Dispatches from Arm's Length, Part 5

I had a particularly strange Lyft ride last Friday night. I picked up this passenger less than half a mile from my apartment; he wasn't wearing a mask, and almost immediately after he got into the car, he asked about "Plandemic." For the unfamiliar, "Plandemic" was a documentary uploaded to YouTube that reinforced several unfounded conspiracy theories about COVID-19. It's been removed and uploaded back to YouTube multiple times in the last week, citing misinformation rules. I saw the video, I know it's nonsense, but he thought it "made you think." I asked politely if he could change the subject, but he persisted. I hate that I had to snap at him, but I did what I could to avoid a more heated argument.

People are getting restless, but there's little we can do. That notorious curve isn't flattening. The death totals aren't tapering off, either.  The health experts aren't giving any indicators that the US as a whole is making progress in the COVID-19 fight. Misinformation is spreading as fast as the virus. The federal government's response has been (to put it mildly) slow, feckless, and unhelpful. Other countries have recovered while the U.S. population bickers over haircuts. Theaters of any kind likely won't open until late in 2020, which puts my weekend job on the kibosh.  Wisconsin reopened, probably too soon. There's no timetable for anything else.

There's a sliver of hope, though: baseball will be back. Two-plus months without this sort of diversion has been rough. I'm acclimated to going to a bunch of games during the spring and summer, but I can handle only watching baseball on TV. (I've haven't bothered to stay up to watch Korean ball, an ESPN "exclusive.") Otherwise, it looks like the rest of our summer has been cancelled. Fatigue has undoubtedly kicked in, but there's little we can do. We just have to persist.

(648)

Follow the Bouncing Ballot

I'm going to keep this week's blog short.  I spent most of last week in Kansas City with my dad, my first trip back "home" in over a decade, and I'm still catching up on things back in Illinois.  Rest assured, I'll be much more chatty next week.

"This will be Florida 2000 all over again!" cry the left-leaning activists. There is growing speculation --some legit, some unfounded-- that voter fraud and dirty tricks may play a part in the presidential election. The election is already fairly contested, with neither candidate running away from the other, but do we have to resort to fearmongering? Is paranoia getting in the way of the democratic process? Are we heading to the most staunchly partisan election in American history? The answer to all three questions is... maybe.

Florida's recent decision to outlaw early voting and add impediments to registering to vote has become a testy issue in a notorious swing state. On one hand, these new laws are meant to prevent non-US citizens and other undocumented residents to vote in November. On the other hand, a substantial percentage of the African-American population doesn't have IDs or registration.  Barring that some alterations are made, these new laws not only violate the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, but they evoke the old Jim Crow laws as well. Clearly, whoever wrote this law doesn't know their own state.

Speaking of elections, the movement to recall and usurp sitting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was an abject failure. I'm disappointed, but I will also admit that a lot had to happen to turn Walker into the midwestern Grey Davis. Ultimately, my neighbors to the north prefer fiscal responsibility and the illusion of a free market over basic civil liberties. Walker was elected to office less than two years ago by vanquishing a weak opponent, and here we stand today with Walker beating... that same also-ran. I don't think I need to reiterate how much I resent Walker's activist, against-the-people agenda, and with any luck the Wisconsin GOP will come to their senses sometime before 2014.

Off, Wisconsin!

As a native Illinoisan, it's difficult for me to give my neighbors in Wisconsin any credit or respect. It's a regional rivalry, plain and simple. From a political perspective, the "Cheddar Curtain" has historically been an incubator for nonpartistanship, competence, and honesty; Wisconsin stayed out of the limelight while bordering states were embarassed by the likes of Jesse Ventura, George Ryan, and Rod Blagojevich. It is neither a red state nor a blue state, but a gooey shade of purple. With mild trepidation, I'll admit that Wisconsin has a legislative method that I ardently envied... until now.

In 2010, Scott Walker was elected governor during the big Tea Party bum rush. A fiscal and social conservative, nearly every move Walker has made in 18 months in office has been under scrutiny. His eradication of collective bargaining rights for unions (exempting only police officers and firefighters) made national headlines. The labor guys felt blindsided, but Walker justified the move as a budget cut in the face of a deficit. Unions aside, some argue that the cuts were also a cynical manuever to emasculate a deep-pocketed Democratic constituency. This would be mere partisan chess if not for a) Walker threatening to sic the National Guard upon his critics and b) all of the union scuffling happened in his first six weeks in office. So much for a strong first impression.

Of course, that's not the only nitpick against the Walker administration. His promise to add 250,000 jobs to the Badger State hasn't panned out, and the nonpartisan Tax Foundation determined that Wisconsin has a less business-friendly tax climate than before Walker took office. This past weekend, Walker nonchalantly signed three bills that impede a woman's right to choose, denied hospital visitation rights for same-sex couples, and repealed the state Equal Pay Enforcement Act. Walker quietly signed off on Good Friday, thinking his critics wouldn't pay attention on a religious holiday. He guessed wrong.

With their agenda all but transparent, Walker and Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch are now subject to the first recall election in state history; the primary is next month, the election in early June. The state that begat Joseph McCarthy more than six decades ago is afraid of another bullying activist, and for good reason. Some will judge the state capital of Madison as a liberal enclave and Milwaukee's history of electing Socialist mayors (three total, none since 1960) but any left-leaning activism is limited to those two cities only. Wisconsin is centrist at its core, one of the last sectors of the country where the government actually gets work done, and democracy in its purist form is at stake.

Other notes:

+ Down goes Rick Santorum. As polarizing as he and his campaign might have been, and the cards stacked ever higher for Mitt Romney, he didn't want to fight futilely for his own home state. Ultimately, I suppose it came down to the well-being of his young daughter, too. At least Santorum left the race with his dignity intact.

+ Improv Update: over the weekend, my independent team The War Room made our unofficial debut. Even though we'd performed before on the Chicago "barprov" circuit, this was the first time we had demonstrated our form to an audience. This was several months in the making; my friend Brandon had formed the group, and I had never done genre-specific improv before. We play again on the 14th, so wish us luck!

+ Over on Facebook, I created an internet meme-cum-unofficial holiday. Follow this link to spread the word about "Mothra Day."

Rahm Like the Wind?

After months of buildup, it's finally over. With 55% of the vote, Rahm Emanuel not only trounced his competitors for Chicago mayor but rejected the need for a run-off vote in March. Whoever expected this to be a close four-way race --cough cough, the local media-- must've been humbled when Gery Chico, Miguel Del Valle, and former U.S. Senator Carol Moseley-Braun combined for 43% of all ballots counted. On the other hand, it's not like people were voting in droves to put Rahm in the mayor's chair; less than half of all registered voters in the city turned out on Election Day. If you think Emanuel bought the election, I'd suggest having a conversation with Michael Bloomberg first.

Mary Mitchell, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times who is notorious for turning every news story into a racial issue, declared the election a death call for the black voting bloc. What she seems to ignore was how weak Carol Moseley-Braun was as a candidate; the "crack addict" remark I mentioned a few weeks ago was only the tip of her malapropism iceberg. Granted, Braun wasn't the only African-American woman on the ballot, but she fumbled whatever momentum she had from the very get-go. CMB was the only other nationally-known name on the ballot and she never used that recognition to her benefit.

As for the future of Chicago, my outsider, suburban hiney will watch with baited breath. Maybe Emanuel will trigger a city renaissance, or maybe he'll do nothing and get spanked in 2015. Either way, we're stuck with the little fella.

Other notes:

+ An old Illinois State buddy of mine works for the CBS affiliate in Madison, WI, and over the weekend I texted him to ask for his take on the fracas up there. He's a libertarian and a social moderate, and chances are he voted for Scott Walker last November, but he shared the setiments that several of us bloggers and editorists have arrived upon: the media is totally playing the conflict wrong. It's easy to say that between the teachers' unions and Gov. Walker, no winners will come out of the protests and partisan hubris, but it's more complicated than that. In the end, the negative publicity will create some Democratic gains in the state senate come 2012, and collective bargaining will be restored while nobody's paying attention. In the long run, nothing will change.

+ A new term has begun at IO, and therefore a new schedule. For the first time in almost two years I'll have Sundays off; I'm taking Improv Level 5 on Saturday afternoons, and a Scenic Improv elective at Second City on Tuesdays. To compensate financially I'm taking a breather from the IO writing program, though I intend to finish that later this year.

+ Finally, I'm so relieved to know that CBS has figured out a way to write out Charlie Sheen from "Two and a Half Men." I don't think there could've been a more fitting ending.