A Girl In The White House? September 11, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in Big Mike, Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Michael G. Glab, Sarah Palin.1 comment so far
The sheer depth of the scorn heaped upon Hillary Clinton when she and Bill lived in the White House not only puzzled me, it fairly scared me as well. Hillary was – and may still be – the most despised person in the United States. For all the rumor, innuendo, canard, and outright fiction generated about her, a visitor from another planet might be excused for concluding that Hillary Rodham Clinton is a lesbian, a murderer, a swindler, and the mother of a gargoyle.
Hillary and Friend
~
For reasons that escape me to this day, Hillary inspired a visceral reaction in the Republican faithful. I’ve talked to quite a few people who, when her name is mentioned, seem to suffer a gag reflex. This abhorrence is too deep to be plumbed by mere rational conversation. In the absence of any credible justifications for the antipathy toward Hillary, I came to the conclusion that a lot of people hate her because she’s a woman who wants to be a leader.
In other words, Hillary doesn’t know her place. There are, after all, still countless troglodytes of both sexes who’d prefer women be little more than brood sows. This rationale seemed to work fine until a couple of weeks ago.
Then, on Friday, August 29th, 2008, John McCain announced that a previously unknown woman from somewhere near the Arctic Circle would be his running mate on the Republic ticket this year. Since then, Alaska governor Sarah Palin has become a celebrity. Her presence on the ticket, say the wags, has energized the Republican party. She may be, some opine, the key to victory in November.
The Life Of The Party
~
Part of her spiel is that she’s a tough, effective chief executive. She has upset the Republican apple cart in Alaska, gone toe to toe with big oil interests, and told the federal government what it could do with its $27 million dollar “Bridge to Nowhere.” I’m not going to quibble with the veracity of these claims. This is politics, after all. Everybody running for office has the morals of a saint and the spine of a rhinoceros. What’s important here is that Palin is selling herself as a leader.
Apparently, Republicans now believe that leadership is indeed a fine and dandy place for women. If so, what is Hillary’s sin, then?
It’s A Gut Reaction
~
You’ll learn what it is if you listen carefully to each of these women speak. Let’s start with content. When the Clintons were running for president in 1992, Hillary stated that she’d chosen not to stay at home, bake cookies and have teas but to go out and ply her profession. Much of America suffered apoplexy. Then Hillary offended the good conservatives who cherish family photo ops by adamantly excluding daughter Chelsea from campaign activities. Seemed a reasonable stance to me; she wanted to protect her kid from prying eyes while not turning her into a political prop. Republicans concluded, though, that she had no desire to be seen with, ugh, a child. Hillary, they charged, lacked maternal instincts. And then, as First Lady, rather than working tirelessly to convince America’s children to brush their teeth before bedtime, she took on the role of point person in health insurance reform. My heavens, the right howled, who does she think she is?
Who Needs Health Care Reform?
~
Palin, on the other hand seems more than thrilled to crow about her status as a “hockey mom,” whatever in the hell that is. I assume it means she’s one of those stretch-pantsed, Avia-sneakered, Celine Dion-listening helicopter parents who refuse to let their kids play sports on their own or, for that matter, do anything, up to and including void their bladders, without hanging around them like a cloud of gnats. Sheesh, you think the Baby Boomers generated a lot of business for shrinks? Wait’ll you see the yachts the psychological care-givers of today’s surgically-attached-to-mom generation will be able to buy themselves.
“You’re Tearing Me Apart!”
~
As for her kids, Palin couldn’t get them into the picture fast enough, a policy which stripped her pregnant teenaged daughter of any hope of privacy she may have harbored. Of course the unplanned inception is nothing to be secretive about at all, according to Republican spin. Harking back to her conservative roots (a woman’s uterus is her greatest asset), Palin gleefully announced that her daughter is going to marry the fetus’s father, a wise choice considering the many decades of wedded bliss a typical 17-year-old bride is sure to enjoy. The maternal instinct apparently runs deep in Palin’s clan.
A Woman’s Place
~
So, no worries that Sarah Palin will stick her pretty little nose where it doesn’t belong. Rather than clutter up her vice-presidential office with things like reports and statute books, Palin’ll decorate it with cribs and Lego blocks. Sure she’ll be a leader – but she’ll always be a Mom.
