Houston's Tabloid TV News: If It Bleeds, It Leads

By Daniel Rigney
As an urban anthropologist I observe and interpret the cultures of the people I live among.  I'll take my ethnographic insights wherever I can find them, including the grocery checkout line, where I like to browse the tabloids and occasionally buy one to take home for further scholarly analysis.  Inquiring minds want to know, as Aristotle said.¹
The National Inquirer is only the best-known of these half-sheets.  Many others, including niche publications like Lurid World and The Morbid Weekly News, compete fiercely for our time and eyeballs in the national and global attention economy.²  
Most of my tabloid data come not from the traditional medium of newsprint,  but rather from screens, and especially from cable television shows.  As you very well know – and don’t pretend you don’t – tabloid television contains within its ample bosom a variety of subgenres.  There is, of course, the celebrity gossip story. (See, for example, the potential rumor of a purely hypothetical Sheen-Lohan affair -- or Lohan-Sheen affair, as her agent would prefer -- as previously reported here  in “How to Scoop-Search.”)
Then there is the conspiracy theory genre, ably represented by that guy who used to wrestle and govern Minnesota. September 11 was an inside job. The government is covering up alien invasions. That sort of thing. 
Then there are the shows that feature the personal tragedy of the week, usually centering on a little blond girl from the heartland who’s “gone missing” (as they invariably say) and is feared kidnapped or worse. (A tip for tabloid television watchers:  Always suspect the boyfriend or former boyfriend of the mother.) Nancy Grace and others who work her subgenre have no interests at heart but the interests of the victims, and of the viewers whose heartstrings they pluck like a country fiddle. I understand that they and their networks donate most of the show’s profits to charities that help children in dire need. Bless their hearts.
We could linger over other tabloid television subgenres, including voyeuristic programs devoted to crime, plastic and other surgery, wild partying, rehab, and what some have called political porn (also frequently heard on AM talk radio). But instead we take you now  to a late-breaking story from the world of  local tabloid news.  We go to Houston, live, for this report.
 It’s about 8:55, CT on Wednesday, March 31, and I’m watching the five- minute segment of local news that directly follows CBS’s Early Show on Houston’s KHOU, Channel  11. (See "Trend Anxiety" in a previous column here.)
The Channel 11 News, by the way, is the station I usually turn to for local events.  The winner of several National Edward R. Murrow Awards for excellence in broadcast journalism (as it reminds its viewers frequently), Channel 11 is by no means the worst of its kind in this region.  In fact, it may be the one of the best. But you be the judge. We report on the reporting. You decide. 
What follows is my attempt at a faithful and honest rendering of this five-minute news segment. None of this is made up, although I have compressed my account for the sake of brevity. [My interpretive subtext is shown in brackets.]

If It Bleeds, It Leads³
 And now for a five-minute update of your local KHOU News.  A hit and run driver in southeast Houston has plowed into a group of people, knocking two into a ditch and sending one woman to the hospital. Ambulance footage accompanies the story. [Worry about your health.]
A youth was killed in a gang-related shooting yesterday evening following a powder-puff football game at a local high school. At least ten police cars appear in the aerial view of the scene. [Worry about crime, gangs, and dying.]
Today’s weather will be sunny and cool, warming to 76 in the afternoon.
Traffic update: There’s an accident slowing traffic in the HOV lane at Greenpoint at this hour. Traffic is also slow on other freeways and tollways throughout the city. Stay tuned for updates on your drive to work. [Worry about tolls, traffic accidents, health, dying, and being late to work.]

We'll Be Right Back After These Cultural Messages 
Tune in to  the new CBS comedy (“Chaos”) about the CIA.  [Will national security anxieties be aroused? And will zany hijinks help us deal with them? I swear I'm not making up the premise of this series.]
Buy a used car at car.com, where confidence comes standard. [Good. I need a car I don't have to worry about. I'll go to car.com.]
Buy a “certified pre-owned” car from Audi. [Don’t call it a used car, and don’t buy one from car.com.]
Watch KHOU, because “KHOU Stands for Houston." This message is accompanied by a generic jingle with sample lyric: “Our Houston spirit reaches deep inside us.” [It does what?]
Enjoy the Reliant Energy Final Four and the Reese’s (chocolate candy) College All Star game at ncaa.com. [Nothing says athleticism like coal-fire and candy. Worry about your lungs, your caloric intake, and your receding youth.]
Stay Tuned For …
“Great Day Houston” with Deborah Duncan. 
[It will be a great day if I’m not late for work, sold a used lemon, injured in a car accident, killed by a gun or worse.  And it’s only 9 in the morning.]
Houston News.  Keeping you informed.  Because inquiring minds want to know.


NOTES
 1,  Aristotle (384-322 BCE), in The Metaphysics, observes that “All men [sic] by nature desire to know .”
 2.   The insightful term “attention economy” is from a book of that title by Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck, 2001. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
3    The phrase “if it bleeds, it leads" is not mine.  A quick scoop-search (see "How to Scoop-Search" in a previous column) reveals  that the phrase has been pervasive for years, both inside and outside the news industry, and especially among those who watch television with a critical eye. Likewise "tabloid television" and similar terms.

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local news, cbs, khou, houston, if it bleeds it leads, tabloid television, danagram, daniel rigney, comedy, gossip, open+call, technology

Gun Rider Shot Down in Texas

By Daniel Rigney
Should guns be permitted in the dorms and classrooms of Texas public colleges and universities?  Believe it or not, a bill to enable students to carry weapons on campus legally has been slouching toward passage in the Texas Legislature over these past  several weeks.  Today there is breaking news on the story. Read on.
But first some background. If you know anything about Texas campuses, you know that Lone Star Beer and his good friend Jack Daniels are present in the student body every day, and even more so on nights and weekends.
Mix these ingredients with academic, emotional and personal stress, anger, and male (or female) ego. Add a dash of carelessness. Horseplay optional.  Stir well.  Serve hot and smokin'.
I’ve taught at three Texas colleges and universities, two of them public, over the years.  In class I sometimes asked my students, “Would you feel safer right now if you knew that you or others in this room were packing heat?”  The phrasing and the flagrant absurdity of the question brought an immediate and appreciative chuckle from students.  They got it.
The Texas legislature is our state’s theater of the absurd.  Senate Bill 1581, the bill that would allow guns on public campuses, is currently at a critical point in the legislative process. Republican Sen. Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio, normally a mild-mannered moderate (by Texas standards) conservative, appears to be playing to the state’s right-wing base on the school gun issue.  Coincidentally, he has an election coming up.
Texas is the state, mind you, that once had an MLB franchise named the Houston Colt 45’s and a semi-pro football team called the San Antonio Gunslingers.  Don’t mess with Texas.
This just in on last night’s Twitter feed, from Students for Gun-Free Schools in Texas: “Excellent news! The House parliamentarian ruled this evening that the guns-on-campus rider on SB 1581 was not germane and sent the whole bill back to the Senate.”  Shooting down the gun rider on SB 1581 could mean the death of the bill. Wentworth and his friends may try to save it with amended language. But if this bill dies in Texas, zombie bills like it are less like to rise up in other states.
Stay tuned on this issue.  And thank you, Lord, for Arizona, South Carolina, and a few other states in between. If it weren’t for them, Texas would be the most backward state in the country.
Meanwhile, in two  related stories …
 A Liberal Gun Club and website (theliberalgunclub.com) have been created “to provide a voice for gun-owning liberals and moderates in the national conversation on gun rights, gun legislation, firearms safety, and shooting sports.” The best man at our wedding – I’ll call him “Richard,” because that’s his name – is the very Jungian archetype of this rare but interesting species.  He hunts and fishes like his daddy did before him in the small central Texas community where he grew up. And he’s what we call a “yellow dog Democrat” – a populist who would sooner vote for a dead yellow dog in the road than for a Republican.  He loves huntin' and fishin'.  As  for myself, I do most of my hunting and fishing at Safeway.
The other story: An organization and website (pinkpistols.org) now exists to protect members of sexual minorities and to promote their safe and responsible use of firearms. Its motto: “Pick on someone your own caliber.”
Don’t mess with New Texas.

