Thoughts on The California Store Owner Shot & Killed For Displaying a Pride Flag

On Friday, a 66-year-old California clothing store owner named Lauri Carleton was shot and killed in front of her establishment in Cedar Glen, a little over 80 miles east of Los Angeles, following a confrontation over a pride flag displayed on the premises. 

The suspect, who has been identified as a 27-year-old man named Travis Ikeguchi, was killed by local authorities when he opened fire upon them. Ikeguchi had a history of posting hateful messages against the LGBTQ community online. For her part, Carleton did not identify as LGBTQ, but considered herself an ally of the community. 

I think of the places I have lived over the past 15 years - Jamaica Plain, the Upper West Side, Midtown Atlanta and now Cambridge. Pride flags are ubiquitous in businesses and private residences alike in these communities, especially here in Cambridge. You notice these things and at the same time you don't notice them because it's like they were always here even though nothing could be further from the truth.

Whether this was the act of a madman or someone who took his cues from the right-wing ecosphere, this killing is a stark reminder that hate is never far away and can manifest itself with deadly force in an instant. One can hope such a tragedy will not deter individuals and business owners from displaying pride flags, especially in Cedar Glen, California. If anything, one can further hope it would firm their resolve.

Israel is More in Danger of Resembling Turkey Than Apartheid Era South Africa

Over the years, Israel has been consistently yet falsely compared to Apartheid era South Africa. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights have made this declaration in recent years. 

Such comparison is irresponsible and intended to incite and inflame hatred against not only the State of Israel, but the Jewish people at large. It is therefore disturbing to learn that South African born Israeli author Benjamin Pogrund, who has long rejected the Apartheid label, has declared that Israel is heading in that direction in an op-ed for The Guardian:

I did not want to write this article. It was torn out of me, addressed to Israelis because the rightwing government is taking the country into institutionalised discrimination and racism. This is apartheid. South Africa under apartheid was straightforward: white v black. Israel is complex. The 21% Arab minority has the vote. Everyone pays the same national insurance and enjoys the same benefits – medical and social welfare. In hospital, I, a Jew, share a room with Arabs and we are cared for by the same Jewish and Arab doctors and nurses. Everything is open: beaches, park benches, movies, theatres, restaurants. The apartheid label is correct, but caution and thought are needed about comparisons.

I disagree. The Apartheid label is incorrect. In Apartheid era South Africa, blacks had no right to vote nor right to participate in South African society. Pogrund cedes Arabs have the vote in Israel. Indeed, Arabs serve in the Knesset and Mansour Abbas of the Arab List held the balance of power in the coalition government of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid of 2021-2022. Abbas himself explicitly rejected the argument that Israel is an Apartheid state.  Moreover, there is an Arab jurist Khaled Kabub who serves on Israel's Supreme Court. People like Mansour Abbas and Khaled Kabub would have simply not existed in Apartheid era South Africa. 

There is something happening in Israel, but it isn't Apartheid. If we want to make comparisons, then we need to look closer in the region. If we examine Israel's controversial judicial overhaul legislation and forthcoming legislation curtailing press freedom, then we ought to look at Turkey. During President Erdogan's 20 years in power, he curtailed the independence of the Turkish judiciary and freedom of the press. And yet Erdogan seldom faces criticism from the West as he is regarded a power broker between Washington and Moscow. If Benjamin Netanyahu is looking to model himself after anyone it is Erdogan, not a political system which was dismantled 30 years ago.

Of course, Netanyahu has certain obstacles which Erdogan doesn't. For starters, although Netanyahu is Israel's longest serving Prime Minister, he is 73 and had a health scare last month. The likes of Yariv Levin (the architect of Israel's judicial overhaul), Yoav Gallant, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are waiting not so patiently in the wings. 

There is also the strength of Israeli civil society which has vociferously protested the judicial overhaul and will soon likely turn its attention to press freedoms. Let us also keep in mind, there is no guarantee the government won't collapse forcing yet new elections which could result in a non-Likudnik like Benny Gantz becoming Israel's next Prime Minister. Of course, even if this did come to pass, it would be interesting to see if Gantz would have the necessary support to reverse the judicial and media overhauls. 

But assuming Netanyahu remains in power for the foreseeable future, he will be on a much shorter leash than Erdogan no matter how many of his political opponents and dissidents he might jail. After all, this is Israel we are talking about. 

Nevertheless, one cannot underestimate Netanyahu's desire to remain in power especially with bribery and corruption charges which remain hanging over his head. Yet if we are to legitimately criticize Netanyahu and the current political climate in Israel, then it is incumbent upon us not to recklessly invoke terms like Apartheid. Someone like Benjamin Pogrund ought to know better because most who do invoke such charges do so in bad faith and with the objective of destroying Israel. 

