Tom Cordle's Open Salon Blog

A Cowboy Buryin’

Wed, 30 May 2012 13:05:21 -0400

“I know – from experience – how much beauty Satan carried down with him when he fell. Nobody ever said the fallen angels were the ugly ones.

Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory

My family is filled with an all-but-endless cast of fascinating characters. Most of the folks on Momma’s side – the McDonnell and Ferrel clans – teeter between brilliant and crazy; but they are all talented and entertaining. Daddy’s people – the Cordle and Martin clans – are brilliant but under-educated people, people strange in that peculiar mountain way that is too often a consequence of poverty, religion, moonshine and inbreeding.

Uncle Gaylord was Grampa Cordle’s half-brother. He had "received the call", as they say, and was a lay preacher of some ability. He could bring an entire congregation to tears or to conversion depending on his particular mood.

Such power must have been a heavy burden, for Gaylord was as good a drinker as he was a preacher, and he alternated his preaching with week-long or longer drinking spells. As Graham Greene eloquently made the case in The Power and the Glory, that’s too often the case with preachers and priests.

But then that’s to be expected given a religion so bent on pointing out people’s shortcomings to them, a religion that tells them they never had a chance, since they were “born in sin” and can do nothing to deserve salvation, but can be saved only thanks to God’s grace.

What may be worse is that people are taught that suffering here results in greater reward in the hereafter. That's always struck me as a poor way to teach people the joy of doing right for it's own sake. Far better, it seems to me, to teach that virtue is it's own reward.

But given that confusing, condemning message, is it any wonder a preacher – set up as an exemplar, but all too aware of his shortcomings – should be so wracked with guilt that he tries to drown his overwhelming and oppressing sorrow? Sad to say, an ocean of whiskey wouldn’t be enough to drown such guilt. But that doesn’t keep a man from trying.

So it was that Gaylord would preach his heart out against the evils of this world and the pleasures of the flesh. Then he’d assuage his own tormented soul with liquor, proving to himself yet again how unworthy he was of God’s grace.

To add to his problems, women were irresistibly drawn to him, aroused by his soulful countenance and the passions he stirred with his words from the pulpit. And so it was that Gaylord fell victim to other sins of the flesh, to the seductive enticement of the waltz, the endless dance between the sacred and the profane … between good and evil … between God and mammon … between agape love and that other kind of love that burned in the nether regions.

Gaylord fought and fought and fought; but in the end, he lost to sin – as we all do. His demons drove him to drink himself to death, and his last wish was for a cowboy buryin’.

Now for those who are unaware, a cowboy buryin’ is in a plain pine coffin without being embalmed. Why didn’t he want to be embalmed? Did he suppose that Heaven did not wait for those whose blood had been removed? Did he imagine the bloodless could not walk streets paved with gold? Whatever his reasons, that was his last wish, and he extracted a promise from his two sons that it would be carried out.

But there was a problem; burial without embalming was illegal in the state of Kentucky. One son was not about to run afoul of the law, and he went against his father’s wishes and had him embalmed as the law required. The other son was outraged, and the two never spoke another word for the rest of their lives.

So it was – and in some places still is – with preachin’ and drinkin’ and buryin’.

A Cowboy Buryin’

A cowboy died with a few requests
“Would you feed my dog when I’m laid to rest?
Would you walk my horse when I’m laid away?
Would you bury me in the cowboy way?

In a plain, pine box … on a slow, slow train
Headin’ for the hills … goin’ home again
Let the whistle cry … while a sad harp moans
You can have my boots … but let me keep my bones

Now, I’ve never been a cowboy, Son
I have no horse, and my dog’s long gone
But when I come to my dyin’ day
Would you bury me in the cowboy way?

