The Errant Æsthete » Poseurs & Pretentions

The Crownless Shall be King

Errant Aesthete — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:03:38 +0000

Move to Amend Occupies the Courts!

Date: Friday 20 January 2012
Time: 7:00 AM – 7:00 PM
Location: Federal Courts Nationwide

Purpose

Call to Action

Inspired by Occupy Wall Street, Move To Amend is planning the kind of trouble that lightens the meekest of revolutionaries. The occasion: the second anniversary of the infamous Citizens United v. FEC decision!

Americans across the country are on the march, so it seems. They carry signs that say, “Corporations are NOT people! Money is NOT Speech!” And they are chanting these truths to be “self evident” across the airwaves, around the water cooler, and now, in front of the hallowed halls of the nation’s federal court houses.

If you’re a little fuzzy on the draconian details of how the Supreme Court’s decision on Citizens United is changing our individual and collective landscape, look no further than the spectacle of the recent Iowa caucus, the political equivalent of this season’s most unwatched reality show. While the country nestles in to a permanent malaise, a slickly polished team of presidential hopefuls exhorting wild-eyed promises and heartfelt pleas for votes, along with a traveling band of sycophants, consultants and handlers who love them, traipsed far and wide over the tundra of the American Heartland, with talk of a return to the good life in their speech, and a barrage of venomous attack ads, (financed by the super PACs, courtesy of Citizens United), in their armory.

“The real winner of the 2012 Iowa Caucuses may not be any of the Republican candidates,” wrote Steven Rosenfeld on AlterNet, “but a new political animal that is ugly, loud, anti-democratic and coming to your state in the upcoming primaries and caucuses: the super PAC.”

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 264 super PACs have been spawned for the 2012 race with almost half of the $32 million raised already spent. In Iowa, nearly $13 million was drained by super PACs, with $4.6 million funneled to Mitt Romney. And who are these well-heeled contributors to the cause of democracy? We’ll never know due to an elaborate system of reporting loopholes that protect the identities of the privileged from the scrutiny of the just. Based on the dozen outside PACs that flooded Iowa with ads, only two have disclosed their donors, hence, Iowa voters, along with those in New Hampshire and South Carolina, don’t get the pleasure of learning who is responsible for such elevated political discourse.

And the raucousness of elevated political discourse as a result of the unlimited money unleashed on American politics by the Supreme’s Court’s Citizens United decision, is now so deafening and so unabashedly hypocritical, that soon it will have all of us questioning our citizenship.

For those dispirited few who have taken up residence in a cave, the winner of the Iowa caucus was everybody’s favorite prevaricator, Mitt Romney, who never met a position he couldn’t embrace. Not surprising considering the fact that, according to the New York Times, “from December 1 until the Iowa caucuses on January 3, 45 percent of all ads airing in Iowa were directed against Newt Gingrich, who promptly lost his frontrunner status and came in fourth.” Financing for these ads was courtesy of Ron Paul, Rick Perry and Restore Our Future, a Super PAC that backs Mitt Romney.

The renowned Newt, who can cue a misty eye with the best of them, railed against the injustices of unchecked spending, claiming that the $3 million spent attacking him came from Mitt Romney’s “millionaire friends.”

But that was Iowa. Already political history. On to New Hampshire, (on and gone. As I write this in our new insta-time frame, New Hampshire ballots are in and Mitt, once again, is being declared the winner).

But a new political reality is looming. Newt, who appears to have come in at a humbling 4th (tied with Rick Perry) in New Hampshire, has adopted a different tact along the biblical lines of an eye for an eye. Did he have a change of heart? (He is a fickle fellow, after all, his wives will tell you). Or as one observer noted, has he “suddenly developed a more Zen attitude.”

What Mr. Gingrich developed is a tidy endowment of $5 million from the Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a fine upstanding practitioner of predatory capitalism. What is more rapacious than a casino? With the tables turned, pun intended, Gingrich is now attacking Romney in a high-stakes, Vegas style, winner-take-all extravaganza that is sure to warm the cockles of the most calcified hearts and enrich the vaults of broadcasters across America.

The pro-Gingrich Winning Our Future Super PAC is peddling a Hollywood crafted heart-stopping tear-jerker entitled “The King of Bain.” A three star, four-hanky, Lifetime Original, this sentimentally overwrought anti-Mitt melodrama attempts, with nary a hint at subtlety, to draw a distinction between the kind of capitalism that makes America great, and the kind of unconscionable plundering that Mr. Romney practiced in his heyday at Bain Capital—i.e. predatory “corporate raiding” at the expense of vulnerable companies and their workers. It is hilariously shameless, but not so funny at what it portends.