If one wants to genuinely understand where Israel might be heading or, at the very least, understand Netanyahu's state of mind and motivations, then we must look to Ankara instead of Apartheid.

Pee-wee Herman Was a Loner & Rebel at Heart in Adventures Big & Small

 

Last night, I went to the Brattle Theatre where there was a special screening of Pee-wee's Big Adventure in tribute to Paul Reubens who passed away late last month of cancer. 

Unlike Jaws, I had seen Pee-wee's Big Adventure on home video but didn't remember very much of it. The only parts of Pee-wee's Big Adventure I remember is the iconic biker bar scene where he dances to "Tequila" and the conclusion at the drive-in where Pee-wee is watching James Brolin play P.W. Herman while Pee-wee is featured a hotel clerk whose dialogue is dubbed. And the thing is I'm not sure why. I have a fairly good memory of my childhood and adolescence. Yet most of the film somehow escapes me. So, for all intents and purposes I was watching the movie for the first time.

The scene which struck the deepest chord was the one set in the bicycle shop where Pee-wee tells Dottie, "There's a lot of things about me you don't know about. Things you wouldn't understand. Things you couldn't understand. Things you shouldn't understand. I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel."

Now I can see how those lines took on new meaning following his infamous and dubious arrest for masturbation in an adult movie theatre. But even if that never came to pass, Paul Reubens through Pee-wee Herman was not always easily understood and to do what he did, he had to be a loner and a rebel. For this, we are a slightly better people. 

Notwithstanding, Pee-wee being a loner and a rebel, there is no doubt he took some inspiration from Buster Keaton when it came to physical comedy. He even resembled Keaton somewhat. Of course, Keaton never had to talk onscreen and if he did, he would have sounded nothing like Pee-wee Herman. In this respect, Paul Reubens a.k.a. Pee-wee Herman was truly an original. R.I.P.

Ex-Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn Blames Jews For Their Deportations to Auschwitz....Again

Former Trump National Security Advisor turned Christian nationalist QAnon adherent Michael Flynn blamed Jews for their deportations to Auschwitz and, by extension, their deaths during the Second World War. Speaking at a church in Michigan earlier this month, Flynn stated:

Any mother who would be told, "Give me your child! Give me your child! Your baby!" and we're gonna separate you and we're not just gonna put you on a club coach car, right, where there's buffet service. We're gonna stuff you like a sardine into a train.

From there, Flynn spoke about his visit to Auschwitz:

But I'm thinking to myself, cause I asked, I asked the guy, the astute historian who was walking myself and couple of us through 'em. I'm asking him, "So tell me what were the rules for the guards?" Because there weren't any guards. But there were thousands, thousands of people. Maybe it's a member of your congregation. Maybe it's you that just said, "Here's my child and get on the train." 

Not surprisingly this isn't the first time, Flynn has made such an analogy. In October 2021, at a rally for eventual New Hampshire Republican Senate nominee Don Bolduc, Flynn spoke about his visit to Auschwitz and said:

Jesus, how could somebody stand there and just allow these people to do that to them? And then knowing what they knew, how could they get on that train? I would have rather attacked that machine gun nest.

Knowing what I know today, I would never get on that train.

Well, that's easy for him to say, isn't it?

It is kind of curious that Flynn would talk about separating mothers from their children considering this was something the Trump Administration did at the Southern border. No, I am not likening the Trump Administration to Nazi Germany, but this deed was plenty cruel and inhumane. More to the point, I cannot imagine Flynn nor anyone else in this sphere pondering why migrant families didn't resist such efforts. 

Of course, Flynn's argument is morally bankrupt. The Nazis and the Nazis alone bear all responsibility for deporting Jews to death camps in an effort to exterminate Jews from the face of the Earth. Those who were sent to their deaths at Auschwitz did not ask for their fate nor were they complicit in bringing it about. Anyone who suggests the Jews were responsible for their deportations to Auschwitz is giving the Nazis absolution while sullying the memories of those Jews who were murdered at Auschwitz. Period.

Simply put, Michael Flynn is no friend of the Jews.

Trump & 18 Other Defendants Charged in Conspiracy To Overturn 2020 Election in Georgia

Defeated, former President Donald Trump has been charged on 13 counts in a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. 

Eighteen other defendants, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, have been charged on 28 additional counts. Also charged were Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis along with John Eastman who was the key figure in unlawfully organizing an alternate slate of electoral college delegates. 

