You’re STILL Wrong Mykel's January 2019 Blog/Column "Eat This!"

You’re Still Wrong

Mykel's Blog for January 2019
or

EAT THIS, SUCKER!

Every asylum in this nation is filled with poor souls who simply cannot stand lanolin, cellophane, plastic, television, and subdivisions. --Michael Pollan

Back from the Deli… not India-- that was a few weeks ago... but the local place around the corner. Ham and cheese on a kaiser roll… I unwrap the plastic from the roll and take a bite of the sandwich… ahh the joy… I’m sooo fuckin’ hungry… but wait... it needs mustard. Ham, cheese, lettuce, on a roll… you can’t eat a ham and cheese sandwich without mustard. A little on the cheese… a little on the lettuce… close the roll again… yeah! It's the New York lunch of the goyim… and those of us who don’t keep all the rules.

CHOMP, CHOMP CHOMP…. a few more bites and the sandwich is gone… into near-future heartburn and further future loose brown turds. I lick my fingers before picking up the plastic wrap… Then I take a bite of it… pulling the wrap into bite-sized pieces. I feel the smoothness of the plastic inside my mouth… slipping over my molars… I grind it down… take a swig of seltzer to wash it over the back of my tongue. Then another bite of the plastic wrap. I use my tongue to separate the price label from the wrapper. Why bother? I swallow them both.

Weird fantasy? You bet your Nexium it’s not. Daily, Americans eat the equivalent of thousands of plastic wrappers-- or latex gloves. I don’t know about where you live, but here in New York… it’s the law that anyone who prepares food must wear latex gloves before touching the goods. Every sliced piece of meat… every block of cheese… every bunch of grapes… must be handled by hands encased in plastic. Change food? Put on new gloves. And you think that plastic stays on the gloves? You think that latex doesn’t contaminate everything it touches? You think you’re not eating fistfuls of plastic every day? Think again, buckaroo. Happy cancer, baby!

In most countries in the world people use skin. Naked hands-- usually washed naked hands-- but who knows?… Naked hands handle food in India… in Africa… in most of Asia. Go to Japan and find an expert sushi chef who wears hand condoms before molding that perfect fish to that perfect lump of perfect rice… yeah right. Skin... it only works with SKIN!

But here… in the US and maybe much of Europe… the body is DIRTY. Skin is DIRTY. It carries GERMS. Don’t touch it. Don’t let it touch your food. Cover it up… that’ll make it safe… The bare body is BAD! Avoid skin at all costs.

While New Yorkers debate a ban on plastic straws, they consume hundreds of thousands of plastic gloves… to cover the sin of SKIN.

In the Pacific… or the Atlantic… somewhere... there is a floating island of latex gloves. Fish are choking on latex gloves. Seagulls are dying from trying to pick real food from floating latex gloves.

Those floating plastic islands you read about... destroying marine life… they are not just plastic shopping bags and drinking straws. They are the tiny one-use bags dog owners use instead of a broom and dustpan to pick up shit on the street. They are millions of garbage can liners, because we don’t want to dirty the inside of our trash bins (oh how disgusting). They are millions of baby-preventing condoms because washing and reusing the same condom twice… OH YUCK! And... they are millions of once-used latex gloves.

But wait! There’s more. Think about those pots you stick in the microwave… or in the freezer. You live on the plastic wrapped meat... vegetables... yesterday's tuna casserole... in the refrigerator. Your morning sandwich bought plastic-wrapped at Pret A Manger! All that: in plastic. And you think you’re not eating it? You think those petroleum molecules are somehow better for you than the washed flesh of someone’s hands?

Sure, blame the cancer epidemic on smoking… on vaping… on the artificial food coloring squirted into your bottle of Mountain Dew. Wake up bottled water drinkers! Every bottle of water is surrounded by plastic… and that plastic goes INTO the water. Buy water by the case? By the time you get to that last bottle, more plastic pollution has leached into that water than will ever come out of your faucet.

Yeah, in other countries they sell water in plastic bottles. Their own water is undrinkable and glass is too heavy for easy and cheap shipping. But most other countries don’t use latex gloves to touch food. They don’t use them to touch each other in the doctor’s exam room.

I blame Christians... those sex-adverse fanatics who tell you that THE SOUL is godlike... good... while its house is evil... sinful... needs to be hidden away like a filthy box for a precious jewel. Christians-- along with their monotheistic cohorts: Jews and Muslims-- have taboo-ized the body... made it shameful... along with all those things the body does... pissing... shitting... fucking.

