The Oppenheimer Report 11/28/16

I recently found myself craving some retro TV, and I PVR’d (I’ve created a new verb) an old show I remember from my early youth: The Rifleman, starring Chuck Connors. Some of you are old enough to remember him playing the tough-but-fair-single-father and vigilante, Lucas McCain, whose wife probably died in a gun-related accident, and whose family later went on to found a French fried potato empire in Canada. My friends and I used to call him “Mucous” McCain, and my favorite part of the show was, hands down, the opening credits. You knew right away that Mucous was one “bad ass mo-fo” because he glared at the camera while he indiscriminately fired off his rifle walking down the main street of town. The townsfolk in Mucous’s town must have run for cover whenever he was around, because he seemed a little reckless with that rifle. I can sum up the plot of every episode of The Rifleman as follows: the bad guys rode into town, Lucas wrestled with his inner demons and the seemingly irreconcilable conflict of his gunslinger and law-abiding personalities. Inevitably, he ended up vastly outnumbered in a gunfight, slaughtering all the villains with his Wild West version of an AK47. The whole show was a send up to Mucous pureeing a bunch of bad guys with his lightning fast, repeat action Winchester. The filler in the middle was absolutely ludicrous. I began to think about some of the other TV shows I watched when I was younger. Actress Florence Henderson just passed away last week, and she played the mom in the hit sitcom The Brady Bunch. I remember how clean cut everyone was in that show. It seemed as if TV reality was more overtly manipulated back in the 60s and 70s. I found it somewhat ironic that actress Maureen McCormick, who played eldest daughter Marcia on the show, wrestled with substance abuse through much of her adult life. Another show which highlighted the difference between television and reality was Dragnet. I liked Dragnet then and I LOVE it now. The monotone dialogue and the deadpan acting is hilarious, and I can’t help thinking the producers knew the show was silly. There was one episode in particular that stands out in my memory. I think it was called “Blueboy” and it dealt with young people using LSD. Of course the young man who took LSD suffered some tragic end. You could argue that these shows were unrealistic depictions of life at the time, but I wonder what they tell us about the era in which they were produced. Why deify vigilantism? Why was divorce sanitized?

These days, nothing is as clear. Yes, there are wholesome sitcoms, but I’m also noticing a lot more fantasy and superheroes. And then there is the explosion of reality television. Reality television is a game changer; it is the car wreck from which I cannot turn away. Reality television is anything but, and the irony is glaring. Not too long ago, I watched part of a show about the struggles of some guy in a remote Arctic location. Here’s a guy in the middle of nowhere, and you know there’s a camera crew following him around. At some point in the show, the guy’s snowmobile breaks down many miles from his dwelling, and he has to walk home. Did the camera crew follow him home in a heated snow cat, or did they just go for hot cocoa? A lot of this reality crap focuses on the lowest common denominator of human behavior. We viewers love the villains, and the more atrocious the behavior the better. Fifteen years ago, I shrugged it off as an amusing dip in the quality of television entertainment, but now that it has woven itself into the fabric of our culture, it has I think become a troubling portent for the future.

If you doubt this, look at who just became President of the United States. Last weekend, Saturday Night Live was a repeat, and the original air date was shortly before the recent presidential election. Clearly no one on the SNL writing staff thought Trump had a cold chance in hell of winning the election, because the story about Trump’s misogynist rant with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush had just broken. To make the show even weirder, the guest host was Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the hit musical Hamilton. Most recently he is newsworthy for having admonished Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who had been in the Hamilton audience for one of the sold out shows, shortly after the election. In a world where social media and cell phones are the primary means of communication, a buffoon like Trump can prevail over an entire political and media empire. Makes you think, doesn’t it? OK, back to fantasy. Time to watch Andy Of Mayberry. That Barney cracks me up.    - Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/21/16