In a plain, pine box … on a slow, slow train
Headin’ for the hills … goin’ home again
Let the whistle cry … while a sad harp moans
You can have my boots … but let me keep my bones

Pirate Call

Fri, 25 May 2012 16:05:06 -0400

In response to Green Heron's open call, I give you Captain Blackheart:

wasin icu*

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:05:21 -0400

*Lakota “takes the fat”

Forgive me while I vent my spleen
But I can’t bear what I have seen
The hunter gone for harvest scene
Now there is nothing left to glean

Men who worshipped gold and green
Looted lands once so pristine
With fisted-glove and twisted mien
They took the fat and stole the lean

They conquered Nature with Machine
Laid the track, bridged the ravine
Poisoned air with smoke-filled screen
Left all they touched with oily sheen

Now their heirs, the cruel, the mean
Feast on flesh like a gangrene
Chasing fortunes so obscene
Like vultures, pick the carcass clean

The time has passed for in-between
From Trickle-Down, it’s time to wean
Let them eat cake, drink gasoline
On chopping block or guillotine

It's Enough to Make Me $cream

Tue, 8 May 2012 12:05:32 -0400

In my previous post, Ann of a Thou$and Tees, I took Ann Romney to task for the hideous $1000 tee shirt she wore on the Today Show. Then some commenters took me to task for wasting space on something so trivial.

Sorry folks, but where I come from, $1000 isn’t trivial, and blowing that kind of money on something so hideous just to prove that you have no conscience and no taste – but that you’re rich enough to flaunt that fact, isn’t trivial – it’s sinful.

But it isn’t just the sin of flaunting your wealth in a time of great tribulation for millions of Americans; it’s also the sin of being oblivious or uncaring when it comes to the troubles of others.

That’s a fair conclusion given the many heartless statements Mitt Romney has made regarding firing people, letting auto companies – and their hundreds of suppliers – go bankrupt, solving the housing crisis by letting millions lose their homes, and telling college students to settle for less and take on huge debt in order to have a slim chance at all those jobs he and his kind haven’t created with all those tax breaks they’ve received over the last thirty years.

• • •

Speaking of job creation, we are told incessantly that if we just reduce taxes for Romney and his ilk, they’ll start creating jobs. Really? Mitt and his friends are only paying 14% on the millions they make annually – how much lower do we have to go before they’ll deign to create a few minimum-wage jobs? You don’t wanna know.

The ugly truth is that tax cuts for the very wealthy all too often don’t create jobs because far too many of the very wealthy are no longer interested in the kind of long-term investment that creates good jobs. These days they demand obscene returns on their money, and they want it now.

Once upon a time not so long ago, a ten percent return on an investment was considered first-rate; now that’s considered chump change for suckers. The high-rollers aren’t satisfied unless they can make 30%-100% or more on short-term investments. That’s one reason guys like Bernie Madoff are able to pull off their multi-billion dollar scams.

In short, investment has given way to speculation. Or let’s call it what it is – gambling. The once careful, conservative monied class has now become a bunch of riverboat gamblers and casino habitués.

• • •

Speculation comes in many forms, but a clear example is the $120 million dollars someone just paid for a pastel of Scream, dwarfing the already outrageous $47.6 million paid three years ago for a small chalk drawing by Raphael. And with the death of Thomas Kincaide, his schlock paintings may well become the next great “art investment”.

Musical instruments are another area of rank speculation by the uber-wealthy. Note (pun intended) the $16 million recently paid for the Lady Blunt Stradivarius and the $2.7 million a member of the Qatari royal family paid for a Stratocaster electric guitar simply because it had been signed by several rock stars, including Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and Bryan Adams.

Speaking of rock stars, Ozzie Osborne just paid $10,000 for a dog. Not to be outdone, a California couple paid $155,000 to have their dead dog cloned. Exotic cat breeds can go for $30,000 and a tropical fish breeder in Singapore recently turned down $80,000 for a fish. Oh, and the fish needed some surgery to fix its droopy eye. I’m not making any of this up.

