And Now for a Few Notes on Occupying One Percent
of Time Magazine, Where It's Currently Hip to Be a Contrarian Economeiser

     There have been many times rock’n’roll has saved my life … but … this has been inhibited by certain destructive activities, including: Whenever I have read any issue of Time Magazine during the past year. For example, there is the examination of the strange false rhetoric of columnist Joe Klein. For example, during the fall peak of the Occupy Wall Street movement, he apparently was inconvenienced by its truth, as well as its rhetoric and lack of singular clarity. Now, my problem is, while listening to the Jayhawks’ album, “Smile,” I now choose to respond to something Klein has written. This event, two days after I watched the DVD, “All the King’s Men,” which was based on a great book loosely based on the Louisiana man-of-the-people politician, Huey Long, who, before he was assassinated, spoke up for the “hicks” all of his life, corrupt as he was, doing great things for “the people,” in other words, the 99 percenters, against the big powers of his day, including Standard Oil, as well as their political lackeys.

     Well, I’d have to say, “Mr. Klein, Mr. Chairman in Pandemonium, is no Robert Penn Warren. I saw Robert Penn Warren speak once, and Mr. Klein, Mr. distinguished Chairman in Pandemonium of, ya‘ know, Hell, couldn’t carry his sharp as a spear pen, keeping it warm for him as Mr. Warren, or a million other fine writers, personally went to the limestone walls themselves to pee against their own personal places of power!”

     Mr. Klein appears to be a mere contrarian at court. A front-runner. The type of guy who, having already failed to notice the zeitgeist for Time, decides instead to write something apparently supporting the one-percent, pissing off, thus, the 99 percent, in order to get more hate mail and therefore, keep his job.

     Anyway, world-weary as I’m feeling right now, I can’t “Smile” about Mr. Klein’s wisdom (a generous use of that word right now), or, his “wit.” He’s really not very funny. Tries to be. For example, in his Oct. 31, 2011 one-page piece, which takes up a little over one percent of the 94-page issue of Time, the headline, which I doubt he came up with, is “An Implausible Populist: Obama hopes to join forces with the protesters, but his record tells another story,” … which, finds fault in some book about Obama’s economic policy because it failed to “check the proper spelling of legendary banker Walter Wristen’s name.”

     I mean, only a fuck face from hell, a one-percenter insider himself, would ever think any banker, other than maybe the Monopoly Money Guy or, and this is still a stretch, someone named Rothschild, or Morgan, another good example, is well-known by enough of the 99 percent of us to ever be known as a, quoth, “legend.”

     When I’m wearing my rock critic hat, I cringe whenever I see the word, “legendary.” Because it’s about as useful of a word, once you analyze the term as “behave,” as in what are parent’s actually saying when they tell a child to “behave,” Peeing against a big white limestone wall of power is a kind of behavior. Publicity people promoting their hot new bands use the word, “legendary.”

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     This just in: It is November 5, 2011, Guy Fawkes Day, and there is snow on the plateau. First snow of the coming winter and it’s a tad early, I’d say. Just as the “freak storm” that hit the North American Northeast about eleven days ago, maybe twelve, was described as being a tad early. Personally, I find the term, “freak,” a bit insulting to both extreme storms and “freaks.” Someone (not me) should write a strongly worded letter. Someone in a position of far more significance and readership and therefore power, such as Joe Klein, who should be writing about climate change instead of inside-baseball shit, for his one-percent use of the page he is given each week for Time Magazine. But Joe Klein is only in-touch with the Washington D.C. insider. Yes, everyone on the Earth thinks they are an economist. It’s hip to be so cardinal square. But there seems to be more important matter at hand, right now, than dollars and cents. The time and money people, nonetheless, are trying to keep, even on a sweet sad Saturday, their grip on “winning the future,” as Obama put it in a recent address about the economy and jobs and gross national product and all, earlier this fall.

     “Future”? What future? Without addressing climate change immediately, Mr. Pandemonium Chairman, what kind of future do you have in mind? Both sides are right, hence, your confusion, about the economy, which is clearly beyond the mortal consideration of any one mind.

