Well, this isn't a kickass start and surge into autumn. It is quarter past eight on Tuesday morning after Labor Day, and I am sick. I'll write this in spurts when I get out of bed, which I'm about to get back into. Quite the sexy picture at the moment, in my nighttime uniform of orange Aqua Man shirt, blue Red Sox shirt, tissue jammed up my nostrils, head freshly buzzed from Friday's trip to the barber.
Yesterday my work day began at three AM. I hadn't felt great the night before, so I went to bed early--on account of the Melatonin--intending to awake early, which I did, and started screening films for work. The 1933 version of Little Women--George Cukor directed--which I'll finish now. Katharine Hepburn is very good in it; perhaps my favorite role of hers.
The plan after that was to cover twenty miles on foot, with a run mixed into that, and several Monument climbs, but instead I only walked thirteen, with an MFA stop to study some French pastels some more. More of my focus was on Millet this time than Degas, as with the last MFA trip. It had actually been a while between visits for me--a couple weeks.
People love the heat, don't they? You know who loves the heat? People who aren't out in it much, who park their car, walk to the store, la la la, I'm walking ten yards, and it's toasty and comfy. Me, I would assassinate summer if I could. On my walk I came up with a great op-ed idea for Thursday, so I pitched that. Don't know what, if anything, will come of it. That one was football-related. Came up with another later in the day that was John Lennon-related. That one I think I'll be able to do. I need a place with some balls for it.
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Hours later now. Cannot stop coughing. Have to go on the radio in a couple hours. Sent out this op-ed pitch:
"I'm irked by the boot licking I see taking place regarding Kaepernick from people who know nothing about sports who automatically believe he was forced out of the league because that fits their agenda. We've already covered that, in part, last year.
"What I want to discuss is intentions. I don't believe Kaepernick sacrificed anything. I think he pivoted. He was not going to be in the league one way or the other. The end was coming. He made a business decision. And in this country, right now, his kind of business decision pays out.
"Tell me something: When Kaepernick was the starting quarterback of the Forty-Niners and they went to the Super Bowl, why didn't he share any of his views then, with that platform?
"Why was it only when no one wanted him? When he offered no quality on-field services to a team?
"What is his activism? Is he going around speaking? Does he do interviews? Is he vocal at all? Of is he just a dude who sometimes shares memes? Wow! What amazing activism, with your memes!
"This guy is as insincere as they virtue signalers who tout him. He does nothing for anyone. He makes no effort to do anything for anyone. He's rich and has absolutely nothing to lose, he's a fraud, and he sits around and collects checks.
"Seriously: I'd love for someone to tell me what he does. What's he doing? What time and effort and energy is he devoting to any cause? He's an exploiter."
This could be a big op-ed week, or it could be a nothing op-ed week. I wrote the football-related op-ed mentioned above and sent it in, but I'm not hugely sanguine. Was told I could write and it'd be read, but their were caveats going in. I have a back-up plan in mind. Of course, that back-up plan, if I have to go to it, could unsettle a different op-ed. It's a fluid situation. I will react and proceed accordingly.
Laying in bed drinking juice and sucking lozenges I watched 1959's First Man into Space, a cheapie from Amalgamated Pictures.
I need to lie back down. I'm cold now. This is discouraging. I thought I was back to being a Zulu warrior, or en route, anyway, after not feeling well, and here I am again, with different symptoms. Really hoping it's allergies and the weather, but it was two years ago at this time I had the pneumonia. Scared of that pneumonia. Cannot have that right now. More later.
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Did the radio segment. This is not going to be the entry it ought to be, but I am putting it up now and will try to do better later. I have much to get into, but it has been a while since I added to this record.
I will say this about Kaepernick: Remember that fool and fraud Harold Augenbraum, editor of the Yale Review, from this entry? He typifies everything wrong with a sector of publishing. Your ultimate toady shill, who never stopped a moment in his life to actually think something through. A parroter.