Are these wise investments? Time will tell, but in too many cases, it appears the real purpose of many of these “investments” is to feed the already swollen egos of the buyers. As a wealthy woman once put it to me bluntly, “I want it because no one else can have one.”

• • •

Whatever the truth of the matter regarding rank speculation and fragile egos, it’s certainly safe to say few if any of these expenditures are going to create jobs – and none will create good-paying, long-term manufacturing jobs, the kind of jobs the wealthy claim tax cuts provide. They’ve been making that claim for decades – so where are the jobs?

And even if some of these expenditures do prove to be good investments, doesn’t society have the right to ask if these are the best societal uses for capital? Doesn’t society have the right to demand that a substantial portion of excess wealth be returned to the people who through their labors created it?

Certainly, the ancient Hebrews, who practiced Jubilee, and the Babylonian kings, who practiced debt forgiveness, understood that society suffers when too much wealth and power is concentrated in too few hands.

Let's not kid ourselves; the Babylonian kings weren't humanitarians, but they were wise in the ways of the world. They understood that when the larger society suffers too greatly, social unrest inevitably follows. And with great social unrest, heads inevitably roll.

Alas, despite the Arab Spring, that lesson appears lost on most of today's "potentates", particularly those in this country.

Forgiving deceptive mortgages and slavish student loans would be in keeping with those traditions. It certainly would do more to stimulate the economy and cool civil unrest than another round of tax cuts for the wealthy. But alas, most of America's uber-wealthy insist the only solution to our economic and social woes is evermore cuts – tax cuts and cuts in social services.

• • •

One more thing. You'll hear it said – incessantly on the Right – that the rich pay more than their fair share of taxes and that fifty percent of people don't pay any taxes. Funny, when they make that charge, they never mention General Electric and other multi-national corporations that often pay little or no taxes.

For those foolish enough to argue (even when the truth is staring them in the face) that the rich bear an unfair tax burden in this country, here are the facts regarding taxes according to Internal Revenue Service statistics:

Five Tax Fallacies Invented by the 1%

Please take the time to read that article; it's filled with facts essential to counter the bleating of wingnuts who insist on doubling down on Voodoo Economics. Of course, those statistics won’t sway wingnuts, who hold to their thoroughly discredited Freemarket religion as steadfastly, and as ignorantly, as any biblical literalist. It’s a scream watching them try to defend the indefensible.

Speaking of which, that Scream tee-shirt is for real, and it won’t set you back $120 million dollars. If Mitt Romney is elected President, I’m gonna buy one and wear it during my move to Canada.

Ann of a Thou$and Tees

Fri, 4 May 2012 13:05:42 -0400

“I am a man of parts, though I disjoint a cripple.” Anonymous

The soiled and spoiled rich have a saying: “If you got it flaunt it.” Ann Romney apparently subscribes to that notion. She recently appeared on the Today Show wearing what has come to be known as the Thousand-Dollar Tee-Shirt.

Fashionista that I am, the tee struck me as somewhere between garish and hideous. But the point isn’t her lack of fashion sense; it’s her lack of common sense. As long as she has been involved by proxy in politics, she should know better.

Or maybe she does know better, and maybe like her husband Mitt, she just doesn’t care.

Certainly, Mitt has made it plain he doesn’t care: “I like firing people … we should let GM go bankrupt … the way to solve the housing problem is to let all those people get foreclosed on … poor people are doing fine.”

• • •

All this begs the question whether Mitt, like his wife, is so lacking in common sense, so utterly unaware of the reality faced by most ordinary Americans, as to be unfit to govern. In another words, the Romney’s wealth isn’t the problem; it’s that their wealth has left them unaware and uncaring.

Ann Romney would differ, of course, but her true feelings were exposed when she expressed the sentiment that has long been rampant among the ranks of the Republican privileged class: “It’s our turn.”

With those words and her thousand-dollar tee-shirt, she might just as well have haughtily intoned “Let them eat cake.”