Several people have recently asked me how I decide what to write about. I have three major tests that each piece must pass.
1. Do I have a dog in that pony show?
There's an old saying, "I don't have a dog in the fight," which pretty much means, "It ain't none of my business." The roots of this phrase are difficult to pin down. Some experts contend that the idiom comes from 16th century Europe, where dog fighting was a popular form of entertainment. The phrase is similar to, "I don't have a cock in the pit," cockfighting being another common sport of the day.
Other scholars purport that the phrase is much more recent, coming from a 1994 Congressional hearing, where the respondent, a Texas businessman, said, "We have a saying in Texas that I don't have a dog in that hunt, which I don't. I don't have a bias in this one way or the other."
There's another old saying, "a dog and pony show," which goes back to the post-Civil War years. Small, travelling circuses often featured dogs trained to do tricks with horses, such as jumping on the horses’ backs while both were running. One example was “Professor Gentry’s Equine and Canine Paradox,” in this case, the Professor being a teenager named Henry Gentry.
Now the phrase refers to any over-staged performance, or event designed to sway or convince opinion for political or commercial ends. To me, the phrase has come to represent the 24/7 news cycle, and the circus this world has become.
What I’m asking myself is, do I personally have anything to add to the conversation, that’s not being said by a hundred-million other talking heads, reporters, and bloggers?
2. Is the topic timely or timeless?
A few years ago, for no particular reason, I happened to watch the movie musical
Oliver! one afternoon, on Turner Classic Movies. I am not a fan of musicals, but who can resist the story of the innocent waif swept up into the chaos of mid-nineteenth century London. As the movie ended, I had to admit, I had never read the book by Charles Dickens. A quick trip to the library remedied that. I so thoroughly enjoyed the original, I wrote a comparative study between the movie and the book (
sjdgoingonrecord.blogspot.com/2014/04/twisting-in-wind.html). I consider this to be
timeless.
Certainly, my holiday themes, memoirs, and recipes fall into this category.
On the other hand, many of my humor pieces, and most of my blogs are timely. They relate to current events that are not yet on the radar, or analyses of those that are.
Here’s an example. On a Friday evening, as a category 5 hurricane slammed into southeast Texas, the president pardoned former sheriff Joseph Arpaio. I, along with many others, was outraged that Trump would so demean one of the most cherished principles of the office. The presidential pardon is a refuse of last resort in cases where justice has utterly failed, not a get out of jail free card for his buddies.
I wanted to shout out about this fucktard Joe Arpaio, the self-proclaimed “America’s toughest sheriff.” As assholes go, Arpaio is a serious one. I wanted to list his crimes in letters ten feet tall.
I wanted to point out the so-called Tent City he had built next to a garbage dump, which Arpaio called a “concentration camp” in a speech to political supporters at his local Italian-American club. The open-air tents have been recorded at 145 degrees Fahrenheit during the day in the dry Arizona heat. Inmates complained that their shoes were melting.
These tents are surrounded by concrete walls topped with concertina wire. (A concertina is a free-reed musical instrument, like a small accordion, used in classical music, the traditional music of Ireland, and polkas. Concertina wire consists of large coils which can be expanded like a concertina. Also known as razor wire, its one function is to shred human flesh. At this, it does a remarkably thorough job.)
I wanted to speak out about this asshat who boasted that he could feed prisoners on 13 cents per day. “It costs more to feed the dogs than it does the inmates,” he quipped.
I wanted to tell people about the throwback, black-and-gray striped uniforms he made the inmates wear (think Jimmy Cagney in Each Dawn I Die), and the female and juvenile CHAIN GANGS he instituted.
That the vast majority of incarcerated were awaiting trial, and not convicted of any crime.
About the politically motivated investigations against his opponents. A former inmate, who agreed to be interviewed anonymously for a New Yorker article said, “Arpaio does retaliation.”
In Arpaio’s theater of the absurd, outspoken citizens also take their chances. Last December, remarks critical of Arpaio were offered during the public-comment period at a board of supervisors meeting, and four members of the audience were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct - for clapping.
About his 9-person media-relations unit.
About an anti-prostitution sweep conducted by the sheriff’s office, that backfired when some members of his volunteer posse got naked, on video, with the prostitutes they were supposedly there to arrest.
About the complaint filed against the sheriff’s office alleging that Arpaio and his staff forced women to sleep in their own menstrual blood, assaulted pregnant women, and ignored accusations of rape.
That even his choice in what he allowed the inmates to watch on the communal televisions was calculated to dehumanize them. The three channels available were C-span, the Food Network to rub salt (which was banned) in an open wound, and the Weather Channel. When a British reporter asked, why the Weather Channel, Arpaio replied, “So these morons will know how hot it’s going to be while they are working on my chain gangs.”