FLASH TO INDIA… I’m at the famous sex temple in Khajuharo. There are frescoes of orgies, sex with animals… with people of all and indeterminate genders. It’s enough to harden my 4 inches of limp biscuit. Tourists pose in front… take selfies… point out the best tiles.

FLASH TO MUMBAI: At a dinner party, I talk about the temple... ask its origins... its history. An attractive homosexual answers me… in a voice that borders on panic.

“You know how old that temple is?” He asks… Then answers his own question… “800 years old! That’s how old. And India has the Kama Sutra… and a history of sex… sex… sex… India was a sex country... More cum spilled than all the tea in Darjeeling... And what happened?”

“The British?” I guess out loud.

He points a hard index finger at me.

“Yes!” he shouts. “Yes! Yes! Yes! It was the British… They ruined us.”

“Like the Americans ruined the other Indians,” I answer.

But it’s not only sex. It’s deeper than that… or-- in a way-- more superficial… or at least surface. The problem is the body and its outer coating… SKIN. The mind is holy. The body is dirty. It needs constant washing… covering up… protection. Half of the #metoo complaints are He touched me. His skin on my body… not even on my skin… just my body. I’ve been defiled… used… his SKIN touched me.

FLASH TO LEXINGTON AVE, NYC: I walk into the school lobby, preparing to board the elevator to take me to my first class of the day. I hope Shiho will be the student. She’s my favorite… one of three people I know in the world who have been to North Korea. She's got terrific stories. This elevator, though, takes fuckin’ forever!

Then it hits me… that caustic smell… filtering through my nosehairs and embedded boogers… burning my nostrils… a medicinal… artificial... stinging smell. I’d know it anywhere: PURELL. The most pervasive example of puritanical cleanliness since Queen Victoria ordered table legs covered-- in modesty-- in the mid 1800s.

The smell is everywhere. In the mensroom, in front of elevators, in the train, in Del Monico’s Deli, where I’m trying to enjoy my half price 4-6PM dinner… The woman at the next table glares at me as she scrubs her hands with PURELL-soaked wetnaps… as if she were trying to rub from her eyes the image of my eating these greasy chicken wings. I gag loudly at the smell.

You don't see Purell in India. They don’t rub germicide on their hands... killing off the weak bacteria… so only the strong survive to reproduce. They don’t wash their hands after taking a piss in Christian fear that their naked hand touched the never-to-be-naked skin DOWN THERE!

[Aside: Some facebook friends were trying to convince me it's HEALTH reasons to wash your hands after only taking a piss. Yeah, right. What's the DIRTIEST PART of any public toilet? The first place touched by people who piss on their hands, jerk off or get shit on their hands while wiping? You got it right! The SINK HANDLE. And what's the LAST place you touch after washing your hands? Yep.]

Me? Back in New York... I'm going to Rick's Cabaret this weekend. I need as much skin as I can get.

– end –

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

-→Common Cold Dept: Some British politician once said, "I think right now if Donald Trump invented a cure for the common cold, they would still find a reason to criticize him."

     BINGO! Trump says he’s pulling 7000 troops out of Afghanistan and ALL the US troops out of Syria. He’s ending two of the worst cases of American international interference in the last 20 years. And what does he get? CRITICISM from both parties. It’s easy to understand from the war-loving Neocons… but the liberal Dems? If Obama had done the same thing, they would have had a parade in celebration.

-→Who doesn’t? dept: The Daily Mail reported on Dec. 14 that a Chinese man identified named Peng was hospitalized in Zhangzhou after he complained of a cough and chest pains. As doctors examined him, Peng admitted that he was "addicted to smelling his socks that he had been wearing." The pain in his chest, it turned out, was a fungal infection he had inhaled from his socks.

     While Peng made a full recovery, other people said on Chinese social media that they have the same habit: "The reason I smell my socks is to know if I can continue wearing them the next day!" one of the comments said.

     Another pledged to "wash my socks every day now.” He learned his lesson.

     Yeah, the fungal infection is interesting and funny… but more interesting and funny is that the reporter didn't realize that EVERYBODY smells their own socks.

-→My kind of recycling dept: Jim Alexander and Betina Bradshaw of Devon, England, had a Christmas feast for family and friends. On the menu: deer, pheasant, rabbits, badgers ... all roadkill. Alexander, a trained butcher, had collected nearly 50 fresh animal corpses over the past year. The butcher said his collecting habits have occasionally drawn the attention of police, but "once they realize I'm doing nothing wrong, they are fine, and one even helped me lift an animal into the van."