Now let’s go past the rhetoric and listen, instead, to the sounds of the two women’s voices. Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks assertively in a rich, relatively deep, authoritarian (in the good way, not the Castro-, Saddam-way) voice. She sounds exactly like what she is: an ambitious, forceful Yale Law School-educated woman. Uh oh. Is that what god-fearing Americans want a woman to sound like?
More likely, they want a woman to sound like Sarah Palin. McCain’s running mate speaks in a gee-whiz manner that suggests she’s shocked that the big boys have actually asked her to come into their tree house. Her voice is high, almost reedy, and it breaks when she tries to stress a point. And, the piece de resistance, at key moments in her stump speech, Sarah Palin actually giggles. She sounds, in short, like a girl. Add to that the fact that she’s well-schooled in beauty contest demeanor and you have the epitome of Republican femininity.
Palin is, a large swath of America has concluded, a real woman. Not one of these health-care-reform, abortion-rights, closet lesbian, child-hating harpies. As I said earlier, the contempt for Hillary is visceral. And a huge part of it is in the voice. I think I understand now.
A woman’s place is in leadership – as long as she always remembers that she’s a girl.
Coping With The Cubs – Get It Now! September 10, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in Big Mike, Coping With The Cubs, Cubs, Michael G. Glab.4 comments
It’s the literary event of the new millenium! You’ve been waiting for it and now you’ve got it. Hot off the laptop of one of today’s most compelling authors, Michael G. Glab, the sports fan’s memoir “Coping with the Cubs: A Life of Depression, A Year of Hope” is on sale today.
A Happy Cubs Fan? He’s Gotta Be Crazy!
~
Delving into the murky depths of Cubs fandom and his own psyche, Glab offers refreshing and rare insights into those twin maladies: love of the Cubs and clinical depression. A lifelong sufferer of both diseases, Glab provides glimpses into his absurd world, one in which he battles dark thoughts every day, one that too often seems replete with anguish and angst, yet one in which he’s chosen to devote his passions and hopes to the baseball team that never, ever wins! Is he crazy? Read “Coping with the Cubs” and find out.
Tears In Wrigley
~
Glab learns, after following the Cubs from afar during the 2007 season, that if he can survive his team’s countless heartbreaks over the last four decades, he can survive anything. It’s a story of hope in the face of hopelessness and triumph where victories are tantalizingly rare. How appropriate, then, that “Coping with the Cubs” should come out today, September 10th, 2008, just as the Cubs once again are free-falling toward yet another memorable collapse. Or will they turn it around? Will this be the year the Cubs slay all their dragons, put to rest all those tales of hexes and curses, and finally win their first World Series in a hundred years?
I Can Dream, Can’t I?
~
Anything’s possible – wise words for anyone who suffers from depression. It’s a lesson that can only be understood by someone who’s spent his life “Coping with the Cubs.”
Click on any mention of “Coping with the Cubs” in this post to purchase your copy today.
My Cubs Book & The God Particle September 8, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in Big Mike, Coping With The Cubs, Creation Museum, Cubs, George W. Bush, God Particle, Higgs Boson, Iraq, John McCain, Karen Roszkowski, Michael G. Glab, Sarah Palin, Science, War Fever.1 comment so far
Hey, I’m back! The book is finished and has been sent off to my e-publisher. Yahoooooooo!
Keep an eye on this space for the release date of “Coping With The Cubs: A Life Of Depression, A Year Of Hope.”
Cover Detail, Designed by Karen L. Roszkowski
Nice to see that the forces of ignorance have been as strong as ever during my absence. No, I’m not talking about that big powwow in Minneapolis last week. Actually, this is the first Republican ticket that doesn’t make me want to run screaming for the medicine chest. John McCain seems a decent fellow with his heart in the right place (even though he has to play nice with all the right-wingnuts of the GOP.) And I give him a lot of credit for selecting a woman as a running mate. Here’s to you, old Johnny, for putting the first MILF on a national ticket!
Sarah Palin: The First Hot Veep?
No, the ignoramuses I refer to are those Chicken Littles who’ve been trying to stop the first run of the new Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland.
