12-16-2009

Tiger– Don’t expect any sympathy for Mr. Woods in this quarter. I’m no less curious than anyone else as to how this public figure, whose entire persona was based on a reputation of steely discipline and an iron will, succumbed so easily to what essentially are the ‘wet dreams’ of sixteen-year-olds. Yes, any heterosexual male over the age of 14 understands perfectly well the allure of beautiful, available women. It’s a biological imperative: gorgeous women are intoxicating. At least Odysseus, passing the island of Circe where stunning Sirens, the very first ‘VIP hostesses’, resided, and who were crying out for him, had the foresight to tie himself to a mast as he sailed by. Not Tiger Woods – he couldn’t even drive by a Perkins Pancake House 10 minutes from his home in Florida without hitting on an eight-dollar-an-hour waitress. Mr. Gripes has no sympathy for fools. One other thing about Mr. Woods that leaves Mr. Gripes cold: he’s cheap. It’s customary for golf professionals after a tournament to tip the clubhouse boys who assisted them during the event – polishing shoes, taking care of the bags, retrieving drinks, laundry, the menial jobs. Archrival Phil Michelson, after one such four-day tournament this year, gave to the three kids helping out $500 apiece. Mr. Woods? He didn’t tip any of them one nickel. Nada. He’s a billionaire. Tiger, you’re a chump.

Invictus – Mr. Gripes will never plunk down his ten bucks to see this film, out last Friday. At his advanced age, Mr. Gripes has finally mastered a technique of sniffing out bad movies before he’s even read any reviews. And, Invictus, I know in my bones, is a movie that I must avoid. Let me enumerate my reasons:       1. Clint Eastwood [director]: Mr. Eastwood specializes these days in movies that resemble three-layer cakes – hokum, on top of cliché, on top of cornball. His films are as nuanced as bulldozers, and as inert as a scrod filet on ice…2. Morgan Freeman: Mr. Freeman hasn’t turned down a movie role in 20 years; he’s in everything – and, alas, once you get pass that great voice, he’s dull, dull, dull. Plus, exacerbating his somnolent mien, he’s portraying Nelson Mandela, a monumental, historic figure certainly, but not exactly Mr. Excitement. 3. Matt Damon: Mr. Damon, who consorts with pretty-boy actors and gorgeous starlets out there in sun-splashed Malibu, somehow nabbed the role of captain of a South African national rugby team. Who’s kidding whom? Rugby in South Africa is top-notch, and from the perspective of a former player, ferociously and viciously competitive. I’m sorry, Matt, but tofu salad and spicy tuna rolls are not normally present at the training table. One muscular forearm to Mr. Damon’s $40,000 worth of bridgework, and he’d shatter into a thousand pieces, like expensive crystal….4. Finally, the plot: South Africa, riven by black and white distrust, becomes united as all its citizens, whatever their skin color, root as one for its rugby team’s victory in a championship match. That’s Mr. Eastwood alright: Let’s all get the Kleenex out, and shed copious tears over warmed-over clichés.  Don’t believe it for a second: the motif of a country coming together over a sports event to create a permanent harmony is maudlin Hollywood horse crap.

AK-47 – The weapon of choice for terrorists around the globe is the AK-47, a light, versatile sub-machine gun originally manufactured in Russia, but now prevalent in every third-world, distressed country.

In Africa, one AK-47 costs $30.00. That’s all.

That’s why Africa arguably finds itself in a hopeless, doomed condition. The Congo, Somalia, Sudan and many other countries have no functioning governments – they’re essentially rogue states. Sure, sham ‘governments’ exist, but there’re actually no legitimate legal systems, no functioning heads of states, no tax systems, and no national transportation systems. An enterprising young criminal, to fund an armed militia of, say, 50 men, needs only $1,500 to create his own army. In the Congo, the one country I know something about, there are thousands of these militias, armed with AK-47’s, who set up road blocks to extract ‘tolls’ from trucks and cars, and freely maraud the villages nearby, stealing, raping, and killing. The AK-47 is the curse of Africa. Worse, there’s apparently no strong countervailing force capable of disarming the militias, most of which are composed of young teenage boys.  The United States, which used to be the only country that really gave a damn about Africa, got severely burned by an adventure in Somalia [Remember ‘Blackhawk Down’?], and, correctly I think, withdrew from any additional humanitarian initiatives. Nothing’s going to get better over there for a long, long time.

Unfortunately, that leaves just one country heavily involved in the continent at the moment: China. They don’t give a damn, either, about anyone’s welfare, but they do have the money and intent to buy up the huge precious-metal assets essential to maintain the massive industrial engines of major powers. China has figured out it does not need to build up a huge military presence. By purchasing vast natural resources all over the world, especially in Africa, they’ll be able one day to strangle American industry by charging exorbitant prices, or even withholding vital metals, i.e., titanium, platinum, chromium, from us. They’ll have cornered the market. America and the West better wake up. Mr. Gripes, though, is not optimistic. Instead of dealing with problems threatening the country’s survival, we’re bogged down with abortion rights, same sex marriage and spurious Kenyan birth certificates. Just a hunch, but I’ll wager that the Roman Empire, obsessively preoccupied with its internal petty, irrelevant disputes, expired in just such a fashion.

Archived columns found at www.mistergripes.com…

If you’d like to, you may ‘subscribe’ to Mr. Gripes on the above website, and you’ll receive future columns automatically. There’s no fee involved. Just supply your e-mail address in the space indicated in the upper right corner.

Jim Israel                                                                                                                             December 16, 2009

by James Israel, aka Mister Gripes                                December 1, 2009

Quick Jabs….

Item: A professional football player is fined $10,000 by the National Football League for not wearing a belt of a mandated color to match his uniform. This actually happened a few weeks ago: Just consider a couple of factors for a moment: 67% of the players in the league are black [and that number’s increasing every year], and all the owners are rich white men. Mr. Gripes had a single visceral response to this news:  We’re back on an antebellum cotton plantation outside Savannah, circa 1855. The plantation owner, worried about controlling his unruly slaves, threatens, “Listen, boy, tie up your pants with that rope real quick, or you’re gonna get a whipping.” That, Mr. Gripes is certain, was essentially the reaction of every black player in the league. The billionaire owners, in accruing money and power, lost their moral compass and humanity a long time ago, so I don’t blame them. The real villain here is the players union, with its black leaders, who permitted an indignity of this magnitude to occur. ‘Uncle Tom’, a notion that’s almost disappeared from our national psyche, is apparently alive and flourishing.

Ever notice the shortest guys wear the longest shorts? They resemble dwarfs, absolutely the opposite impression they’d like to display to the young ladies. Look in the mirror, guys.

Let’s play word association….’Ike Turner?’ Your instant thought: ‘He beat his wife, Tina.’ That’s it, right?  Get over it. Despite the disgrace and humiliation Mr. Turner brought on himself, he indisputably was a musical genius. Mr. Gripes’ favorite music is 1940’s/50’s rock and roll. It’s the most sublime music ever created. And, the late Ike Turner, when Tina Turner was lead singer in his band, produced some of the finest rhythm-and-blues. [Incidentally, it was called ‘race music’ in the ‘40s.] Once she left the band, Ms. Turner never again sounded so celestial. The lovely, honeyed voice that was discovered and nurtured by Mr. Turner was gone. What Tina Turner turns out these days is nothing but a lot of yelling and screaming. Ike Turner belongs in the Hall of Fame; Tina decidedly does not.

So many Americans expend so much energy denigrating and vilifying Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Mr. Gripes just doesn’t get it. The venom and hatred that pours from the mouths of her detractors are so disproportionate to her actual power. Astonishing.  Her predecessor, Dennis Hastert, holding the identical position, engendered not a thimble’s worth of criticism, so something’s amiss. Mr. Gripes, as one would guess, has a theory: Ms. Pelosi, obviously a competent, confident and successful woman, on some level frightens or threatens men. What that fear or threat may be I’m not sophisticated enough to know, but it is evident that Ms. Pelosi’s most egregious sin, for a lot of men, is her gender.

The word that pops into Mr. Gripes’ head when he observes television political pundit George Will is ‘persnickety.’ It’s as if Mr. Will emerged, with bow tie in place and supercilious demeanor intact, from some 19^th-century, Thomas Hardy novel. Another Gripesian ad-hominem observation:  the countenance of Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky never changes: always clenched and pained, he looks like he’s just consumed a large glass of warm, rancid milk.

Mr. Gripes understands that he may be tiptoeing on terra incognita at this juncture, but he’d like to comment briefly on the incomprehensible phenomenon called ‘women’s fashion.’ Two months ago, women’s tall boots were not at all visible in New York. Virtually overnight, at mach-6 speed, every other woman now owns a pair and is wearing them. To a disturbingly straight male, the velocity and momentum at which women pick up on a trend is totally mysterious: one day a particular fashion is non-existent, the next day there’s a million pair of boots pounding the pavement. Mr. Gripes is not complaining: there’s something very tribal and life-affirming about the byzantine world that is women’s fashion. And, apart from a faint resemblance to the Prussian Army officer corps, the boots on women look great.

Allow me, dear readers, to add a brief historical note:  I happened to go to school across the street from one of the ‘Seven Sisters’ women’s colleges. The students at that school were very bright and assertive, I recall. In the autumn of 1964, Mr. Gripes observed that many of the women there, perhaps in defiance, were wearing men’s construction boots; I had never seen women wear boots of any kind previously. To this day, I’m certain I was present, like the Three Wise Men, at a Creation: boots became very ‘hip’ soon after. I’ve always believed that those strong, powerful women on the other side of Broadway paved the way for the stylish, sexy boots women wear today.

His critics accuse him of every venality: he’s Hitler, he’s Stalin, he’s Hugo Chavez, he’s a Communist, he’s a fascist, he’s a traitor, he’s ‘taken our country from us,’ he’s setting up death camps, his friends are terrorists, he’s not even an American. Despite the savagery emanating from radio jocks who conduct themselves like spoiled, insolent, loud-mouthed, ill-mannered children, Barack Obama manages to maintain a civility, a grace, a commitment to hard work, an eloquence and appreciation of language,  a reverence for education and scholarship, and, yes, even an optimism. His accusers are greatly diminished in comparison.