     I see this as a dilemma for vegetarians. The animals eaten weren't killed for food. They were dead anyway. Isn't it a waste to just throw the corpse into a trash heap? If the roadkill isn't eaten, then carnivores will simply spend money to buy meat that WAS killed for food.  Doesn't eating roadkill actually SAVE animals?

-------------------------

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you. You add me.

Here's a start:

• David Goldberg's Busy Microbes Blog

• And another Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

• Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

• And my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's Recipes.

• And here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour diary of sorts.

• Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.
• Savage Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.
• Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue soon.
• George Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavy blog... with music and books featured prominently.
• And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas Master Blog.

CONTACT REDUX: You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group: readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

You’re STILL Wrong Mykel's December 2018 Blog/Column "Appropriation"

You’re Still Wrong

Mykel’s Post MRR column
December 2018
or
CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

It’s hard to believe… I can’t believe it myself… but I type this at a tiny table in Mumbai, India… inside a… I can hardly type this… inside a… this is pain! Inside a Starbucks!

I hate the coffee. I hate the company. I hate the atmosphere… the customers. But it’s 97^o outside. I’ve been sitting... standing... walking... in the sun since 10:30AM… it’s now 2:11PM. I asked Google for the nearest coffee shop with AC and it gave me three or four within a couple miles… none of which responded to a tap of the DIRECTIONS button. The only name I could remember was STARBUCKS… so I plugged it into Google Maps and voila! Here I am… guilty and unpleasant for being here. But here just the same.

Starbucks prices in India are the same as in New York. 200+ rupees for an Ice Coffee Medium… I refuse to say Grande or Tall or whatever the fuck they call it. 200 rupees is about $3... big money for the local snake charmers. The baristas served it to me In a cup with my name... “Michle...” written on the outside.

There are mostly brown-skinned people here, but enough palefaces to make me feel totally creeped out. Few things can be as horrible as drinking coffee at a Starbucks in an Asian country where other white people also sit and drink. It’s embarassing... like a fart in an elevator.

I’ve been in India almost 2 weeks now. Except for the weather, lack of toilets, and spotty internet, it’s been pretty good to me. (You can read my adventures at: https://mykelsdiary.blogspot.com.) One of the reasons I came to the country is I love Indian food in New York and I want to see how the real thing compares. I won’t find the answer in Starbucks.

Also, I know Indian food, but I don’t know Indian punkrock. I’ve been waiting 40 years for an Indian band The Vindalosers to show up at CBGBs. It’s not gonna happen, I fear… for two reasons.

1. CBGBs is gone…. at least the punk rock club by that name is gone.

2. As far as I know (or any of my punk pals in India know) there never was an Indian band called The Vindalosers.

It’s yours for the taking. Feel free to appropriate it and use it as you like. You don’t even have to give me credit…. And that is what I want to talk about this month…

FLASH TO a long shot of a dusty prairie... roaming cattle… a single dilapidated building… maybe a bar. Johnny Cash sings off camera as a lone horse and cowboy enter from screen left… galloping across... a dustcloud forming alongside… then fading behind them.

Slowly pan in… follow the horse over the plains closing in behind… until we have a view of the tail and… from behind… a man in bluejeans, flannel shirt… and cowboy hat… sitting on the horse… The dust kicked up behind the animal slowly fades… hoofbeats change from galloping thuds to clop... clop... clop.

Pan out again. The horse is on a street… some suburban town… a middle class American town… white fences… rose gardens… suburban houses with a few faded, tattered, Hillary Clinton for President signs stuck in a few well-mowed front lawns.

As our cowboy rides down the street, two people come running from one of the houses. They wear black hoodies with a black scarves… burqa-like.… covering their faces. They shout at the passing cowboy. We hear the shouts over the hoofbeats.

“Fuck you! You fascist pig!”

“You think you’re a cowboy! You mock the Native American killers? You’re fetishizing the old west… The genocide of native people. You’re appropriating their culture and turning it against them!”

The pair picks up some rocks… some garbage… some things to throw… and throw they do…. the horse and rider gallop off toward a shopping mall.

“You’re culturally appropriating!” They scream…. and that brings me directly to the topic.

APPROPRIATION

First, let’s get the terms right.