What a difference a week makes! Last week, I took one last putt around the lake in the Porta-Bote, before putting the little outboard away for the season. As I drifted on the far end of the mirror-calm lake, the sun in the latter half of its day, I had a moment of sublime peace. That peace is ever elusive these days, and while we live in paradise, and my life is in most ways charmed, there is a lot of noise in my head right now. An omnipresent sadness and dread lurk just below the surface of every human encounter I’ve made this past week, and it just seems as if a lot of people have resigned themselves to the notion that “evil” has triumphed. Trump is President, Russia and the Syrian Government are bombing the life out of Aleppo, the Kardashians are still bafflingly newsworthy. As if all the troubles around the world are not enough, an unusual number of my musical heroes have checked out of the Shit Storm Hotel in 2016. Leonard Cohen in particular, the poet-songwriter and ambassador of love, who so eloquently taught us the complicated lessons of love, has betrayed us by proving to be mortal. Maybe it’s the Chicken Little press, or the preponderance of “how-can-you-not-see-this-is-the-end-of-the-world?!” conversations floating around, or the indignation of so many, I don’t know. It just seems to me as if it is up to us “the people” to extricate ourselves from this doom and gloom. If righteous indignation was a currency, North America would have an embarrassment of riches. Sure I’m worried, but here is my deeply meaningful, self-righteous, rationalization of the week.

“We have met the enemy and he is us!” How many times have I repeated this quote from the famous cartoon possum Pogo? For the almost twenty-five years since I began writing this report, I have, sometimes sarcastically, vented my righteous indignation about politicians, hate groups, spoiled celebrities, biased media, etc. etc. Still, what have I done to make the human condition better? Bupkiss. I’m part of the problem because, just like the whining masses in the streets bitching about Trump, I am indignant but ineffective. The real heroes of our society are invisible. Who cares about my friend Michelle, who works for Community Living and daily assists, respects, cares about her mentally challenged clients? Who notices the inspirational music teacher who mentored a dozen famous singers, or the fireman who contracted cancer when he dug through the ruins of 9-11 looking for survivors, or the policeman who was killed protecting an ungrateful community, or the volunteer who selflessly delivers meals to the homebound elderly, or ten million other good people? We live in a world full of unspeakable atrocities, and now that the information is more accessible than it ever used to be, indifference becomes our self-defense. We demand ever more sensational catastrophes of the human condition and, like we watch reality television, we stare numbed at the bad news like deer in the headlights. Is it really such a surprise that a “populist” like Donald Trump was elected? He had the ratings. We the people have met the enemy … and he is us (not them).

My songwriter friend Doug McLean posted a quote the other day that drives the point home. It had to do with the Holocaust, and how that atrocity was allowed to occur. Essentially, the message was that, in the environment of divisiveness, ignorance, indifference, complacency, and cowardice, horrible things like genocide can happen. I know a lot of people are fearful that history is again repeating itself; I’m afraid of this as well, but I haven’t given up on humanity. What I aspire to do is my part, in my community. This Thursday marks the American Thanksgiving, hands down my favorite holiday of the year. I miss my mom and dad a lot, and I miss the beautiful family gatherings they hosted every year. They were the glue that bound our family together, along with at least a few strays, and no matter how dysfunctional it is, there is no better microcosm for humanity than our immediate family. Turn the other cheek. Maybe I didn’t adore Uncle Fred, and his seemingly ignorant, backward comments, but I learned to accept him. I am thankful for my good fortune, and most of all for the wonderful people whom I have been fortunate enough to know and love. All I can do is pay it forward, and hope that love triumphs over hate. Of late, I have begun to view the friends in my community as my family. Don’t leave it for someone else to fix this. Tolerate, listen, heal, understand; love. You can’t fix everything, but you can help. To all my American family and friends, Happy Thanksgiving!!         

