finito
March 2020
sysygy
Quote of the Month
Following that “coming-out” Caitlin cover story in Vanity Fair in 2015, her Twitter following shot up to 2.5 million. She is now arguably, the most famous transgender woman in the world. And with “the coverage of her transition from male to female, in The New York Times, People, USA Today and virtually every other media outlet… she has climbed into the stratosphere of American celebrity…and seemed to give the onetime Olympic athlete and reality TV father unprecedented notoriety…” (Politico Magazine).
Unprecedented? We tend to look at today, as if there were no yesterdays. But the Politico article does go on to properly note…
“With a flourishing transgender rights movement, her (Caitlin’s) story is nowhere near as startling as Jorgensen’s was in the 1950s.
…Christine’s story had taken off into media madness, covered obsessively in hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles in the United States and abroad. More than a year later, with Jorgensen still in the headlines, the Daily News claimed that she was its top story of 1953, boosting its circulation more than any other story, including the controversial execution of atomic spy Julius Rosenberg and his wife, Ethel…
Jorgensen shaped her own story and, like Jenner, won a surprising amount of public sympathy and support…”
Surprising indeed, given the paleolithic age of early 1950’s postwar America. As in: ”Better dead than Red!” “I Like Ike.” ”When men were men,” “A woman’s place was in the home!” etc. So it’s especially important and endearing to note here, that Christine’s parents were fully supportive of her through it all at such a time.
By the summer of ’53, she had become particular fodder for Confidential, a trashy tabloid that dealt in sex, crime and violence. It had a 5 million circ at a time when there were only 110 million adults in the U.S. (Nearly 250 million adults now, for those keeping score).
As there always seemed to be a copy lying around somewhere within easy access (I grew up in a culture that was the lowest-of-brow), even at a tender age of 8 or 9, most kids in my midst knew who Christine Jorgenson was. And used to be.
Though the working class and macho types I knew were readily given to racist, sexist, and Anti-Semitic remarks (unfortunately), and found sport in bestowing cruel nicknames, I can never remember hearing a disparaging word uttered about Christine. In fact, our next door neighbor’s son who was a professional drummer, travelling in entertainment circles, knew her well. So well, that she served as godmother at his kid’s Christening. (Talk about six degrees separation…this one is about six hundred).
What added to her charm, was that as she became a nightclub performer, actress, autobiographer, she layered it all with a wonderful sense of humor. (Her favorite song to sing…”I Enjoy Being a Girl”). Later, in the early 1970’s she lectured at colleges sharing her life story with baby boomers who had missed her sensational debut.
This is all by way of saying, that with the rise of a LGBTQ movement (which re-began in the 1990’s with a couple of initials later added), and with all the acknowledgments of the key moments in the history of gender redefinition and sexual identification--- not to mention the current battle over the right of transgenders to serve in the military--- I never hear mention of the name Christine Jorgensen. And I am a self-confessed news (and muse) junkie. Though alas, lacking in social (or anti-social?) media engagements.
Only now after some surfing, do I see that in June of 2019, she was one of the “50 American ‘pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes’ included in the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument at the Stonewall Inn.” Another text or Tweet or Facebook posting I guess I missed. Still, the point prevails. I mean, Joaquin Phoenix didn’t even mention her in his Oscar acceptance speech (which touched on a far lower-profile female issue: “We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her babies.” Which seems like a lot of bull. Joaquin in the flesh, can be scarier than Joker in the film).
It seems that the lack of reference to Christine and the role she played in bringing about awareness of transgenderism, again, is just one more indication of a world which seems to think it didn’t exist before heads were buried in smart phones. Jorgensen died in 1989 at 62. When Caitlin was that age, she still was not Caitlin.
There’s no better time than now to retell Christine’s story. In full. As it can offer an interesting perspective at a time in which we are witnessing a growth in the number of people publicly identifying as gender diverse. The latest estimate I saw, put it at 1.3 million adults in the U.S., which was said to be twice as large as just five years before. And it has become a puzzling development to many, witness the discourse as to who exactly should be using what restroom.
