I would never urge Missoula to gather fireworks and converge on the mall

Rockets explode over Bed, Bath and Beyond in a display of times past.

Rockets explode over Bed Bath & Beyond in a display from times now past.

Every once in a while, current events intersect with my natural talent for stupidity to make something so dumb even I enjoy reading it. This week’s column in the Independent is one such. You may not know it, but the mall canceled its Fourth of July fireworks show last week, depriving the city of its semi-official display. Because Missoula is basically a bowl, you used to be able to see the mall fireworks show from any of the mountains and hills around town. One of my favorite summer activities was taking a blanket to High Park and watching the fireworks from within the tall grasses. But all that’s over now, unless we all come together in some kind of implied but not explicit plan to save the Fourth of July. You see, I know what the loss of independent spirit can do to a town.

I have always loved the Fourth of July, ever since I was a kid. In my hometown, graduating seniors used to grab a 12-pack and drink it at the municipal fireworks display, then go to the highest point we could find and throw up. Sadly, in ways none of us could have predicted, this tradition turned tragic. The annual fireworks display was canceled out of respect for the family my friend threw up and then fell on, and the mill shut down after that. Eventually, the town was disbanded.

Fireworks are illegal within Missoula city limits, so residents should definitely not buy as many class-B mortars as they can find and bring them to the mall. The assistant fire marshall has most certainly not been driven mad with power and irrational opposition to fire and its works. But still, one wonders when the centipede of liberty will wriggle from beneath the bootheel of oppression and bite, bite bite. If we are ever to climb the pants leg of freedom, we must rise up.

 

 

Close Readings: SC state senators prevent lesbian play

Leigh Hendrix as Butchy McDyke in How To Be a Lesbian In 10 Days or Less

Leigh Hendrix as Butchy McDyke in “How To Be a Lesbian In 10 Days or Less”

It’s good that South Carolina Upstate university has canceled its presentation of Leigh Hendrix’s one-woman show How To Be a Lesbian In 10 Days or Less, because now Hendrix won’t have to contend with people shouting “fewer!” whenever she says the title. Maybe that wouldn’t have been a problem at SC Upstate. Regardless, satirically-named South Carolina senator Mike Fair (R–Greenville) has convinced the university to shut down the satirically-named play, arguing that it was a recruiting tool for homosexuality. Fair, you fool—any theater on a college campus is a recruiting tool for homosexuality. Also, you played quarterback for the Cocks. But biography is orthogonal here. All we care about is the text, because it’s time for another Close Reading.

Continue reading

What is Sarah Palin now?

She’s not a politician, exactly—she quit her job as governix of Alaska, and that whole second-in-line-for-the-presidency thing mercifully remained conjecture—yet all she talks about is politics. Normally that would make her a commentator, but her public statements are not really, um,  up to the standards of the field. Palin’s pronouncements combine brevity and vagueness in a manner that suggests she’s not trying to convert us to her position so much as convert us to her. When she says that health care policy must strengthen American values, it’s not an argument so much as an answer. So far, Palin’s priority as a commentator seems to be to make her own position clear in relation to everybody else’s, albeit in the most infuriatingly abstract way possible. That agenda seems doubly odd, since we already know what she thinks before she says it: Sarah Palin agrees with the Republican Party. Still, she seems aligned with but not quite of the GOP, perhaps because the bulk of her rhetoric is not for anything; she’s just against President Obama. Consider her most recent piece in the National Review, in which she argues that the President’s recent support for expanded oil and gas drilling is just a trick. When one of her stated nemeses agrees with her, she refines her position in order to renew the dichotomy. In the past, we’ve criticized her for not having any ideas, but that isn’t really fair. In her present incarnation, Sarah Palin doesn’t need ideas, because the idea is herself. As David Carr suggests in today’s Times, Sarah Palin is a brand.

Continue reading