I know only too well how the tedium of the times is leaving us all feeling a bit undone. A little fragile, a lot afraid. After all, how can one marvel at Bach’s Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Minor, or relish the near decadent pleasures of a silky-smooth pistachio cream, when treachery, disparity and wanton money-grubbing abounds. It’s enough to send an aesthete on a murderous rampage. Why not a calm and quietly subdued one day protest at the nearest Federal courthouse instead?

Move to Amend Occupy the Courts will be occupying all the Federal courthouses across the country, including the high priestess herself, the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Friday, January 20. For the sake of those you love, for a country you hardly recognize, for a future you think lost, be there.

Think of all the positive rhythms you will be sending through the cosmos and to each other. For just this one day, Move to Amend volunteers across the USA will lead the charge on the judiciary which created — and continues to expand — corporate personhood rights. It’s an outrage against every person with a soul, a heart, a birth certificate.

“From the ashes
a fire shall be woken,
a light from the shadows
shall spring,
renewed shall be blade
that was broken,
the
crownless
again
shall
be
king!”

Images:Unknown
Scales of Justice (Getty Images)
“Justice,” From ceiling of the Stanza della Segnatura (Getty Images)
Statue of lady liberty holding the scales of justice (Getty Images)
Quote:The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

Filed under: Political Theatre, Poseurs & Pretentions Tagged: CitizensUnited, movetoammend, movetoammendoccupythecourts, occupythecourts, occupywallstreet, wethepeople

Overheard – Disbelieved.

Errant Aesthete — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:23:23 +0000

We the soulless Corporations of the United States, in order to form the Union more perfect to our shareholders, establish injustice, insure domestic inequality, provide for our common defense, promote our general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity at the expense of living American citizens, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United Corporations of America.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the next President of the United States,
brought to you by Goldman Sachs, Mobil Oil, DuPont Chemical, and Coca-Cola.

Game over.
America loses.
Democracy has just been sold to the highest bidder.

Random comments culled from a variety of sites in response to yesterday’s supreme court 5-4 ruling to topple century-old restrictions on corporate spending in federal elections that had never before been questioned in the courts. In a sort of constitutional Frankenstein moment, the court declared that the corporation is, like the average citizen, what Dahlia Lithwick of Slate termed, “a real live boy.” Pinocchio, if you will.

Hence, corporate speech is now more compellingly “real” than the “voices of the real people” it will drown out.

Yesterday, such an unthinkable act would have seemed an improbable plot slated for a nail-biting political thriller, fiction, of course, with a screen adaptation to follow and a Jimmy Stewart type hero leading the charge, or a Jiminy Crickett type character with a conscience saving the day and our once beloved democracy.

Today, however, it’s all too numbingly real.

The Supreme Court’s Citizen United Decision

Posted in Poseurs & Pretentions Tagged: corporatefinance, democracy, Excerpts, supremecourt

The Ladies Gallery

Errant Aesthete — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:38:44 +0000

“Situated in the House of Commons, the ladies gallery was a discreet and elite place for ladies–-the wives, mothers, sisters and any other privileged female relation or acquaintance–-to sit and watch the proceedings in Parliament. A highly coveted spot, it was nonetheless raided by Suffragettes in the late Edwardian era.

“Whilst the WSPU had been thus active, the Women’s Freedom League had startled London by cleverly organizing and smartly demonstrating in the Ladies Gallery of the House of Commons, on October 28th, 1908. That morning all the world had awakened to find that little placards, headed ‘A Proclamation containing a demand for Votes for Women’ had been posted on every hoarding. At 8:30 in the evening, whilst Parliament was discussing the Licensing Bill, and Mr. Remnant, one of the Conservative Members, was speaking, a woman in the Ladies Gallery suddenly thrust through the brass grille one of those proclamations with a cry of ‘Votes for Women!’”

–Sylvia Pankurst

Ladies were excluded from the House of Commons, but a gallery, above that of those reserved for reporters, was provided. Essentially, those of the female persuasion were “caged” behind a grille, as separated and invisible to the gentlemen down below in the Commons chamber as the women in Middle Eastern harems. After the Women’s Freedom League laid assault to the Commons through the Ladies Gallery, Parliament closed both the strangers’ and the ladies’ galleries for good.

Posted in Poseurs & Pretentions Tagged: houseofcommons, suffragettes, womensvote

Et Cetera

Errant Aesthete — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:40:54 +0000

Political posturing from the always reliable and laughably charming Groucho Marx singing the mantra of the times courtesy of the GOP:

VIEW

Posted in Poseurs & Pretentions Tagged: grouchomarx, humor, politics

Tweeting Too Hard

Errant Aesthete — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:50:58 +0000

Where self-important tweets get the recognition they deserve.

If that’s YOU!

Samples:

OMG i was saying how i couldn’t afford the gas
to fly daddy’s jet to the riviera this summer,
and this barista totally rolled her eyes at me

So I had a dream last night
that I was awesome and then I woke up
and realized it wasn’t really a dream at all but reality.

Posted in Poseurs & Pretentions Tagged: selfimportant, twitter

Overheard

Errant Aesthete — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:22:59 +0000

A cheerfully inebriated political reporter

is holding forth in the French ambassador’s residence

about the optimal approach to celebrities.

We’re in the back of the lavish Kalorama manse,

where every room on the first floor

seems to be a space for entertaining,

the high ceilings, oriental rugs

and busts of Gallic statesmen

giving off a distinct Eyes Wide Shut vibe.

The key to the celebrity encounter,

the expansive gent explains,

is not to give a s***:

“When a celebrity meets you,

it’s completely meaningless.

They have to put up with admiring strangers all the time.

So why worry about the impression you make?

It’s oddly liberating, really.”

Bloomberg-Vanity Fair afterparty
White House Correspondents Dinner

Posted in Poseurs & Pretentions

Grey Garden’s MemoraBEALEia

Errant Aesthete — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:34:51 +0000

It appears HBO’s dramatization of Grey Gardens this past weekend, the prodigious publicity campaign leading up to it, and the Broadway musical a few years back is not enough to sate the morbidly curious. Word has come down that the Grey Gardens Online website has been revamped to include every possible thing you ever wanted to know about the Beales and every unimaginable trinket you could hoard in their memory. I find a certain pathos and vulgar exploitation to this bit of news. One can only hope that Big and Little Edie are giggling in delight at the fame and, certainly, fortune denied them in life.

In addition to endless information, anecdotes and asides, scavenger hunters everywhere will thrill over the “Memorabealeia” section, where, predictably, bibelots abound. Little Edie Beale Bears, Little Edie Bobble Head Dolls, Grey Gardens Greeting Cards, HBO Promo Leather Photo Books and the ultimate Grey Garden collectible — little Edie’s signature brooch which finished off every “revolutionary costume” she wore.

According to sales details, “David Crotty, a fan and admirer of Little Edie, painstakingly re-created it with extraordinary attention to detail. The brooch is four inches long and is handmade in brass and gold with white topaz.” Bragging rights include the fact that an identical replica was worn by Christine Ebersole in the musical and Drew Barrymore in the televised production. Purchase online HERE and follow up with a novena for their dearly departed souls.

Posted in Poseurs & Pretentions Tagged: ediebeale, greygardens, jackiekennedy, memorabilia, onlinesite

The CEO’s Lament

Errant Aesthete — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 18:18:23 +0000

Everyone hates them, and now they don’t even get paid a lot. Sniff.

WSJ

Posted in Poseurs & Pretentions Tagged: bonuses, ceo's, economy, recession

The Errant Æsthete » Poseurs & Pretentions

The Crownless Shall be King

Move to Amend Occupies the Courts!

Images:Unknown Scales of Justice (Getty Images) “Justice,” From ceiling of the Stanza della Segnatura (Getty Images) Statue of lady liberty holding the scales of justice (Getty Images) Quote:The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

Overheard – Disbelieved.

The Ladies Gallery

Et Cetera

Tweeting Too Hard

Where self-important tweets get the recognition they deserve.

OMG i was saying how i couldn’t afford the gas to fly daddy’s jet to the riviera this summer, and this barista totally rolled her eyes at me

So I had a dream last night that I was awesome and then I woke up and realized it wasn’t really a dream at all but reality. Posted in Poseurs & Pretentions Tagged: selfimportant, twitter

Overheard

Grey Garden’s MemoraBEALEia

The CEO’s Lament

Images:Unknown
Scales of Justice (Getty Images)
“Justice,” From ceiling of the Stanza della Segnatura (Getty Images)
Statue of lady liberty holding the scales of justice (Getty Images)
Quote:The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

OMG i was saying how i couldn’t afford the gas
to fly daddy’s jet to the riviera this summer,
and this barista totally rolled her eyes at me

So I had a dream last night
that I was awesome and then I woke up
and realized it wasn’t really a dream at all but reality.

Posted in Poseurs & Pretentions Tagged: selfimportant, twitter