New and Improved! Civil Rights 2.0 (Brought to You By Intel)

 

http://childpsychiatryassociates.com/treatment-team/mary-hilliard/ By circumstance and TV viewing habits, I’ve been particularly attuned to the advertising world of late. And while I still believe corporations will be the ruination of America (we seem to have forgotten that money burns), business may be unintentionally performing a public good.

Consider: Three years ago, six states recognized gay marriage.  Today, it’s 36 — plus D.C. And while the Supreme Court weighs the issue on the federal level, its eventual success, regardless of the conservative slackwits on the bench, is certain.

That’s because American business has deemed it so. Years before politicians, corporate brain trusts from Hollywood  to GM to Apple recognized the gay community. Not out of a sense of altruism or fairness. But as a business strategy; gay  Americans statistically form a powerful financial demographic. From Will & Grace,  Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, even as far back as Three’s Company, Hollywood embraced the corporate notion that there is one gender symbol: $.

That’s a powerful concept, one that recognizes the right of all Americans to spend freely, regardless of what your religious pamphlet says. Other businesses quickly followed suit.

Witness what happened in March in Indiana, where the huckleberries passed a bill permitting god-fearing shop owners to refuse service to the godless.

indiana

Business saw clear past this ruse, recognizing it as a weapon against gays (or any group Indiana representatives deigned loathsome, for that matter). Businesses, including the NCAA, which held its Final Four in Indianapolis, threatened to boycott the state. Apple said not only that it wouldn’t recognize the law; it would rethink opening new business in the state of hayseeds. “Lawmakers” quickly backed down, redacting the most offensive language. Hopefully, Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi witnessed that on their World Wide Intertubes.

The original (and ongoing) civil rights battle didn’t have the backing of corporate America. If anything, corporate America was fine with discriminating against black Americans. It even worked racism into the business model, in the form of segregated bar stools, bathrooms, beaches and busses. Even today, analysts seemed stunned by how well entertainment sells in the “urban market.”

segregation

But, in addition to one gender, money sees one race: Patent Green. And money is just fine with gay marriage, transgendered customers, minority businesses and godless entrepreneurs. Hell, money even digs potheads: Colorado, which just legalized marijuana, reported a tax windfall of $53 million last year in weed revenues. It ain’t perfect, but at least it ain’t politics.

So pack that in your bong and blaze, Moral Majority diehards, and get used to domestically-partnered next door neighbors. You’re about to turn all colors of the rainbow as you blend into green.

Still, some things businesses can’t seem to advance. I just saw a commercial for Trident, which is still clinging to its “One out of every five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum.”

Who, exactly, is that fifth dentist? A pawn in the Bubble Yum lobby? Come on, Trident. Only 80%? You’re doing the polling — of puppets. You’d think you could do better than a B-.

dentists

 

For Esme, with Love and Slobber

 

I learned recently that my submission to America’s Funniest Home Video had been rejected.

Not that it came as a surprise. The footage is grainy, with crappy sound, shot on an early iPhone (which I guess is redundant). Still, I challenge producers to capture anything as unabashedly trusting.

But it got me thinking about viral videos. What makes them such a barometer of the zeitgeist? Why does Winnebago Man speak to our inner Walter White (beyond the guy trying to sell Walt’s vehicle of choice)?

Why does David After The Dentist philosophize so eloquently to our inner stoned child?

Or Keyboard Cat strike a chord in the inner animal in all of us, or at least maestro?

Then I realized: they work because they’re not trying to. When so many things are produced, prepackaged and beta tested, we rarely get an unrehearsed moment. Which makes them sing like Socrates.

And there was another through-line: none of them give a shit about recognition. In fact, when I told Teddy and Esme they weren’t going to be on AFHV (Esme’s favorite show), they went right back to sleep. I think they actually  would have preferred not to have been awakened with the news (unlike those Oscar contender phonies who claim to be asleep when the nominees are announced at 5:30 a.m.).

Perhaps the hounds had a point. Maybe it’s about consciousness, not clicks. Maybe it shouldn’t even be called a viral video; viruses are nearly always unfortunate news. A good viral video can heal the soul, even when it captures life in all its love, frustration, Novocain and pet hair.

Even when it tastes like Boston Terrier.

inmouth

Birthdays, Cursed Days and the Galapagos Islands

 

I got sick in June, 1979, on a Friday the 13th.

As a 14-year-old, I knew the day was supposed to be unlucky. But I didn’t really feel cursed. Not when the docs diagnosed me with juvenile diabetes. Not when they said I’d have to give myself two shots a day. Not even when I saw mom cry for the first time, as we sat in the parking lot outside the doctor’s office.

I understood it a few days later, watching a TV documentary about the Galapagos Islands. The narrator explained how Charles Darwin came up with his survival-of-the-fittest theorem on a visit to the islands and its thousands of indigenous residents. Iguanas, parrots, penguins.

But the animal that caught my eye was the great sea turtle, the icon of the islands (which are named after a specific breed of tortoise). With a little luck, the narrator said, a tortoise could live to 50, 60, even 100 years. More.

For some reason, 50 stuck in my head. It just seemed so old. That’s a half century. Grown-ups are that age. Parents are that age. Why, I’d even bet some people in their 50s are…grandparents.

IMG_0870

But I must have somehow, finally realized the Friday the 13th curse. I remember asking myself, for the first of many times: “I wonder if I could live as long as a sea turtle.”

It’s not an easy age to reach, the narrator said. Not even for the sea turtle. It had to survive the beach scamper from sandy egg to surf. If they avoided the birds, hatchlings had to survive the sharks and seals who love baby turtle soup. But if it could reach adulthood with its shell intact, the narrator said, a sea turtle can enjoy a long, fruitful life. Like, a half century fruitful.

So I began a countdown to a goal that seemed as unreachable as dunking a basketball. Fifty. Thirty-six years away. Five lifetimes, it seemed. As a boy, dad would say I was so impatient that I’d ask “what’s next?” five minutes after arriving somewhere.

And for so long, 50 did seem unobtainable. I was a shitty diabetic who could not accept that, overnight, I wasn’t allowed Bazooka, Starburst, Hershey bars. So I ate them with my friends, afraid of standing out.

I quickly succumbed. By the time I was 30, I’d had 17 eye surgeries. My kidneys were failing. I went on the transplant wait list for a new kidney and pancreas. Then, 50 didn’t sound so far off. Forty did.

But, at 35, I got the call that Samuel Flegel, a 17-year-old who was brain dead from a motorcycle accident, had come to save me. My perfect genetic match, he joined me in January 2000. sam

Suddenly, 50 wasn’t such a fantasy. And the years initially flew by as my new body broke into a sprint that took me to Australia, Japan, Mexico. 15, 14, 13, 12, the years peeled.

Five years in, the nausea came. Perhaps to remind me that Father Time and Mother Nature are still here. Not vindictive, but merciless. A divorce, a move, a resettlement accounted for the years, though they seemed to move slower. Nine, eight, seven…

Ten years in, and the engine truly felt sputtered. I watched hatchlings who should have long outlived me die in the beach scamper. Samuel. Libby, the first friend to offer to be tested as a viable donor, died in a motorcycle crash. Michael, who was tested and ready to donate a kidney, died of a brain tumor. Dad’s sudden death in his sleep made me wonder if I were meant to see the marathon tape. mikeybillybowles

The years were slowing to molasses. Four..three…two…

But something inside me awakened. Perhaps it was Michael. Or dad. Or a confluence of losses that made me realize how many people wanted me to get there. Who offered their bodies to see it so. That there were so many hatchlings, including the one I carry, who would never have a chance to outlive the great sea turtle. But they wanted me to.

One.

Hey, fifty.

I’m here.

What’s next?

umbrella