­­­_____________________________________________________________________________________

Pirates, Again…

It’s getting worse. Once upon a time, just a few months ago, the pirates off the coast of Somalia boarded only huge cargo ships, and took the crews hostage. That activity has become a more difficult feat lately, as countries of the shippers have taken steps to deter the criminals. So, a month ago, the little bastards perpetrated an even more despicable crime: they kidnapped off a sailboat a couple enjoying a vacation on the high seas. The scenario becomes more chilling: the kidnappers transported the couple to land, hustled them into cars that were last seen speeding rapidly into the interior, as another bunch of competing bastards were in hot pursuit in order to steal away the two people so they could hold them for ransom.

Just imagine how terrified these two captives feel. As stated in an earlier column, Mr. Gripes continues to push for some action: the United States, Britain, France and all affected nations assemble a 1,000-strong ‘Dirty Dozen’ commando squad, pinpoint exactly where all the pirates are [I’m sure the United States has that information], and initiate a raid, with concussive bombs, Predator drones, and grenades, to eradicate these pirates. If an Audi or Jaguar or Mercedes is spotted on some rutted road in the interior, destroy it. The idea that these criminals, who incredibly have amassed $100 million in ransom money this year, are riding around in luxury automobiles in villages that make slums in Haiti look like Dubai, just infuriates Mr. Gripes. Let’s clean ‘em out for good. If hostages die, well, that’s the price of ridding the world of these gutless, pitiless vermin.

And, if the Somalia government objects, my response would be, ‘Tough sh_t, Sherlock. You’re a broken state. When did you plundering thieves last protect your own citizens? They’ve been terrified and defenseless for years in the face of the all the murderous warlords running amok in their midst. You’ve allowed your people to be raped, macheteed, and slaughtered. The population would welcome an eradication of these lawless criminals, and thank us for it.’ Mr. Gripes at the moment sits at his desk, gripping its edges tightly, seething and furious that this behavior has been allowed to continue with impunity. Locate them.  Identify them. Eliminate them.

Ayn Rand, of the Fed-

As a young man, Mr. Gripes was compelled in despotic classrooms to read books he wouldn’t dare use now even as doorstops – execrable, turgid, impenetrable garbage. One stands out as among the worst – The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand. A 340-pound, strong-as-an-ox professional nose tackle like NY Jet Chris Jenkins would have difficulties bench-pressing the weighty tome – a brisk read, at, get this, 600-or-so pages and 500,000 words. But, miracles do happen in our great land: this worthless and silly novel, its architect-hero a comic-book character of unblemished character who fights and wins battles to build skyscrapers against meddling bureaucrats, resembling no one more than the fabled personage of Mighty Mouse, was to become the ‘Koran’ for the true believers of the free-market philosophy. It gets crazier: one of Ms. Rand’s acolytes, who regularly sat at her knee to soak in her half-baked aphorisms 60 years ago, was none other than the beloved Alan Greenspan.

Decades later, Mr. Greenspan, his fervor for free markets unabated, became Fed chairman. Still wedded to the concept that only the ‘pure’ free markets can correctly and successfully guide a huge economy like ours, Mr. Greenspan tossed the dice, and lost. Take a look now at your 401[k]: Mr. Greenspan’s Fed policies, in channeling Ms. Rand’s economic theories, were a colossal, disastrous mistake.

You see, my always astute readers, Mr. Greenspan overlooked one huge flaw in his cockeyed calculations: free markets do not exist in America. Our national mythology insists they do, but that’s a false notion. I’m not talking about two bodegas across the street from each other; they compete for customers fairly and judiciously, through pricing and product. No, it’s the mega-industries that destroy any free market ethos. Telecom, Big Pharma, real estate developers, defense contractors, Wall Street, insurers: billion-dollar industries spend millions and millions, in political contributions [all legal, of course] to influence cash-crazy politicians, who subsequently pass laws that eviscerate competition.

Just take a look at your own cable television situation: there’s no choice involved – the telecom companies essentially divided up territories among themselves, with a single company in each proscribed zone. The consumer can get his services only from that one designated provider, or go without. Congress allowed this to occur, after reaping millions from telecom lobbyists. Free market competition? Bull crap. ‘Monopoly’ is the operative word.

Ayn Rand, who evinced not a sliver of humor in her novels, did come up with one uproarious, entirely accurate nickname for Alan Greenspan during his visits to her Los Angeles home in the 1950’s: she called him ‘The Undertaker.’ Prescient, too. Mr. Gripes, ever the wordsmith, could never have found a more fitting appellation for our illustrious chairman. Bullseye, Ms. Rand. Perfect.

Direct comments to: Jamesisrael77@yahoo.com

Website: www.mistergripes.com

Send a request for a subscription to my e-mail address, and I’ll send out the Mr. Gripes posts as I complete them.