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gay/lesbian, comedy, belief/religion, guns on campus, guns on college campuses, open+call, sports, danagram, daniel rigney, new texas, sen. jeff wentworth, yellow dog democrat, liberal gun club, pink pistols, sb 1581, texas legislature, zombie bills, san antonio, politics, guns, texas, politics

Creative Driving in Houston

By Daniel Rigney
If your town is like mine, driving a car is like playing a video game. Objects pop out from nowhere.  Cars, trucks, buses, SUVs, bicycles, pedestrians and road hazards of every imaginable kind lunge out to get you, or to make you accidentally do something you’ll spend the rest of your life regretting, even  after you get out of prison.
I’m not complaining. I’m a positive thinker. I firmly and sincerely believe that our lives are whatever we make them.  We create reality in our own heads.  I must have wanted Houston traffic to be a screaming nightmare from the underlife, or I wouldn’t have created it this way. 
For all I know, I may be the driver from the underlife in other people’s nightmares.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I am. Why else would they keep honking at me and shooting me the digitized message (00100) every time I try to drive creatively?
I thought creativity was supposed to be a good thing in America. What is this? Russia?
I deal with bad traffic in three simple ways.  I leave the house as little as possible. (Did Emily Dickinson die in a car wreck?  Think about it.)  If I have to go somewhere, I drive between rush hour and rush hour. (In Houston, that’s between 1 and 5 a.m.)  And I take back streets. Never, if I can help it, do I drive on freeways, especially in the city. Maybe a freeway through the desert if it’s not rush hour.
If you follow these three simple rules you’ll rarely go anywhere, but you’ll rarely be lost, and you probably won’t be among the 33,000 Americans in the U.S. last year who went to meet their automaker on our highways and byways. 
As I’ve said,  I’m a positive thinker, so I’ll put an encouraging spin on that traffic fatality statistic. It’s uplifting to know that the annual figure was 42,000 less than a decade ago.  Our streets and highways have been getting safer and safer.  I’m sure the reasons for this are complex. For one thing, I’m staying home more.  I’m saving up for a trip to the gas station.
But if I must get into traffic, I try to drive creatively.  I’ve perfected several four-wheeled maneuvers that boost me forward toward my short-term goals, like buying groceries. I don’t have time to go into all of my creative driving techniques here, but let me mention a few. 
First, there is the diagonal parking lot shortcut. Go fast to beat competing vehicles to your parking space about a quarter-mile away.  Just remember, though, that other drivers are also doing the creative cut-across from other directions.
Second, view stop signs and stop lights as driving suggestions, like they do in Rome and Mexico City. Too much regulation stifles the creative spirit. I’m against traffic overregulation on principle. Overregulation is any rule I don’t like.
Third, if you’re on the freeway, drive at the same speed as the rest of the traffic.  Don’t recklessly obey speed laws by slowing to 60 from the more typical 85 (Houston Standard Speed). Obeying the law may put the lives of other motorists in danger.  It’s okay to use others as an excuse to drive too fast, because they’re using you as an excuse to do the same.
Fourth, always know which lane you’re supposed to be in. If the lane you need is not available, make  one for yourself. You’re in a hurry, and life is short.
Finally – and I can’t emphasize this too much – changing lanes should be viewed not just as a way to cut twenty seconds off the length of your trip, but also as an opportunity to display your driving skills and bust a few  road moves:  the Bob and Weave, the Dodge and Dart, the Bluff, the Brake Dance.  You know, the usual driver’s skill set.  You may even want to create some of your own signature moves. Surprise us.
You can show your appreciation for the creative driving of others by giving these imaginative road artists a round of applause-honks. Or by finger-texting  them the digitized message (00100) as a way to recognize and honor  innovative performance in a road show.
Meanwhile, I’m walking to the metro stop. Let somebody else play this video game.  And hey.  Be careful out there.*

*Exit line from “Hill Street Blues,” circa 1985.
-- Danagram, curating our precious comedy heritage since 2011 at open.salon.com/blog/danagram

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driving crazy, satire, humor, comedy, creative driving, freeways, driving video game, traffic overregulation, overregulation is any rule i don't like, positive thinking, positive driving, we create our own reality, screaming nightmare, underlife, shooting the digitized message 00100, giving the digitized message 00100, applause-honk, applause honk, emily dickinson car wreck?, traffic fatality statistics, encouraging spin, creative driving techniques, bust a driving move, bob and weave, dodge and dart, driver's bluff, finger-texting, digital finger, hill street blues, daniel rigney, danagram, curating our precious comedy heritage, driver's skill set, houston standard speed, houston metro, recklessly obeying the speed law, saving up for a trip to the gas station, diagonal shortcut, creative cut-across, rush hour 1 to 5 a.m., travel, television

Backyard Bar-B-Q Houston-Style

Recipe for Houston-Style Bar-B-Q
Semi-Fiction by Daniel Rigney
Twenty-first century Houston is a culinary crossroad.  Cuisines native to Texas, such as barbecue* and TexMex, mingle casually and amiably with foods from other lands. But though our regional cuisines grow ever more varied, barbecue and Mexican food remain at the top of the Texas menu.  On Sunday we observed Memorial Day with a traditional backyard barbecue at the Houston home of some good friends.  As the temperature fell toward 90 degrees  by late afternoon, we decided  it was cool enough to cook and sit out back.  The backyard pool had been inflated to the recommended air pressure and filled with agua pura for the younger kids, and the mosquitoes had not yet descended on us. We fired up the grill.
Here’s an authentic Houston recipe for Texas barbecue, faithfully remembered from Sunday night, that will make your mouth sing “Texas Our Texas” if you know the melody and lyrics.
Preparing the Charcoal
Preliminaries: One experienced Weber grill
One mess of charcoal briquets.  (“Mess” is a common             .                             though  imprecise unit of measure in Texas.)
One container of two-stroke engine gasoline (not                          .                recommended in real life)
Prepare gasoline mixture with 20 parts gasoline to one part motor oil. This will produce a blackish smoke, imparting a distinctive and regionally-authentic carbon flavor to the meat and vegetables. Houston is, after all, arguably the carbon capital of the world. How appropriate, then, that we should celebrate this feast day by grilling carne al carbon.
Drizzle briquets generously with two or three splashes of this Texas-style homemade lighter fluid. Throw matches, fade quickly, and enjoy the show. 
Tonight our barbecue chef will be grilling a variety of meats, including two packages of Kosher hot dogs and  several small succulent hamburger patties artisanally hand-crafted in the shape of Texas.
Preparing the Barbeque Sauce        
If you haven’t procured a reputable barbecue sauce at the grocery store, just make your own. We enjoyed  a  traditional Texas homestyle sauce blending ketchup, vinegar, sugar and seasoning (to include salt, pepper, garlic, and whatever else you have on hand.)  Or substitute these seasonings with Tony’s Cajun Seasoning, which is essentially the same thing.  If your grocers don’t stock it, ask them to fly it in from Louisiana.
Grilling the Food
Tonight’s patio meal features not just the hamburgers and hot dogs mentioned earlier, but also fresh roasted corn in the shuck, potatoes, onions and zucchini.
The key to grilling Texas-style is to respect the Law of Irreversibility, which states  that you can always cook something more if you need to, but you can’t uncook something that’s already been cooked too much. It’s really just applied physics.
Condiments and Beverages
Standard American accoutrements  include mustard (choice of French  mustard, French's mustard, or New York-style stoneground), onions, pickles, relish, and blue corn tortilla chips with salsa.  For a walk on the wild side, why not try the four-jalepeno salsa on your burger or dog in place of ketchup, or in concert with it?  Let cuisines join hands in friendship across borders.
Choice of cool refreshing  beverages: Shiner or Shiner Bock (with sediment), Tsing Tao, Pepsi Max.
And a Surprise for Dessert
Slices of watermelon cut in the shape of Texas  (That’s not the surprise, but it was  mighty tasty.)
The surprise:  Potato-chip cookies with chocolate chips, prepared with sidewalk chalk by the barbecue chef’s four-year-old daughter.  Superb.
This is how we do barbecue in the authentic Houston style.  Did I mention that the Texas barbecue chef and his family moved here recently from Connecticut?              