                                             - Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/14/16

Over the past 25 years since I began writing this weekly report, I have had more than one cynical, opinionated, off-color thing to say about politicians. It would be easy to spew today, less than a week after the election that surprised so many. Goodness knows, I’ve read and heard plenty of spewing about Donald Trump over the past weeks, but I have nothing to say that I have not already said about the man. Over the past few months, I’ve been offering my unsolicited opinion about the Trump phenomenon, just as the rest of you have. After he ran away with the Republican primaries, I was deeply concerned that his unlikely ascendance to the highest office in the country was becoming more and more likely. To me, that spoke to the nation’s largely unrecognized discontent. Now, as the world lets out a collective gasp of fear and indignation, I reprise a letter I wrote to an old friend, who expressed her despondency the day after last Tuesday’s election results…

11/9/16 Dear C,  I am a diehard Republican, but I crossed party lines to vote for Hillary this time. While I am terribly worried about what a Trump presidency may foretell, I am somewhat philosophical at this point.

We all know Washington is broken. The Wall Street debacle in 2008 was an outrageous abomination, as was the Savings and Loans scandal in the 1980s. Buy now, pay later. Business as usual led us to a $30 Trillion deficit and there is no indication that a Clinton presidency was going to do anything but exacerbate that problem. The stock market was supposed to tank today, and it did not. Today, black is white, and white is black. I do not know what the future will be, but I’m not jumping ship yet. I am still an American citizen and I still love my country, in its entirety.

This election was a shot across the bow of democracy; Americans have been living in a house of cards for decades, and sooner or later the shit was going to hit the fan. I have despised Trump for 40 years, since my days at Saperston Real Estate. His arrogance and lack of class or grace goes against everything I believe in. But he is a shrewd business man and hopefully he knows how to put a team together. My slim hope is that he will achieve what no other leader has recently done: put the country back on track. Hatred and bigotry are alive and well in America – Trump did not invent them - he simply used them to get where he needed to be. The man is a shameless opportunist, and always has been. He effectively tapped into the lowest common denominator of human behavior to get where he needed to go, and I do not believe the entire block of the electorate that voted him in is stupid or hateful. You may find that, for all his toxic rhetoric, the growing constituency of disgruntled Americans who feel betrayed by their government will come together, and all this nonsense about walls and Islamophobia will simply evaporate. That is my hope anyway. He will have to dial his crap back now if he wants to achieve anything in Washington, and perhaps he will do some of the constructive things he claims he will – untangle the tax code, disassemble the deplorable campaign financing system, re-negotiate our trade deals and bring jobs back to America. Regardless of what his perceived “beliefs” are – and we don’t really know -  if he restores ANY prosperity to this foundering country, the results will be good. If he doesn’t make good, is he any different from the career politicians? 

This seemingly horrible development may in fact be exactly what democracy is. You can argue about the unfairness of the electoral college or that only the haters were heard, but he won, fair and square, and against all odds. If I can forget the asshole Trump is and look at what happened, democracy worked. He didn’t buy the vote; look at the machine against which he prevailed. It’s nothing short of remarkable. Bernie couldn’t fight Hillary’s machine, even though we all know he was the people’s choice. The DNC was not going to let a socialist run against the elephants (and presumably lose). Trump is not beholding to PACS and he is as much a threat to the Republicans as he is to the Democrats. He shrewdly tapped into the disgust over the status quo, and found his majority. Americans decisively voted for change, and whether or not it was the right decision, it may mean there is hope. His success or failure as a president is a question for the history books. My hope, however tenuous, is that this lightening rod for controversy will now settle down and Trump the blowhard will turn into a conduit for much-needed reform. Maybe, just maybe, he can put together a plan to unify this completely divided nation. I see the same hatred you see – but you might be surprised to hear some of the things JFK said and did, and he was much loved during his presidency. Sadly, hypocrisy is an almost constant by-product of the political system.