There are two types of appropriation in the cultural sense. One is like the flu. If someone gets the flu from you… you still have it. The amount of flu is not fixed, but can be passed from waitress to bank president… with neither losing it as they give it away. This kind of appropriation takes from other cultures-- or takes from other languages-- but doesn’t TAKE IT AWAY.

When Burger King offered its “breakfast bagel” in New York, customers had their choice of ham, bacon or sausage. The chain appropriated a quintessentially Jewish food and made it as goy as you can get. In New York people objected… complained. Well, of course.

The offer didn’t last long in New York. But I hear it continues today in the South. I still have my bagels with lox and a shmear. Burger King did not take that away from me.

FLASH TO SCHOOL (I teach English to Japanese students) Ari shows up with a single thin chain around her neck. Dangling from the chain is a small rhinestone-studded cross.

“Oh,” I ask, “are you Catholic or some other kind?”

She frowns.

“Your necklace,” I say, pointing to the cross.

“Oh that,” she says, laughing, “I’m not Christian. I just like the design.”

My pal Sara told me she saw a Japanese student wearing Mogen David star earrings. She asked what synagogue she went to. 

The answer, of course, was “What’s a synagogue?”

My mogen-david Matzoh cover loses nothing because of her earrings.

Now, take Halloween… please!

Happily, this year I was in India for that horrible holiday. Few people celebrate it here. Next to Christmas and the related Santacon… Halloween is my least favorite holiday. It’s gotten worse… more restrictive… because of charges of Cultural Appropriation.

I’m a Navajo, not your Halloween costume.

Pagans are not witches.

Blackface is racist.

The X-men of cultural purity don’t get that if I wear a loin cloth and feathers, it does not damage Chief Waterwiggle’s ability to sit down with his tribe of REAL Indians and smoke a peacepipe any more than Burger King’s bagels damaged my ability to enjoy lox and cream cheese.

What’s left for Halloween? Vampires?, Superheroes? Bad parodies of Donald Trump? Glad I missed it.

In Oregon, two women who traveled extensively in Mexico… discovered a special way of making tacos… one never seen in the U.S. They learn the recipe and cooking method from the locals, They open a restaurant based on their culinary discovery. What happens?

You guessed it!

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION screamed the Twitter Twits… The owners STOLE the recipe from some poor Mexicans. Hegemony! Imperialism! The restaurant soon closed.

I’ll try to put it another way, Culture is not a car. If I steal your car, you don’t have it anymore… It’s not there for your use. If I copy your burrito, you can still make another using the same recipe.

But there IS a kind of appropriation similar to car stealing.

When homosexuals became Gay sometime in the 1970s, “Gay” still carried the meaning of happy, carefree, light-hearted. I never liked the term as a sexual one. And most of the homos I knew (and most that I know now) are as far from being GAY (in the original meaning) as a crowbar is from being a crow.

“Look at that guy, I wonder if he’s gay.” only has one meaning now… no matter how happy and carefree he is. The word is lost… stolen… taken away. And probably will never be returned. In 2018, you cannot have a gay old time without exchanging bodily fluids.

Then there’s anti-semite. A Semite is a person of Middle Eastern origin. Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic (the language of Jesus… if you believe) are Semitic languages. Moroccans are Semites. Tunisians are Semites. Sephardic Jews are Semites. My Ukrainian grandfather was NOT a Semite.

But what happened? Somehow anti-Semitic came to mean anti-Jewish. All those other Semites were pushed aside. Jews-- whether Semitic or not-- took over the word and pushed aside its original meaning. In 2018 Palestinians can be “anti-Semitic,” and Jewish advocates for the Palestinian holocaust… well they’re just… er… something else.

FLASH TO NOW: I continue this blog in Delhi Airport… terminal 3. My flight for New York is set to leave in 13 hours. I can’t find an electrical socket, so my only choice is to write until the battery conks out. Around me are Indian-looking guys with tags around their necks. I guess they work at the airport. Across from me, a business-suited guy fiddles with his iPhone, stopping once or twice to adjust his black turban.

I clear my throat, trying to avoid the hacking cough that comes from 2 weeks in the most air-polluted section of the most air-polluted city in India… and I was staying with a chain smoker. My weak lung (the left one) wheezes on the inhale… coughs on the exhale. So much can happen between one paragraph and the next. Watch this:

Bang! I’ve returned to New York for a few days, then left by bus for a visit to relatives in South Carolina, I am now seated next to the bus toilet... the stink roughing up my still-frail lung…I chain suck one Fisherman’s Friend after the other. Any break makes a coughing fit loud enough to wake the neighbors.