*also sometimes spelled barbeque or Bar-B-Q.  Some sources trace the word to Spanish via Haiti (barbacoa, from "framework of sticks")  while others prefer  the French etymology "de barbe à queue," meaning "from beard to tail" to denote spit roasting.  Most English dictionaries, including OED, favor "barbecue," though as always, purists will insist on whatever version they learned first. I prefer "barbeque" myself, because the French etymology is more vivid. OED  disdains  the French derivation as an "absurd conjecture," but it  creates a more memorable word-picture.

open.salon.com/blog/danagram

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memorial day, open+call, family, danagram, daniel rigney, humor, satire, comedy, tsing tao, shiner bock, potato chip cookies with chocolate chips, gasoline+lighter fluid, carbon flavor, law of irreversability, texmex, houston-style+barbecue barbeque, bar-b-q, tony's cajun seasoning, potato chip cookies, carne al carbon, french mustard+french's mustard, artisanal, regional, authentic texas+barbeque, let cuisines join hands in friendship across borders, barbecue chef, recipes

Drudge Alert! Houston Hits 105!

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Drudge Alert!  Houston Hits 105!
By Daniel Rigney
Matt Drudge, the influential aggregative journalist who knows more about climate than climate scientists themselves  do, rarely misses an opportunity to publicize unseasonably cold weather events around the world on his popular tabloid website, thedrudgereport.com.  
Drudge's  greatest triumph to date in this regard was to report a few years ago that a winter blizzard had arrived in New York City just as carbon-industry critic Al Gore was in town to give a speech on global warming. Get it? Now do you see how ridiculous and fraudulent Gore and his chicken littles have been about weather? 
In Drudge's mind,  if New York or New Delhi has a much colder day than usual in winter, or an unseasonably cool day in summer, this means  that what climate scientists believe about long-term warming trends in most regions of the world must be wrong. 
Blizzards and unseasonable cold waves warm Drudge’s  heart and the hearts of many of  his readers, because such events call into doubt theories of human-influenced climate change that predict  more erratic weather over time and an overall warming of the Earth’s temperatures (varying by region, etc.) in the coming decades or centuries. Most climate scientists seem to agree that  these gradually rising temperatures over time are due in significant part to human activity, and particularly to a rapid global rise in the combustion of fossil fuels.
Drudge sometimes forgets to publicize unseasonably warm days in winter or unseasonably hot days in summer.  Acknowledging that the world is warming and that human activity could  have something to do with it might lead to complicated thinking about climate, and no one wants that.

I was worried that Drudge might overlook another opportunity to report record-breaking weather that broke the wrong way. I sent a message (three, actually) to thedrudgereport.com, through its response box, letting  Matt  know, if he did not know already, that the mercury hit 105 degrees yesterday in Houston, seven degrees hotter than the record high for that date set in 1977 according to the Chronicle weather page this morning.

Heat records were being  broken north, south and west in the United States last week. As it happens, we were at Bush International Airport at about the time the National Weather Service was taking the city’s record-breaking temperature. Less than a week before we had hit 100 on the earliest date for that reading in Houston history. It's been a hot, dry spring here in Carbon City, and lately we seem to be be getting hotter earlier.

I bring up yesterday’s weather not because it has any significant long-term bearing on the climate change issue, but only to point out that by Drudge’s own logic, and the logic of many other conservatarian climate experts like him, this proves once and for all how wrong climate change deniers are on this issue.  By Drudge’s own logic, Gore and his colleagues of the scientific persuasion should be running a victory lap in the sun just about now. And Drudge should be doing some fresh thinking. Don't count on that.

So Matt, you're wearing the asshat today according to your own implicit logic, revealed in the way you select and headline your weather stories.  What does a hot, steamy day in Houston have to do to get its picture into your political tabloid?

Of course, in reality one day in Houston or one night in Bangkok doesn’t prove anything about long-term climate trends.  I don’t care how hot or cold or wet or dry it is at any given place at any given time.  The  ragged sawtooth of daily statistics is not what we want to track here, but rather the longer, smoother trendlines that run through millions of data points to reveal unfolding patterns over vast areas, including the poles, over long stretches of time. Herein lies a difference between weather and climate, and between tabloid weather and climate science.

But it is nonetheless  noteworthy, if only in the short-run where we live out our lives, that Houston – along with  many other locales in the U.S. from Arizona to Florida and up from Texas through the Great Plains -- has never been  so  hot so early in the season -- and it's still spring.

For background on Drudge’s record as an enabler of climate change denial, why not start with Jesse Zwick’s “It’s Always Snowing on the Drudge Report” in the  New Republic (Dec. 9, 2009)?  And to see where Drudge  hides some of his hottest weather headlines, check out the “Weather Action” button in the lower-right corner of his own page.  It will jump  you to the website of the National Weather Service, which reports inconvenient facts.  Your tax dollars at work.  Sincere thanks to NWS. No blindfold.
open.salon.com/blog/danagram

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houston, media meteorology, tabloid weather, carbon city, 105 degrees houston, matt drudge, drudge report, drudgereport, climate change, global warming, al gore, tabloid website, weather vs. climate, climate+chicken little, overall warming, unseasonble weather and climate change, aggregative journalism, climate scientists, hoax, fraud, fossil fuels, jesse zwick, national weather service, no blindfold, houston history, drudge's own logic, anthropogenic climate change, media meteorology, ragged sawtooth statistics, record breaking heat houston, june 2011, daniel rigney, danagram, open call, not humor, not funny, environment, economy, tabloid website, complicated thinking, complexiphobia, carbon-industry critic, tabloid news, business, news, science

