Good But Not Nice: Deplorables, Hypocrites, and the Liberal Dilemma
I’ve spent DAYS, months, YEARS not saying what I think about politics, sex, a dozen other things so I don’t offend, alienate, or hurt people…the same people who don’t give a good goddamn if their behavior hurts someone else (me). This is the liberal dilemma. The fight to be inclusive, means letting assholes be assholes.
The other day, Hillary did something ugly. She called a spade a spade. No, it isn’t *nice* to call half of Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables.” But I’m starting to think, like Sondheim’s Cinderella, that it might be good.
No grand proclamations, no long explanations. Just, these articles are about people who are getting it right, and I want to celebrate them and remember.
1. Abe and Michael Chabon, son and father
“You are born into a family and those are your people…”
Here’s a guy who has won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and for a damned good book. But when GQ asks him to cover fashion week in Paris, what does he write about? Not himself. Not his reflections on Judaism and fashion, or Jewish designers, or any of the things he could and be lauded for. No, he writes about his son.
An old friend, once very dear but long since traveling a different path, passed away the other day. I wouldn’t know about it at all, but that a current friend, still very dear, thought to pass me the email she’d received, in case I hadn’t heard. I hadn’t. The email asks that we not speak about it on social media until close friends have been spoken to, and I can’t think but that this friend would appreciate her privacy as much as an encomium–for now, anyway.
The behemoth behind the brick. Cardiff Gas Light and Coke’s Victorian facade dwarfed by the Altolusso tower in Cardiff, Wales. Source: RightMove via The Guardian.
Frankenbuilding
It’s hardly a new practice, building upward when a city can sprawl no further. Arguably, it’s as ancient as walled cities, where development real estate was at a premium. Even without models and maps, it’s not hard to imagine something Seussian: towers of blocks upon mismatched blocks of dwellings, and workrooms, and mercantile shops.
But in a world where development and redevelopment are big business—and one where developers work hand in glove with environmentalists and conservationists—why cleave the back off an old building and tack a new one awkwardly in its place? It’s like a mash-up of bad plastic surgery and an Apple theme on an Android product, a Frankenbuilding.
SSA Clara and I were talking today about my writing. Specifically, why I’m not doing it. While I have a lot of pieces of the Pollocking puzzle, it’s not coming together. I’ve been vacillating between “BICFOK, Allie. Damn it,” and “But it’s not cookies yet.”
Most people would probably call my “not sitting down to write” either laziness or the dreaded WB (not Warner Brothers, people; the other one). Me, I’m reluctant to use that phrase. Like, I don’t even want to actually type it. (Okay, I have to, because my SEO check is coming up poor and it’s bugging me, but I’m going to close my eyes until I finish this paragraph, because I don’t even want to see the words writer’s block).