This bus feels like India. I’m the only white guy… the way I like it. I know I’ll be jinxing it to write this… but although I’m overwhelmed with the smell of piss… there are no screaming babies.

I love the U.S. Southeast… except for the politics. The weather is usually nice. People are friendly. Best barbecue in America. Maybe I’ll stop in to Burger King for ham and cheese… on a bagel.

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

-→INKED Dept: If you need another reason (other than the risk of God’s wrath) NOT to get a tattoo, the Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that agencies of the US government are working on a tattoo database. It both matches tattoos with the wearer and tries to figure out the political and ideological positions of various tattoo holders. Originally they used images from police files only, but have recently branched out to include Flickr… and, I bet, that’s only the beginning. Watch that Instagram of your latest. The FBI is watching it right now. 

Cultural Appropriation by People in That Culture dept: People Magazine, of all places, reports that model superstar Gigi Hadid (mother: Dutch, father: Palestinian) has been criticized for wearing a hajib in her picture on the debut cover of Vogue Arabia. Her critics say she has culturally appropriated the traditional Muslim scarf. Of course, since she is ½ Palestinian-- and a Muslim… it’s HER tradition! -- Maybe she should have worn have a burqa.

-------------------------

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you. You add me.

Here's a start:

• David Goldberg's Busy Microbes Blog
• And another Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com
• I post a blog for Kyle Nonnemon, in prison for a ton of shit. He's a smart guy, with a passion for industrial metal and a general detestation of humankind. You can read his blog at:apothelema.blogspot.com
• Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency
• Sometimes I contribute to an interesting multi-talented blog called OgFomK Arts see me there!
• And my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's Recipes.
• And here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour diary of sorts.
• Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.
• Savage Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.
• Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue soon.
• George Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavyblog... with music and books featured prominently.
• And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas Master Blog.

CONTACT REDUX: You can contact me on facebook or by email atgod@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. 

You’re STILL Wrong Mykel's November 2018 Blog/Column "Tolerance"

You’re Still Wrong

Mykel’s Post MRR column No ???
or A CRITIQUE OF PURE INTOLERANCE

I write this sitting in a train traveling on a 15 hour ride from Agra India to Amritsan… I probably have the name spelled wrong. I’ve got an deafening headache from lack of coffee. I’m thirsty, having just finished the last of the water. The only available food is Chiwda, a nice mix of nuts, toasted rice and noodles… great any other time… but it’s salty… and there is no water.

Internet is spotty in Google… time to write is even spottier. So this month, I’m combining some facebook posts into a blog. Next month, I hope, I’ll be writing about India.

This month, with some repeat (Who me, repeat? Who me, repeat?) I want to talk about TOLERANCE:

Tolerance used to be a “liberal” principle. I remember all these teaching tolerance programs in school… kids’ books with different colored rabbits-- kidtalk for different racial groups. The moral was always: underneath it all, they’re all just plain rabbits. Get it?

Tolerance was a virtue. You should approach people without pre-conception. You talk with them... learn from them... maybe they learned from you. People who dressed differently, looked different, had different religions, different ideas. You might disagree with the ideas… and say so... but you should tolerate them because a free exchange of ideas is the way both sides learn. And a free exchange of cultures is the way both sides can have nice new eats!

No discrimination by race, creed or color, we used to say. Today the right has no tolerance for race and color and the left for creed. Every politician promises ZERO TOLERANCE for something or other… and that’s supposed to be a good thing.

Maybe the earlier tolerance was a product of the peace and love generation… or the burgeoning Civil Rights movement… where Martin Luther King learned non-violence from Mohandas K. Gandhi … His image is everywhere here in India. Like every podunk town in the US has its ML King Drive… every city in India has its MG Road. Non-violence is crucial to tolerance. Violence is the ultimate in intolerance.

I guess this began to change in the 90s… a reaction to the unlimited freedom and tolerance of the 60s and then the 80s. I think the first time I heard the words ZERO TOLERANCE was in the war on drugs. Any use of drugs… possession of drugs.. BANG you’re in jail. ZERO TOLERANCE. The WORDS became a hallmark of the Giuliani administration in New York. The Broken Windows policing policy, based on an idea similar to marijuana leads to heroin. The smallest “crime”-- pan-handing, pissing on the street, fare-jumping,… BANG! You’re in jail. ZERO TOLERANCE.