Driving in the No-NPR Zone

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Driving in the No-NPR Zone
By Daniel Rigney
Driving between two NPR cities, I’m losing the signal from Austin’s national public radio station. I cross into a liminal space between two known urban worlds as twilight approaches.  I have just entered the No-NPR Zone.
The radio is silent. In this silence I resolve to make the most of my next three or four hours alone on the road to Houston. Aspiring  to become what Saul Bellow called a “first class noticer,” I resolve to pay close attention to small details in the passing panorama, scribbling notes into my pocket-sized blogging pad as I drive with one eye on the road. I’m texting hazardously the old-fashioned way, with a ball-point pen.
I’ve taken this route many times. How come I never saw these things before?
Although I’ve lived in this state (Texas, not oblivion) most of my life, the only time I see the hinterlands of Old Texas is during infrequent trips from one metropolitan area to another by car. The windshield is my television screen, and today the passing scenery resembles a live PBS documentary on the subtle and sometimes unexpected signs of transformation that are sprouting in 21^st century  rural  and small town America.
Eye Catchers
Some things, I notice, remain constant even in the flux.  With apologies to Ben Franklin, nothing is certain but flags in Texas. (This is, after all, home to the original Six Flags Over Texas amusement parks.)  I  see mostly U.S. flags, but also lots of Texas Lone Star flags (the Texas tri-color, I call it), and a few corporate flags, even in the middle of nowhere.  I realize that today there are only three flags over Texas: U.S., TX, and INC.  I quickly lose count of the scores of banners on the road as I continue observantly through the No-NPR Zone, heeding Yogi Berra’s advice that you can observe an awful lot just by watching.
Well out of Austin now, I see a fast food drive-through boldly displaying the national, state and corporate colors. (The corporate flag of Sonic Drive-in features the traditional red and gold against a retro-futurist-shaped white field evoking the Jetsons era.)  A Mazda dealership pledges its allegiance with perhaps a dozen small U.S. flags surrounding one much taller mother flag. I'm amused by this ironic spectacle as I drive past in my Honda Civic, assembled in Canada.
Now I’m in observational high gear. I pass a tiny old frame house that might have once been a cowboy barber shop.  It has a new coat of crimson barn paint and a big sign in front reading WEB SITE DESIGN. Even in rural America, the times they are updating. Nowadays, a good ranch needs a good web brand to compete effectively against foreign cows.
Flags stand silent watch over browning, sun-beaten pastures and Texas cattle. Ranch gates are typically flanked by one American and one Lone Star standard. Since September 11, 2001, it seems, even our cattle are more conspicuously patriotic and state-riotic than they used to be.
Flags  stand guard at small-town gas stations. A ramshackle tin barn in an advanced state of dilapidation has a big sign out front: NATIONAL CONSTRUCTION SERVICES. I’m guessing this is not the home office.
There’s abundant road kill today – raccoon, possum, skunk, deer, and several specimens unidentified at a passing speed of 70 m.p.h. This topic is not for the faint of stomach. I had a good joke here about a Texas art museum fundraiser, but I’m going to let it go for your sake. Let’s move on, shall we?
To take my mind off of death on the road, I tune into local radio. There are no jazz stations in these parts, so I turn for solace to country radio station 92 FM (“Renegade Radio”) in LaGrange (population 4,641), a town made famous not only by the Broadway show and movie “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,”  but also by the classic rock tune “LaGrange,” performed by a little old band from Texas that we like to call ZZ Top. I listen to some old-school Texas swing music on 92, and a little Willie – the latter a musical and cultural bridge from Old Texas to the emerging New Texas (“It’s newer. It’s bluer. Get used to it.”)  with which I identify, and whose very existence as a cultural entity I am now announcing publicly.
An ad comes on the radio urging listeners to listen to Radio – not just Renegade 92 in particular, but Radio in general, now also available on HD and the web. As radio stations continue to compete with each other for listeners, the radio industry as a whole now broadcasts advertisements on behalf of the entire medium. The radio business finds itself in a desperate commercial struggle for survival with other media technologies and industries to capture and hold onto scarce eyeballs and eardrums in the global attention economy.
I shouldn’t be surprised that Renegade Radio 92 proclaims itself “proud to be American and even prouder to be Texan.” This is all in keeping with Texas mythology, and in particular with the Myth of Texas Exceptionalism. The voice of 92 is a familiar one  in Old Texas.
The Greening of Texas
What does surprise me is the public service announcement, sandwiched between country songs, offering tips on how to conserve energy during the winter months by greening  your house. The pitch is not just that you’ll be saving your own money by patching air leaks, but that you’ll be doing something environmentally responsible for others as well, including future others. What a quaint old country notion: that there might be other compelling focal points in life than me and my money. I doubt it will sell.
Most useful tip: Check to make sure that cold air is not leaking in through your floor. It could be coming from inside the house.
I pass a classic car dealership, featuring a mid-fifties Thunderbird displayed on a platform high above a badly aging showroom. Then I pass more cows. Rosemary’s winery. More cows. More flags. More roadkill. And more evidence of the globalization and digitization of farm and market. Rural billboards now routinely promote the sponsor's website, and some roadside watering holes are hotspots. Texas has always had hotspots (It’s about 100 degrees here as I scribble), but now we have Wifi hotspots year-round in both town and country.
We're living now in the the future I heard about in my Texas public high school decades ago. It's not the future we expected.  This future is a lot more interesting than the Jetsons, even if not as happy. But unlike the Jetsons, this future does have the virtue of being real.
As I near the end of my journey through the Zone, I attend to evidence of changing spirituality in the countryside. I find no roadsigns at all of the old “Repent Now or Roast Forever“ variety. The signs I see today bring a message of divine love. Coming into Columbus (population 4,305)  I see a remarkable sign picturing a man crouching against a wall with his face buried in his despairing hands. The sign reads “Nothing is Too Hard for God.” But signs of hope are not easy to find in the present economy, and especially not in our dying small towns and rural areas.
Yes, I'm seeing signs of hard times here in the No-NPR Zone. Times are tough all over.  It's interesting to me, though, that so few of the signs I've seen here today are explicitly political – unless you count flags.  Flags  have long since been thoroughly politicized, and now, more often than not, they are raised as strategic symbols promoting one or another denomination of conservatarianism. In Houston I often see them flying in front of large corporate buildings, like so many fluttering cloth billboards. American flag. Texas flag. Corporate flag. Some old-timers from World War II tell me that at one time the American flag was actually a uniting symbol.  Hard to believe.
Old Texas and New Texas
Today I’ve seen old and dry cultural fields withering in the Texas drought.  But I’ve also seen  some new sprouts.  I’ve seen remnants of 19^th and 20^th century Old Texas, but I’ve also seen signs of an emerging 21^st century New Texas.
In Columbus I look for the Texas Stop Sign (Dairy Queen), and I’m sorry to see that my familiar DQ, where I had  stopped several times in the past, has been torn down and replaced with a new Jack in the Box.  Quickly deciding  to remain loyal to traditional Texas fast food, I  pull into Whattaburger across the street for a large cup of coffee.  You may know this size as a “Venti."
I notice the relaxed and comfortable ethnic diversity of the place – Anglos, Hispanics and Blacks integrated, sometimes “within booth.”  I grew up on the edge of the deep South (would that make East Texas the shallow South?), in a time when restaurants were racially gated and segre-gated, and the sign in the window read “We refuse the right to refuse service to anyone.”  That sign meant more than it said. I could tell you stories.
 But times have changed somewhat in Texas, and they’re still changing.  Somewhat.
As I pull onto Interstate 10 for the last leg of my journey, I flip on the radio again. This time NPR is within range. KUHF is coming in loud and clear from the University of Houston.  I have just left the No-NPR Zone. Goodbye, Old Texas. I’ll be in New Houston soon.

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Dispatch from Pride Houston

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Dispatch from Pride Houston 2011
By Daniel Rigney
“Pride Houston” sounds like an event  the local Chamber of Commerce might have synthesized, but it’s actually the event  formerly known as the Gay (or GLBT) Pride Parade. I'm participating in the parade  this year  for the first time, walking behind  the banner of the Unitarian Universalist (UU) churches of Houston.
As I walk, I try to pay close attention to passing details, scribbling a few blognotes along the way as we follow the mile-long parade route across Westheimer, past the restaurants and bars and theaters and tattoo art houses, toward Houston’s sparkling night skyline.
It’s now 11 p.m., Saturday, June 25, 2011. I just got home, and I’m sitting down to rest  my feet and collect my thoughts and impressions here on the word-jazz keyboard.
Our parade route has taken us through the heart of the Montrose. One of the many things that may surprise newcomers to Houston (as we are) is that the city has a fairly large and visible gay and lesbian community, centered in the Montrose area near the Museum District. Our popular mayor, Annise Parker, is an out lesbian, and I haven’t met anyone yet for whom that’s a problem. But then I haven’t met many Houstonians yet, and the ones I know here in my university and Unitarian social pods are not representative of Greater Houston.
Would that they were. I grew up not far from Houston, on the edge of the Deep South (Would that make it  the Shallow South?), and I could tell you stories about what this region was like in the 1950’s and 1960s. Maybe another time. Even  today, southeast Texas remains a conservatarian stronghold.
This morning’s Houston Chronicle played up the Pride parade on its editorial page. This is not just a gay event, the editors emphasized. It’s an event  for the whole city. Well said. Houston -- and the country it’s in -- have come a long way since the Stonewall uprising, the birthing event that Pride Houston honors.  In  June of 1969,  according to legend,  gay patrons in a mafia-controlled New York bar refused to let bullying cops treat them  like second-class citizens. They fought back. This was gay dignity’s Rosa Parks moment.
So we’re moving forward – gay and straight alongside each other -- in Houston Pride, a slow-flowing  river of diverse humanity numbering in the tens of thousands, I would guess, if we count  both walkers and curbstanders.  They also serve who stand on the curb.
[Postscript: This morning's  Chronicle estimates the crowd at 150,000. I later hear that New York is expecting a half-million today.]
Our Unitarian-Universalist pace car and limousine tonight is a stubby and wonderfully retro late-model navy-blue Plymouth PT Cruiser convertible with top down, its driver and passengers waving cheerfully  to the noisy  crowd. The limo is flying the six-striped "rainbow flag."  I walk alongside pretending to be a secret service agent on a presidential motorcade.
Ahead of us in the parade is an armada of local affinity groups. I haven’t seen official  Baptist or Catholic groups so far, but I’ll keep looking for their banners. And looking. I'm sure Baptists and Catholics are here. Just not officially.
Our UU  group, banner forward, follows in the musical  wake of a transgender float blaring Helen Reddy’s now-classic anthem “I Am Woman.” The transgender group is followed by a gay and lesbian support group from the University of Houston, and we in turn follow them. Behind us are representatives of a Houston law firm (any partners, I wonder?). Also in the mix are students from Rice University and a merry band of rifle-twirlers, mostly male.
The atmosphere is festive, even celebratory.  This morning’s headlines have brought news of the passage of a an important gay marriage bill in the New York State Senate. Progressive politicians are seeing and being seen in the parade, sending a strong signal of their support  for the gay love agenda.
Our  river of moving humanity flows past cheering spectators standing on the concrete banks. They greet  us with wild waves and  a loud and continuous “Woooooohhh!” the entire way. Clapping, cheering, shouting. People in the street. People on the sidewalks, People on the balconies. People on the rooftops, people on scaffolds and in bleachers, yelling “Wooooohhh,” like a roaring communal Om.  Or like a more politicized and  less drunken and suffocating Mardi Gras.
People on the curb reach out to high-five me. I’m too socially flat-footed to respond quickly enough. About twenty young people along the route plead with me to give them the small rainbow flag I’m carrying. I quickly  learn to  say “Sorry, it’s not mine” with a regretful shrug.
The UU churches will collect these flags later to reuse in next year’s parade, and the one after that, and the one after that. The Pride parade is by now a well-entrenched annual urban, national and even international historical tradition. Not just a tradition, but a Tradition. Get used to it, as the saying goes.
The rainbow flag befits  the crowd’s demographic diversity. Members of the crowd, each distinctive in some way, appear to be largely Anglo (as we say in south Texas), but also include large numbers of Black, Hispanic and some Asian celebrants as well. One group's banner, in fact, reads “Asians and Friends.” 
I see people displaying a wide assortment of body sizes and physiques, of gender performances, of skin hues. Racially or ethnically mixed couples and groups, both male and female, are commonplace. This is the future my Southern grandmother warned me about.
The crowd is youngish, but with a few silverbacks like me in the blend. Hard to say whether there are more men than women.  I don’t  really know for sure who in this crowd is gay and who isn’t.  Mostly gay, I would assume, but I didn’t ask. They didn’t tell.  Who cares?  This parade is not just about sexual orientation. It’s also about everyone's civil rights. And about having fun together.
Although this is my first Pride event, I'm  an experienced veteran of other civil rights events, having attended many MLK marches with my family and university colleagues  in San Antonio, a city that knows how to fiesta. I remember well the exhilaration I felt among kindred spirits in marches that drew more than 50,000 participants, heads bobbing as far as the eye could see.  Events like these, apart from their symbolic significance, are  amazingly interesting and entertaining and  inspiring to me. The two events – MLK and Pride – are strikingly similar in many ways. Both are civil rights festivals. The MLK may be more political than Pride. MLK is explicitly a march, not a parade, commemorating those who marched  in years past  when doing so wasn’t safe, and was sometimes lethal.  But then being gay has also been lethal at times, and not just in Wyoming.
MLK is also a bit more solemn, perhaps. Pride is a  more exuberant and playful occasion, complete with dragsters (not the racecar kind), moms, dads, kids, religious and secular liberals, family and friends of gays and lesbians, Mardi-Gras-style bead-throwers, Democrats and Logcabicans, dancers,  prancers, cupids and vixens. 
Sorry no pets, unless you count the road-appleing horses (watch your step) carrying the mounted police, whose uniformed peacekeeping has been uniformly professional and helpful tonight  as far as I can see.  We’ve all come a long way since Stonewall and Bull Connor. Well, most of us have.
The sound system on the transgender float ahead of us strikes up another classic anthem: Kool and the Gang's “Celebration Time,” and then Sly and the Family Stone's timeless “We Are Family.” This event  is one Unitarian-American’s idea of expressing family values.
We come to the end of the parade route. Some in my UU group disperse, but I swim to the banks of the human river to watch the rest of the parade. The age-old problem: How do you watch a parade while you’re in it?  Solution: You find a way to do a little of both.
I take a place on the sidewalk near the end of the route and watch those who have been walking behind me all along -- among them the Houston Pride Band, the Macy’s employees (though this is no Macy’s Day Parade), a brigade of emergency medical personnel, and the Green Party, which proudly advertises a political platform that includes a plank supporting gay marriage.
The biggest cheer of the night greets a group of maybe forty or fifty NASA employees and their families. This is one Unitarian-American's idea of a patriotic moment.
But the most poignant moment, for me, comes when the PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) folks float past and a young man standing directly in front of me calls out repeatedly from the curb, “I love you, Mom! I love you, Mom!” A middle-aged woman from the PFLAG ranks walks toward him. They share a long, long tearful embrace and some quiet words.
Nothing can top that tonight. I’ve gone home to write about it.

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glbt, gay pride parade, montrose, social pod, dispatch from pride houston 2012, silverbacks, deep south, shallow south, pride houston, social pods, rice university, university of houston, houston chronicle, stonewall+rosa parks, rosa parks moment, river of humanity, they also serve who stand on the curb, pflag, nasa, macy's gay parade, rainbow flag, houston chronicle, affinity groups, transgender, celebration time, we are family, mlk march+san antonio, houston museum district, unitarian-american, transgender, houston pride band, belief/religion, conservatarian, family, feminism, gay/lesbian, music, news, open+call, politics, daniel rigney, danagram, houston pride, houston pride 2011, unitarian, unitarian universalist, logcabicans, first unitarian universalist houston

Unconventional Worlds: The Baseball Card Show

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Unconventional Worlds: The Baseball Card Show
By Daniel Rigney
The doors of a large urban convention center are like doors leading into subcultural twilight zones. Each convention event  – the gun show, the bridal extragavanza,  the public assembly of astrologers or astronomers  --  ushers us into  a distinctive “world” of its own. Today I’ve walked into the world of Sports Collectibles.
My blogging notepad is at the ready as my eyes and ears scan the convention hall for amusing and telling details.
The world of sports memorabilia may be unfamiliar to you.  If you don’t know it from the inside, you may not be aware that an elaborate code of rules and social conventions governs this cultural province* within the larger domain of Collectibles in General, whose provinces also include Doll World, Stamp World, and Wealth World, the latter harboring a shadowy sub-subculture better known to outsiders as Wall Street.
I myself am already fairly familiar with Baseball Card World, a subset of the larger set, Sports Collectibles World, which is in turn a subset of Collectibles in General. I am especially familiar with the baseball neighborhood as it existed between the mid-1950s and the mid-1960s, back in the days when  sports card collecting  was pure and simple, before commercializers  came and ruined it, some would say, by turning baseball cards -- miniature works of art --  into mere investment commodities.
Not for nothing are collectibles called memorabilia. They remind us of a semi-imaginary past when things were so much better than they are now. Actually, there was never a time when baseball cards (and professional baseball itself) were not commercialized. The cards  first appeared in the United States in the 19^th century as promotions for tobacco and other products, and later, for chewing gum.
From the ages of about 10 to 18  I collected baseball cards with some earnestness. Sometimes my growing  collection would absorb the smaller collections of generous others, like a blob that feeds on smaller blobs. Often I would augment my collection by  buying more Topps bubble gum than one person could safely or reasonably hope to chew, just to have the cards that lay wrapped like miniature portraits inside the gum’s waxy packaging.
Then I lost track of baseball card world, and even baseball itself, for awhile as I spent the next several decades going on to college and pursuing an academic career.
Now that I’m semi-retired from a life of teaching and writing about serious things and administering serious programs, I can spend more time recreating (re-creating). I can reprioritize and reimagine and reinvent, and all those other re-words.  I can reconnect  to the magical world of baseball cards, and to a purer and simpler time, before the commercializers came and ruined it.
Did I mention that baseball cards are miniature works of art?
So here I am today at the Reliant Center, a large convention hall next door to what was once the Astrodome, Houston’s own ruined Roman Coliseum.  When it was built in 1964, going on 50 years ago, the Astrodome was touted as the eighth wonder of the world. Now it’s a wonder the old barn hasn’t been torn down.  I think it may still have a few tractor pulls left in it, myself, and as a general rule I do support historic preservation. But there are counter-arguments and counter-interests at stake as always. The fate of this monument to modernity will be a close call at home.
Baseball in the Twilight Zone
I step into the twilight zone that is the TriStar Collectibles Show. (TriStar is a major corporate “player” in the game of sports collectibles.)  I’ve paid $10 to park in order to pay another $10 to get into the vast exhibit  hall, about the size of a football field,  for the privilege of spending even more money on little pieces of colored cardboard.  I know that may sound nuts to some. You may not understand. It’s a baseball card thing.
As I enter, I survey the commercial landscape. On the right, I see baseball world. That’s what I’m mainly here for.  Beyond that are football world and the autograph pavilion, about a hundred yards from the entrance.  A long line of tables and booths is staffed by small business-owners or their employees, hawking sporty gear.
The Sports Collectibles  show is a manly world, demographically – even more so than the gun show I attended as an inquiring blogger a few weeks ago.  Maybe five percent  of the light crowd today is female, including two stocky middle-aged women who are  shopping together for pro football cards for their home collection. (I wonder whether we say that women “shop,” but that men “invest.”)  Today’s crowd is mostly men, casually dressed in Houston’s standard summer weekend uniform of jeans or shorts and athletic shoes.  I see no cowboy hats, but I do see quite a few baseball caps and shirts with team logos from around the country.
The only women’s athletic memorabilia I see all afternoon are two pin-up cards of  photogenic Russian tennis player Maria Sharapova. 
Lurking around, I accidentally overhear a sales guy advising a potential customer that he doesn’t have to tell his wife he’s buying a pricey piece of sports merchandise,  because wives “don’t need to know, and it ain’t going to hurt ‘em” not to.
The accents in the room seem generally more drawly and Texan than usual for an increasingly diverse and urban place like Houston. Many of these guys are old-timers, and most (not all) are white Anglo, with just a sprinkling of ethnic diversity. This demographic is more Old Texas than New. But there is evidence of a new cosmopolitanism in the room as well. I see caps and shirts from places as far away as Boston, Chicago and California.
I chit-chat about the sports card business with several  salespeople, including a woman from a little memorabilia company in Florida -- a kind of “nostalgia shop,” as the lead character in Woody Allen’s recent  “Midnight in Paris” might call it.
I happen to own (or co-own)  a small collection of “star” cards from the 1950s and 1960s, and I also have shoeboxes full of what I’m learning to call “commons” from that same era. I ask one used-card dealer (thank you) how he and other dealers evaluate the condition of the cards they buy and sell. He tells me that in this business they use a 1-10 scale (a 20-point scale if you count half-points) to rate a card’s  condition.  A “1” means the dog chewed the card, while a “10” is mint, and preferably never touched. 
The more valuable cards are sheathed in clear plastic covers for protected display, so that a fingerprint won’t suddenly cause a card’s condition to plummet from, say, an 8 to a 6. The difference in these two ratings could be hundreds of dollars or more in some instances. That’s an expensive fingerprint.
I explain that I have several cards in my own family’s collection from the Mays-Mantle-Berra era. Some of these may be pretty valuable.  The family treasures include not just Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra, but also Roger Maris, Don Drysdale, Stan Musial, Warren Spahn, Roberto Clemente, Ernie Banks, Sandy Koufax, Hank Aaron, Brooks Robinson near the start of his marathon playing career, Willie McCovey, and the old professor Casey Stengel, who once sagely observed that in simpler factual disputes “you can look it up.”
Our personal  collection also features  a couple of rookie Carl Yastrzemski’s, and a couple of Babe Ruth commemoratives. As novelties, I’ve safekept the cards of  broadcasters Bob Uecker and Joe Garagiola, and of my probable distant relative, manager  Bill Rigney of the Giants.  And from the worlds of football and politics, Jack Kemp.
If you have any idea  who most of these people are, you must be a real baseball fan, and pretty old.
If we ever decide to sell these cards, which I doubt, I now have several business cards to add to the collection. I also have insider information on the sports memorabilia market which, like markets in general, is pretty anemic these days according to several I talked with.  “We’re not buying anything right now," said one discouraged used-card dealer.  "We have too much present inventory.”
As I stroll around, I scout not just baseball cards, but also replica uniforms (never call them “baseball outfits”), including a fine-looking retro-replica Grays uniform from the old pre-Jackie-Robinson Negro League days, selling for only $190, as well as autographed baseballs and  -- a discovery worth the price of admission -- an unopened box of Honey Nuts Cheerios celebrating  the Florida Marlins’ World Series victory of 1997. The box is in near-mint condition, and the picture on the front, a photo of a victorious and manly team hug at home plate, is signed by two members of that year’s team. This is what some might call a "heritage" box of cereal.
$15?  Let me think about it. Time for a snack. I'll have the overpriced Ken's Pecan-Smoked Turkey Jerky, please. I hope it isn't heritage jerky.
King Football
But why am I talking so much about baseball? Everyone knows that in Texas football is king.
I don’t care much for football myself. As a game and an entertainment, should it remind me so much of grim warfare, with helmeted soldiers clashing violently in strategically coordinated ground and air attacks for the control of territory?  I prefer baseball. In baseball, as George Carlin observed, the object is to be “safe at home.”  Let’s not get into the old “football players fight so that baseball players may live in safety” argument. That old line is such an unexamined cliché.
But since I’m now in the gigantic football section of the show, just past the modest basketball, hockey and tennis exhibits, I may as well give you the football highlights.
A replica of a Joe Namath’s green #12  heritage Jets jersey, autographed and authenticated, is available at a special price today, but you must buy now. The heritage Tom Brady model (also #12)  is $1,650, or $1795 with the Beautiful Custom Shadow Box Frame. Nearly-antique heritage issues of Sports Illustrated and the Street and Smith 1967 College Football Preview are also available if you’re a little behind on your football news as I am.
Bart Starr is worth more than Terry Bradshaw. How do I know?  Starr’s autographed replica Green Bay Packers helmet can be yours for  $350. Terry Bradshaw’s signature on a Steelers helmet is going for just $250. The helmets are handsome, but where would you wear them?  Footballs in various sizes and team colors are also available, though they come in only one shape.
Bargain alert: Next to the footballs, a white Oklahoma State Cowboys basketball is yours for the special price of only $8.  Not a bad deal if I needed a white basketball.
I head to the back of the cavernous hall to get a look at the TriStar Autograph Pavilion. There are nine signing stalls in all, but only two are operating this afternoon. Autograph seekers wait patiently in roped lines to get the signatures of former Texas A&M football coach R. C. Slocum and/or former Aggie Von Miller, a promising young rookie linebacker for the Denver Broncos. Miller’s line is at least twice as long as Slocum’s. Youth beats experience,  24-10.
As autograph hounds leave the area, they pass through a checkpoint, where the authenticity of the autographs freshly inscribed on their merchandise is entered into a computer data base on a check-out laptop. Welcome to 21^st century sports, where it isn’t authentic if it isn’t authenticated online. Authentication is what we now look for in a sports investment or a sentimental personal effect.
As I start to leave the convention hall, I think fondly of that $15  mint-condition autographed box of heritage Honey Nut Cheerios commemorating the Florida Marlins’ 1997 World Series championship. I vaguely remember watching some of that series on television. It brings back a trickle of memories.
I go back to the rather surly guy behind the table I had visited earlier to talk cereal. I get him down to $10. The Cheerios box should be worth at least that much for its conversational value alone. At that price, I can’t afford NOT to have a box of 14-year-old toasted oats commemorating a group of grown men who hit balls with sticks for a living.
The surly guy seems glad to have made the sale. Business is slow. He warns me not to open the box and partake of its 14-year-old toasted oat contents. He’s not a doctor, he says, but he advises strongly against it on medical grounds. Point taken. When I get home, I’ll put it up on the shelf with the large books and leave it there, to be taken down and shown on special occasions.
You may think I'm nutty to pay $10 for a box of 14-year-old honey-nut cereal. But you may not understand. It’s a baseball thing. It's about heritage. It's about tradition. It''s about four o'clock, and the memorabilia show is closing in a few minutes.
I leave pondering this questions: Why are there no comedian trading cards?  [Searching….Searching....]
Never mind. Comedy trading cards are already out there.  I wonder if they come with jokers in the deck.  
 

*This article links sociologically to Alfred Schutz’s The Phenomenology of the Social World (1932),  and especially to  Schutz’s notion of “finite provinces of meaning.” It is to him, among others, that we owe the popular conception of subcultures as social and cultural “worlds” of meaning.
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open+call, travel, fashion, rimshot, baseball tradition and heritage, heritage jerseys, heritage uniforms, heritage cereal, heritage+tradition+old, comedian cards + jokers, comedian cards + baseball cards, comedian cards, feminism, business, twilight zone, cultural worlds, subcultural worlds, old texas, new texas, players in the game of sports memorabilia, players in the game of sports collectibles, memorabilia, woody allen, nostalgia shop, midnight in paris, used card dealers, negro league + grays, alfred schutz+phenomenology of the social world, finite provinces of meaning, baseball cards, football cards, trading cards, sports collectibles, sports memorabilia, comedian trading cards, doll world, stamp world, wealth world, bridal extravaganza, gun show, astrologers + astronomers, florida marlins, 1997 world series, honey nut cheerios box, aunthentic+authenticated, authenticated+autograph, commercializers, card collecting, bob uecker + baseball card, bill rigney + baseball card, joe garagiola + baseball card baseball+twilight zone, jack kemp + football card, maria sharapova, casey stengel + you can look it up, comedy, humor, unconventional worlds, houston reliant center, daniel rigney, danagram, you wouldn’t understand + it’s a baseball thing, new texas, old texas, social conventions, sports

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Dispatch from SlutWalk Houston

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Dispatch from SlutWalk Houston
By Daniel Rigney
They're wearing black this year at SlutWalk Houston. And yellow and  brown and green and red and white and blue.  They're wearing short shorts and dressy dresses, jeans and thigh-high stockings, t-shirts and tanktops. This is an easy-going and good-humored feminist occasion -- men welcome. Since you don't have to be female to be feminist, I'm here to support this ironically-named event and to learn more about it. Today's event is co-sponsored by a coalition of  feminist organizations, including two from the University of Houston (Downtown and Clear Lake campuses), joining forces to send one clear message: Wardrobes don't cause rape. Rapists cause rape. The diverse clothings on view here today dramatize the political point that while sexualities and styles of self-expression may vary, they are never excuses for sexual coercion.
This event follows closely on the heels of similar events in other cities, beginning in Toronto earlier this year when a representative of the Toronto police advised a meeting of law students that if women don't want to be raped, they shouldn't dress like sluts. He really shouldn't have said that. It's not just that the words were poorly chosen. The problem lies in the more  deeply-rooted beliefs and crudely-traditional attitudes toward women that such words commonly express. I've often heard similar views expressed in Texas. This isn't just about one guy in Toronto. But I have to wonder:  By choosing these words, was the police officer just asking for a mass international protest?
Katha Politt, commenting on SlutWalks in this week's The Nation,* notes  that the word "slut" (originally a menial  kitchen-worker) is associated in our language with dirt (read: dirty, soiled, filthy, earthy), and therefore, metaphorically, with culturally-defined sexual "impurity" -- hence the binary contrast between the virgin and the vamp, the madonna and the whore.  This sort of simple-mindedly categorical thinking has had the effect of containing and controlling women's sexualities and their means of expressing them within the narrowing confines of what nice women are supposed to do.
In Simple World there are only two kinds of women: the pure or higher women and the contaminated lower women (such as the lowly slut).  It is a sacred duty of  men to guard the purity and family honor of  their own women so that they aren't contaminated. Contaminated women (e.g.., those with sexual experiences outside of marriage) are, to varying degrees, "sluts" or worse.
This basic cultural script and its myriad variations have been  passed down, often uncritically, from one generation to the next in traditional societies even to this day, and even in some segments of modern societies such as the United States.
SlutWalk has a different and more complicated story idea.  It has the temerity to suggest that in a Complex World  there are many kinds of women, who may express themselves in many different ways in many different contexts, and in different modes of dress, and that none of them deserves rape. (P.S.: In this story I am supposing that men can also be diverse and complex.)
But why tell this story through an event like SlutWalk? And why this name, which many will surely find tasteless and offensive?
The ironic use of "slut" in SlutWalk parallels other ironic inversions of meaning  in recent decades. Counterculturals in the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, commonly embraced the word "freak" as a self-description as they sardonically donned military-surplus clothing.  So, in time, did some (not all) occupants of other stigmatized social categories, taking on  ironic self-descriptions by choosing to call themselves "queers," or "niggahs," or, now, "sluts." In choosing these self-descriptions, some on the margins of social life have turned epithets into epaulets, wearing  them as badges of honor, as a way of nose-thumbing  (or finger-saluting) their tormenters. Hence the SlutWalk, a defiant digital salute that devalues the devaluers, and that unites the nice and the naughty, and everyone in between (which is pretty much all of us), as we walk alongside each other in support of expanded choices for women. As Politt observes, there's something of  "I am Spartacus. No, I am Spartacus!" in all this, each participant defending the right of every other to sexual and sartorial self-expression.
I'd say more about ironic self-description, but I'm just a "nerd."  NerdWalk, anyone?

The Limits of Irony In a recent blogpost in the Houston Press, our town's most visible alternative newspaper, Mandy Oaklander** describes the SlutWalk dress code as "wear what you dare."  The event offers women (and men) of all walks and talks a chance to send diverse personal and cultural messages, ironic or not, to a largely uncomprehending public.
"SlutWalk? Huh? Are they really calling it SlutWalk? That doesn't make any sense."
The wild diversity of clothing choices on display at SlutWalk sends a message of its own. This is what feminists look like now:  Skin in all shades of brown, from pinkish-tan to dark chocolate.  Bodies in all sizes and shapes. Many modes of dress. Many ways of performing gender. Many kinds of people. One message. Rapists cause rape.
Yes, we know that gray is the new black and white, and that  cultural complexities abound whenever we talk about sexualities and their contextualities. And yes, we know that women have to be careful, and so do men, and so do children and those who protect them, and that there will always be dangers.
But where sexual matters are concerned, SlutWalk draws a clear line in the shifting postmodern sand: No still means no. Pre-ironically, no. Ironically, no. Post-ironically, no. No means no means no. Trans-ironically.
In a culture of irony, words like "transgressive" and "subversive" are often used admiringly and sometimes uncritically to romanticize daring adventures in cultural resistance. But the culture of pure irony and the romance of boundary transgression, it turns out, have their dangerous and potentially-lethal limits. Rape, for example, is a transgression of boundaries. But not all transgressions are romantic, and not all boundaries are in need of transcendence.

Highlight Clips
I'm  flipping through my blogging notepad now for highlights from today's event, which my wife and I observed and participated in this morning.  She tells me that this event reminds her of the Take Back the Night marches she saw in Austin years ago. Our crowd combines elements of countercultural politics, art and youthful energy. It resembles enclaves one can find in Austin (and probably Berkeley, Portland, and a dozen or more other cities in the U.S. alone) on any day of the week.
The main aim of Take Back the Night in Austin was to raise a loud, communal, and explicitly-feminist voice against the crime of rape as a coercive act of aggression against women -- and, I think we should always add, against men who have been raped as well.
Today's event has a similar theme, printed in its flyer. SlutWalk's name is "intentionally subversive" of a  "victim-blaming mentality" propagated through media and popular culture against women who have been raped. Today's moving demonstration is billed as a "come-as-you-are, whoever-you-are" event. 
And so they come to Houston's Cherryhurst Park this morning  in all manner of costume, as if Halloween has arrived in July. One woman wears  a lingerie top with cutoffs and cowboy boots; another, a similar top with black athletic shorts, aqua-blue fishnet stockings, and what appear to be a pair of black Chuck Taylor lowtop basketball shoes. Both are wearing Playboy bunny ears with pink trim for that traditional feminine touch.
One guy wears a black clerical shirt with notched collar, black short-shorts, and black shoes and socks. Is this a religious or anti-religious fashion statement?  A woman in a comic parody of a slut costume finishes her outfit with a pair of Doc Martens-type high platform black boots. She's not looking for trouble.
And then there's the Marlboro Man. I'm not sure what he's looking for.
I'm especially curious, though, to know the backstory of a woman I see wearing what looks like a Muslim head scarf.  I wonder what life experiences are impelling her forward today. There's a whole used bookstore full of backstories here at SlutWalk Houston. I imagine that each is unique and that each is  comic or dramatic or mysterious in its own way.
Many in the crowd arrive unexceptionally dressed in the usual hot-humid-Houston summer weekend uniform -- t-shirts, shorts or jeans, athletic shoes -- or in nice-girl, tastefully-understated party dresses. I don''t see any prairie dresses or pilgrim bonnets, but I do see many other dress-coded messages, ranging from churchwear to grocerywear to streetwalker wear. Today we're all streetwalkers. Or sidewalk walkers, rather. We have no official parade permit to walk in the street.
Horns honk at us, as Houston horns often do.  Are they showing support, or are they just annoyed that we're holding them up when we cross the street in front of them?
I don't ask who's wearing a pretend-costume today and who's just dressing in the usual costumes of everyday life, nor do I interrogate anyone about  sexual orientation. Don't ask. Don't tell.  Don't care. None of my business.
I also refrain from asking political questions, but I'd bet dollars I don't have that most here today are center-to-left on the U.S. ideological spectrum, including some "liberaltarians," and that nearly all embrace not just the broadly egalitarian aims of feminism, but also the name itself.  I'm not sure how many generations or "waves" of feminism there have been  in the United States in recent decades (periodizations vary), but  those here today seem to represent a younger vintage -- most in their 20s and 30s, I would guess. A few older, a few younger.
I'm also guessing that most of those present today are ironic  (or "post-pre-ironic") in their cultural sensibilities, understanding that cultural messages may have multiple layers of meaning, including meanings intentionally opposite their surface meanings.  These participants would readily "get" an  ironic self-description like "slut," understanding it as a kind of cultural counter-punchline.
But other feminists may be culturally pre-ironic and/or have severe personal, political or aesthetic objections to using the word "slut" to name a feminist event.  Some of these  probably chose to stay home this morning.
The most overtly political person I  chat with at SlutWalk is a stocky older woman selling copies of  the newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.  The paper's cover photo features  a woman carrying a sign that reads  "No More NYPD Rape."
I ask this American  revolutionary about the identity of the man whose image is emblazoned on her t-shirt. She tells me he is the national leader of the organization. I'm curious to know where he's  based, and I learn that his location has not been disclosed for several years. I have fun imagining what a Drudge or a Fox or a Breitbart would do propagandistically with this tiny tidbit.  ("Slutty Texas Sex Clowns Infiltrated by Hidden Communists, etc.")  Headlines like these are an easy sell to uncritical thinkers, and the those in the political tabloid sector of the meme industry know their meme markets.

SlutChants
A flyer passed out to walkers recommends some group chants:
"Show me what a feminist looks like. This is what a feminist looks like." [chanted by women and men of many different appearances]
Another: "Slut, skank, bitch, ho. Whatever you call me, NO MEANS NO! .... No means No! Yes Means Yes! Wherever We Go, However We Dress!"
One chant I hear on the march ("We are the SlutWalk, the mighty mighty SlutWalk ....") flashes me back to an old high school football cheer: "We are the Trojans, the mighty mighty Trojans, and everywhere we go, people want to know, who we are, so we tell them, We are the Trojans, the mighty mighty etc." And yes, our high school mascot really was named after a famous condom. I guess it symbolized our commitment to safer sports.

Signs of the Times
But I digress. One of my favorite things about SlutWalk Houston is the signs that many walkers (and rollers -- several are in wheelchairs) carry:
My short skirt is not an invitation.
Don't taunt me. I'm a happy fun slut.
Sluts have feelings too.
My slut level is over 9000  [a meme citing an episode of Japanese manga/anime series/film/videogame(s) Dragon Ball Z, and meaning something like "my slut level is extremely powerful."]
Most poignantly, a woman being pushed in a wheelchair, surgical mask over her face (perhaps to conceal her identity [correction: to protect her health -- see comment below]), is carrying a sign that reads "I was a child. My PJ's were not sexy." Next to the inscription is  a multi-colored handprint in finger paints.

SlutWalk Meets Vietnamese Demonstrators
The most remarkable intercultural experience of the day occurs near the end of the walk, as our group threads its way through a demonstration of Vietnamese or Vietnamese-Americans in front of Houston's Chinese consulate on Montrose.
I stop  counting flags of the former South Vietnam  (three thin horizontal red stripes across a yellow field) after the first twenty or so.  In the crowd or in passing cars, Vietnamese flags fly alongside U.S. and even Texas flags in a display of imagined solidarity against China. I learn from their English-language signs that the demonstrators are protesting "Chinese Navy Pirates," and demanding that they "Stop Killing Vietnamese Fishermen" in Spratly and Parecel, disputed islands in the South China Sea. Will war in Vietnam never end?
As a few  hundred SlutWalkers pass slowly through the middle of the crowd of a few  hundred Vietnamese demonstrators, we witness one of those odd, twilight-zone moments when culture meets culture unexpectedly in an entirely unplanned encounter. As we approach the Vietnamese group, I talk briefly with SlutWalk parade leaders, who have no idea in advance that another, and completely unrelated, protest event has been separately scheduled to share this moment with us in space and time.
We pass through the Vietnamese group like a cord through a bead.
During this passage, the two groups of protesters are more than cordial toward each other. Walking through the Vietnamese crowd, I reach forward awkwardly to meet their extended  handshakes and high-fives across ethnic boundaries. Each protest group is congratulating the other. Each is almost surely unomprehending of the other's issues. But what can we do? Go home and quickly research the issues to make an informed choice about whether or not to extend our hands? Politics makes strange hand shakers.
Most comically, perhaps, several SlutWalkers finish our parade twenty minutes later waving tiny Vietnamese flags as souvenirs of their ephemeral intercultural encounter with the friendly other.
Have two subcultures just  inadvertently passed socially-transmitted memes to each other in a casual and unplanned encounter between strangers? Can this be the beginning of international feminist-Vietnamese solidarity against powerful and violent invaders? We may never know.
But clearly, the problem of violent assault at every level, from rape to war, is pervasive and persistent on many fronts around the world -- including the personal, the sexual, and the political. And sometimes all three at once.

Signing Off from New Texas
So that's the way it looks***  this  Saturday, July 9, 2011, as we sign off our  narrowcast from Schlotsky's sandwich shop at the corner of Weistheimer and Montrose in Houston.  The cultural and political side of Texas from which I'm reporting  is in an enclave of what I'll call "New Texas," a newer, bluer Texas emerging from within the urban centers of  the more conservatarian and rural Old Texas, or Red Texas, if I am permitted one last irony.  I reckon that New Texas is  starting to make Old Red just a mite nervous.
I'll  have more to say about emerging possibilities in Texas politics and culture. But as we say here in New Texas, that's the subject of a whole 'nother blogpost.


*Katha Politt, "Talk the Talk, Walk the SlutWalk." The Nation, July 7, 2011. The acknowledged anthropological classic on "purity" and "contamination" as cultural categories is Mary's Douglas's Purity and Danger, 1966.
**Mandy Oaklander, "SlutWalk Houston Sure to Shock and Empower." Houston Press (blog), May 23, 2011.
*** a tribute to the late Walter Cronkite, who grew up and went to school in this neighborhood.  Lyndon Johnson also lived hereabouts in his early days as a young school teacher.

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