Morning musings…267

Colin Kaepernick is no Ali, but he’s got people listening and talking

patti dawn swansson

Let’s not get silly and compare what Colin Kaepernick is doing to Muhammad Ali’s refusal to heed Uncle Sam’s call to arms.

Yes, Kaepernick has taken a stand by sitting/kneeling during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner at National Football League games, but when the San Francisco 49ers commence their 2016 crusade he’ll be the backup quarterback. His protest against police brutality and the oppression of black people/people of color hasn’t cost him his livelihood. His bank account is no less ample. He’s in no danger of being arrested, cuffed, hauled into court and sentenced to five years in prison.

Ali was dealt every bit of that hand. And more. Including death threats. Yet he was all-in. He had “no quarrel with them Viet Cong” so he wasn’t going to drop bombs on, or shoot bullets at, innocent brown people come hell or hoosegow.

By way of comparison, Kaepernick’s posture has, at worst, earned him enemies who see him not as a caped crusader for colored people but, rather, as an anti-anthem, anti-military and an anti-America ingrate who ought to just play football and zip his lips unless he plans to pledge allegiance to a country that he believes has come undone.

But when did doing and saying nothing become acceptable?

Maybe Rosa Parks should have given her seat to that white man and moved to the back of the bus where the black folk belonged to save herself from finger printing and time in jail.

Maybe Martin Luther King Jr. should have stayed home to mow the lawn instead of marching through the southern United States and spending time behind bars.

Maybe Gandhi should have just bought government salt rather than walk more than 200 miles to collect his own and spare himself yet another stretch in jail.

Maybe Tommie Smith and John Carlos should have played nice by putting on their shoes, unclenching their hands and smiling for the cameras.

Maybe Jesse Owens should have skipped out on the 1936 Olympics and let Hitler have his way.

Maybe Harvey Milk should have stayed in the closet.

Maybe students at Kent State should have gone to class instead of carrying signs, marching and shouting.

Maybe all those young people shouldn’t have taken sledge hammers to the Berlin Wall.

Maybe Marlon Brando should have accepted his Oscar as best actor for his role as Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather rather than send an Apache woman, Sacheen Littlefeather, to deliver a speech about the misrepresentation of Native Americans in film and on TV, at the same time drawing attention to Wounded Knee.

Maybe John and Yoko shouldn’t have acted like a couple of layabouts and gotten out of bed.

Maybe Johnny Cash should have worn more colorful clothing.

Maybe Nellie McClung should have stayed home to cook and clean for her hubby and their five children rather than make so much noise about women voting and being “persons.”

Maybe the drag queens, transgender individuals, cross-dressers, butch lesbians and gay men at the Stonewall Inn should have simply tucked their feathered boas between their legs and peacefully piled into paddy wagons rather than kick up a fuss.

Maybe all those draft dodgers who sought refuge in Canada should have been turned back at the border.

Maybe punter Chris Kluwe should have kept silent and not exposed homophobia among the Minnesota Vikings coaching staff.

Maybe Branch Rickey should have hired Jack Roosevelt Robinson to shine his shoes rather than sign him to a Brooklyn Dodgers contract that made him the first black man to play Major League Baseball.

Maybe what Colin Kaepernick is doing won’t amount to anything. He’s no Ali. He’s no Jackie Robinson (who, by the way, would not salute the flag or stand for the anthem toward the end of his life). He’s no Rosa Parks. He’s no Gandhi. He’s just a backup quarterback clinging to a high-paying job that grants him a lifestyle of privilege.

But, he’s got people talking. And thinking. He sees something that he believes isn’t right. He’s trying to fix it, as are other athletes who have begun to parrot him. How can that be wrong?

The Cult of Cait, Vol. 5: Call her Caitlyn, except when it’s convenient to call her Bruce

Not so long ago, a friend I hold very close to my heart asked if she could refer to me by my former male name (or, as some in the transgender community refer to it, my “dead” name).

patti dawn swansson

“Would you take offence?” she asked. “In no way is it meant to be disrespectful.”

“Yes,” I told her, “I’m afraid I would be very offended. I would also be hurt. That person no longer exists, except in the memories of a very few people. He is gone forever.”

I mention this because Caitlyn Jenner has sold out. Totally.

Jenner, of course, has postured herself as the Chosen One. She, with the aid of her fawning flock in the Cult of Cait, has vowed to lead the transgender community out of the wilderness to the Promised Land. She is the High Priestess. She is Moses. She is Gandhi. She is Martin Luther King Jr. She is all this and more because, well, because she says so. Ditto a mostly kow-towing media, which has all but granted her saintly status since her much-ballyhooed Call Me Caitlyn appearance on the cover of Vanity Fair.