Of course this hit the poor hardest, if you’re not poor you don’t NEED to piss on the street or jump the turnstyle. The jails filled. The poor were in jail or forced out of the city… The rich, who no longer were forced to watch people piss on the street, moved in. ZERO TOLERANCE worked to reduce crime. But it made life worse for those not tolerated. And drove rents and other prices up… ethnic diversity down.

Like the swine flu, ZERO TOLERANCE, quickly caught on. ZERO TOLERANCE for prostitution. ZERO TOLERANCE for smoking in public places… and the list goes on. Then, like syphilis jumped species from sheep to human (I wonder how that happened), ZERO TOLERANCE jumped politics and moved to liberals… the so-called left.

ZERO TOLERANCE FOR HATE is a sign I saw in a store window on Lafayette Street. It made me laugh. What better definition of HATE than ZERO TOLERANCE? They are the same thing! That was funny… but it wasn’t a joke.

Just like all Muslims were branded TERRORISTS by the right… All nationalists, alt-rightists, libertarians suddenly were branded NAZIS, or FASCISTS by the the left. And, guess what, ZERO TOLERANCE for “Nazis” and “Fascists.”

In the 20^th Century, the violently intolerant wore white hoods (and robes) and attacked violently in a wave of racial intolerance. In the 21^st Century, the violently intolerant wear BLACK hoods (and scarves) and attack with clubs and fists in a wave of political intolerance.

Flash back about 20 years. An old Caribbean-American friend of mine lives in Raleigh North Carolina. Last time she came to New York she seemed slightly stand-offish. I don’t remember the exact details, so my reconstruction will be slightly off, but close enough. (I’ve changed the protagonist’s name.)

“Olga!” I shout when I see her. “Great to see you! It’s been a long time.”

“Oh hi, Mykel,” she says. “My life has changed a bit since you saw me last. I have a new boyfriend now.”

“That’s cool,” I say, “but not so weird. How has your life changed?”

“Well,” says Olga, “He’s told me about Doctor Farrakhan. And I’m learning the proper way to act. Dr. Farrakhan says…..”

“Dr. Farrakhan????” I don’t say, “This is the guy who said ‘I’m not anti-Semite… I’m anti-TERMITE! THAT Dr. Farrakhan”

But I listen… I listen to ideas about modesty... about Jews position in history… about how Islam is the religion of the underclasses, the poor, the displaced, the oppressed. I listen.

And I have been listening ever since… or making the effort. I’ve traveled to Muslim countries (Turkey, Morocco, Senegal, The Gambia), and listened… and met great people, and have friends among them. I don’t hide my Jewitude… they check for horns when they find out… then they laugh and don’t care. We talk.

Flash to early 21^st Century, Laurens South Carolina: I’m with Sid Yiddish, who’s visiting from Chicago. Laurens is home to THE REBEL SHOP which my cousin tells me is run by “a real Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” Sounds scary.

“Can we go, Uncle Mickey?” asks Sid.

We go.

It looks like it used to be a theater. The letters in the marquee say REBEL SHOP and there’s a confederate flag in front of it. Sid and I look at each other. I shrug. We walk in.

The owner of the shop, a chubby guy in his late 60s-early seventies wishes us welcome. Sid goes over to look at the t-shirts. I walk around to look at the posters, and Klan memorabilia. No lynching pictures… just guys on horses in robes with white hoods.

“This is the later Klan,” says one of the patrons-- a muscular guy, early 30s, I’d guess. “See the hoods… they don’t cover the faces like the early ones did. I guess they had more pride the second time around.”

Most of the pictures, in fact, are of the reformed Klan, where the hoods didn’t cover their whole faces… I wonder how long before Antifa is proud of what it’s doing. The story is scary, but fascinating.

The shop owner calls to us over the counter, “If you want to look at more pictures, you can check out my own room. I sleep in the back.”

He opens the door and shows us to the back room. There is indeed a bed there… along with what looked like several posters from BIRTH OF A NATION.

I look at the bed… nothing more than a couch with a few sheets and pillows... surprisingly coordinated, blue and an odd shade of beige. Then I walk out to talk with the guy.

“I’m surprised,” I tell him. “I thought you guys only used WHITE sheets.”

He laughs.

“You boys ain’t from around here, are ya?” he asks.

“Imagine your worst nightmare,” I tell him. “Imagine your vision of hell! The worst place you could ever be...”

“Ah,” he says,” You boys are from New York.”

The three of us laugh.