I’m a science nut so I’ve been geeked since 1995 when funding was approved for the facility. The LHC is now the largest particle collider ever built, making the previous record-holder, the Tevatron at Fermilab outside Chicago look like an elementary school running track. The Tevatron has been – and the LHC will be – on the lookout for a little thing called the Higgs Boson, also known as “The God Particle.” The Higgs, if found, would be the most elementary particle yet discovered. It would pretty much explain why there are things in this crazy, mixed-up Universe.
The Bang Gang: CERN Scientists Try To Understand The Big Bang
As always, whenever there’s a huge scientific advancement, the hand-wringers start yelling about how it’s going to kill us all. The scaredy-cats in question fear that the LHC will inadvertantly create a black hole Wednesday when it’s turned on. Some people watch too many sci-fi movies. They envision this black hole popping into existence and sucking everything in the world into itself, rendering the outcome of the 2008 baseball season moot. The LHC already has caused any number of petitions and lawsuits to pop into existence.
There’s an anti-science mood in the world today, particularly here in the USA. Strange, when you consider that we live in the a world where huge strides have been made against disease and hunger, where a person can travel from Colombo, Sri Lanka to Des Moines, Iowa in a matter of hours rather than months, and where every schoolchild can listen to the Jonas Brothers on a miniaturized, portable, self-contained music player even when they’re supposed to be studying polynomials for that big test tomorrow. All thanks to science.
Knowledge Is Good: Don’t You Think? Or Don’t You Think?
Most people in the world (and, again, in the USA in particular) would prefer to be ignorant. And pundits wonder how we could have fallen for George W. Bush’s Iraq war.
Glad to be back. Talk to you next time.
Fretting (As Usual) And Strumming July 14, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in Ben Joravsky, Big Mike, Chicago Reader, Coping With The Cubs, Cubs, Joe Satriani, Keith Richards, Michael G. Glab, Milo Samardzija, Richard M. Daley, Schoolboy.2 comments
I’ve been too busy to rant in these precincts the last few days mainly because I’m hustling to accomplish a couple of other things right now.
I’m Learning!
My family’s picnic is coming up on August 3rd. I hope to have the book, “Coping With The Cubs: A Life of Depression, A Year of Hope” completed and published online before then so I can crow about it to all my kin. Also, I’ve been working on getting down the main guitar part for “Brown Sugar,” perhaps my favorite pop song of all time, so I can play it for my nephew Doug, the aspiring musician of the clan. Doug loves the acrobatic-fingered virtuosos like Joe Satriani, whereas I prefer rhythmic kings like Keith Richards.
I bought my first guitar in January and have been teaching myself how to play. My pal Skip Frank, the trombonist and former Louisville-area high school music teacher, has given me a few theory pointers but mainly I’ve depended on instructional books and You Tube vids. It’s a slow learning process but I’m taking tiny steps forward all the time. One obstacle is that my fingers are sausage-like and I have the genetic misfortune to have been born with spatulated digits, meaning my fingertips are abnormally flat and rounded. That makes it only slightly easier for me to master a musical instrument than for an arthritic butcher to become a neurosurgeon.
A Normal Human Hand Over A Big Mike Hand
Still, I’m pretty proud of myself for taking on the challenge in my 50s.
As for the book, my feelings about it are baffling. I love it and hate it. Sometimes I read what I’ve written and think I’m one of the finest scribes who’s ever trod the Earth. Other times I fear my mother won’t even take the time to read it. I suppose that’s the emotional lot of all writers. Then again, I saw Joyce Carol Oates on a panel discussion yesterday and wondered why I couldn’t be more like her. Oates has written 49 complete novels and eight novellas and has published 32 short story collections, at least eight plays, and countless essays, poems, young adult books and children’s stories. What the hell kind of coffee does that woman drink?
Books Written By Oates Last Week
Oates has been quoted as saying, “I’m drawn to failure. I feel that I’m contending with it constantly in my own life.” My response, with all due respect, is “Joyce, shut up.” I can give her lessons in failure.