That his practices were criticized by the United States Department of Justice, Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union; the Arizona Ecumenical Council; the American Jewish Committee; and the Arizona chapter of the Anti-Defamation League. The National Commission on Correctional Health Care withdrew the health accreditation of Maricopa County’s jails for failing to meet its standards.
That Federal Judge Neil V. Wake ruled in 2008, and again in 2010, that the county jails violated the constitutional rights of inmates in medical and other care-related issues. A lawsuit brought by the ACLU alleged that "Arpaio routinely abused pre-trial detainees at Maricopa County Jail by feeding them moldy bread, rotten fruit and other contaminated food, housing them in cells so hot as to endanger their health, denying them care for serious medical and mental health needs, and keeping them packed as tightly as sardines in holding cells for days at a time during intake."
That, as reported in the New Yorker, a federal investigation found that deputies had used stun guns on prisoners strapped in “restraint chairs.” The family of one man who died after being forced into the restraint chair was awarded more than six-million dollars in federal court. The family of another man killed in the restraint chair got $8.25 million in a pre-trial settlement.
That this deal was reached after the discovery of a surveillance video that showed fourteen guards beating, shocking, and suffocating the prisoner; and after the sheriff’s office was accused of discarding evidence, including the crushed larynx of the deceased. (In fact, many of the officers involved were promoted.)
That the threat of terrorists entering the U.S. through Mexico is a very real concern, but this is not Arpaio’s (or Trump’s) focus.
That this is where terrorists come from. That Sheriff Joe (and his pardoner) do more to radicalize these people than any deep web recruiting site.
That Arpaio's office (read: the taxpayers of Arizona) has paid out more than $146 million in fees, settlements, and court awards due to misconduct and violations ordered by the sheriff.
That in July of 2017, Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt of court, for repeatedly thumbing his nose in the judge’s face by ignoring the court’s orders (a crime which carried a maximum sentence of six months – far shorter than the length of stay of most of his victims). It was this conviction that the president pardoned.
Trump's callousness knows no bounds. In his own words, he said he had timed the pardon to gain maximum television views during Hurricane Harvey coverage. "In the middle of a hurricane, even though it was a Friday evening, I assumed the ratings would be far higher than they were normally."
I wanted to relate the immediate and overwhelming condemnation of the president’s action.
That the ACLU tweeted: “By pardoning Joe Arpaio, Donald Trump has sent another disturbing signal to an emboldened white nationalist movement that this White House supports racism and bigotry.”
That community organizer Maria Castro said, “The people who actually deserve this pardon are the people who were in Tent City and who had to endure the 120-degree summer heat and who were victims of [Arpaio’s] rage.”
That Harvard law professor Noah Feldman wrote that such a pardon is “an assault on the federal judiciary, the constitution and the rule of law itself.”
That Greg Stanton, the Mayor of Phoenix, Arizona, urged that Arpaio not be granted a pardon because it would make it "clear that [the president's] true intent is to inflame emotions and further divide our nation." He further called the pardon a “slap in the face to the people of Maricopa County, especially the Latino community.”
Meanwhile, Republican congressman Paul Gosar said, the pardon “reflects the very reason we voted President Trump into the Oval Office, to uphold the rule of law.”
To date, the Sheriff has disavowed all wrongdoing, and has never apologized to victims or their families.
I wanted impeachment proceedings to begin at once for the evil thing that occupied the White House.
I wanted turmoil. I wanted violence. I wanted bloodshed in the streets.
But then I thought, okay, yah, I’m a citizen, I’m incensed at what happened, but I don’t have a dog in this pony show; and by the time I researched this vengeful, criminal scumbag, it was already yesterday’s news.
3. Is it worth every utensil in the drawer?
In 1993, a woman named Christine Miserandino, strove to find a way to explain to her best friend what it was like to live with a chronic illness. They were in a restaurant, and she seized on the idea of comparing the amount of effort it took her to get through the day, to holding a cluster of spoons in your hand, and taking away one spoon for every step it takes a person with a chronic illness to function.
Miserandino lives with lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease which causes the immune system to attack the body’s healthy cells. Transverse Myelitis, from which I suffer, is also an autoimmune disease. Miserandino wrote an article about the experience, which quickly became the go-to metaphor for chronic illness.
Miserando wrote, “I have been forced to think about everything I do. Do you know how many "spoons" people waste every day? I don’t have room for wasted time, or wasted spoons and I chose to spend this time with you.”
I'm not a news bureau. I don't have reporters to investigate stories. I don't have an intern to do research. I don't have a graphics person to supply art. I don't have an editor to make sure I don't sound like an idiot. I'm one, old, crippled guy in Somonauk, Illinois, trying to stay sane in an insane universe.
Writing is a physically, mentally, and emotionally taxing activity for me. I have a limited amount of spoons per day, and I chose to spend them with you.
“The Spoon Theory,” by Christine Miserandino:
