Nine years after Michael Jackson’s death, his testimony overwhelms the memory of his creative and performative genius.  More than his Moonwalk or Thriller video I hear him describing the refiner’s fire that forged perfection on stage, video and in recordings.  No birthdays off, no Christmases, no New Years, no time off at all from drilling – under a father/sergeant major who recognized his child’s hundred-year latent talent, that could be realized by disregarding the price to be paid. […]

This hopeless liberal’s examination of professions that best prepare people to serve as legislators and in other elected offices began when John Dunne (from Long Island not “no man is an island” Donne) once Republican majority whip in the New York Senate assigned the decline in legislative civility and productivity to not too many, but too few lawyers. He said in more productive and decorous times a majority of legislators had been attorneys, whose education and profession rewarded skill in negotiation, compromise, conciliation, conflict resolution and knowledge of the law – how to make them, change them and what the fuck they actually mean.  Dunne did not utter the expletive but went on to chronicle the growing number of doctors, farmers, dentists and astronauts in legislative chambers and the contemporaneous plummet in productivity. […]

After reading about, then hearing, finally watching Trump’s “why would they” and accompanying remarks from the post-coital 7/16/18 Helsinki news conference, H.L. experienced a series of reactions that corresponded to 80% of the Kübler-Ross stages of grief.  Acceptance being the one missing. […]

Naked and Afraid H.L. spent Memorial Day weekend with living family and long deceased parents.  Dad a waist gunner and bombardier in two of Rosie the Riveter’s B-24 Liberator Bombers.  Mom a canteen girl who helped establish a USO in Clovis, New Mexico but met Dad on West 44th Street in ’44 at the Stage Door Canteen, while he furloughed to say goodbye to his mother. Rosie the Riveter One weekend activity was a group viewing and discussion of the reality/survivalist TV show Naked and Afraid.  My kids gave the show a “C” for the genre but I experienced it as a good 2018 version of Father Knows Best and Amos and Andy. Those 1950s TV shows, while presenting stereotyped versions of [...]

Welcome back to Hopelessly Liberal after its long winter nap. Last year we tried to write about the “#MeToo movement” but each time HL’s advisory board vetoed the post.  The sage and prescient advice was that the exemplars written about (Kevin Spacey was one, Bush 41 another) would soon attract additional accusers, named and anonymous, rendering the point we were trying to make incomplete, at best. The hits kept coming as most of us spent considerable and painful effort recalling episodes of sexual aggression that we were party to. The allegations and introspection continue, but some interim reflections are in order. Politics Skew Perception Among social conservatives in Alabama, Roy Moore’s alleged pursuit of teenage girls during his thirties was quickly compared to Joseph’s marriage [...]

Hopeless liberals of an age spent some of the 1960s debating which failed Eden, one resembling George Orwell’s “1984” or Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” was more likely in our future – pausing occasionally to ponder Robert Frost’s question of whether the world will end in fire or ice. […]

Most attention paid to the SCOTUS actions announced Monday (6/26/17) centered on the grant of certiorari for Trump’s petitions to reverse the Fourth and Ninth Circuit’s injunctions against his second travel ban.  That and the Court’s partial stay of those injunctions pending a decision on the merits next term. Justice Gorsuch But the attention of SCOTUS watchers focused more intently on the work product of rookie Justice Neil Gorsuch, expansively revealed for the very first time in one tension filled hour, when the Court’s final day orders and decisions were announced.  It proved a very ugly picture, confirmed many gloomy predictions about Gorsuch and surpassed some dire ones in previous HL posts. In these “pages” it was predicted that Gorsuch opinions and votes [...]