Failure, oddly enough, has been missing from the Wrigley Field world this season. We go into the mid-season all-star break with the Cubs tied with the Los Angeles Angels for the best record in baseball. The team is clicking on most cylinders and has about 47 players on the all-star team. How weird and unlikely would it be for the Cubs to end their World Series victory drought precisely at the one-hundred-year mark? Not that I’m betting on it, of course. As I’ve moaned here previously, the Tampa Bay Goddamned Rays will win the Fall Classic this year, defeating the North Side boys. It’s only fitting.
“Apres moi…,”
Ben Joravsky continues to lambaste the Farouk of the Fifth Floor (aka: Mayor Richard M. Daley) in the Chicago Reader. If you’re not up on Bennie’s work on the Mayor’s power grabs and tax-financed war chest you’re missing some of the finest muckraking journalism in the country today.
I understand the Immortal Milo Samardzija has just about completed yet another novel, this one with a science fiction tinge. Sheesh, he must be drinking Joyce Carol Oates’ brand of coffee. Anyway, get on “Schoolboy” right now so you can read this new tome when it comes out. The guy sure knows how to splotch a piece of paper with ink.
Oh, and keep a block of time open for “Coping With The Cubs.”
Big Mike
Don’t Be A Smart Guy July 8, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
One of the advantages of not being a TV addict is that whenever I turn the box on, everything seems interesting at least for the first 30 seconds or so. I watch stuff that most TVĀ junkies would click through without a second thought.
Not Actually Me – This Guy Has Hair
For example, today I sat down on my recliner and switched on the tube during lunch. I came across the Rev. John Hagee, the guy whose brilliant insights into people, the world and god embarrassed the hell out of John McCain. I never knew a thing about this fellow before I heard his comments about Roman Catholics, Hitler, the Jews, and – of course – homosexuals. (Why religious bullies are so fixated on homosexuality is beyond me. They think about homosexuality more than homosexuals do.)
He-e-e-ere’s John Hagee!
Whereas a sane person would have zapped the Hagee show in a nonosecond, I hung on to hear what this guy is all about (as if I couldn’t tell by those few comments I heard previously.) Anyway, Hagee was prowling his altar/stage haranguing his flock who nodded enthusiastically or gazed off in some Jesus-drug trance.
Here’s what Hagee was talking about. He said you have to look at the world through eyes of faith, not physical eyes. Okay, so far so good. A nice little poetic image. Any pastor would be proud to have turned such a phrase. Hagee went on.
If you look at the world through physical eyes, he shouted, you’ll see nothing but darkness, evil, destruction, sin, etc. Cool. He’s really into his metaphor here. His flock continued nodding and staring so, obviously, they were into it too. Nobody’s being hurt so far.
Oops, spoke too soon. Evangelical browbeaters can’t let a moment slip without ripping someone’s intestines out (See? I oughta be a preacher – I know how to wield a mean metaphor myself.) Hagee told his audience that “intellectuals” insist on seeing the world through their physical eyes. The camera panned to the crowd again and the nodding became even more vigorous, as if the Hagee faithful couldn’t wait to hear what dumb asses intellectuals are. Those who were busy staring, by the way, continued at their established pace – once you’re in the Jesus-drug daze, you’re pretty much gone no matter what the preacher says about homosexual, abortionist, satan-worshipping, college professors.
A Typical College Dorm Entrance
Here Hagee dropped the bomb on intellectuals. “That’s why,” said he, “they’re always popping aspirin until they become drunks!” (I use quotations marks liberally here – that’s the quote to the best of my recollection.)
The crowd laughed, although it wasn’t unconditionally mirthful. It was a laugh of recognition and agreement, the way my circle and I would titter about evangelicals being fixated on homosexuality. But Hagee’s worshippers’ laugh was tempered by what appeared to be pity for the poor fool intellectuals who study books, observe the world, conduct experiments, and consider different sides of issues. Such practices clearly can drive a person to the horrors of aspirin addiction.
Tearing Apart The Fabric Of Our Nation
You know, I must have been out of it of late. I was unaware that the aspirin scourge had taken hold of the halls of academia until Hagee told me so. Are professors holding up citizens at gunpoint to get money for their Bayer fixes? Are teaching assistants turning to street prostitution to support their tablet habits?