Get over it. Get over it … so we can move on …

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     Anyhow, on the face of it, the use of the word “legendary” is short-hand for “I have absolutely no new information or light to share about this person I am now mentioning, if only because I am writing on deadline from an ivory tower right now and, well, I have a lunch appointment I have to get to downtown. And with all of these bad-smelling protesters outside, I am going to be late … and anyway, I have never misspelled a name before in my life and all … and anyway, if I did during my tenure at Time Is Money Magazine, there are about a zillion copy editors and proofers and control ‘freak’ editors to pluck it out …”

     Have I ever heard of any “legends” about “legendary banker” Walter Wristen? No, I have not. Never even heard of him. Not surprising, that. Am I an economist of any sort? Nope. Nope. Nope. Saying anything, quite honestly, prior to this year, about bankers, is a pretty new terrain. But I have seen Mr. Klein on various talking head broadcasts, ivory towering, and, well, I have never given him much thought. As a head talker, that is. Hardly, you know: Legendary. Not even colorful. A pretty drab man. Just another, as Ryan Adams might sing … another “political scientist” who lives, as that fine song goes, “on the edge of town.”

     More interesting, and more “legendary” is the Geico.com insurance Gecko featured on another page, also taking up a little more than one percent of the Oct. 31, 2011 of Time, on the page opposite of Klein’s column. “Geckonomics,” the advert states. “A case study,” the ad quips, “… in Saving People Money on More than Just Car Insurance.”

      And time, one hopes … dreams, in fact. Gotta make good time, right?

      And as the Jayhawks are getting the loud on, I realize: Hey, the Gecko is funnier than Joe Klein! If I’d just looked at the advertisement and spent less time and money on Time, reading Joe Klein’s work today, it would have saved me a tremendous amount of time in my life that I will never get back.

     Because (boy, this is really starting to feel like “werk” now) Klein also has had something rhetorically useless to say about some arcane appointment, about some Washington D.C. insider sort named to something called the National Economic Council. Look, angels, I’m no Klein or Robert Penn Warren or even a funny Brit Gecko, but I do know a few things about journalism and how, on the national level, it has failed us all. Or, at least 99 percent of us. Klein has been kissing up to power with his pretty pen. It’s what pays for his, well, high position in life as false scribe of phony, not-very-funny rhetoric. For example, about this Obama appointment for this thing called the National Economic Council, it dismisses the “atmospheric intelligence” of this guy, Lawrence Summers (Klein’s legendary, Okay, Okay, Orwellian phrasing here). Then, Klein writes, the appointment has the “emotional intelligence of a gnat.”

     For me, this is an insult to all gnats. The National Council All About Gnats should be disgusted with being compared to a man who, apparently, this Summers’ guy is, “prohibited the government from regulating financial derivatives.”

     Yeah, that sounds pretty stupid, I guess. Whatever derivatives are. We are all supposed to know because, clearly they are all part of that zombie-technology machine that has actually now, count them all, emptied people from their houses, their jobs, their homes, torn up families, caused suicides, long lines at the food banks, shootings at Wal Marts, assassinations at strip malls, started some wars, choked off others … but sure has fed a lot of bitchy talking heads to yell at each other on the different network shows currently still not discussing more important things all day, all night, such as, the current weirdness of the “atmosphere.”

     My question is this … Who the fuck is speaking up for the gnat right now? Joe Klein? Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. These days gnats are like girls gone wild. He’s not even speaking out against the magical television salamander Geico man who is a spokes lizard for car insurance we are all forced to buy; in many cases even if we don’t even own or drive a car!

     Try to get flood insurance!

     That, as Fleetwood Mac might sing, “Is not that funny, is it?”

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The Pedestrian Peace Piece, aka, Public Transportation in Small Town USA, Aye!

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Climate change and the subsequent social disorders it creates, is the No. 1 story, and No. 1 security threat in America this week, the next, the next, and then, the next ... and it doesn't look like those facts are going to change soon, politicos ...

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Time to bring the boys and girls back home? ... Well, according to the Huffington Post ... "Military Spending Waste: Up To $60B In Iraq, Afghanistan War Funds Lost To Poor Planning" ... seems to me the storm-wrecked nation could use a little nation rebuilding back home ...

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Currently working on: "An Apology for Walking: A Pedestrian's Galaxy Guide to Provincial Tactics in Avoiding to Get Hit By Weaponized Bus Drivers and Other Weapons of Mass Public Transportation." ... But before I post it up for free I'm going to put it up for auction on eBay to see if I get any fee-based interest there ..

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Sure, it's looking like snow here in Arizona, but yeah, I'll wear my blue Columbia rain gear out to breakfast this a.m., as a symbol of mutual support for my brother and sister journos out there on the East Coast, fluttering in the breeze and waving their arms in the wind to entertain us. Sure, I'll do that.

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Now featuring "reality lit" and poetry by author, poet and Bards of Mythville singer/songwriter Douglas McDaniel ... http://mythville.blogspot.com/