As to who might portray Jorgensen were there to be a remake of her long-forgotten bio-pic, or an original screenplay, I would bet that would create controversy faster than you can say… Johansson.
She has already quit a film after critics said her casting in a transgender role took opportunities from transgender actors.
(Frankly, Scarlett gave a damn).
I would think the goal would be to use the best actor who would be convincing in the role. Not to mention, "star quality" and impact at the box office.
Does this now mean that a straight actor can't play a gay character, and vice versa? I wonder how Christine would have felt about this? A discussion best saved for another day.
…George, a bachelor, begat Christine at age 26. The year was 1952.
muse-letter \’myüz-‘le-tər noun
1: a personal message, inspired by a muse of one's own creation, addressed to a person or organization, in the course of which, the sender becomes absorbed in thought; especially turning something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively.
2: a letter from a poet, or one who envisions oneself as such, in which he or she “muses” on that which is perceived to be news, or newsworthy, usually in some ironic or absurd way.
Featuring...
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Christine's World
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Quote of the Month
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Word of the Month
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Bern Burns Beelzebub, But?
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Side-angle-side
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Recent Reading Gigs
Recent Reading Gigs
Last month’s public readings:
February 25, 2020
The Tin Woodman’s Story
by Ron Vazzano
from February 2020 Muse-Letter
https://ronvazzano7.wixsite.com/mysite
February 26, 2020
In Honor of Black History Month
A Reading of Black Poets
The Cabdriver Who Ripped Me Off
by Cornelius Eady
read by Ron Vazzano
Cornelius Eady has published more than half a dozen volumes of poetry, among them “Victims of the Latest Dance Craze” (1985), winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets; “The Gathering of My Name” (1991), nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; and “Brutal Imagination” (2001), a National Book Award finalist.
I mean, look at that guy
You know, who was big
In the sixties,
That drug guy,
Timothy Leary?
Yeah, he went underground,
Lived overseas.
You know what?
A few years abroad
And he was ready to
Come back
On any terms.
He didn’t care if
They arrested him.
He said
The U.S. is better
Than any country
In the world.
Send them over there
For a few years.
They’d be just like him.
This is the greatest country
In the whole world.
Timothy Leary
Was damn happy
To get back here,
And he’s doing fine.
Look at me.
I used to be like that.
I used to live underground.
I came back.
I think all those beggars got
a mental block.
I think you should do something.
I mean, you ought to like
what you do,
But you should do something.
Something of use
To the community.
All those people,
Those bums,
Those scam artists,
Those hustlers,
Those drug addicts,
Those welfare cheats,
Those sponges.
Other than that
I don’t hold nothin’
Against no one.
Hey, I picked you up.
The Cab Driver Who Ripped Me Off
That’s right, said the cab driver,
Turning the corner to the
Round-a-bout way,
Those stupid, fuckin’ beggars,
You know the guys who
Walk up to my cab
With their hands extended
And their little cups?
You know their problem?
You know what’s wrong with them?
They ain’t got no brains.
I mean, they don’t know nothin’
’cause if they had brains
They’d think of a way
To find a job.
You know what one of ’em told me once?
He said what he did,
Begging
He said it was work.
Begging
Was work.
And I told him
Straight to his face:
That ain’t work.
You think that’s work?
Let me tell you what work is:
Work is something that you do
That’s of value
To someone else.
Now you take me.
It takes brains to do
What I do.
You know what I think?
I think they ought to send
All these beggars over
To some other country,
Any country,
It don’t matter which,
For 3, 4, years,
Let them wander around
Some other country,
See how they like that.
We ought to make a
National program
Sending them off
To wander about
Some other country
For a few years,
Let ’em beg over there,
See how far it gets them.
Word of the Month
syz·y·gy | \ ˈsi-zə-jē \
noun, plural syz·y·gies.
Syzygy can be traced to the Greek syzygos ("yoked together"), a combination of syn- ("with, together with") and zygon ("yoke").
It basically has three meanings.
