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.

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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.

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