Aspirin Drove Him To A Life Of Crime
I’m certain college-infested Boston, which the intellectual-coddling media is trying to portray as the City of Championships, is actually an Anacin war zone. And, to be sure, other big cities that are homes to universities are awash in St. Joseph bottles. Aha! How neatly the conspiracies tie in! The Roman Catholics and the aspirin pushers – Hagee, you’ll save our country’s soul yet!
How weird is it that the US, alone among the world’s cultures, belittles its intellectuals? Here, you go to college to get a cushy job in a cubicle, not to hone your mind or broaden your horizons. Study philosophy and people will snicker behind your back. Get an MBA and your relatives will carry you out of the commencement hall on their shoulders.
Not An Intellectual, Thank God!
We mistrust smart people. When presidential candidates debate, the guy who uses polysyllabic words and tries to examine the totality of an issue is usually declared the loser. George W. Bush stumbled and mumbled his way through his first debate with John Kerry so badly I actually felt sorry for him. Then I thought how sad it was that our president was such a cerebral lightweight. Then I read the papers the next day and discovered that the wags all agreed that Kerry alienated much of the viewing public by coming off as “intellectual.” Like that’s bad thing.
Well, it is. I know now. John Hagee told me.
Big Mike
Fire And Ice July 6, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in Big Mike, Boss, Chicago Tribune, City of Chicago, Col. Robert R. McCormick, Daniel Burnham, Kentucky, McCormick Place, Michael G. Glab, Mike Royko, Richard J. Daley, University of Illinois at Chicago.1 comment so far
Not long ago, I wrote a post about how I couldn’t help but love my newly adopted Kentucky, the site – with West Virginia – of the legendary Hatfield-McCoy Feud.
The H-M Feud is definitive Kentucky lore, what with its backwoods, shootin’ iron totin’, cousin marryin’, moonshinin’ overtones. Now I’ve discovered a forgotten anecdote that is equally as definitive of my hometown, the great City o’ Chi-KAH-ga. Its existence has been hidden in the reams of information concerning the creation and destruction of the original McCormick Place, the nation’s largest exposition hall.
The Original McCormick Place
Back in the dead of winter 1967 McCormick Place burned down overnight before the opening of the international housewares show. The blaze is legendary in Chicago history because, for one thing, it was the biggest local conflagration other than the Great Fire of 1871 and, two, the structure had been touted as virtually fireproof.
Burnt Out and Collapsed
Sitting on the lakefront just south of Soldier Field and across from Meigs Field, McCormick Place was over 1000 feet long and more than 400 feet wide, as big as the Empire State Building laid on its side. Its exhibition space was larger than six football fields. After it was completed in 1960, McCormick Place helped make Chicago the convention center of the nation.
The city’s convention and exposition business came to a standstill after the fire and remained that way until McCormick Place was rebuilt. The new building opened in 1971, bigger, more modern, and – naturally – really fireproof this time.
McCormick Place: Part Deux
The history of the place serves as a primer for learning about the way Chicago does business. The publisher of the Chicago Tribune, Col. Robert R. McCormick, began pushing for the construction of the center nearly 40 years before it opened.
The Colonel: A Big Man In Town
McCormick insisted the place be built on its eventual site despite the city’s unwritten prohibition against lakefront construction (in 1909, architect and city planner Daniel Burnham issued his far-reaching Plan for Chicago, insisting that “The lakefront by right belongs to the people.”) The Colonel, though, would not be deterred. He cajoled, threatened, and bullied a string of Chicago mayors and Illinois governors until he died in 1955, the year Richard J. Daley was elected mayor.
Daley I: An Even Bigger Man
Daley was more interested in transforming his city into a big economic player than abiding by Burnham’s encomium that Chicago was a “Paris on the Prairie” with its green, unfettered front yard on the shores of Lake Michigan. Building a giant exhibition hall on the lakefront would mean thousands of jobs for union laborers loyal to Daley and a river of revenue in the form of visitor dollars spent on hotels, restaurants, taxicabs, and countless other amenities. After weighing his options – hundreds of millions of dollars of economic activity versus Burnham’s pristine lakefront – Daley said, in essence, the people’s right to the lakefront be damned.
Along with a massive expansion of O’Hare International Airport, the building of a University of Illinois campus just southwest of the Loop, and the announcement that the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company would erect the world’s second-tallest building on North Michigan Avenue, McCormick Place was part of Daley’s personal stamp on the city.