1. Astronomy: an alignment of three celestial objects, as the sun, the earth, and either the moon or a planet: Syzygy in the sun-earth-moon system occurs at the time of full moon and new moon.
2. Classical Prosody: a group or combination of two feet, sometimes restricted to a combination of two feet of different kinds.
3. any two related things, either alike or opposite.
(Dictionary.com)
And then when Carl Jung came along, he had to put his two cents in and apply it to the psyche. Which when used this way, results in the irony of it being easier to explain in a picture, than in words. Or, maybe not?
Model of Jung's Psyche as an Open System
When used commonly (which is rarely), it is with that the third definition above in mind. Such as in:
"It’s tough to beat the unadulterated, magical syzygy of beef and American cheese
on a steaming sesame bun."
"25 best burgers in Phoenix: If you've got a hamburger craving, here's where to go"
Dominic Armato, food critic in Phoenix
Bern Burns Beelzebub, But?
His anger for millionaires and billionaires, “duh top one pahcent,” is legendary and as current as this morning. And if you’ve ever wondered what annual income qualifies for that designation, according to Forbes (as of 2018), you’d need to earn “$480,930 or more annually. The Bern’s average household income according to his tax returns over these past three years, is about $900k. And he does own three houses. Thus he has dropped the mention of mere millionaires from his rhetoric. I’m just saying. But it’s the billionaire devil who continues to set him aflame.
“We have a grotesque and immoral distribution of wealth and income. Mike Bloomberg owns more wealth than the bottom 125 million Americans. That's wrong. That's immoral. That should not be the case when we got a half a million people sleeping out on the street, where we have kids who cannot afford to go to college, when we have 45 million people dealing with student debt.”
"… there is no justice when the 15 wealthiest people in this country in the last two years, saw their wealth increase by $170 billion. That is more wealth acquired in a two year period than is owned by the bottom 130 million Americans."
As a sidebar I can't resist---call me old school, or just plain old--- but my image of what a billionaire and captain of industry looks like, first formed through lessons at school, is something like…
this.
Not this.
When Zuckerberg came before Congress last October, he looked like a kid who had been called into the Principal’s office for throwing spitballs during class. You wanted to smack him in the face (book) for “Zuckering” us. And as a further aside, to Buttigieg, who is the poorest and youngest candidate (and looks even younger than that), put a jacket on! In white shirt with sleeves rolled up to suggest a man in action, you look instead, like a summer intern trying to earn enough money to put yourself through college. But where was I? Oh yeah, The Bern. On fire. And wouldn’t he have loved to have skewered that derby-hatted Henry Ford and the other so-called “Robber Barons” of the day.
As a New York Times editorial recently pointed out absent any satirical intention…
“In debates, Mr. Sanders has one mode: shouty. It fits with his chronic crabbiness his fans find so charming--- evidence of his passion and authenticity. But when you combine shouty with defensive, the result is not so charming …”
Yet “Shouty” went on to kill it in Nevada, with a victory margin of 27 points, and all but ran the table in the delegate count. He is expected to do so in California as well, and as of this writing, he has emerged as the clear front-runner. Though more on that in a minute.
Sanders has been shouting out his essentially one-note manifesto forever. There’s no flip-flopping with The Bern (excepting on gun control). He’s consistent. Even the summer intern has given him credit for that.
I wonder if he was like this even as a kid? Did he ever lighten up? Play games? I wonder if he refused to play Monopoly, as it was a game that rewarded cutthroat Capitalism? Can you imagine The Bern playing Monopoly?
In the interest of full (or at least guarded) disclosure, I am a registered Democrat. Since about… always. And undecided as to how I will vote in the New York State primary on April 28th. I’m certainly not a Bernie Bro. But neither a “never-Bern” I’d ever be, in this coming general election. And it is now commonly assumed that The Bern could have the nomination all but sewn up a few days after this posting. As in, March 3rd, Super Tuesday. (Though increasingly there is talk of a brokered convention).
