo?  I mean, besides the fact that all nine justices are men and wearing robes?  If whites were so horrible, how is it that nine men, who had the power to maintain the status quo, voted unanimously to end it?

And the 1964 Civil Rights Act?  Was that Act passed by a Congress composed mostly of minorities?  I think not.

Make no mistake:  There are still problems that need to be corrected.  I personally know whites who are rude about minorities.  But there are plenty of whites who see no difference between the races and firmly believe in equal rights.  The problem is that there is a group of people in control who, by virtue of their privileged status, want to remain in control.  Allowing people of different backgrounds, whether it be racial, social or economic, would threaten their hold on power.  And that, not race, is the true privilege that needs extirpation.

It's easy to hit a target that's made of one large substance.  Unfortunately, society isn't and shouldn't be equal to target practice.

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

DWTS and The Voice

I must say this at the outset:  Insofar as dancing is concerned, I have two left feet.  And when it comes to singing, I can hold a tune, but no one will ever confuse me with Josh Groban.  That my wife likes to dance with me and listen to me sing speaks to her absolute love for me overtaking her good taste. 

Because my wife enjoys both dancing and singing, she became a fan of the shows Dancing With the Stars and The Voice.  Because I love my wife, and because I can sit quietly and read while she watches her shows, I spend time with her in the living room absorbing the goings-on.  That doesn't mean I haven't seen a thing or two.

First, allow me to reiterate:  I may have been a good athlete in my day, but when in comes to dancing, I always suggest that we do it in the middle of a large crowd with the lights dimmed so no one is repulsed by the sight of my awkward jiggling.  Someone may get the mistaken impression that I'm having a seizure and call paramedics.  And as for singing, I enjoy it, but I don't have the skill to perform in front of people.  The closest I would ever come to doing that is karaoke fortified by adult beverages in a place to which I'll never return.  I was a member of my high school choir, but no one ever suggested I audition for a solo.  Wisely. 

Still, I am a watcher of television, and having done that capably for over fifty years, I have developed a taste for what's good and bad about television shows.  DWTS is downright horrible and The Voice is troublesome.  Allow me to explain:

DWTS billed itself, at its inception, as ballroom dancing being brought to the masses.  It has devolved into vaudeville crossed with tawdry carnality.  It's almost as if Andy Hardy and Betsy Booth got lost in a kinky jazzercise club.  Scantily clad men and women with undeniably toned bodies incorporate as few ballroom dance moves into routines that stray as far from ballroom as they can and still earn points.  Sure, they call them foxtrot, waltz and tango, but the truth is, over the course of the season, few dances are true ballroom dances and are more properly fusion dances that allow for entertainment to overwhelm the dancing.

How do I know this?  Once upon a time I took a ballroom dance course.  Admittedly, I'm no good at anything beyond a waltz, but I know what's supposed to happen.  What happens on DWTS strays from what I was taught.

As if that weren't bad enough, the schmaltz factor is neverending.  Pro dancers are turned into interviewers cum therapists as these staged discussions about the celebrities insecurities are examined for the cameras.  Nevermind that these celebrities are typically off the C list; that they try to rope the audience into feeling for them because -- look!  they're just like the rest of us! -- they have problems which, in turn, garners votes that have nothing to do with the performances, is nauseating.  It's almost as if I'm watching some sort of dancing therapy show for celebrities. 

Then combine that with the fact that there are ringers in the crowd.  This year's winner is from the Broadway plan Hamilton...in which he dances.  Other winners have included an ice dancer, Olympic gymnasts and professional athletes.  Sure, a few outliers have won, but the thing is rigged.  It's largely a popularity contest until the finale, when the one or two celebrities with any dancing chops are pitted against each other and the popular non-dancers have been eliminated, forcing people to actually vote for someone who can dance.

The judges on the show include some woman who in her effusiveness once infamously misused coño with cojones, a superannuated Brit who tries to keep the dancing on the rails and an Italian dancer whose claim to fame is having appeared as a background dancer in an Elton John video.  Their antics add to the lack of luster the show presents.  They've decided to add guest judges from time to time, including Shania Twain.  Egads. 

Little vignettes are staged as props for the dancing.  The singing, which is just covers of popular songs, leaves a lot to be desired.  The endless mugging for the camera is sickening, as is the over-the-top cutesy behavior of couples who are introduced before their dances is something I would expect from children, not professionals and celebrities.  I've seen teenagers act with more aplomb in public.  That this is encouraged is beyond belief.

Usually, when a celebrity is eliminated, there are unctuous thanks for the pro's tutoring, a profession of undying love and a promise that the celebrity will continue dancing in the future.  It's like revisiting high school where everyone professes things when they sign each other's yearbooks. 

From time to time, no doubt, there's a dance or two that is memorable or moving.  But most of the dances are just overwrought productions designed to tug on viewers' heartstrings.  Some of the professional dancers are excellent.  Derek Hough is a genius, as is Mark Ballas. The problem with Ballas' involvement in the show is that his strengths are more suited to Broadway than the ballroom. 

The Voice, on the other hand, started out trying to play it straight.  Contestants sing for four celebrity judges whose chairs are turned so they aren't swayed by the appearance of the contestant.  If a judge likes what he or she hears, a buzzer is hit to turn the chair around announcing to the contestant that that judge wants him or her on his team.  If multiple judges turn around, the contestant picks which judge will be his coach.  Once the teams are picked, there are knockout rounds within the teams.  This is the first problem that I have with the show. 

The two teammates sing a song together, alternating lyrics.  How anyone is supposed to decide which vocalist is better from this is anyone's guess.  I suppose professional singers can tell; Karen always points out when someone it pitchy, something that completely escapes me, so I'm probably wrong on this point. 

After the teams are set, a further winnowing down of the teams is made.  The vocalists are guided not only by their coaches but by celebrity coaches brought in to tutor them.  Admittedly, they do instruct the contestants.  Then the contestants sing songs either they chose or that were chosen for them by their coaches. 

Here's another problem I have with the show.  At this juncture, the singers are all marvelously gifted.  Virtually any of these people could win the competition.  Sure, there are styles that I don't particularly like, but the talent that reaches this level is astounding.  If the touchstone for this show is American Idol, at no point in that show's history did it have the abundance of quality that The Voice has at this stage in the competition every single year.  This year alone there have to be between five and ten contestants who could have their own recording contracts,  When did that ever happen at Idol?

The judges' votes at this point seem random.  I guess their positioning themselves to have the best contestants for the finale when the public actually votes for the winner.  And this hits another problem with the show:  When they're interviewed prior to singing for the first time -- and at various points as they progress -- more backstories are elicited that play on the viewers' emotions.  I understand people have lives and histories, but the editing that puts these stories out there is done for effect.  And as much as the novelty of having judges not see the vocalists when they do the blind auditions is cool, the viewers see the contestants from the get-go, so hot women and men must earn extra votes for that.

Despite its superior production values, The Voice has fallen victim to its popularity.  At times, it engages in cutesy segments that detract from the purpose of the show just to fill time.  It's not as bad as DWTS, but it's annoying nonetheless.

One final comparison between the shows is worth pointing out:  For as bad as DWTS is, Tom Bergeron is an excellent host.  In fact, he's the only reason I pay any attention.  He's as quick-witted as anyone in show business.  On The Voice, Carson Daly, for as nice a person as he is, is a wooden host, given to over-exuberant reactions at the most inappropriate times.  He's a seemingly nice guy, but he's as stolid in his role as Bergeron is easily personable.

The Voice is the superior show if for no other reason than the product it produces is better.  The talent level of the contestants is so much higher than that on DWTS.  Even if it weren't, the stupid schmaltzy vignettes, the unctuous love everyone has for each other, the attempt at creating a DWTS family -- it all just rubs the wrong way.

But again, there's a reason I don't dance or sing for a living.

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Implosions

Fall is my favorite time of year.  The weather is perfect, the smells are heightened, the foods are more to my liking, college football is upon us and holiday season is back.  Add to that it was in October when I first met my bride and it's understandable why I enjoy fall so much.

This fall, however, has an added bonus.  Simultaneously, three industries are imploding.  Two of them I detest, one of them I tolerate with indifference.  Never in my wildest dreams did I think any one of them would teeter so much, let alone all three of them teeter at the same time.  But the planets aligned perfectly to cause the NFL, the Democratic Party and Hollywood to all go through massive implosions one right after the other.  And the beauty of each one is that each implosion just keeps going and going and going....

The NFL has faced a backlash of fan discontent when the players decided to emulate Colin Kapernick and kneel during the national anthem.  Reports vary as to the motivation behind the kneeling, but it hasn't resonated with the fans.  Fans in droves are staying away from the stadia to the point that the owners are concerned.  This weekend there's supposed to be a boycott of the games to show support for veterans, given that tomorrow is Veteran's Day.  Add to that the ongoing struggles addressing abuse of women and the CTE issue and the NFL is a hot mess.  It's so hot that now renegade owner Jerry Jones is threatening to sue the NFL a la Al Davis because the compensation committee is about to renew commissioner Roger Goodell's contract for $44M.  Needless to say, it hasn't been a good year for the NFL.

If the NFL has issues, the Democratic Party is beside itself.  Having lost the presidential election to a non-politician after harrumphing that there was no way on God's green earth that Donald Trump would ever be president, Cankles lost all but the coastal elites at the end of her Inevitability Tour.  She then took to the book tour where she tried to explain away her loss on everyone but herself, further casting the party into disrepute.   In the meantime Wikileaks provided evidence that the DNC rigged the primary so that Cankles would win and Bernie, despite the groundswell of grassroot support, didn't have a chance.  Recently, Donna Brazile, who took over the chair of the DNC for the disgraced Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, has written a book wherein she pointed the finger at Cankles for taking over the DNC.  As if all that weren't bad enough, an ultra-liberal activist group referring to itself as Antifa (short for Anti-Fascist) has been wreaking havoc nationwide because it feels that President Trump is racist and fascist, for some reason.  In the process, antifa has highjacked the Democratic Party, causing even such liberal stalwarts as Nancy Pelosi to criticize its tactics, which are, ironically, reminiscent of Nazi tactics.  Donna Brazile is now sniping with Cankles and Cankles is accusing Ms. Brazile of being a Russian agent.  It's so aburd that it almost sounds like the plot of a Hollywood political farce...

...Speaking of Hollywood, I've detailed the notorious indiscretions and possible crimes of movie czar Harvey Weinstein.  Given Weinstein's girth, it's not a stretch to claim that his fall broke the dam, so to speak, on other powerful men who have groped their ways to power.  Now, other moguls have been accused of being Weinsteinian, as have high-profile actors like Kevin Spacey.  The shooting inside Hollywood's tent is fascinating.  People are claiming everyone knew, while others claim not everything was known.  As this goes on, movie ticket sales plummet, a la the NFL's attendance figures.  Virtually every day another story comes out about some actor or actress who was violated in some fashion.  The interesting spin on the Hollywood implosion is that it goes from heterosexual to homosexual abuse and, sadly, even into abuse of minors. 

Why am I so tickled by all of this?  First, the NFL is a behemoth that I've said for years is too full of itself.  Football is football, but compared to the college game, the NFL is sterile, stoic, almost robotic.  The Democrats have been fooling people for years, touting itself as the more moral of the political parties (is that even possible?) and hypocritical as hell.  That they've been shown to resort to decidedly undemocratic tricks to win elections even within their own ranks is telling.  And Hollywood?  Those people who imitate other people for a living have been so busy telling the rest of us that we don't know what we're doing, that we are racists, rapist enablers and worse, and yet within their own community, they're worse than anyone.  Either they were involved in the abuse, or they knew about the abuse and condoned it with their silence, or they were willfully ignorant of the rumors.  Yet they acted as if they owned the moral imperative and had the right to criticize the rest of us.

I don't know much about the story of Nero fiddling while Rome burned, but I wonder if anything that was burning while he fiddled was like the NFL, the Democrats or Hollywood...

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles