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AARON JUDGE & THE REVISING OF BASEBALL HISTORY

October 11, 2022 by James Campion in Articles, Sports | Leave a comment

Aquarian Weekly
10/12/22
 
Reality Check
 

James Campion
 
 
AARON JUDGE & THE REVISING OF BASEBALL HISTORY
 
I used to be a sportswriter. That’s how I eventually got the gig here. I was covering sports for a paper in Westchester called the North County News in the early 1990s and hosting sports-related radio shows when I finished my first book (on music, mind you), and was hired by the publishers to do the “sports thing.” I ended up penning a sports column for the East Coast Rocker during the mid-90s before moving back to my first love – bashing idiots, uncovering the folly of existence, and generally being an asshat. Also, music. Hence, Reality Check. Twenty-five years later, I’m still at it. But I’ve written my share of pieces on seminal and cultural news-making sports events and figures before in this space. And everyone knows I love the N.Y. Yankees. Grew up in the Bronx. My late dad was an epic fan, and for a time in my youth it was the one thing (as stated beautifully in Field of Dreams and one of the reasons I weep every damn time I watch the film) we could always talk about. In fact, we talked about the Yanks the last time I spoke with him. It was our thing. And I really wish he was here to see Yankees 30 year-old right fielder, Aaron Judge tie and then best a former Yankees right fielder, Roger Maris, for the most home runs in the history of the Yankees franchise, the American League, and, as many important people around the sport are now arguing, all of baseball history.

It was so cool seeing Judge do it. I have followed him, as I’ve followed all Yankees players either through the farm system, trades, or free agency since the mid to late 60s, and he is a class act – cool as a cucumber, humble, and damned talented. He is not just a slugger. Like Maris before him, he is the league’s best defensive right fielder, and has played an excellent center field too, which is nuts because he is over six-foot tall, and you’d figure he couldn’t cover ground out there. But you would be wrong. At the time of this writing, he is also close to leading the AL in batting and well ahead in runs batted in – a solid hitter and super clutch. He was the right guy to stand together with Maris, and eventually surpass him with 62 dingers to become the all-time single season HR champ.

But he’s not, technically. Is he? This whole thing would have been so much more historic if there had not been the Steroid Era of the late 1990s into the first months of this century. Can you imagine how this would have reverberated throughout baseball – a sport of tradition and rich history, that reveres the names the N.Y. Yankees have rung down through the ages, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Thurman Munson, Don Mattingly, Derek Jeter, etc., if after 61 years, another Yankees right fielder took the crown? The first guy wore #9, the new guy wears #99. Crazy fun! But nope. Baseball was silly with drug-jacked monsters for a spate, and that takes a bit of the sheen off this affair.  

Although now a tougher chore to get to even 50 home runs today with league-wide drug testing, during the Steroid Era, a ton of heretofore mediocre major leaguers, bulked up on steroids or human growth hormones and other things, hit a lot of home runs, and still others rose above that crowded field to obliterate the single-season home run record nearly every fucking year. St. Lous Cardinals’ first baseman (a man I called “a human parade float” in these pages back in 1998 for a piece called “Freak Show Baseball”) hit 70, and Chicago Cubs right fielder, Sammy Sosa, hit over 60 homers twice, as did McGuire, by the way. Both of those guys were okay players before the drugs, but it was when one of the best players in the game, Barry Bonds – allegedly motivated by the jealousy he felt for McGuire and Sosa, far lesser players than he – did every possible steroid and rub and gobbled every pill and took every shot he could get his hands on to become part android and belt 73 home runs in 2003. 

Before the Steroid Era only two players hit over 50 home runs from the time when Maris broke Babe Ruth’s 1927 mark of 60 in ’61. But during it, weak hitting borderline major leaguers were routinely smacking 30, 40, 50 homers a year. What a wild time of misrule it was. It was so off the charts, the U.S. government had to get involved. The league woke up under its pile of money to “police” itself, so it could hold fast to its unconstitutional anti-trust exemption. That was when it conducted a series of “anonymous tests” on random players, although many of the names were leaked. Then came full testing that brought half-year to season-long suspensions for those caught doping. Immediately, offense, especially home runs, plummeted and players who were big-contract stars faded. The sport subsequently panicked and “juiced” baseballs to get homers back, but things got a tad goofy two years ago, so last year they deadened the balls, and fuck it – let’s get back to Aaron Judge’s incredible 2022 season.

He was the right guy to stand together with Maris, and eventually surpass him with 62 dingers to become the all-time single season HR champ.

Putting this all into perspective, Judge did something no one has done without juicing in 61 years, and only two others (both Yankees) have done sans performance enhancement substances. He’s had a season for the ages, and because of it, his achievements have drudged up all the past inequities to the MLB record books and prompted a revisionist view of the era from sportswriters, commentators and ex-players. This was already taking place in the Hall of Fame voting for McGuire, Sosa, and Bonds, as all of them, statistical locks for the Hall of Fame, have been consequently denied entry, bringing attention back to the true “legitimate” Single Season Home Run King, and, well, Aaron Judge.

Because of Judge’s exploits, another Aaron has also come to mind, the late, Hank Aaron. There is suddenly chatter on his 755 as the “legitimate” All-Time Career HR Record, calling into question the aforementioned Barry Bonds, who “artificially” drugged his way to 762. In a single season, Judge has done more than awake the echoes of Yankees greatness or thrill the league with his chase. He has reminded everyone of the folly of the Steroid Era two decades later. He did it, as far as we know, “clean,” as Roger Maris’s son said the day Judge tied his dad: “He should be the home run champ, and baseball should recognize it.”

I am not getting involved with that argument. I can only wrap this up by stating for the record that Aaron Judge had the best non-steroid season of my lifetime.  
  

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THE CRUEL DUMBNESS OF RON DESANTIS 

September 23, 2022 by James Campion in Articles, Politics | Leave a comment

Aquarian Weekly
9/28/22
 
Reality Check
 

James Campion
 
 
THE CRUEL DUMBNESS OF RON DESANTIS 
Or How to Use Innocent Humans as Political Props and Get Sued 
 
Florida Governor and phony political hack grandstanding media whore Ron DeSantis thought it was a good idea to lure 48 Venezuelan migrants in San Antonia, Texas onto buses and then air shuttle them to Massachusetts to continue his I OWN EVERY RIGHT-WING GRIEVANCE variety show. And while wildly popular with racists and general morons who get their news from gum wrappers and Fox News, it has painfully backfired. This embarrassingly unoriginal and agonizingly transparent political, and more pointedly inhumane stunt has drawn the usual ire from the sane, but now a lawsuit and investigation could bring what Tallassee immigration attorney Elizabeth Ricci suggested was “human trafficking and kidnapping charges” down on him.

Up until DeSantis piggybacked on this cynical idea from Texas Governor Gregg Abbott and Arizona Governor Don Ducey – the Republican bigot fascist brigade – he was rolling. He is the leading Republican candidate for president if Donald Trump goes to jail for stealing classified government documents, defrauding the state of New York, or fomenting an insurrection against the United States, or if he finally has that massive heart attack his appearance and diet has been hinting at for decades. He has managed to all-but own the base of Republican politics 2022, which is now anti-LGBTQ, anti-women’s reproductive rights, fearmongering, book-banning embrace of ignorance, which predictably shot him to the top of his party’s dung heap. He was the man, and may still be among the great unwashed, but this migrant thing is so onerous and pitiful, and to tweak Evangelicals, anti-Christian, never mind plain stupid, it may have not only gotten him into legal hot water, it might (gulp!) queer his chances at high office.

When you mull over the details of this stunt, it gets more and more horrifyingly stupid. And none of it had to happen. If DeSantis wasn’t obsessed with owning the national narrative of every Trumpist bottom feeding edict, this likely gets laughed off in the high-grade glue sniffing stage. Because, you have to ask: Why is the governor of Florida involved in quasi-border security debates he knows next to nothing about and has no jurisdiction over? Isn’t there enough stuff to wreck in Florida? Health Care? Civil Rights? Environment? The man has his hands full with his minimum ten press conferences a day schedule. A mere toe stubbing merits a podium, some mics, and his best 1987 Ronnie Reagan “deep in dementia facial tics mistaken for pride” schtick. The whole thing is like watching a monkey trying to fuck a greased football, despite it being a big winner in Florida, which may give us a clue why this cruel prank got out of the glue sniffing stage.

Of course, DeSantis stands by all of it. Using Florida taxpayer cash to pay conmen from something called Vertol Systems Inc. armed with what is termed in the underground as a “birddog fee” to lure (a term used by San Antonio law enforcement) 48 migrants, many of them women and children, from a sanctioned government migrant installation to an undisclosed taxpayer funded hotel with the promise of food vouchers and job opportunities in Boston. These poor, duped, confused and desperate people were then shipped to Florida on the taxpayer’s dime to give DeSantis another PR “win,” before hauling them off to Martha’s Vineyard in a tax-funded $615,000 airplane trip (that is over 12-grand a migrant, even though the normal cost of a flight from anywhere in Florida to Boston is like $400). This all done in service of a ham-fisted “gotcha” on a sanctuary state. The guess by those with brain bubbles was that DeSantis would make the (very expensive and likely taxpayer defrauded) knuckle-dragging point that New England elitists would be outed as out-of-touch with illegal immigration? Except none of the migrants are illegal. They were peacefully awaiting asylum like every migrant in the history of a nation built by poor and frightened people escaping persecution.

The whole thing is like watching a monkey trying to fuck a greased football

A stunned and disgusted Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salavar held a press conference to announce the investigation into this alleged crime, during which he could not fathom the exploitation of humans for what he described as “nothing more than political postering before being stranded with no shelter or food on an island off the coast of Massachusetts.” Sheriff Salavar concluded, “What infuriates me is that these poor people, who are here legally, and have every right to be where they were, were preyed upon by paid out-of-state operatives, who hoodwinked them into taking this needless trip to Florida.”

So, like some evil Bond villain petting a white Persian cat, DeSantis orchestrates this thing from afar, ripping off both the performance art of governors’ Abbott and Ducey (who run states actually on the fucking border) while making his weekly “Look at me, because daddy didn’t love me” cry for attention. And, in a move that might piss off the hardline anti-immigrant cabal, DeSantis’s scrambling administration began trying to make this a “human rights” effort by the governor, stating their hopes to cherry-pick 48 random people, lie to them, and send them all over the place before dumping them with no food or money on an island “for their benefit.”

The fun postscript to this travesty is that now faced with a class action lawsuit and criminal investigation, if DeSantis is found culpable in these shenanigans he will not only go down but the very migrants he hopes to kick out of America will get special visas due to being victims of human trafficking. And, to make matters worse, this heretofore political genius has ticked off the all-important Latino vote for Republicans in his state. The GOP previously enjoyed the lion’s share of the 200,000 Venezuelans in Florida, not to mention Cubans, who recall these kinds of draconian tactics from the late dictator Fidel Castro and are starting to voice their displeasure.

So, you know, a lose-lose-lose-lose move by the leading GOP candidate for president. 

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SIX-OH

September 12, 2022 by James Campion in Articles, Reality Check | 1 Comment

Aquarian Weekly
9/14/22
 
Reality Check
 

James Campion
 
 
SIX-OH
How Age Happens to The Worst of Us
 
The day I am writing this, which also happens to be the day it goes to press, I will turn sixty. That is six decades on this planet, which seems simultaneously to be perfectly acceptable to the time/space continuum and yet freakishly bizarre in the same framework. Like most of life, it’s all occurred incredibly fast and painfully slow at the same time. What I wrote in this space twenty years ago on the eve of turning forty, still stands. I have always seen the whole thing as if living several lives, not just one. None of us remain unchanged, unevolved, even though most of us fight like hell to avoid it. Then I went and had a daughter, who has been a whole bunch of people in just fourteen years, never mind sixty. She obliterated any quaint illusions of stasis for the purposes of slowing down time, subjectively explaining my own plight while objectively reviewing another with the same DNA. 

Wait, what was my point? 

Oh, right, in 2002 I pondered, “Aging, or should I say, experiencing life, is an odd process, seeing how most of what you really know is what is right in front of you and most of what you’ve already accumulated in the way of knowledge is ghostly, like a dream of some kind. And by the time you reference this crap it’s so completely meaningless in the realm of your current reality, you seem like a doddering factfinder trying to impress the congregation.”

But then a few weeks ago I surmised about how cool it was that Paul McCartney has lived to the ripe young age of eighty, despite, you know, the drugs and the rock star stuff – especially in the wake of two of the other four Beatles having died young, or younger. And I believe that too, because I having survived long enough to gather information and experience and having the honor to watch nieces and nephews and your daughter grow up and your dearest friends and family age long enough to bitch about the same stuff and get excited by the other stuff is very cool.

Am I saying here that I prefer to be alive at sixty than dead?

Yes, I am saying that… and more.

Then, yesterday, Queen Elizabeth II died. She’d been queen longer than I’ve been around. Damn. That is titanic perspective right there on the primacy of hanging in. Good for her.  

It’s good to be above ground and falling apart and turning a deep, dark crimson inside.

Having a bit of road behind you is a boon in England, but aging is something we do not prize in the U.S. There are billions of dollars spent in this country to retard the aging process or make us forget about it or to try and stay “relevant” or “hip” or at be least aware of things around us that people much younger than us in ages we used to be comprehend. I am lucky to have worked covering pop culture and specifically music these past thirty or so years, and twenty-five of them at the Aquarian Weekly. Because this paper is both history (we’re in the R&R Hall of Fame archives, bitches) and current events, I’ve enjoyed penning this column. It has kept me engaged in some strange and dangerous places, and I am better for it. I have been afforded the ability to write books on history and current events in music as well, and let’s face it, it is an advantage to be alive to do it. I have always been proud to be a post-Boomer writer. I like that I straddle the demon line between Boomer and X and know enough to opine on you Y and Z fuckers and millennials and now with this daughter of mine, whatever crazy crap you kids are cooking up.

I mean, it ain’t Queen Elizabeth II perspective, but it’s pretty good.

Hey, we’re all getting older, and for each of us it all comes down to perspective. When I was forty, I did not feel old or out of touch at all. In fact, it was the first time in my hell-bent life that I felt like a functioning human being, which I did not entertain in my thirties. Hell, my twenties were a blur, so let’s not belabor that nonsense. But after forty, and after fifty for that matter, I could see the finish line, making me less inclined to waste time and procrastinate on the things that make me happy personally, professionally and creatively. Getting to six-oh means I am getting closer to twenty-five years married to the best person I know, but I will keep her out of this, because she is much younger than me and keeps reminding me of it and should. But just having all those years behind us and the memories and the trust and the fortitude we built can only be achieved through the years. There is no substitute for time. You can’t cheat it, or it cheats you. And I must say having lived, and having lived with her, has taught me that it’s good to be above ground and falling apart and turning a deep, dark crimson inside. 

There was a time when I would mark my writing life and its remaining time by Hunter S. Thompson, who did all he could to end his life about fifty times in his sixty-plus years among us. Then Hunter said, “Fuck it, I’m done” in 2005 and put a bullet in his head. That bummed me out for so many reasons, but the crucial one is that the “Let’s see how long Hunter can keep this up?” measure clock stopped. In his suicide note he remarked, “It is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring.”

Hunter wasn’t wrong about much, but he was way off on that one. Or at least he was way off for me. I’ll keep this going as long as I can love and be loved, question and be questioned, write and read and listen to the blessed glorious sounds coming from my turntable. Watch baseball. Smoke cigars. Drink gin. Watch sun sets. Eat apples. Fuck. Fight. Have black cats. Be the guy who was born the same year as the Rolling Stones and Spider-Man and miss the things and the people who could not for one reason or another continue to move along with me. But I remember them fondly. It’s what you do with time. 

Six-oh.

Let’s keep going.

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DON’T BE FOOLED – ALL REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES WANT ABORTION BAN

September 2, 2022 by James Campion in Articles, Politics | Leave a comment

Aquarian Weekly
8/24/22
 
Reality Check
 

James Campion
 
 
DON’T BE FOOLED – ALL REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES WANT ABORTION BAN
         
As the mid-term campaign season heats up after Labor Day the key word has dramatically shifted from Inflation to Abortion. Thanks to the June Supreme Court Dobbs decision that systemically enslaved women, the political narrative has flipped from a Republican wave to a Democratic surge. There has been an enormous increase in Democratic Party (the only party that stands for women’s rights left) support, enthusiasm, and voter registration across the country, and it shows no signs of abating. Because of the aforementioned inflation, President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, and mostly racist gerrymandering, the Republican Party will take the House, but the Senate and the national fervor has gone from close Republican to strong Democrat in a wild two and a half months. None of this data has escaped Republican candidates, who now either run the other way from Dobbs, lie that they don’t support complete bans on abortion, or simply scrub their strong anti-women’s reproductive rights rhetorical history in the hopes no one will realize a fascist Republican-controlled Supreme Court has stolen the liberties of 51 percent of the electorate.

A new Pew Research Center poll the last week of August showed abortion rising as a “very important” priority for Democratic voters – 46 percent in March to 71 percent currently. Excuse me? What? You couldn’t find a 25-percent jump in a political position to support a law banning the drowning of kittens in this polarized environment. Even Republican voters (poor, misguided fools) support some portion of women’s reproductive rights – rape, incest, the life of the mother – but that’s not where their party has been or is now. It’s currently a federal crime in Texas, with a lifetime sentence for murder, to get an abortion today. It is complete madness, and it is all on Republicans. And those running with an R next to their name are finally getting the hint people are pissed. 

Take New York’s 19th Congressional district special election last month. Talk about Purple. These people have voted for Obama, Trump and Biden in that order. Republican Marc Molinaro was a shoo-in before Dobbs. After Dobbs, Democrat Pat Ryan beat him because he rightly warned voters Molinaro, if elected, could move New York in the direction of enslaving its women like Texas, tossing them in jail for what happens inside their bodies.

This special election result, and the results of four others including Red State Alaska in which former Masked Singer and Wife Swap contestant Sarah Palin was defeated, and the numbers coming out of the Kansas voter overwhelming election support stopping a ban on abortion, has reverberated throughout the Grand Old Party. Democrats have out-performed prognostications and previous electoral metrics by as many as eleven points in the aggregate. As a result, Republican candidates should be and are becoming concerned. You can see it in their complete refusal to touch the issue their party made an issue. But don’t believe for one minute any of the whiplash pivots Republican candidates make. Just remember what the game show president’s parade of Supreme Court Justices said when asked about Roe v Wade when being vetted for the gig. “It’s settled law.” Really?

Take the phony Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, who trails Democrat Mark Kelly by eight points, causing him to scrub his website of his support of a “federal personhood law,” which would turn fetuses into full citizens with social security numbers and allow pregnant women to claim as burdens on their tax returns. Masters then, within hours after the pro-women’s rights Kansas vote, immediately released a video softening his abortion stance from “100% pro-life” to “exceptions across the board.” Sure. “Settled law” and all that. 

If you want women to retain the rights to their organs, then you should NEVER under any circumstances allow a Republican to gain power.

“We regularly update the website,” said a spokesman for previously bold “100% pro-life — no exceptions” Michigan congressional candidate Tom Barrett, who within hours after the Supreme Court decision, wiped that nonsense from his campaign platform. Same goes for Iowan Republican House candidate Zach Nunn, who a month before Dobbs raised his hand when asked during a primary debate in May whether “all abortions should be illegal in this country.” After Nunn’s Democratic opponent, Rep. Cindy Axne, ran an ad using the video of this, Nunn rushed to publish a fifth-grade level op-ed backtracking like a busted cheating spouse.

Minnesota Republican gubernatorial nominee Scott Jensen (a fucking doctor!) was asked about abortion by Minnesota Public Radio in March and said he would “try to ban abortion” if he were running the state. This is before the Supreme Court left it up to states to enslave women, and now he says he supports abortions for victims of rape, incest or if the life of the mother is threatened. Something no one believes. Because, you know, “Settled law.”

To wit: The week before I write this, South Carolina State Rep. Neal Collins emotionally recounted the arduous journey faced by a 19-year-old woman whose fetus was not viable, but that attorneys told her doctor they couldn’t extract it because it still had a heartbeat — the standard set in the bill supported by Collins that had gone into effect just the week before. “The doctor told me at that point there is a 50 percent chance she will pass the fetus in the toilet and a greater than 50 percent chance that she’s going to lose her uterus. There’s a ten percent chance that she will develop sepsis and herself, die.” The young girl was sent back into the street. Collins later blubbered: “That weighs on me. I voted for that bill. These are affecting people.” Days later he voted for another bill banning abortion. “Settled…” Oh, forget it. 

No Republican should EVER be believed on this issue. If you want women to retain the rights to their organs, then you should NEVER under any circumstances allow a Republican to gain power. If they do, they have shown time and again they will strip you of your rights and do not care who believes what. They are lying and will continue to lie to save their political hides. But their actions speak loudly.

The mid-terms are coming. And there is only one voice you have. Keep Republicans from office until a national protection for women’s reproductive rights are guaranteed. And if this means taking the senate and eliminating the filibuster and filling the Supreme Court with justices that will protect their constitutional rights or get enough true Americans in the Houser and Senate to make it law, so be it.

Until then, ALL Republicans want to do is control the rights of women, no matter what they say.

Period.

Believing otherwise is stupid and insane. And if you vote for a Republican, you get what you deserve. 
 

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REPUBLICAN HYPOCRISY 101

August 23, 2022 by James Campion in Articles, Politics | Leave a comment

Aquarian Weekly
8/24/22
 
Reality Check
 

James Campion
 
 
REPUBLICAN HYPOCRISY 101
Cops, Government Overreach, Domestic Terrorism, Lecturing      
 
When Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted about defunding the FBI in the wake of the seizing of our property from Donald Trump’s criminal organization Mar-a-Lago headquarters, it got me thinking: How do Republicans, who have indiscriminately defended shitty, racist police no matter what sub-level of murder and maleficence they enact on the citizenry, square this sudden anti-law enforcement rhetoric? The furor in which the Republican Domestic Terrorist Machine has come out vehemently against the nation’s top law enforcement unit doing its job protecting the U.S. against its enemies is plain weird. There is another word for this, hypocrisy. 

Anyone has every right to question the motives of the Justice Department, although for decades Republicans defended its worst kind of criminal behavior when they had a Republican in the White House and bitched against it when they didn’t. Democrats do that as well. It’s Politics 101. Hypocrisy is built in. This, however, is a different level of hypocrisy. Since the Black Lives Matter movement in the past few years sprouted from the protests against police murdering unarmed Black people, some of them in their homes, the knee-jerk, completely asinine All Lives Matter/Blue Flag set have gone above and beyond. It has also been a very effective tool to tie the Defund the Police cries to major Democratic candidates. And yet, now that their beloved orange Al Capone has been caught stealing top secret documents, he claims as his own, the cops are the Gestapo. 

It should also be pointed out, because it is glaringly obvious, that Republican Boogie Woman and all-around crap-candidate par excellence, Hillary Clinton’s misuse of top-secret info on unsecure email accounts when she was secretary of state was a main sticking point for Trumpists in 2016, making this whole defense of the same fuck-up spectacularly hypocritical.

They do not stand for anything. It is a house of cards and a sandcastle. None of it is real.

Now, I know pointing out this monumental idiocy is like shooting fish in a barrel and doesn’t reflect the usual nuanced arguments of this space, but come on, it is so blatantly insane I had to address it. Especially now since all these jabbering cretins waving the sacred Don’t Tread on Me flag while complaining like spoiled brats that they couldn’t be bothered wearing masks to help keep their neighbors safe from a deadly virus, are now perfectly happy with having random state governments controlling the inside of every woman’s body. Of course, the flag does say, Don’t Tread on Me – Treading on you if you have a vagina is a-okay!

Of course, this is assuming that any of what Republicans have espoused for decades is even real. It’s clearly not. Not one Republican went nuts over the exploding deficit or national debt when George W. Bush put two useless wars on the national credit card or Donald Trump acted like a drunken rich trophy wife on a binge for four years – two of which with a Republican congress. Nope. This doesn’t matter. Nowadays fiscal responsibly is magically all the rage when a Democrat is in the White House. These are same phonies who defended Bush’s war machine then quickly sided with Trump, who wanted to end NATO and called Bush a war criminal and Iraq a stupid waste of money. Suddenly the global police force built by their purported god, Ronald Reagan, is reduced to isolationism. 

But without a scintilla of doubt, the greatest hypocrisy in the Republican playbook is the constant harping on Cancel Culture. That’s a good one. These are the same morons who spent the 1980s trying to undo the freedoms fought for and won during the progressive 1960s and 70s in civil rights, women’s rights, film, literature, music, drugs, sexuality, and who spent the first years after 9/11 demanding everyone call French Fries Freedom Fries, and who now want to summarily ban books, revise history to keep white people from being upset, and ban pride flags and silence the voice of the LGBT community at school levels everywhere, not to mention suppress the vote and hand the reigns of elections over to anti-American zealots who still claim Trump won in 2020.

Republicans are the #1 purveyors of Cancel Culture. They invented it. And while this wimpy, head-in-the-sand political correctness run amok is an anathema to the very concept and construct of the most sacrosanct American values of free speech and expression, the last motherfuckers on planet earth fighting against it should be goddamn Republicans. 

#religiousright

My favorite example of the latest “all-up-in-yo-business” from the former “Fuck Your Feelings” Trump cabal is when a good friend of mine (an Independent conservative, who was sick of paying high gas prices) was driving his new electric car and minding his own business (not “treading” on anyone), when some Trump goober asswipe with a giant truck (small pecker substitute) started tailgating him and revving his engine at a stoplight, and then, with his Trump flags flying, yelled “Electric cars suck!” at him. Hmm… that sounds like “treading on” him with some serious “hurt feelings” while infringing on his “personal freedom, man” there. It is remarkable how easy the “don’t lecture me” side is all about lectures. 

Hypocrisy.

Don’t be fooled by Republicans. They want to control your lives, your bodies, your language, they are anti-law enforcement, and they do not want you to vote for your candidate only their candidate and they have chosen the cult of a damaged daddy-please-love-me personality over sane governance. They do not stand for anything. It is a house of cards and a sandcastle. None of it is real. It changes with the wind. It is self-aggrandizing bullshit. As stated before here, the Republican Party Republicans is now a domestic terrorist organization that must be stamped out. 

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PUT PRO-CHOICE TO A VOTE EVERYWHERE

August 7, 2022 by James Campion in Articles, Politics | Leave a comment

Aquarian Weekly
8/10/22

Reality Check


James Campion


PUT PRO-CHOICE TO A VOTE EVERYWHERE
Red-State Kansas Shows the Way

I want to first point out that putting the personal sovereignty of a citizen’s internal organs on the ballot in any way shape or form in places not called China or Russia is beyond comprehension. It is flat-out icky and so incredibly unconstitutional it is hard to believe I am writing about it. But that is where we are now thanks to Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s ramming of underqualified radical Supreme Court picks that had one agenda – overturn Roe v Wade and enslave the wombs of women across America. And since I am not a crybaby like most Republicans, and frankly many Democrats, I just deal with the circumstances and get on with what we’re dealing with. Revolution. And the revolution was televised this past week. And in all places, Kansas.

Fucking Kansas!

You know, one of the box-shaped, fly-over spaces somewhere along the fruited plain where Dorothy came from in a book written by a New Yorker by way of Chicago and made famous in Hollywood, U.S.A.? The Deep-Red state that voted overwhelmingly for the aforementioned Trump twice? That Kansas.

Now, if you are regular reader of this mess here, you know I’ve been on this wall throughout the crucial month of June when the Republican Party would officially become a fascist regime after the former shit-for-brains domestic terrorist president’s justices summarily overturned what they deemed “settled law,” forcing 51-percent of the populace into bondage to government control and made abortion illegal – fines, jail, harassment. I promised a follow-up routinely, and most importantly a political temperature-check on the fallout of this generation’s most significant socio-political event.

And the very essence of that fight played out this week in the most unlikeliest of places.

Fucking Kansas!

Kansas is as a Republican controlled state as can be found north of the Mason-Dixon line – it’s state legislature, senate, its congressional delegation and both of its senators are all GOP controlled. And this electorate went to the polls during the middle of summer (okay, so there are no beaches in Kansas, but still) in a lousy little primary (no one really votes in primaries except shut-ins you might glimpse at goofy things like rallies), to obliterate the Republican-concocted proposal to completely ban abortions even for rape and incest by a tally of 59 to 41 percent. This, by the way, equals what is the nationally polled average of ALL voters – Republican, Democrat and Independent – 60-percent in favor of abortion rights or Pro-Choice or really Pro-Freedom and Pro-America. To use a rarely uttered political term: Oof.

That’s not all, kids. Digging deeper, Kansas released new voter-registration numbers around the time of the primary. Before the June 24 take-down of Roe v Wade, which formally protected the rights of women to control their own bodies, new voters, usually dominated by Republicans, averaged around 19 points, was slashed to an eight-point advantage. Seventy percent of these newly registered voters were women. And they also apparently have an agenda, and that is to expunge this draconian shit from their state.

And they did. At the ballot box. Overwhelmingly.

Fucking Kansas!

Digging even deeper into this keening political siren reveals that nearly one-million votes were tallied, doubling the total of the last competitive primary season in 2018. That is staggering, determined, energized turnout on any scale of measurement. To compare: The last two general presidential election cycles drew 1.2 million. This vote was national. This was major. This was a voice, a very powerful and meaningful voice coming out of the American hinterland.

Those are the kind of numbers come November that could greatly lessen a Red Wave.

Oooh, another good one, courtesy of our pal, political stat-guru, Steve Kornacki: When Democratic Governor Laura Kelly won the position in 2018, she carried eight counties, and Biden, who lost the state by 15 points, carried five. The “No” vote on the expunging of abortion rights in Kansas carried 19 counties!

Fucking Kansas!

So, what does this mean for this fall’s mid-terms, which looks bleak for Democrats in the House – record inflation, vacillating gas prices, jumpy stock market, and shitty presidential approval numbers? Well, the Senate is now favored to go to the Democrats due to some weird candidates in places like Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania. And it’s the Senate that decides the Court. And this is finally not lost on non-Republican voters. Especially suburban women, who fled the Republican Party like the plague it had become under Donald Trump.

But in the last two years this growing and influential voting block has slowly shifted back to the GOP on the vaguely made-up issue of “Parents Rights,” a goofy culture-war ploy used by hucksters like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is excellent at polarizing the electorate to his advantage. This has been a key ingredient in putting the squeeze on the MAGA crowd currently, which will be a sticky situation should Trump, who doesn’t give a shit about party politics or America, his children, your children, or anything not named Donald Trump, get into the fight and begin to paint DeSantis with the same brush as Lyin’ Ted and Little Marco and his other fifth-grade level bullshit.

But I digress, what the Kansas vote underlined is that in these suburban counties, like Johnson County in Kansas, that nationally doomed Trump in 2020 in Red and Blue states, the average percentage of the statewide vote is 20-25 percent. This past week, in fucking Kansas!, it nearly topped off at 30-percent. Those are the kind of numbers come November that could greatly lessen a Red Wave. Not sure if will, but what Kansas tells us is that it would have been a whole lot worse before the historic, damaging, and wholly unpopular Dobbs decision that started this fire.

But Republicans can tame this thing by simply not making it an issue and put women’s private healthcare on the ballot in all 50 states. This is what it has come to. And may come to with marriage-equality, contraception and other rights the conservative-packed Supreme Court is coming for.

This is what Fucking Kansas! told us this week.

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DONE WITH REPUBLICANS – A STUDY IN FUTILITY & FASCISM

July 18, 2022 by James Campion in Articles, Politics | Leave a comment

Aquarian Weekly
7/20/22

Reality Check

James Campion


DONE WITH REPUBLICANS – A STUDY IN FUTILITY & FASCISM
And A Pathetic Attempt To Wake Up Feckless Democrats

Anyone who has read this space for the past quarter century knows I am a man without a party. Reality Check has been the Freethinker Corner of political and social discourse and will remain so. But over that time, I was also a citizen of these United States and a voter. And unlike many who claim to be Independent but always vote for one party, I have actually voted for members of both. That stops today. The man who voted for George W. Bush, called former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani the most effective politician of my times, and wrote glowingly about my dear friend Rob Astorino, while also openly providing funds for his first successful run for Westchester County Executive is now forced to become a deep-throated opposition to the Republican Party. Its legitimacy ends here and it must be stamped out like a deadly pox.

This, of course, does not mean I will become a Democrat. As, again, stated here for decades of writing this wretched weekly diatribe, I will remain staunchly Independent. But in order to stem the tide of this political cancer on democracy known as the Grand Old Party, I must make it my business (given the system we endure) to expunge its barely breathing remnants from my home state of New Jersey and I guess just hope that the country never again completely falls into its hands as it did during the dark days of Donald Trump.

But this will not merely be a column to bash Republicanism. No one knows what that is, no one has ever known. Today, Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of modern conservatism, would be considered a liberal. Can you imagine his work with the Soviet Union today? It would be called appeasement. Can you imagine his work to restructure immigration? It would be called anti-American. Can you even fathom what his work to save Social Security with the Democrats would be deemed? Traitorous.

Nope, this will also be about the useless and weak Democratic Party that failed to protect the rights of women for decades, assuming Republicans would play by unspoken third-rail rules. They let fascist/zealot judges be jammed into positions to politically undermine the Constitution, and even allowed the type of bottom-feeders into national office that would produce the Patriot Act and normalize torture. Where was Barack Obama for eight fucking years after that miserable shit? Where was the press when the Republicans refused to vote on his Supreme Court nominee and then ramrod another within weeks of the 2020 election to overturn Roe v Wade? They all failed us and continue to fail us.

Joe Biden has got to stop speaking. Just put this dumbfounded empty suit out to pasture. He did his job in getting the racist/misogynist fence-sitters in the Rust Belt to vote against Trump in 2020. Thank you, now move on. Because since then it’s been a bust. He must cease talking about Executive Orders and Health Crisis. He needs to get out of the way and allow some mean-ass dogfighter to kill the filibuster and add four goddamn normal judges to overturn this political coup. Democrats yelling about voting never helps. Republicans clearly don’t care about voting. They are putting a stop to that atavistic crap in half the states in the Union. Elections don’t matter when Republicans are involved, so it shouldn’t for those opposing them. It is political warfare being fought by radicals versus high school level debate nerds.  

The Republican Party… legitimacy ends here and it must be stamped out like a deadly pox.

Who can accept the Republican party’s support/excuse/dismissing of the horrors of the January 6 insurrection by the terrorist Trump and his cronies who decided election results don’t matter and monarchy is a thing? Not this guy. If polls are to be believed, and this is a thorny issue, his party will doubtless put him back on the ballot for 2024, unless he goes to jail or decides he doesn’t need the aggravation. The Justice Department is useless. The Democrats keep talking. And a terrorist will represent one of the two major parties.

But the main take here is that the Republican Party is a dead issue now as a real alternative to voting, if you insist trying this antiquated exercise to stop the crazies. I am sure a vote of no-confidence in Europe was enough to expunge the Nazis or the reprimanding of the South figured out the slave issue. And if you think this is Campion’s usual hyperbole, I offer January 6, 2021. 

Well, fuck that. And fuck Republicans.

Look, you might want to live in a democratic construct that strips the rights of women to control what goes on inside their bodies and leave us with ten year-old rape victims having to be ushered across state lines for an abortion or wise-asses (and I shall always support wise-asses) who use the special commuter lane for at least two passengers because they’re pregnant (a good one). Fetuses should be allowed social security numbers and pregnant women can claim them as dependents. The Woke Pro-Lifers want you to change your birthday to the day your father shot a load in mommy.

And this is not only thanks to the Republican Party’s decades-long war on women finally won, but asleep-at-the-wheel Democrats for thinking they were merely an opposition party and not a fascist insurgence.

Let’s finish up this proclamation with fascism, specifically the January 6 “issue.” It is painfully clear that both parties fall short in describing what it was: Domestic Terrorism. Semantics are important. There are many who described 9/11 as freedom fighting and other as an “inside job.” I’m looking at you Q-Heads. But at least Democrats and some Republicans are concerned about this. The rest are trying to take down the United States. Shit, I expect pundits and goobers in the private sector to run that rancid dung up the flagpole, but members of two of the main parties? (and in the most minority-led way, because there are way fewer Republicans than Democrat and sane Independents out there, just see five of the last six national elections popular vote tally).

So, stop sending me campaign junk, Republicans, and if you are a friend and hope to run as one, go somewhere else for a voice.

Roe v. Wade + January 6 = Done.

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WHAT THE ROE?

July 5, 2022 by James Campion in Articles, Politics | Leave a comment

Aquarian Weekly
7/6/22
 
Reality Check
 

James Campion
 
 
WHAT THE ROE?
Man, This Is Stupid – Horrible and Un-American – But Really, Really Stupid
 
No woman in crisis should ever be a potential criminal in a democratic republic. 
– jc, Debate Team, Freehold Township HS, NJ, 1978
 
If the striking down of Roe v Wade by this politically addled joke of a Supreme Court (because legality had zero to do with a ruling that reads from its briefs as if it were written by hacks that received their law licenses by drawing a bunny on the back of a matchbook) wasn’t so horribly pathetic, then it would be hilarious. Not sure where to even begin – but it won’t be as I have written before about women’s rights or how it blithely tramples on habeas corpus and three amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Nope. I would like to ask three key questions at this juncture. No, wait, four. Four questions about this “ruling” aka “Republican puppetry.”

First one to get out of the way, because it is the easiest: Can you name another Supreme Court ruling that has so summarily and arbitrarily (or any which way) expunged a fundamental human right to sovereignty? You can’t. Move on.

Second one is also fairly easy, although it may be fraught with subjective analysis: What level of psychotic fascism does Justice Clarence Thomas practice; titanic or atomic? Because this crazy fucker wasn’t satisfied with just completely obliterating a right, he wants to attack every case that uses right to privacy in due process and the equal protection legal standards set by Roe ― specifically citing cases that legalized contraception, same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage. That is some weird medieval shit. If Thomas was a Middle Eastern country, we would have bombed him by five o’clock on the Friday this “ruling” aka “Donald Trump’s gift that keeps on giving” came down.

Now onto to the more confusing queries.

Has anyone bothered to provide a concrete, immutable answer (key in legal arguments and court decisions) on what pregnancy is? How can you tell if a pregnancy is terminated if there is no agreed upon legal and binding definition of pregnancy? Because I still don’t know, and you don’t know, and all the justices that said Roe v Wade was “settled law” so they can get lifetime appointments to do Mitch McConnell’s bidding don’t know. This entire thing is a smoke-screen magic trick. Are we sure a pregnancy is a fertilized egg? And when does it exactly become that… legally? I understand the science, but a quote in the decision of a 1964 obscenity case decided by the Supreme Court, specifically Justice Potter Stewart, “I know it when I see it” might not pass muster for someone who is about to have the federal government of a purported free country decide whether they should bring to term a mass of tissue that might kill them. 

You think the courts are clogged now with meaningless shit? Oh, wait.

Doesn’t the government have enough things to fuck up?

And this brings us to the final and most important question that will take down the fabric of what is left of this fragile republic: How are municipalities supposed to uphold abortion as a crime? To be blunt: How exactly do you police this? Already, there are southern states (of course, these people are still upset the real nation took away its slaves and burned their silly little cities to the ground) that want to put in laws to restrict travel for women escaping bondage to real states that do not want control over the innards of its citizenry. So, then, travel between states to obtain an abortion is now illegal? Also, are we trying these women as murderers? So, let’s say you eat a bad taco or guzzle a shit-ton of vodka with a side order of crystal meth, because, you know, you’re really not mommy material; and your fetus flushes out of your privates, is this a case to be investigated by law enforcement? We’re using taxpayer money, nearly two-thirds of which are Pro Choice, to prosecute teenagers who’ve been raped by their uncle?   

I am reminded of a brilliant scene in Woody Allen’s 1971 classic film Bananas that best explains what the Court aka “underqualified, unelected masters of 51-percent of the populace” has unleashed. A deranged dictator declares it a law that all citizens must change their underwear daily. He finishes this babble by qualifying that all underwear from then on will be worn on the outside, so we can check.

Not sure we should be okay with our tax dollars and law enforcement resources not spending every waking moment protecting us from crazy people with guns shooting actual children so they can monitor the pregnancy of millions of women. This is what the government is dealing with now. Doesn’t the government have enough things to fuck up? You want them fucking up our daughters now? 

This is why just striking down the basic constitutional rights for citizens to have control over their bodies was a bad move. You must govern these draconian laws and police these bodies for nine long months and decide if a miscarriage is actually a miscarriage or if it’s manslaughter or maybe first-degree murder? And what to do with the abortion pill – not available to women in 1973 when Roe was passed? Does this “ruling” aka “systemic misogyny” give the right to states to go after manufacturers who make the pill? And can users get it through the mail anymore? Should the Post Office now be involved, and the DEA and the FBI and Homeland Security? States (mostly in the south, because we mistakenly left too many of these towns still standing after the Civil War) are asking neighbors to keep an eye out on women seeking abortions through means beyond Planned Parenthood or a clinic. But, again, who polices this in an official manner? The crazy religious lady next door is now in charge of your body? And who is paying for all these new restrictions and making sure they’re adhered to? And if not murder, what will be the penalty for abortion, which is now murder in twenty states with more coming? 

Remember how organized crime flourished during prohibition? I see dollar signs in a black market for morning-after pills. Don’t worry, some clever Mexican cartel is already on it.

My favorite thing so-called Pro- Life advocates, aka “religious fanatics”, argue is that they are supporting women and that “women are not criminals but victims.” That was as big a lie as “settled law.” A woman today in Mississippi, (a slave state again we foolishly did not completely obliterate in 1865), takes an abortion pill, which now thanks to this Supreme Court aka “feckless tool of the fascism” is criminal activity: Does she go to prison? And if not, then what was the point of taking Roe down?

There is no point – not legal, not moral, not rational, not constitutional. Which is why it was stupid. Horrible and Un-American, but very, very stupid.

Good luck with all that.

We here in New Jersey respect all of our citizens, not just ones with penises or who practice ancient rituals. We’re good here. Women retain their rights in one of the states that won the original war against slavery. And don’t fret, we’re working on expunging the Republican Party entirely from the state. Send them down south where they belong. The rest of this godforsaken country can spend its tax money and police force rounding up teenaged moms filled with the neighborhood drug addict’s sperm.

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JAMES PAUL MCCARTNEY TURNS 80

June 18, 2022 by James Campion in Articles, Music | Leave a comment

Aquarian Weekly
6/22/22
 
Reality Check
 

James Campion
 
 
JAMES PAUL MCCARTNEY TURNS 80
 
I feel obligated to acknowledge the eightieth birthday of James Paul McCartney the day after I am writing this – June 18, 2022. Beyond the fact that I have noted certain milestones for many of popular music’s giants here over the years and for a while became the de facto eulogist for too many more, there has been a weird connection I’ve had with Sir Paul for the past three years. Not the least of which having conceived a book project around his greatest song (in my humble opinion) “Hey Jude” titled Take a Sad Song – The Emotional Currency of “Hey Jude,” which was released just a few weeks ago, mere days before

One of the things I learned hanging in the shadow of Paul McCartney these past years, is the importance of staying alive. For the longest time, especially after the death of his songwriting partner, the iconic and sainted John Lennon in 1980, McCartney’s significance in this little four-piece rock and roll combo he founded, the Beatles (have you heard of this?) was greatly and woefully diminished. Living was a bad career move for Macca. At first. Now it turns out having several lives after you’ve peaked at 26 years-old is a good thing. And an argument can be made that now that Paul has managed to make eighty and has completed his tour triumphantly in front of eighty-thousand or so fans in a massive stadium here in N.J. last evening, it was a tremendous career move. Not to mention a good personal one, because, you know, otherwise…   

Makes sense that Paul McCartney is still with us. I mean, what sixteen year-old boy – music-obsessed, sex fiend, ego loon – takes the time to write “When I’m Sixty-Four?” Then, instead of forgetting he ever did such a thing put it on an album (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – have you heard of this?) that came out eight years later when he was just twenty-four. The man had a plan. And it has gone way past sixty-four. If my math is correct, sixteen years past. The age he was when…

“No one else is remotely in this stratosphere.”

Okay, so Paul has lived and has made a lot of music. And as I write in my book, people seem to like this music. Some stats for these songs that Paul’s come up with – composed with and without some notable collaborators like the aforementioned Lennon (wowza) and Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Elvis Costello, Johnny Cash and Kanye West to name a few – include thirty-two that have gone to #1 in the United States and/or in the United Kingdom. A staggering 129 of his songs have charted in the United Kingdom, ninety-one reaching the Top 10. He is the Guinness Book of World Records’ Most Successful Songwriter of All Time. “No one else.” I wrote, “is remotely in this stratosphere.”

Paul McCartney might be the most prolific and influential songwriter of popular music ever. He is Gershwin and Porter and Ellington and Berlin and all those other guys and then some. Paul, as I discovered also in my research, is song. He has been song, and he will forever be song. I think it is possible if you look up the word “song” in Webster’s it might have Paul’s smiling face next to it. There is no daylight between a hummable tune and James Paul McCartney.

Oh, I also found out during this book journey that apparently the Campion men over a century-plus were fellow Liverpudlians who married a lot of Irish women from across the water. This is thanx to my Little Brother, PJ, who is now the family archaist. Before this, I was merely another of these Irish/Italian types from the Bronx by way of a large boat of people. Turns out there was a large boat or two or three, there was just a Liverpudlian Campion on it. 

I was already here in 1964 when the Beatles arrived via an airplane and changed the planet forever. There are pop stars and icons and then there is the inexplicable sonic boom of the Beatles, who were four scrums from that British port town that no one gave a flying fart about until they invaded every cover of everything. People coming from nowhere to dominate is the stuff of legend. And for some weird reason Paul, this old soul with his songs about retirement written before he could shave, rode it like he knew it all along. And this is the same boyish charm that pervades today. You see his glee when he performs and gets those cheers. He loves those cheers. His little dance when he stands up from the piano after serenading us with “Maybe I’m Amazed” or “Let It Be” or the next masterpiece is pure unadulterated joy. Saw him for the second time in my nearly sixty years on the planet a few weeks ago in Syracuse, NY, where my wife is from and her amazing family that is my family and where I signed my books that afternoon with his visage on the cover, and all those the years between 1964 and 1968 and 1978 and 1989 (when I first saw him at MSG) and the rest melt away into one big Macca moment.

A musician friend of mine back in the mid-eighties once mused that it is strange that anyone can do an impression of almost any rock star from the 1950s onward, except McCarney. Paul doesn’t have a distinct sound (unless you listen to Badfinger or early Billy Joel or any boy band that has existed after the Beatles) but I kind of know what he meant. He meant that Paul could be a vocalist for any time and any occasion His songs demand that his voice run the gamut. It isn’t an affect he is doing; it is Paul being song, again and again, and, blessedly, again.

So, all those year ago, and the years in between and the ones to come, are right there for Paul, who is a time machine, an indelible mark on our sense memories in sound. He brings us there, time and again, with a melody for the ages. Because he has aged. 

So, fuck dying and leaving a good-looking corpse and all the bullshit about burning out and fading away. 

James Paul McCartney is eighty. 

Long may he be song.

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ONE ALIEN ALIENATION IN THE ALIEN NATION

June 14, 2022 by James Campion in Articles, Pop Culture | Leave a comment

Aquarian Weekly
6/16/22
 
Reality Check
 

James Campion
 
 
ONE ALIEN ALIENATION IN THE ALIEN NATION
David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars at 50
 
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children… boogie
 
It is difficult to express how important David Bowie’s fifth album was in the annals of popular music without understanding its connection to the genre, purpose, and essence of what rock and roll meant (in 1972) to its third generation. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was, is, and will always be the soundtrack of iconography from Elvis Presley to Lady Ga Ga, because it is, as an artistic statement, a timeless examination of Western culture as ephemeral claptrap in the wake of youth-ego distortion. But it is, at its core, a reinvention of the form, while simultaneously playing up its most vital foundations, its humor, its majesty, its sexuality, and, most of all, embracing the solidarity of youth alienation. The symbol of Bowie as androgynous Starman waiting in the sky in his glamor queen, macho baller, furious rebel fragility, begs the question; does the death of the prepubescent spirit inevitably lead to drab immortality?

Oh, and it rocks. Hard.

This is not a review of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust to understand its musical brilliance, realized by his musical sherpa and rough-edged doppelganger, Mick Ronson, the din progeny of Hendrix, or even its image-driven keep your ‘lectric eye on me, babe manipulation. It is not going to regurgitate the obvious career move Bowie achieved by taking a slight, if not preternaturally gifted, pop singer-songwriter from the British dance-hall tradition and quite strategically turning him into a Glam Bitch God capable of giving voice and breath and infinity to The Teenager, in all its confused, angry, hormone-crazed isolation. This is about The Teenager. This is about the all the nobody people, and all the somebody people queer, shut-in, frightened, picked-on, disdained youth for which Ziggy-as-avatar stands for – beyond his singular place in campy well hung and snow-white tan rock-star satire with his screwed-up eyes and screwed down hairdo. Beyond the 1970s decadent, drug-addled chic doom that would come to define the art form for which Bowie had finally come of age in and will lead him until his dying breath with each new character driven statement, there is The Teenager. This the audience and the muse of Ziggy, the character, reflected in every note and lyric in Ziggy Stardust, as an album, as a movement, as a very real and lasting license to celebrate individuality as if divine mass.  

Think about all of the strange things circulating round 

It is not fair to say that Ziggy Stardust is the first youth statement as mass prayer – new words / soul love – but it is the most effective. In a very real way, Bowie’s pursuit of a conceptual rock piece does not make it unique for early 1970s rock, or certainly British rock. If anything, this is the time and place for grand statements –the birth of prog rock and the overindulgent statements in fog machines and costumes. But there is no arguing with Ziggy being the statement for The Teenager. Owning a rock star as personal badge of identification begins, and in many ways, ends with Ziggy. This is why Bowie killed him off after a year of parading his make-up-addled, emaciated carcass around the world in grand spectacle. Ziggy Stardust, who told us not to blow it ‘cause it’s all worthwhile, cannot live on Sugar Mountain or a darkened street corner as an aging font of bland maturity. He is the alien. Alienated. No metaphor there. Forever young, naïve, defiant. He is infinite woman/man/trans in two, three, four dimensions. An empty vessel to fill with fears and lusts, noise and spat from the freak out, far out ether on your hazy cosmic jive radio.

In this way, there is no timeframe for Ziggy Stardust and the Spider from Mars, because it never existed and never will. Not really. It is a fuck-around tits-and-confetti moonage daydream, a wisp, a sideways glance made by too much grope and hallucination and tint color and space boots and screaming guitars and moody piano and the pound-pound-pound of the drums. Tribes come calling. The femme fatales emerged from shadows / To watch this creature fair / Boys stood upon their chairs / To make their point of view / I smiled sadly for a love I could not obey. And they will forever be young with their snot noses and high cheekbones and eye-shadow and colored fingernails and black lights revealing bemused smirks. Thus, they cannot be defeated or homogenized or god-forbid labeled or cornered or allowed to fade away. So… don’t lean on me, man, you can’t afford the ticket.

Inevitably they all burned out. Long before Johnny Rotten. Long before the rock and roll suicide. Get out while you can. This is what the music tells you. And it is not death. It is rebirth. It is refiguring. It is the epiphany of self-realization, the discovery of brutal truths. Bowie speaks of becoming in the whole of Ziggy, because that is the plight and blessing of The Teenager. The flayed bastard knowing that not knowing counts for something. Anything. And he made it so there was no lonely but the chosen lonely. This is what rock and roll was/is to anyone left who dares hear it. But it never mattered anyway. David Bowie sang at the end, Just turn on with me and you’re not alone over and over like a mad mantra. He needed you to hear that. Because it was true. And truth is the same as making it all up when it doesn’t matter. You make your own myths, Ziggy says. That is why he came for a little while. Five Years? And fifty years later he is still saying it…

You’re not alone.

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