I'm going to explain Colin Kaepernick really simply. And completely accurately. He lost his job in the NFL--and, actually, he had opportunities to have a job--because he is terrible at playing the position of quarterback. This is proven by numbers. Which no one, seemingly, looks at. The NFL sucks and football is pointless in the grand scheme of life--read some John Keats, walk for four hours in the woods, confront your failings, grow, risk the vulnerability of true love, get a membership at a museum, study Eric Dolphy's music, read Tender is the Night, go through all of Shakespeare, explore Billie Holiday's Decca catalogue, open up to your spouse, share your fears, help alleviate someone else's, come to know who you are, truly--and matters little. But it wasn't a bunch of big bad racists taking away someone's livelihood. Do NFL owners sucks? Of course they suck. Most people suck. Billionaires who often just inherited things are going to suck, have no perspective, be completely full of themselves, while being just as stupid as any garden variety stupid person, but with more ego. They're also not going to make moral stands. They'll sign Darth Vader to play QB if they think it will get them Ws. Kaepernick sucks at what he does. What he did. But to think that he sacrificed? He didn't sacrifice. He pivoted. He went to a new business model.
And you tell me, supporters of this liar, how come he wasn't speaking up about the police when he was a starting quarterback in the Super Bowl and every microphone in the world was in front of his face during media week? Hmmm? How come? These things he says exist now didn't exist then? And what is his activism? What's he do? Does he maintain a website writing his thoughts every day? Does he speak publicly? Does he do interviews? What's he do? He does jack shit. He reposts memes on Twitter.
But I watch people in publishing on Facebook. These people tend to hate straight white males. Right now. And if that straight white male is in their business, achieves more, produces more, and is an athletic sort? Wow, the staggering hatred. The hatred grows more hatred and it grows more discrimination, and they reach to publish terrible works based solely on skin color, gender, cronyism, favor trades, and how shitty and boring and safe as milk that work is, a meaningless orgy of corruption, discrimination, pretentiousness, and yawns. Then the world doesn't read any more, and no one sees the connection. But that's it right there. As they kick each other in the stomach to clamber over the top of the pile to tell you and all who will listen (which really just means their very circumscribed circle, the echo chamber that is publishing, the island, far, far, far from the mainland, which the mainlanders never think about, because they have no reason to) they are one of the good ones. As they measure who gets to get somewhere based upon how like them you are. I'm nothing like these people.
And none of them who post their #youarethebestnike hashtags on Facebook have bothered to look into who Kaepernick was as a player--a shitty one--or what he actually does as a would-be activist. They just want the narrative for their soulless, mindless, agenda. So, Harold Augenbraum. He goes on Facebook and he posts, "I don't even wear athletic shoes, but I'm going to buy a pair from Nike!" You get the classism, right? What he means is he doesn't even own a pair of sneakers, because that's for the unwashed masses. So you never run? You never play a game of pick-up basketball? You never get on a treadmill? Of course not. You're so rarefied! He wants you to know that. Rabble.
But someone like this is so stupid that they can't think anything through. Can't just parse the numbers, because, of course, they won't understand sports metrics. Can't attempt to learn anything, because why would you? You know nothing in this world, but that hasn't stopped people from giving you things, so why start trying to learn now? Can't ask the questions I just asked, because it's all aboard the fraud train. And no questions are asked on the fraud train. You want to carp about the president, you want to blame everyone else for why this society is what it is right now, that's obviously your right and God knows there are points to be made there, and lots of them. But it's people with approaches to life like this kind of guy, who are the reason society is dying. Never a single thought in their brain. Never an attempt to actually think.
And the anthem? You might remember I was the guy who just wrote the USA Today piece saying--or asking whether, rather--the anthem was too important to be played before mere games. But this stand or kneel thing? Who cares? You should not care. It's a posture. For a minute. You want to stand, stand, you want to kneel, kneel. Kneeling is not activism. Activism is putting in time, effort, work, sweat, blood. Big chunks of your life. What I am seeing is your Harold Augenbraum types coat themselves in their own ejaculate over the glory of how woke they are, and then far right people burn their sneakers. Both miss the point equally. This is not about whether you stand or kneel over the course of a minute. That is irrelevant. It doesn't bring change or stop change. It's not paying respect to the country, or not paying respect to the country. You know what paying respect to the country is? Not being a fool and actually thinking for yourself. Putting the time in to learn, to be an individual, so that you might reach other people, some who are individuals, some who need some guidance in understanding how you become an individual. So they can then reach others. You can do that levitating in the bloody air. Standing or kneeling? Come on.