Then, within a span of seven hours beginning a few minutes after two in the morning, one of Daley’s signature shrines was transformed into nothing more than a gigantic smoking pile of twisted steel and crumbling concrete. Investigations into the fire later indicated there’d been glaring construction and safety oversights that contributed to the building’s destruction.
Wreckage
Daley ran for re-election later that year, eventually winning his fourth term in office. His Republican opponent, a harmless man named John Waner, hoped to use some of the findings of the investigations against Daley. He was rebuffed, though, when he approached the Tribune with his charges. The paper was eager to gain quick approval for the monument to its late publisher to be rebuilt on the lakefront so it told Waner to take a hike. At least that’s the story Waner told Mike Royko in the columnist’s book, “Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago.”
But here’s the little nugget I dug up tonight. It says everything you need to know about the city I was born in. Time magazine, in reporting on the McCormick Place fire, attempted to calculate the dollar cost to the city. After it listed the value of the building and all the display materials and goods, Time added that $25,000-worth of diamonds were missing. According to the magazine, the diamonds were to be given away as prizes during the housewares show.
Diamonds? What Diamonds?
How beautiful is that? How Chicago? Some 150 laborers and security guards were in McCormick Place when the fire started. Could one of them have grabbed the hot ice as he evacuated the place? Or could a firefighter have stuffed the box of rocks underneath his greatcoat amid all the confusion and smoke?
The diamonds have never been mentioned again. We only know this: some opportunistic Chicagoan became a wealthy man in the early morning hours of that frigid January day 41 years ago. It was a fitting coda for the first McCormick Place.
I love that city.
Big Mike
Shootin’ Irons, Sputnik, and Lunacy July 3, 2008
Posted by glabwrites in Ben Joravsky, Big Mike, Cubs, Dementia, Guns, Michael G. Glab, Milo Samardzija, Schoolboy, Sputnikfest, US Supreme Court.2 comments
So, with recession slamming us, gas prices rocketing toward the moon, the housing market flopping, and the very real possibility that the US will elect a (somewhat) black man as President this fall, the Supreme Court issues a death blow to municipal firearms bans. Yikes!
The Real American Girl
The five black-robed Solomons (all nominated by Ronnie Reagan and the Bush Dynasty) who signed off on the majority opinion last week are essentially telling the American public that its right to keep, cherish, and rub shootin’ irons all over their bodies is, well, sacred. Great. Just what we need in a time of economic malaise and jarring social change.
~ This turn of events might have made me depressed (or at least even more so than I usually am) if I hadn’t discovered that the lovely town of Manitowoc, Wisconsin is holding Sputnikfest on Friday and Saturday, September 5th and 6th.
The First Sputnik
It seems a chunk of Sputnik IV crashed onto the streets of said burgh back in 1962. Now a bunch of awfully cool people have come up with this first annual gala to mark the historic event. It’ll be a combination art fair, music fest, food orgy, beer bash, and overall hoot.
Manitowoc is on the way to Door County from Milwaukee and Chicago, so I’d suggest heading there for the weekend (organizers promise to name a Miss Sputnikfest, as if you needed more encouragement) and then driving up to Wisconsin’s thumb for fish boils, fab scenery, and cherry pie.
~ My pal Ben Joravsky tells me my recent post on the Cubs is prima facie evidence that I’m fairly well along on the road to psychosis. I predicted that the Cubs will break my heart this fall by losing the World Series to the Tampa Bay Rays. Here’s an excerpt of his response:
…and you’re doing this fretting in june, mind you, months before the post season begins. the cubs haven’t even made it to the playoffs — much less the world series — and you’re already worrying about losing the series to the rays. it’s like you’ve conjured up the worst of all possible endings to a wonderful season and convinced yourself that it will come true. i love you dearly, big feller, but when it comes to the cubs, you’re nuttier than a fruit cake….
Yeah. Wonderful season. And he tells me I’m crazy.
The Rays Win! The Rays Win!
~ Hey, have you bought Milo Samardzija’s book, “Schoolboy,” yet? If not, why not?
Big Mike












