Pollster, predictors, media, politicos, spin doctors … America rejected all of them, and all the money on both sides could not bring this guy down. To me, that is hopeful. Trump is not a puppet of the Koch brothers. Maybe, if he can accomplish this unimaginable feat, he can make the positive changes that will help right the ship of state. In fact he is no worse than the partisan bastards that make up our Congress right now. The team he picks will be telling. That is my concern right now. Despise the man, by all means, but focus on the possible good that can come from all this. I’m as lost and fearful as the rest of the world, but Donald Trump did not create the mess we’re in. We, our complacency, and the officials we elected did. Imagine what would happen if half the money we lost on campaign financing and un-collected taxes was diverted to low income housing or to feeding the poor. When America is most down and out, that is when she shines. This may be the wake-up call that brings the pendulum back to center. I do not think this is the end of the world, only time will tell. One thing is for sure: we Americans need to wake up and see our part in the big picture. Sometimes democracy is not pretty.

Be well my friends!  Jamie

RIP  singer/songwriters  Leonard Cohen (82) and Leon Russel (76).

   - Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/7/16

As Remembrance Day approaches this Friday, I have probably purchased three or four poppies in the past week. I have yet to properly fasten one of those things to any garment I own, and usually manage to skewer myself at least once or twice. Perhaps a little prick of pain is a fitting way to remember the men and women who have sacrificed so much for our collective freedom. While I worry about the state of the world today, and am as disheartened as the next American about the up and coming Presidential election tomorrow, I am still hopeful and comforted by the (possibly deluded) notion that we North Americans enjoy freedoms that most of the rest of the world cannot imagine. I am thankful to every generation of veterans for their service, and I express my gratitude locally by making several donations to the local Burk’s Falls Legion over the year.

When I was a sullen teen, my parents employed a cleaning lady named Mel, and her son Richard used to pick her up after work. Richard was a Viet Nam vet, and though he was a little shy, we developed an odd friendship which originated around cars. Richard owned a “sleeper”, which in drag racing circles means a car which does not look as fast as it is. Richard’s car was a hopped up Cougar XR7 with a supercharged V8. That motor developed well over 500 HP and was geared for drag racing. The car was intentionally painted to look as if it was done by a child - orange with black leopard spots - and it definitely did not look like something that would hit 0-60 in under 4 seconds. I took several rides in this thing and it was probably the fastest car I’ve ever been in. The acceleration off the line could snap your neck. He used to take it down to Fuhrman Blvd. and race other hot rodders for pink slips. Fuhrmann Boulevard was at the time Buffalo’s unofficial drag strip, because it featured numerous exits for escaping the cops. Richard told me that he and “The Leopard” had won a few cars down there. We had an unusual relationship, not just because I was a spoiled young teenager, and his family was several rungs below mine on the social ladder, but also because I was a naïve kid, and he was a war vet. I met a few of Richard’s friends, many of them also veterans, and they looked as if they'd been through a war. While Richard and I never talked much about his experiences in Viet Nam, I know he’d seen combat, and that he was affected psychologically by what he’d done and seen. It was obvious. The Viet Nam War was troublesome on so many levels, because the mission was ambiguous and it came to represent one of the worst and most devastating failures of U.S foreign policy. As happened to so many vets from every generation of war, many of the Viet Nam vets came home with PTS, and to a population that did not understand or appreciate their sacrifice. I don’t know what happened to Richard, or if he is still on this earth, but he was my personal reminder of the ravages of war. I have never been a history buff, but I do know that war is hell. I try never to forget this or to take my freedom for granted.  Not every vet was a decorated hero, not all of them sacrificed their lives, but in my opinion, they are all worthy of my respect.

I feel the same about Remembrance Day as I do about Thanksgiving or Christmas: it shouldn't just be  for one day that we honor our vets, any more than it should be for only one day that we are thankful or charitable or kind. Maybe it’s because we have so much more “information” than we used to, but it seems to me as if the world is becoming an ever more dangerous place than it used to be. I’m not as worried about some fringe group of religious extremists in the Middle East as I am of the misdirection of a super power. We should never forget the lessons of the past, and we should never forget the sacrifices we depend upon from our soldiers, both at home and abroad. I’ll try to remember them the next time my internet service is slow, or the chainsaw won’t start, or someone cuts me off on the highway. Little problems. I think the best way can honor our veterans is to do a better job of appreciating and respecting the freedoms for which they fought.    

   - Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED