THE Patriotic Shlock: The Endless Summer What in hell is happening in America? This has- been an existent breeze. ABC got so bad that Olympic authorities Endless Summer, an odious, repellent, horrifying orgy of began to complain. Patriotic Shlock. In all my years I have never seen so many But it wasn't just ABC or the press. It was the American blankety-blank American flags being waved, mindlessly, over masses, the audience themselves, that succumbed to the most and over again. unsportsmanlike behavior. The mob, bellowing "USA," It started on that rotten last night of the ~emocratk "USA," the cheers for every U. S. point, the booing when a convention, when the massed delegates were all waving, U. S. gymnast got less than a perfect 10. Probably the low instead of the usual banners for their nominees, American point of the entire Games was when Carl Lewis, upon winning flags, duly issued to them by the smooth Mondale machine. the 100 meters - typically, about 20 meters ahead of The culmination was the acceptance speech of Geraldine everyone else - grabbed a huge American flag, and virtually Ferraro, in which La Ferraro droned on about her immigrant wrapping himself in the thing, ran around the Stadium. It was mother, immigrant daughters, and God knows what else, all the apex of a truly obscene spectacle. to the tune of American flags being waved, and, yes, masses of And what ever happened to the old propaganda of the U. S. delegates sobbing and hugging each other. media that the Olympic Games are not a team, but an I put it all down to one night's aberration, little realizing individual, sport, so that one shouldn't even count the medals what an orgy of mass sobbing and flag-waving we were all in gained by the various countries? That old hype apparently for. The next step, of course, was the infernal Olympics, in applied only when the Soiriet Union and East Germany used which patriotic shlock reached a new all-time low. Again, to walk off with most of the medals. But now that the East what in hell is going on? There was nothing at all like this in Euopean bloc was safely out of the way, Oh the crowing and the last Olympics held in the U. S. - the winter Olympics of oh the gloating about all the medals "we" of the U. S. were 1976. There was no sobbing, no flag-waving, in fact there wag racking up! Hey, fantastic, so we beat up on the British a healthy realism by the media focussing on the Antilles, and all the other one-horse countries that the U. S. transportation foulups at Lake Placid. But here, in L.A., in paid to show up. As usual, the American mob was ungallant the home of Hollywood shlock, all of a sudden everyone went from start to finish, as in the invasion of tiny Grenada, nuts, the audience, the media, even the athletes. The pattern gloating about the huge U.S. stomping on minuscule began with the Opening Ceremonies, a vast exercise in opposition! tedium, when the flag-waving, the sobbing, and all the rest An old friend of mine, a U. S. patriot from many years of began, and never let up. Come on: 84 pianists in blue tuxes, being obliged to live in a hated foreign land, upon watching simultaneously faking the playing of Rhapsody in Blue! And it the opening ceremonies, lamented, "It made me ashamed to wasn't only ABC (see below) that went bonkers; the press was be an American!" almost as bad, San Francisco's famous voice of the Peepul, I tell you: Watching the Olympics made me nostalgic for Truman Democrat Herb Caen, writing two lengthy columns the good old days of the New Left, and the ranting about on the wonders of the Opening Ceremonies, how it "made "Amerika" or even "Amerikkka." One more day of this everyone proud to be an American again," "proud to wave horror, one more binge of patriotic sobbing and flag-waving, flags again," etc. Yecchh! Also characteristically weighing in and I will be ready for the Jeff Hummell Deviation (i.e. to do his muddled bit was philosopher Tibor Machan in opposition to all nationalism, even national liberation against Reason magazine, taking off on a few facts, all of them wrong, imperial States.) And for the first time in decades I look with about the Olympics. favor on old Herbert Hoover, President when the last ABC was disgustingly chauvinist, much more than in past Summer Olympics were held in the U. S. (Los Angeles in Olympics. Cameras pointed shamelessly to Americans to the 1932), who didn't bother officiating at the opening ceremonies exclusion of virtually anyone else; commentary was because "they weren't important." A.t this point, I am almost American-hype to the nth degree; behind every American ready to forgive Hoover his origination of the New Deal. athlete pictured was a huge American flag waving in the non- s The Libertarian Forum July-August, 1984 Life In 1. Of All Time. definition of the shortest period of time: the length of any cease-fire in Lebanon. Recently, one Dan Lurie, publisher of Muscle Training Illustrated magazine, decided to search for someone whom he 3. Unemployment in Grenada. could dub "the best physically fit President of all time." After an exhaustive search'; Lurie came up with, lo and behold!, In the last days of the Marxist Bishop regime, Ronnie Reagan. unemployment in Grenada was severe, at 14 percent. The Ronnie Reagan? But how about George Washington, a United States invasion - oops, "rescue mission," as Lew strapping 6'2" in a world where most male Americans hardly Lehrman's Citizens for America managed to have it called - poked up above 5'5"? How about Abe Lincoln? Or Ike had the effect of more than doubling that unemployment, Eisenhower? No, he couldn't pick people like that, Lurie which is now about 30 percent. Why? Because of the "sudden explained, because "You can't go back and honor a President unemployment," imposed not by wicked capitalists, but by who's no longer there." Oh. Well, that takes care of that. the U.S. military occupation regime: i.e. on former members of the People's Revolutionary Army, former officials in the 2. The Shortest Time Period. Bishop government, ,former members of Bishop's ruling party, the New Jewel Movement, and workers building the It is an old New York quip that the definition of the famous airport. shortest perceivable interval of time, is the time it takes Comment by a 19-year old Grenadian who hasn't had a job between the change of the traffic light to green and the yet: "They call it a rescue mission, but they haven't rescued moment when the car behind you honks its horn. I offer a new me yet." To each his own, on Grand Fenwick. $ Democrat Convention Notes The Democratic convention went out drowned in a deluge ruining the demonstrations. Sometimes it was the 1812 of odious and maudlin hokum, everyone crying and singing, Overture, no less. More often it was repellent rock, and while all sexes and races joined together. The last time I saw all this the convention was a shameless scramble by the Democracy was at the Democratic gathering of 1976, when Jimmy and to recapture American Values from the Republicans, they will Miz Lillian and all the rest of the gang sang "We Shall learn that you cannot do so by the sight of thousands of Overcome." It's getting to be a stale act. The difference, of delegates boogeying down to goddam rock, regardless how course, was that Jimmy was nowhere to be seen, having many plastic American flags they wave at the same time. himself bombed out in his pre-keynote address. It looks as if Even five minutes of George M. Cohan and "the Grand the Great Family of Democrat doctrine, the Family of the Old Flag" won't do it. The Democrats are suffering badly dispossessed and the left out, has no room for their oId has- from an adult white male gender gap. They will not recapture .been and Former Peerless Leader. It's like the old shaggy-dog that lost vote by playing songs written in 1912. (Hey, bunky, jokes; the Party of Inclusion can't include everybody. we ain't that old!) To quote the great line from "Kids": "Why can't they dance like- we did?-what's wrong with sammy Kaye?" And speaking of singing. There were two absolutely rotten * * * and unforgivable aspects of this convention. One was the fact that they robbed us of the best part of a political convention: The high point, the only high point, of the convention, was the suspense, the excitement, by making sure that everyone, the magnificent keynote by Mario Cuomo. Note the even the Veep, was picked way beforehand. That left only the difference between Cuomo's and the other instantly tinsel and the hokum. The media kept quoting grand old H. forgettable speeches; the content, in many ways, was L. Mencken on the obscene glories of political conventions. superficially the same. But the difference was not simply the But that was when conventions really meant something, and "delivery," although it was certainly true, as one journalist the suspense and the excitement were there until the end. wrbte, that Cuomo's speech had the "grace, the elegance, the Tinsel by itself is mere ashes. The second terrible thing was the strength" of Joe DiMaggio playing center field.