Family Stoned

Mackenzie Frenzy -- Picture courtesy of Imdb

by blogSpotter
Before I dive into the subject of Mackenzie, I'd like to talk about my weekend ...

Whole new worlds …

This has been a Lewis-and-Clark weekend for me. Searching for the Forest Lane Krogers, I came across a beautiful, bodacious new Wal*Mart at Forest and Greenville. It's been open 11 months! I grieved when they closed the Midpark store, not realizing they'd given us a nice replacement. That's what I get for ignoring newspaper inserts -- better late to the Wal*Mart party than never.

Then this morning, I channel surfed on my HD TV, only to discover that my basic cable is giving me music channels 80.5 thru 80.40. Does basic always include that?? We won’t ask questions -- we will just enjoy the beautiful music. Last but not least, I took the new DART Green Line to Fair Park for the State Fair. The train ran perfectly on schedule and we were packed like sardines on the way down. Deep Ellum, Baylor and Fair Park were all beautiful stations -- the Green Line is a smashing success if Saturday was any test.

Now to our fair Mackenzie

I loved Mackenzie Phillips on One Day At A Time back in the 70’s. I wondered why my favorite raspy-voiced, mouthy teen was kicked off of the hit sitcom midway thru its run. Now it turns out she was canned for her drug and alcohol issues in 1980. According to her latest bio, that is when the 18-year old began an incestuous relationship with her father, rocker John Phillips of Mamas and Papas’ fame. He apparently took advantage of her in a drug stupor and things snowballed from there. The on-again, off-again incestuous relationship continued “consensually” for the next 10 years.

She says that the relationship was because of drug-addled thinking on the part of her and her father. She did feel like she had been initially raped and emotionally coerced into the affair -- she also emphasizes that she forgave her father on his deathbed in 2001. You might think that Mackenzie’s confession would shed light on a verboten but relevant topic but judged on public reaction -- you would be wrong.

You’re as sick as your secrets …

The public reaction has been revulsion, outrage and anger -- all directed at Mackenzie. In looking at reader/audience responses from various articles and TV interviews, I see two general tendencies, both (I think) misguided and wrong.

“You should take this to the grave -- it hurts your family” -- She was never seeking revenge or vindication. She was trying to focus light on a deeply affecting, family and personal problem. Her aunt and Mother already told Mackenzie to take it to her grave, and mostly what that did was help to bedraggle the sick affair another 10 years. Nobody was suggesting that John should “do time” but family counseling was certainly in order -- circa 1980.

“It never happened -- Mackenzie made the whole thing up”. Total strangers presume to tell Mackenzie what happened in her own experience. The affair is so horrifically bizarre that small minds can’t wrap themselves around it. People who are not Mackenzie, or even related to her in any way have to insist that it never happened.

As someone from a dysfunctional family (albeit no incest), I can attest to lots of weirdness -- truth can be stranger than fiction. I don’t doubt her story in the least, nor do I begrudge her the freedom to speak her truth. On the Today Show, Mackenzie pointed out that many incest survivors were coming “out of the closet” to her, thanking her for the honest soul-searching and frank retelling of the events. Mackenzie isn’t writing Mommie Dearest -- she’s owning her part of the story. Let’s let Mackenzie be Mackenzie and let the truth eke its way out. If the truth hurts, sometimes we have to bear the pain.

© 2009 blogSpotter

Do Ask, Do Tell

Tom Dooley, Navy M.D. -- Picture courtesy of Wikpedia

by blogSpotter
Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a term used for the 1993 Clinton-era policy which asserts that "Sexual orientation will not be a bar to service ....excepting individuals who engage in homosexual conduct". The law was the bastard child that came of Clinton's campaign promise to allow gays in the military and Senator Sam Nunn's dogged opposition to that same idea.

Throughout American history, gay men have been drummed out of the military based on accusations of "sodomy" or morals charges. LGB people were given discharges labeled blue, undesirable or dishonorable -- all with various degrees of censure and denial of benefits. There has always been some ambivalence within the military. Navy M.D. Thomas Dooley was a noted humanitarian hero of the 1950’s -- he was allowed to resign honorably despite a general knowledge of his homosexuality. The 1957 Crittendon Report was even ahead of its time in stating that gay people were no greater a security risk than heterosexuals.

Up until 1981, military personnel could choose to retain people suspected of being gay if it was thought that the behavior was a temporary aberration -- a basically straight person acted out homosexually. This was dubbed the “queen for a day” policy and points up major problems of fairness, enforcement and consistency surrounding these types of policies.