Trouble is, the High Priestess takes to calling herself Bruce when calling herself Caitlyn proves to be very much the inconvenience. Like when applying for membership to a hoity-toity golf club in Los Angeles.

We know this to be so because Jenner had a most revealing exchange in the latest episode of I Am Cait, her E! channel opus to her own self. There sat her girl Friday, Ronda Kamihira, pen in hand as she took to the task of completing the Sherwood Golf Club membership application for Jenner. (Yes, it’s perfectly understandable for you to wonder why Kitty Cait couldn’t fill out the form herself, but apparently she can do only two things on her own: eat and go to the biffy. We think.) Ronda was advised to use the name Bruce, not Caitlyn.

“I don’t understand why you’re putting Bruce down as opposed to Caitlyn,” a baffled Kamihira said. “I mean, really?”

“My membership is under Bruce,” the High Priestess explained.

“Why can’t you go in fresh as Caitlyn?”

“Ah, it’s just not gonna work.”

“What are you going to do, wear your hoodie and pretend you’re not…?”

“Probably, ya…and once I get on the course I’ll take that off.”

“Are you going to wear a skirt, shorts?”

Now, Kitty Cait is hissing through clenched teeth.

“No, no, no, no, no…not right now,” she insisted. “I just wanna do the thing. So let’s just put Bruce down and it’s fine.”

“It doesn’t make any sense to me because everyone’s gonna know that you’re Caitlyn,” Kamihira persisted.

“Cause then I don’t have to worry about locker rooms and all that crap right now. I’ll worry about the locker rooms down the line.”

“I understand, but everyone’s going to know that you’re Caitlyn.”

“I know, I know, I know, but…”

“And they’re gonna go, ‘I don’t want Caitlyn in my locker room.”

“I know, I know…we’ll deal with all those issues down the way.”

No, no, no, no…one thousand times no. This was an astonishing bit of banter. Numbing, in fact. Transitioning is not a back-and-forth proposition, like the swinging doors in a saloon. Either you’re Caitlyn or you’re Bruce. You don’t get to be Bruce simply because a bunch of fuddy-duddy, old women at a golf club might not accept you as Caitlyn. If they don’t want you as Caitlyn, you don’t want them.

Ah, but that would mean a loss of social status, wouldn’t it? A mega-millionaire can’t have any of that. So let’s just park this transgender thing, shall we? Let’s bring old Brucie boy out of the garage and take him for a spin, at least until we receive the A-OK from the hoity-toities at the Sherwood Golf Club, then we can put the dress and lipstick back on.

Good gawd.

Look, running the risk of rejection is a large part of the process for transgender individuals. It happens. Every day. We lose our jobs; we are denied jobs; we are refused service; we are dismissed abruptly when applying for lodgings. Simply because we’re transgender. Caitlyn Jenner has never experienced any of this. Her worth is estimated at $100 million, so she doesn’t need a job. She has her $3.5 million house on a hill in Malibu, so she wants not for a roof over her head. She lives in a bubble. Thus, when there’s the slightest hint of rejection, she kicks Caitlyn to the curb and runs and cowers behind Bruce.

And this is the lead trumpet in the transgender symphony? Someone who tells us to “Call Me Caitlyn” one day then calls herself Bruce the next? Because of a golf membership?

Sorry, but that trumpet has struck the sourest of notes and that’s no spokesperson of mine.

(Next volume in the Cult of Cait: Ellen meets Caitlyn.)

Those without tongues speak, those without ears listen

 

My guardian angel, Whisper

What happens when you have nothing left to say?

I suppose you just listen to what others have to say.

Or not.

What others have to say is often simply the wagging of tongues and the flapping of lips. It is not worth the lending of our ears.

Why, I wonder, is listening not considered an art form, like speaking?

We admire the great orators, such as Sir Winston Churchill and Gandhi, yet we do not admire the great listeners. Indeed, who are the great listeners of history?

It is said that the teacher is not present until the student arrives. It follows that the orator is not present until the listener arrives.

Yet which came first, the great listener or the great orator?

Words in the wind, after all, are not but wind unless there are ears upon which to fall.

It must be that the great listeners of history are also the great orators of history. They have listened, therefore they speak. But who spoke to them? Does that not make she who spoke to Churchill and Gandhi the great orator?

They without tongues are the greatest of orators, for the wind and sky, the sun and moon speak to us each day. But who listens? Only that which grows in the garden and fields. Yet the rose bush, the peas in the pod and the sheaf of wheat are without ears.

Those without tongues speak, those without ears listen.

We wag our tongues when the clouds gather, yet the wind and sky, the sun and moon do not listen. Is that because they are without ears, or because we have nothing to say?

That says it all.