Ultimately, when it comes to voting in a presidential election, New York is decidedly Blue. Since JFK, the Democrats have won the state 12 of 15 times. Currently, eight in a row. The only Republicans to win here in the last 60 years, are The Gipper (twice) and Tricky Dick once.
Of course, the question with The Bern atop the ticket, is not whether he will win the “Big Blues,” New York and California, but would America ever vote for an avowed and proud Socialist? With or without the hyphenated modifier Democratic- before it? Which he will be hard pressed to explain, as to the nuanced differences between the two.
Americans don’t do nuance well. Especially in trying to understand the parsing of words. The Bern has voiced some positive things about socialism regimes in the past. Which inexplicably, he reiterated and sought to defend just a week ago on 60 Minutes. Which was magnified during the last debate in particular ---welcome to the Ghost of Castro Past. For The Bern has clearly committed an in-Fidel-ity here.
Steve Schmidt, a Republican consultant who ran John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign and is now an MSNBC commentator who opposes Trump, was succinct and on point in his assessment, which he stated even before this recent debacle of a debate:
"He is a socialist, and he supported communist revolutionaries all over the Western hemisphere in the 1980s at the height of the Cold War. These positions are antithetical to the values of the country, and certainly explains why the Trump campaign is so enthusiastic about Bernie Sanders as an opponent."
A glance at history in the person of Norman Thomas and his various runs for the presidency on the Socialist Party ticket, echoes Schmidt's point of America's values in this area. And they have always been firmly entrenched.
At the height of The Great Depression in 1932 with unemployment at 24%, he got only 2.2% of the popular vote (zero Electoral votes). And as was once noted in a retrospective piece in the Washington Post many years ago, Norman was no kook or crude demagogue.
The only resemblance to The Bern by that descriptive really, is the baldness.
Yes, yes, of course, I’m talking “apples and oranges.” Of course no third party candidate ever wins more than low single digits regardless of political ideology. Except of course, Ross Perot, who won 19% in '92. Which was the largest share won by a candidate outside of the two major parties since 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt won 27% running atop the Progressive (“Bull Moose”) Party ticket. Granted, he was a former president who had served two terms.
It would be astounding, even running in Democrat clothing, for the big bad wolf of socialism to win an election against an incumbent president, who not only has full backing (aye, enabling) of his party, but an economy with the lowest unemployment rate in the last 50 years in his favor. Especially in an era of polarization, the likes of which has not been seen, arguably, since …uh… the Civil War? (Of course as I write this, the coronavirus is lurking...the DOW is tanking...the Trump is blaming).
Undaunted (The Bern doesn’t do “daunt”), he will continue to give those devils their due. But, he doesn’t seem to have a snowball’s chance in… well… hell. Yet neither the pundits, nor the politicians nor Hillary herself, ever thought Donald did either. Yes, a lot of factors were at play, which have been dissected ad nauseam these last three years, and need no reiteration.
The only one perhaps who got the 2016 election right, was Michael Moore. Who this time around is an ardent Bernie backer and not just a soothsayer. But this time around, as I look around, Moore looks like less.Yet, I've had to revise this treatise a few times in the course of writing it---to borrow a phrase---as the world turns.
“…his 1932 campaign sparkled. He shone against Hoover, Roosevelt -- who had not yet begun to soar,"
"…nearly 48, was a handsome presence: 6 feet 4, keen blue eyes, a bold, bald head, tanned, thoughtful, with smiling face and a rousing voice which could boom and cut. He had the gift of expository language without talking down. His passionate utterance was often relieved by humor. To the campaign he brought high purpose and daring which his opponents could envy but never match.”
Christine’s World
Before there was a William Bruce Jenner, from Mount Kisko N.Y.--- Olympic Gold Medal winner in the decathlon, and a proclaimed “American Champion”---there was a skinny unathletic blond-haired kid, George Williams Jorgensen Jr. from The Bronx, who served in the Army for a year and a half toward the conclusion of WWII.
Before Bruce begat Caitlin at age 65, five years ago, and after three marriages and six kids (better latent than never)…
Remainder of the site under reconstruction