How has Don’t As, Don’t Tell worked? In years since it went in to effect, the number of gays discharged soared from 617 in 1994 to 1273 in 2001. The number has settled down some since then, but still -- no significant reduction in the discharge of gay people. The Government Accounting Office conservatively estimates that roughly $180 million dollars was spent recruiting and training the replacements of gays being discharged from 1994 thru 2003. In the Iraq War, highly valuable Farsi translators (among other critical functions) were sacrificed to the cause of "Heterogeneity".

If you’re not gay, you might wonder what all this has to do with the price of tea in China. It does tie back to things relevant in your own experience after all. President Obama pledged to allow gays in the military as part of his 2008 campaign rhetoric. After being elected, he promptly scuttled DADT discussions to 2010 and said that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would need to formulate any new ruling. Then more recently the Obama White House stripped the National Defense Act of a provision that would end funding for DADT enforcement. Effectively, Obama reversed his position. He didn’t just exhibit “weak sister” behavior, he did an about-face.

All of this is being said with an eye on the health care debate. Obama has already shown that he’s willing to concoct an unholy compromise as a way of conflict avoidance. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is already a monstrous political byproduct of the Clinton days -- a half-assed solution that arguably made things worse for LGBT’s.

What kind of fish-nor-fowl, half-baked solution will the Obama team give us for health care? If we’re lucky, it will be something so heinous to both left and right that it never sees the light of day. Sometimes a compromise is just that -- a hobbled hybrid that serves nobody’s purpose. Obama has shown us that he has the silver tongue of an Am-Way salesman. He needs to show us that he has the cajones to stand on principles and follow his ideas to fruition. Bush 1 (Herbert Walker Bush) was somewhat of a conciliatory man who looked for compromises; he was also thought of as a human weather vane and was a one-term President. We have to hope that Obama can help to shape our opinions with intelligence and clarity rather than simply react to them.

© 2009 blogSpotter

Music Revolution

A Rock and Roll Tour de Force -- Picture courtesy of Wikpedia

by blogSpotter
How is it that we have devolved so much in 40 years? Think back to 1969 -- a man walked on the moon, Ford had came out with its most kick-ass, muscular Mustang, and the Beatles gave us Abbey Road. Come back to the present and what do we have? We have a stultified space program featuring a backed-up-toilet Space Station, the questionable rap lyrics of R Kelley and blandified cars from car companies going out of business. Maybe we shouldn’t fault ourselves too much. The decade of the 60’s was a hard act to follow, especially in music.

The entire Beatles catalog has been recently digitally remastered and I just availed myself of 3 albums missing in my collection: Rubber Soul, Revolver and Abbey Road. These albums represent the middle-to-end of the Beatles’ amazing trajectory and each album (from 1965, 1966 and 1969 respectively) represent logical phases in the evolution of the group’s style and message. Rubber Soul gives us more folk guitar with intimations of things to come … sitar music and “ooh la la” background vocals – things that hark to a psychedelic future.

Revolver is considered the 3rd best rock album ever made, in a poll conducted by UK’s Guardian. With a cover featuring the beautiful line-art collage of Beatles artist friend Klaus Voorman, Revolver is considered to be one of the first (if not the first) psychedelic record albums. It featured innovations in sound effects, backward sequencing, electronics and instrument experimentation. Not only that, the topics of the songs were more cryptic and sometimes couched in symbolic wrappers. "She Said" is supposedly a direct repeat of a conversation with Peter Fonda, where he discussed a near death experience.

Abbey Road is remarkable as a finale to the Beatles’ short tenure (short compared to the venerable Rolling Stones anyhow). The album has the gorgeous guitar riffs of George Harrison; "Here Comes the Sun", is probably one of the best songs ever written by anyone, anywhere. But what gripped me on my most recent listening was the sequence starting with "Polythene Pam", followed by "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window", and finally "Carry That Weight". Each segment blends seamlessly to the next, almost like a rock opera. I listened to this on the way to work – nearly had to pull the car over to digest and comprehend the beauty and complexity of what was delivered.

Once upon a time, I thought the Rolling Stones was a better group. The mundane sex themes of the Stones somehow seemed earthier and more accessible to my adolescent mind. While I still love the Stones and think that they rule over a certain realm, the Beatles are unquestionably the best rock group of all time. I sincerely think they’ll be in the realm of Shakespeare and Mozart – standards for all the ages. If you haven’t done so yet, go to Starbucks or Target and pick up the remastered editions of these musical legends.

© 2009 blogSpotter