He motions to a younger man… 40s… muscular in an uncomfortable way-- like a grumpy version of the guy who told me about the hoods. The man is sitting by himself… arms folded… unsmiling. 

“I want you to meet (I forgot his name). He’s the head of the county National Socialist Society,” says the Grand Dragon.

“Hi” I say, extending my hand, “I’m Mykel Board from New York. This is my friend Sid Yiddish.”

The guy doesn’t look at us and only tightens his arms across his chest. He does not take my out-stretched hand.

Sid and I look at each other. He shrugs. We go back to looking at the t-shirts. Before long, we both find t-shirts we like. Mine is a very homo-looking one with a picture of a topless cowboy smiling and the logo IT’S A SOUTHERN THING! Sid gets one of an astronaut planting a rebel flag, with the logo SOUTH SIDE OF THE MOON.

Sid, who looks even Jewer than me, pays for both shirts by credit card. The credit card has Sid’s real name on it. (Hint: think something-berg or something-stein.) The Klan guy looks at it, laughs, rings up the sale and hands us applications to join the Klan. Neither of us qualify… you have to be a “loyal white Christian American.”

We wave to him, and leave going back to my cousins.

“Wow!” says Sid, “That was quite an adventure. The Klan guy was funny.”

“I’m surprised the town allows a store like that,” I say. “Seems like it’d be bad for its reputation.”

“The great thing is,” he says, “that the landlord for the place is a black church… Southern gospel. He pays his money, and they’re friends.”

“Holy shit!” I say, “A black church and the KKK… now THAT’S tolerance.”

“It’s a Southern thing,” he answers.

Flash to 1998: The phone rings… I don’t answer… I never do… I hate the phone. In an hour or so I listen to my messages… I recognize George Tabb’s voice…

“Mykel,” says George’s voice, “I have some bad news. Tim died today. I thought you’d want to know.”

People die all the time. I lived through the 80s… the AIDS era… dropping like butt-fucked flies then. I lost some people very close to me. There was a lot of sadness, but I didn’t cry.

ASIDE: I’m one of the least macho people I know. No muscles to speak of… I hate team sports (except baseball… and that isn’t really a team sport). I even ask directions on the street… can anything be LESS macho?

But if there’s a speck of machotude in my body, it’s the crying thing. I used to be sooo sensitive… as a kid I cried when Lassie didn’t come home. Later in life, I saw the movie, Once Were Warriors. It was about the Maori in New Zealand. I don’t remember the details, but I do remember that I cried… at a fucking MOVIE... I cried. What the fuck?

I felt manipulated… used… by the director.. I decided to stop crying. (Of course, when my parents died, I allowed myself the luxury. Most people cry when their parents die.)

But when Tim died, I cried. I didn’t feel guilty or girlish about it. I loved Tim. He was funny, opinionated, stubborn, and a good friend. We disagreed about music. Tim said the first hardcore band was THE MIDDLE CLASS. I said it was THE BAD BRAINS... politics Tim was a Commie... I was-- and still am, a Libertarian Socialist... baseball teams (but not baseball as an institution). Tim was a Giants fan… I liked the Yankees.

I remember Tim taking me to Candlestick Park for a Giants game. When the Star Spangled Banner came on, I stood up and took off my hat. (This was just to get Tim’s goat. I am not a fan of America, or The Star Spangled Banner? Oy vey! Is there another national anthem with bombs and rockets in it?)

Tim asked me to write for Maximum Rock’n’Roll and kept me on through several purges (I LOVED Tim, but he was not a tolerant guy. Not only Politically Correct, but Musically correct, and business modely correct.) Tim only censored me once in my time at MRR. That was when I mentioned John Crawford… creator of the Baboon Dooley. Tim hated the guy.

But we got along so well. We both respected and made fun of each other. I would never miss hanging out with him on my frequent visits to San Francisco.

Bob Black once asked me why I continued writing for MRR despite the totalitarianism of Tim.

“Don’t you know?” He said, “Tim is using you to try to prove he’s open minded. You’re just a tool.”

“But, I LIKE the guy! He took me out for my first El Salvadorian burrito. He’s like a musical encyclopedia (Example: I once was talking about subjects for punk songs. I was a fan of the early Texas homocore of the time like THE BIG BOYS and THE DICKS.)

“It’s a shame there are no homo baseball-loving bands,” I say.

In a flash, Tim is gone only to return with a 7” from a band whose name I can’t remember, but who had a song “I fell in love with a guy on a baseball card.”

So, when Tim died, I cried.

Someone set up a memorial page for Tim… I contributed. A friend of mine sent me an email message:

“Did you see Gavin’s obituary for Tim? It’s really good.” And she sent me a link.

I thought she was talking about Gavin of Artless guitar fame. But it turns out to be a guy called Gavin Mcinnis… someone I never heard of. But I really liked the obituary. It was obviously written by someone else who loved Tim.

I find this Gavin on facebook and friend him. Turns out he knows who I am… and he played in a punk band himself. I check out his page and see he’s got his own TV show… on Fox. Who am I to judge? One of my best friends-- and fellow yippie at Beloit-- had an investigative reporter job on Fox. (He’s since worked for Bernie Sanders… and helped expose the Russian connection during the last election.)

I invite Gavin to go drinking with my roving group of drunks in New York… He promises to join but never does . Then I heard about THE PROUD BOYS.

Actually, that’s not quite true. It wasn’t that quick. Gavin and I had some brief exchanges about Drink Club in New York, and a bit more about punkrock. I had already been fired from MRR by the latest in a succession of post-Tim MRR editrixes. I was fired for complaining about MRR policy of censorship that I never had to suffer under Tim... but times were changing.

Then, I didn’t realize Gavin had a TV show until… and didn’t know that he had anything to do with VICE in NY or anything else. Now, I realize he’s kinda famous.

---------------------------------

FLASH TO BERKELEY… the home of the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. The movement sparked the naming of a square FREE SPEECH SQUARE.

Now we’re in the 21^st century. Some group called AntiFa had stopped a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, a right-wing homosexual. It was the first I heard of the Antifa or Yiannopoulos, but I enjoyed the irony of a blocked speech in Free Speech Square.

As time passed, I heard more and more about the hooded AntiFa’s intolerance… and their violence used to suppress the speech of those they don’t agree with. Labeling their antagonists NAZIS, they feel it’s right to stop them BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, including murder to judge by the cartoon.

I suggest to Jeff Bale, another former MRRer, that we start a counter group to AntiFa where we go to meetings of the totalitarian left and stop THEM from speaking BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. Jeff puts the kabosh on that idea.

“We need to maintain the high road,” he says. “Let them be the thugs.”

“But how about if we don’t stop them from speaking,” I offer, “but just get together to protect speakers from being attacked and censored by the hooded ones.”

He wasn’t up for that either.

“Mykel,” he says, “You’re nearly 70. I’m a year older. You think we can fight a bunch of macho 20 year olds with chips the size of a hammer and sickle on their shoulders? Besides, I thought you were non-violent.”

He’s right. I’m, letting a bit of 70 year old macho get in there. My mistake.

Shortly after that conversation, I heard about the Proud Boys. I didn’t hear much, but they sounded like my fantasy-- a version of it anyway. They are a group dedicated to fighting the censors… and ready to fight. They are not non-violent. They are macho brawlers willing to stand up for the right to speak. And willing to fight back when attacked. A kind of tolerance police… freedom defenders… At least that was my image when I first heard about them.

That they came from the right is logical. Free speech in America (this century) has been physically attacked by the left more than the right. If I had my druthers, I’d rather they came from the libertarian left. I’d like to see the war between freedom fighters vs the totalitarians… though with a different ending than in the Spanish Civil War. 

But, as I’m learning here in India, you eat what’s on your plate… even if-- in two hours-- it’ll give you the shits.

What happened in New York with The Proud Boys vs Antifa? I don’t know. Gavin says THEY started it, with a physical attack-- a thrown bottle. The press… at least the non-Fox press… says The Proud Boys were just a gang out to commit hate crimes... toughies looking for trouble

My guess: the truth lies in the middle, as it usually does. But in any case, the war will continue. Because talking is over. Tolerance… discussion… learning… compassion… understanding… are values long gone. Those who disagree are NAZIS, if you’re Antifa… or ANTIFA if you’re on the other side. 

Me, I’m on nobody’s side. I fear for the future though… Tolerance was a great value… as was non-violence. Both are gone now. It’s anyone’s guess what’s gonna happen. Being near 70… I’m lucky enough to have less of a future than the rest of you. It ain’t gonna be pretty.

1. I know about Carl Popper… He’s wrong.

2. I will be spotty on answering comments. I’m now in India and Internet access is not as available here as you’d expect… and I have other things to do.

3. If you want to read about my adventures in India and other places, check out my travel blog at: https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com