Well now the second big liberal icon is dropping off the radio spectrum. Yeah, today is Ed’s last day. Nothing like a lot of advanced notice, huh? Ed Schultz, trying to sugar coat it as he will, is getting out of regular radio broadcasts. He claims he doesn’t have the time any more to sit and devote three hours in a radio studio for a broadcast. So apparently today is his last day, and all of the callers were wishing him well and such, and he’ll still have his TV show on MSNBC. However the loss of Randy and Ed in the same month is a little much to take. It will leave a big hole in the day. Before I began watching Ed on the Chicago station - - there was a lot of open space in the morning with that nightmare “live and local” format on KTLK where you had all these KFI hybred-transplants filling in. Stephanie Miller won’t be doing any more sexy liberal tours for the remainder of 2014 after this final gig she’s doing in Mimiapolis on Saturday June 7th when I’ll be glued to my TV watching the Belmont Stakes and seeing California Chrome win the Tripple Crown. It’s pretty much time for “retired” liberals like me to get back into the employment market and ‘get a life” and just forget about politics because it will only make us depressed. Clearly “the new normal” is here to stay with all of the surrenders of civil liberties, and a world of increasing pollution and global warming and weird weather, and a money supply that’s only a fraction of what it once was.
Given the situation we face in America today, I guess it’s time for us Progressives to try and figure out how to be good conservatives. Thom Hartman had a suggestion, although he probably doesn’t know he made it. And that is the Truth that under Ronald Reagan it wasn’t all bad. There was a good thing that Ronald Reagan did. He got Americans investing in the stock market. Remember I told you that CEO’s investment (salaries) in the stock market fueled the vast explosion in the stock markets we witnessed in the 1980’s. Frankly it blew my mind the extent of the rise. I had been following the stock market since at least June of 1969 and I had never seen anything like the explosion in prices we witnessed in the ‘eighties. So maybe you couldn’t count on your Union to guarantee you higher wages. And you had people like Bob Dylan now as it were “working for the other side” singing songs like “Sundown on the Unions” and calling them greedy and such now. But you could put your earnings in the stock market and you too could be part of the American Dream. This option, need I remind you is STILL open to you, and I have been recommending it this whole year of 2014 that you do so, as a means of beating inflation. I’m not worried about any “bubble” because for any long time student of the markets you know that any time there is a lot of general skepticism and apprehension among the general public about the stock market- - that is Thee perfect time to Invest. Of course it goes without saying that those radio commentators on the Right won’t be following the lead of Ed and Randy anytime soon. They would respond “Get out of AM talk radio - - what do you think we Are - - Stupid?” No, no. But you know if some wise-acre were back in the fourth century when the Roman Empire was becoming Christianized, I or somebody might deliver a speech to the effect “This transformation and abandonment of tradition is not a good thing. And I believe it may well lead to centuries of what would be known as the Dark Ages, with the loss of intellectual discourse in society”. But then Ed would take the rostrum after me and say “Well you know things change and the Church is evolving into the new form of government now and we need to get with the times here. Besides you know this whole castle and moat thing with the serfs working on the plantation for nothing - - it’s just a natural evolution of the economy and signaling a trend of “decentralization of commerce”. That’s what he’d call it. Of course thirty years ago in early March of 1983 I wrote a piece- - which I think was our first reference ever to global warming and pollution on a massive scale- - as a mustard green sky and stagnant air hung over Southern California - - and the race thing and even “propaganda” and also the security thing with people needing passes to travel to a different government sector, all got thrown in there. I don’t know whether I still have that page - - but I’d like to reread it now.
It dawned on me that - - people by instinct tend to be “progressive”. It’s pretty good when you consider the alternatives, which are either “stagnent’ or “regressive”. I remember Ron Rhodes in 1982 and I kind of felt like I was “taking a step backwards” in some of those activities. Ron said his least favorite outing was going to a movie. He much preferred some card game, or more physical activities we did back with that BOSC group including bowling, miniature golf. Ice skating baseball games, both playing and watching, or the beach. With Terry it was more likely to be amusement parks, movies, or museums or some science exhibit. But today’s young people get squinty eyed staring at their I phones as if there were some fascination holding their attention for hours. The trouble with the Tea Party among other things- - is that it seems like some intellectual retreat back to some - - imaginary place that never existed. I think the motto of fundamentalist Christianity should be “let’s do some living, after we die”. Glen Beck said this morning (almost agreeing with me) that this economy has a lot of innate potential to really take off - - with the right prompting. But why is it - - that all of the most liberal and if you will “Progressive” ideas - - seem to be in books that are forty and fifty years old that most of the time sit dusty on shelves? What STOPPED our forward political and intellectual evolution?
This is Thursday May 22, 2014 and the weekend will be approaching soon. I was thinking this morning I need to be “reaching outward” more to potential social activities, like I was just reminiscing about yesterday. I need to charge up all four batteries for my camera and begin taking pictures again. I had intended - - a couple of months ago - - to begin a major new wave of picture taking, because there are a lot of people I interact with now that I didn’t three years ago or so. Oddly, most of the economic statistics you see quoted seem to run to about 2011 and they don’t including the key developments of the past couple of years, so paint a grim picture - - usually more favorable to the republican doom and gloom scenarios. I’d like to get away from doom and gloom. I’m not getting enough caffeine. I think even twenty years ago I was a more optimistic person given whatever situation I faced. If I had to pick a date when “Rock officially died” it would have to be Jerry Garsia’s death in early August of 1995. If I were going to do a rewind of my life it would be somewhere around that period. It’s too bad they haven’t had the Grateful Dead hour in nearly twenty years. When Jerry Garsia was alive there was still a living continuity to the past. I’m thinking it wouldn’t be too bad to rewind the clock to exactly eighteen years ago. The last time I positively remember seeing Marie and her girls was watching them in the poor on Mothers Day. At some point after this Marie moved out, but I’m not sure if it was by herself, of whether she officially hooked up with that Christian fat guy she had been seeing. I wish I’d had other final conversations with her to see where her head was at and what she thought about things. Of course it was Dianne and her son Zach, who lifted me out of the “blue funk” I was in for a lot of spring 1996. But of course Dianne a few days before the fourth of July announced she was moving out too, and she did not have a boyfriend. It’s kind of an ongoing game of God playing a gigantic game of “social keep-away” with me. Another reason driving me to pick summer of 1995 is because it’s after the majority of the OJ trial, and sitting through that thing again would prove unendurable. But also it was just before Aunt Bonnie had her stroke, after which she was never the same again - - the bubbly, vibrant person she was - - and after this point she seemed plagued with various illnesses. But also it was before the fabled “government shut-down” and before some of this horrible legialation got passed by that congress and signed by a Judas president, alias the Communications Bill Reform Act or whatever of 1996. What price would you pay to “undo the deed” of that atrocity?
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