American Pie

Soupy Sales Plans to Pie the Man in Black, 1969

Once while visiting tony Middleburg, Virginia, I saw a gentleman who'd received a parking ticket stroll into a gourmet bakery, buy an expensive Boston Cream, return with it to his car, remove it from the box, and pie the meter.

Sic semper tyrannis.

Who was the first man to settle an injustice with a pie?

Culinary and entertainment historians agree it was British music-hall comedian Fred Karno, mentor to, among other pie-pitchers, Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel.

It was a short step from the British music halls to Vaudeville, and then to motion pictures. But controversy surrounds which picture first portrayed pies as projectiles. Some historians claim it was Ben Turpin's "Mr. Flip" (1909); others insist it was Chaplin's "Behind the Screen" (1916).

Regardless, pelting adversaries with pies quickly became a Hollywood trope. Fatty Arbuckle used so many as missiles, his studio had to build a bakery on premises. Laurel & Hardy threw over 3,000 pies in "The Battle of the Century," and Buster Keaton perfected proprietary recipes to ensure his ordnance would land with maximum effect.

Pie-fights also punctuated films featuring The Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges, The Little Rascals, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Blake Edwards' "The Great Race" depicted the largest pie-fight in cinematic history, taking five days to shoot; and Mel Brooks tossed one into "Blazing Saddles." Stanley Kubrick even shot a pie-fight for the ending of "Dr. Strangelove," but cut it from the film.

Off stage, pieing is a punishable offence in US criminal law, actionable as a tort (not a torte). But that hasn't stopped leftist political activists from pieing deplorables. Among conservatives who've received a pie-holeful of pie filling are Anita Bryant, Phyllis Schlafly, Chuck Colson, G. Gordon Liddy, Rupert Murdoch, David Horowitz and Ann Coulter.

In fact, radical organizations like the Biotic Baking Brigade and the terrorist group Al Pieda have made the pie their weapon of choice. And why not? 

Deplorables deserve their just desserts.

Liking to the Limit

We're like licorice. Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice.

― Jerry Garcia

My father liked licorice. He really liked licorice, and kept the trunk of his car filled with big cardboard boxes of the stuff. I guess he needed assurance, were the Soviet Union to attack or a pestilence fall upon us, he'd never go without.

Thanks to social media, we've all become too cavalier about "liking" things. Liking today is an indoor sport demanding no effort of any kind.

But true liking―liking to the limit―takes a village (no pun intended) of "like-minded" people. Jerry Garcia understood that: when it came to liking psychedelic bluegrass, Deadheads were indeed a breed apart.

And so are other die-hard fans―of actors, movies, musicians and more―as proven by the honorable names they've earned over the years.

Fans of musicians 

• Apple Scruffs, those hardest of hard-core Beatlemaniacs
• Beliebers, the fans of Justin Bieber
• Bobby Soxers, fans of Frank Sinatra
• Diamond Heads, fans of Neil Diamond
• Dylanologists, fans of Bob Dylan
• Elvisians, fans of the King
• Fanilows, fans of Barry Manilow
• Kellebrities, fans of Kelly Clarkson
• Metallicats, fans of Metallica
• Parrotheads, fans of Jimmy Buffett
• Phans, fans of Phish (also known as Phishheads)
• Sheerios, fans of Ed Sheeran
• Swifties, fans of Taylor Swift
• Vanatics, fans of Van Morrison
• Wayniacs, fans of Wayne Newton
• Wholigans, fans of The Who
• Zepheads, fans of Led Zeppelin

Fans of actors

• Cumberbitches, the fans of Benedict Cumberbatch
• Deaners, the fans of James Dean
• Fanistons, the fans of Jennifer Aniston
• Pine Nuts, the fans of Chris Pine
• Streepers, the fans of Meryl Streep

Fans of fictional characters

• Batmaniacs, the fans of Batman
• Fannibals, fans of Hannibal Lecter
• Potterheads, fans of Harry Potter
• Sherlockians, fans of the famed detective
• Xenites, fans of Xena, Warrior Princess

Fans of movies, TV shows & Broadway hits

• Alexander Familtons, the fans of the musical Hamilton
• Colbert Nation, fans of The Late Show
• Dunderheads, fans of The Office
• Finaddicts, fans of Jaws
• Phans, fans of The Phantom of the Opera
• Ringnuts, fans of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen
• Thronies, fans of Game of Thrones
• Twihards, fans of Twilight
• Warsies, fans of Star Wars (please, not to be confused with Trekkies)
• Whovians, fans of Doctor Who
• Windies, fans of Gone with the Wind
• X-Philes, fans of The X-Files

Fans of fanatics

• Dittoheads, the fans of Rush Limbaugh (also know as Walking Dead)
• Trumpsters, the fans of 45―gentlefolk who just haven't quite yet found a fan club to replace the Bund
• QAnon, soon to be the last of the Trumpsters 

Fans of licorice

• Bonapartists, who, like Napoleon, are die-hard lovers of the stuff

Have I left out your favorite?

Rothkie

Untitled Watercolor by Mark Rothko, 1945

I've had the pleasure these past three months to teach art history to my seven-year-old granddaughter every Wednesday morning.

We've already Zoomed through the careers of such greats as Georgia O'Keefe, Mary Cassatt, Edward Hopper, Wayne Thiebaud, David Hockney, Andrew Wyeth and Pablo Picasso. Alice Neel is on deck.

Before the first lesson, I searched the web for guidance on teaching art to a child and found it in the unlikeliest of places: the so-called Scribble Book of Mark Rothko.

During the Depression, Rothko—still the starving unknown—ran inexpensive art classes for kids at the Brooklyn Jewish Center, where he was known affectionately as "Rothkie."

In the Scribble Book, he jotted nearly fifty pages of notes that pedagogues later boiled into Rothko's five principles for teaching art to kids:

Teach kids that art is self-expression—and that everyone starts life as an artist. Just as kids do when handed crayons—until life gets in the way—adult artists are expressing their felt emotions when they make art.

Don't quash their expressiveness—it's fragile. Long demos rigid assignments turn kids off to art, so avoid them. Rothko would simply set out his students' supplies and let them leap into free-form creation.

Exhibit students’ works. The art teacher's purpose is to instill self-confidence. Rothko would organize public shows of students' art across New York City, including one at the Brooklyn Museum. He also exhibited student work alongside his own at his very first solo show at the Portland Art Museum.

Teach art history with modern art. Kids can learn from modernists, whose work is like their own. The Old Masters were too precise and fussy.

Cultivate creative citizens. The teacher's other purpose is to drive imaginations. “Most of these children will probably lose their imaginativeness and vivacity as they mature,” he wrote in the Scribble Book. “But a few will not. And it is hoped that in their cases, the experience of eight years in my classroom will not be forgotten and they will continue to find the same beauty about them. As to the others, it is hoped, that their experience will help them to revive their own early artistic pleasures in the work of others.”

Fantasy

Thinking calls not only for intelligence and profundity but above all for courage.

― Hannah Arendt

I've learned my lesson in the past 48 hours: arguing with right-wingers is thankless.

Foolishly, I joined two Facebook "conversations" inviting comments about the Black Lives Matter marches.

I was daft enough not to know "only the closed-minded need apply."

Right-wingers often pose as moderate and thoughtful, but are lightning-swift to unleash mockery, once presented a view at odds with their own, or with facts that contradict the dubious and paranoid bullshit they champion. They'll even throw in emojis to reinforce their contempt.

Mockery as a rhetorical strategy predates Trump's ascendance, so you can't blame that buffoon for right's embrace of it. Nor can you blame Rupert Murdoch and his cavalcade of stooges.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, Aristotle scolded Greek orators who mocked their opponents, insisting "the arousal of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts."

The writer Thomas Friedman last week called right-wingers "angry and stupid," a characterization I can agree with.

But I'd go farther: right-wingers are colorless dummies―the Mortimer Snerd kind―without intelligence, profundity or courage.

And, like Mortimer, they work hard at being ignorant.

I'll share a fantasy of mine: I long one day to make a "knockdown argument," in the sense of that term as defined by the late American philosopher Robert Nozick.

The knockdown argument, Nozick said, represents the "attempt to get someone to believe something, whether he wants to believe it or not." Perfect in its power over others, it "forces someone to a belief."

But knockdown arguments aren't easy to come by, because listeners are so stupid. "Perhaps philosophers need arguments so powerful they set up reverberations in the brain," Nozick said. "If the person refuses to accept the conclusion, he dies. How's that for a powerful argument?"

I can only wish.

Blind from Birth

The place was bright with industriousness. There was a big belief in life and we were steered relentlessly in the direction of success.

— Philip Roth

With exceptions—most of whom answer to the name Billy Ray—white Americans aren't born racist.

But they are, in fact, born blind.

From the crib, white Americans are raised to pursue competence.

Our Puritan romance with competence in fact explains why we idolize so many black Americans: black athletes, in particular; but also black preachers, poets, musicians, comedians, actors, directors—even a few politicians. They make whites' A-List.

The rest of black Americans—the non-celebrities—don't make that list. They don't make any list. You might say they're unlisted.

That's not because we're bigoted, but because we're preoccupied with competence, the gold standard drilled into us from birth. And that preoccupation perpetuates a tragic blind spot.

We're blind, as surveys show, to the effect thousands of incremental policy decisions have had on so many black Americans; decisions about matters like emancipation, homesteading, voting rights, the GI Bill, desegregation, interstates, truth-in-sentencing, and the seemingly innocuous questions asked on IQ tests, SATs, and job applications; decisions that destined so many to live their lives on the margins, without hope or the prospect of achievement, while a talented few become society's idols.

Today's New York Times reports that our abundant incomes hide from view racial inequities. “We so want to believe we are not racist,” a sociologist told the paper, “we don’t even see the way that race still matters.”

But we're not racists and we know race matters. We just can't see how. 

We were born with congenital blindness.