This is the next phase of a process which began when Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis launched an investigation in February 2021, one month after Trump's "perfect call" with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger demanding he "find" 11,780 votes to overturn President Biden's victory in the Peach State in the 2020 election. 

Aside from charges being brought concerning calls Trump made to Raffensperger and other Georgia state officials and the alternate electoral college delegate scheme, there are charges pertaining to false statements, efforts by Trump's team to breach voting data in Coffee County and the harassment of election workers.

This is now the fourth set of indictments with which Trump has been charged this year. Trump was first charged in March by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg on 34 counts of falsifying business records. In June, Trump was charged by Special Counsel Jack Smith with 37 counts of mishandling classified documents at Mar-a-Lago which was superseded by three additional counts last month including willful retention of a top-secret document concerning military plans in Iran. Earlier this month, Smith also charged Trump with four counts pertaining to the events of January 6th. 

Trump could stand trial on the January 6th charges as early as January 2024 while the New York case is scheduled to begin in March 2024 while the classified documents case trial is slated to commence in May 2024. Given the large number of defendants involved, it very much remains to be seen when everyone will be arraigned let alone when trial dates will be scheduled. Of course, it is entirely possible that some of these defendants might have something to say concerning Trump thus resulting in lesser charges or charges being dropped altogether. 

Notwithstanding all these charges, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee next year and we might be just foolish enough him to elect him President once more.

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" Was a Lament Against War, Not a Confederate Anthem

Last week, Robbie Robertson, best remembered as the principal songwriter for the 1960s & 1970s group The Band, passed away of prostate cancer at the age of 80.

Among Robertson's best known his works is his most controversial, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". Originally released in 1969 as part of The Band's eponymous second album (a.k.a. The Brown Album), Robertson tells the fictional account of a Tennessee farmer named Virgil Kane during the Civil War.

To the extent there should be a controversy pertains to the authorship of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". While Robertson has sole writing credit for "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and most of their well-known hits such as "The Weight", "Up on Cripple Creek" and "Ophelia", the late Levon Helm contended that these songs were written collaboratively among all members of The Band including Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson. 

In recent years, however, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" has been criticized for glorifying the Confederacy, most notably by writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. In a 2009 essay for The Atlantic, Coates wrote in part:

I was thinking about the Richmond yesterday, and The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."... I'm told that it's a great song, and I don't so much doubt this, as I doubt my own magnanimity.....I can no more marvel at The Band then a Sioux can marvel at the cinematography of "The Died With Their Boots On." I wouldn't fault the man who could, but it's not me. My empathy is a resource to be rationed like all others....I started to play the song yesterday, and stopped myself. Again, I was angry. Again, another story about the blues of Pharaoh, and the people are invisible. The people are always invisible.

Yet by his own admission, Coates cannot bring himself to listen to "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" in its entirety. Coates ought to consider some of Robertson's lyrics:

Like my father before me
I will work the land
And like my brother above me
Who took a rebel stand

He was just 18, proud and brave
But a Yankee laid him in his grave
I swear by the mud below my feet
You can't raise a Kane back up
When he's in defeat

This is not a Confederate anthem much less a glorification of Confederacy, it is a lament against war.

It also strikes me how Coates invokes the Sioux Nation. I wonder if Coates is aware that the Canadian born Robertson was of Cayuga and Mohawk descent and was honored by the Six Nations of The Grand River upon his passing. Given his background, Robertson seems like an unlikely candidate to glorify the Confederate States of America. In a 2019 interview with John Fugelsang, Robertson explained the genesis of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down":

I was writing a movie about a Southern family that lost in the war, in the Civil War, and from their side, the story of that family. And I don't know, I was trying to write a song that Levon (Helm) could singer better than anybody in the world and that's all it was.

Now over the past half century plus, many have sung "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". Joan Baez would score the biggest hit of her career with her 1971 cover although she misheard some of the lyrics when she recorded the song. Like Robertson, Baez is an unlikely poster child for the Confederate cause. Perhaps Baez's version of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" would fill Coates with every bit as much anger as the original. If that is the case, then what emotions would be conjured in Coates had he heard versions of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" by the late African-American artists Richie Havens and Dobie Gray?

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" was part of Havens' live repertoire throughout his four decade plus performing career and appears on his 1990 album Live at The Cellar Door and The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, a collection of songs captured in concert between 1970 and 1972. Between 1999 and 2005, I had the privilege of seeing Havens in concert in both Canada and the United States half a dozen times as well as meeting him on several occasions. When Havens would perform "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", he invariably described it as an anti-war song.

Dobie Gray is best remembered for his 1965 hit "The In Crowd" and his 1973 hit "Drift Away". The latter song would return to the charts 30 years later when Uncle Kracker covered it accompanied by Gray himself. While Gray never recorded "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" on any of his studio albums, the song was a regular part of his concert repertoire. While Havens' interpretation is introspective and quiet, Gray's rendition is passionate and soulful. Perhaps Gray identified with the song because he was born in Texas to a family of sharecroppers. If that isn't sufficient to soothe Coates' anger, it is also well worth noting that Gray was the first international artist to perform in front of integrated audiences in South Africa in 1976. 

If I had the opportunity to speak with Ta-Nehisi Coates, I would ask him this question. If "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is a pro-Confederate anthem offensive to the ears of African-Americans, then why would Richie Havens and Dobie Gray spend a good part of their respective careers performing the song in public?

Given that such a conversation will unlikely ever come to pass, I think the answer is that the power of music gave Richie Havens, Dobie Gray, Joan Baez and, Robbie Robertson the sort of magnanimity which Ta-Nehisi Coates simply does not possess. Just as one cannot raise a Kane laying in defeat, one cannot open the heart of one with a closed mind.

The MBTA Commuter Rail Train From Rockport to Boston Approached Salem But Never Arrived

Last night, I ventured up to Salem on the MBTA Newburyport/Rockport Commuter Rail line to hear my friend Don Hammontree play a gig at the Lobster Shanty. 

I've seen him perform there and at other venues in Massachusetts and Rhode Island on several occasions over the past couple of years. At first, the crowd was sparse, and it appeared to be a dead Saturday night. Then out of nowhere comes a large party of perhaps 25 to 30 people celebrating some fellow's 40th birthday and they practically take over the entire joint. And did I mention they had too much blood in their alcohol?

Now that kind of crowd can get ugly, but Don was playing covers such as "Wonderwall" by Oasis and Bob Seger's "Turn the Page" and they were singing along with him and didn't want him to stop performing. I had initially planned to catch the 9:41 p.m. back to Boston, but I was so happy to see Don getting such a positive reaction that I decided to stay until I had to catch the last scheduled train at 10:41 p.m.

Everything seemed to be going to according to plan. I left the Lobster Shanty at around 10:20 p.m. and arrived at the Salem Train Depot 10 minutes later. The electronic sign said the train to Boston was 10 minutes away, 9 minutes away, 5 minutes away, etc. Then the sign said the train to Boston was now approaching the station.

But the train never came.

As the clock approached 11 p.m. there were perhaps half a dozen or so people on the platform were trying to figure out what the hell was going on because there was no new information on the electronic signs nor was there any information on the MBTA website. Someone looked at an app (it wasn't clear if it was the MBTA app), but supposedly there was a boat accident in Saugus hitting a bridge the train passed over, but I have not seen any news to that effect. 

Regardless of the reason one would think there would have been an announcement and the MBTA would have provided shuttle buses. Indeed, last year, I met up with Don in Lowell to see Fanny: The Right to Rock and on my way back to Boston we were informed there was a problem with the Commuter Rail train, and we would need to take shuttle buses. 

Needless to say, I was annoyed. Fortunately, I contacted Don who was finishing up his gig and explained the situation. He was kind enough to pick me up at the Salem Depot and drive me all the way back home in Cambridge. While I was waiting for Don, a couple of the passengers who had been waiting on the platform said the train to Boston was now 26 minutes away. 

But what if I didn't have that option available to me? What the hell would I have done? I don't have Uber because I don't have room for it on my phone because of the apps I use for work. Even if I did an Uber or a cab ride would have been outrageously expensive. I suppose I could have caught a bus to Wonderland on the Blue Line, but there is no guarantee I would have been able to make my connection to the Green and Red Lines before service ended for the evening.

I should mention that while I was waiting for Don, a couple of the passengers who had been waiting on the platform said the train to Boston was now 26 minutes away. I told them I had waited long enough. Let's also remember the sign said the train was approaching the station. Let's just say, the MBTA 's word did not inspire my confidence. 

Above all else, what annoyed me the most was the radio silence from the MBTA. They have an obligation to notify riders of delays and to provide alternative means of transportation if service becomes unavailable - especially if it is the last train of the evening.

Under the circumstances, I am bit leery about taking the Commuter Rail train in the evening whether it is to see Don or for any other reason. While I'm sure Don would give me a lift if a situation like this arose in the future, I have no desire to put him out of his way. But more importantly, I want our public transportation services to be reliable and for the MBTA to be at the ready when things don't go according to plan. Unfortunately, things do not go according to plan all too often.