New Heights in Victimology: Should We Call Southampton Residents “Refugees,” or “Evacuees?"

We’re in general sympathy with homeowners of the “affluent” neighborhoods of Southampton and Boulevard Oaks in their efforts to thwart construction of a 23-story apartment tower along a two-lane stretch of Bissonnet, and we're also down with Guv’nuh White’s vow to all but position himself in front of the oncoming bulldozers, although the mayoral proposition does set an interesting precedent for similar future development conflicts.*

But we didn’t know how deserving of our sympathy the genteel folk of the Rice University-area neighborhoods were until we read an opinion piece in the Sept. 25 Village News/Southwest News, a weekly throwaway rag that circulates to the east of our domicile.** The writer is identified only as “Leslie Miller, Ph.D.,” and Doc Miller’s argument apparently was so incisive that it reappeared, with the only the slightest touch of the editor’s hand, on the front of the Sept. 30 Outlook section of the Houston Chronicle.***

In the Village News/Southwest News the doc’s piece was ominously titled “Houston: Living in the Shadow of Greed,” while the Chronicle (which more fully identified the writer as a “native Houstonian and resident of Southampton for 35 years”), opted for the similarly faux-spooky but slightly more pop culture-friendly “23-story high-rise would be nightmare on Bissonnet.” In both pieces---and here we must link to the Chronicle’s version ( thus helping to account for the newspaper’s claimed 50 million [or is it jillion?] monthly page hits), because we can find no evidence of an online presence of the Village News/Southwest News---this native Houstonian and holder of a Ph.D., who after all that time clocking-in here suddenly finds herself in the “shadow of greed,” draws a slightly strained analogy:

In this mix of unregulated development and a proliferation of developers without concerns about the impact of their actions, we are witnessing the destruction of our neighborhoods and the diminution of our quality of life.

A perfect storm is brewing — literally in my back yard in Southampton and yours.

The mayor of our city, Bill White, exercised great courage and civic responsibility in helping thousands who were escaping from the terrible storm, Katrina. I would urge him and all those on City Council to exercise that same courage and civic responsibility to stop this impending storm.

Its destruction will be every bit as real.

So can we expect to soon see the bloated bodies of Southampton homeowners floating down Main Street? Will the intrusive tower force the residents out of their homes and into shelter at the Astrodome, the first stop on the road to longtime government-subsidized residency in cramped southwest Houston apartments? Perhaps Kinky Friedman, while readying himself to run against the courageous Guv’nuh White in the 2010 Democratic gubernatorial primary, can come up with a mock talkin'-blues number---as a working title, we’d suggest Buckhead Done Drove Me Down---that could be used as a soundtrack behind CNN’s footage of the beleaguered and bedraggled Southamptonites lining up to catch a bus out of town.

Oh, we’ll stop now. At least we can’t accuse Leslie Miller, Ph.D., of exploiting 9/11.

*Say, for instance, if some developer suddenly lost his or her mind and wanted to drop down a 23-story tower along a major thoroughfare fronting our much less affluent neighborhood, would the mayor come to our rescue? On second thought, never mind---we’d welcome a 23-story tower right down the street, and if things don’t work out along Bissonnet we’d like to invite Buckhead Investment Partners to investigate our area. It’ d be prime for an “Enclave Near the Foodarama/Wing Stop.” We’d voluntarily help assemble the parcel.

**We’ve kept a jaundiced eye on this rag ever since the publisher, many seasons back, ran for a state representative seat and suddenly was having her newspaper tossed onto the driveways of our neighborhood, which was in the district she sought to represent but previously had not been in the rag’s distribution area. After her election loss the newspaper summarily, and thankfully, did not appear on the driveways of our neighborhood.

***Although the subject is only tenuously related, we are again moved to wonder about the criteria for employment at the Chronicle. We know the daily newspaper requires prospective employees to piss in a cup and have their urine inspected by a private contractor, but apparently the newspaper does not force actual employees to submit to IQ exams or random field sobriety tests. We were moved to this conclusion after being among what surely were the single-digit number of readers of Tuesday’s “Sky Watch” column, a monthly feature whose lede ran thusly: “This is a great month for early rising planet-watchers but not so good for the evening crowd.” The headline over the column read “Star-gazing better in the early evening.” Gaaawwwdamn!

At the Frozen Edge of the Solar System

“Rock musician Bruce Springsteen is 58 …"
“Birthdays,” The Houston Chronicle, Sept. 23, 2007

So hand me down my walkin’ cane
And my travelin’ shoes
And my Smith & Wesson .44
And my EZ tag sticker
And if it’s not too much trouble
could you reach over there and hand me down
that can of WD-40?
Stuff always comes in handy.

And, um, hate to keep botherin’ you but ah how about fetchin’ me
that box of Grape Nuts? The big one. Right there.
Thank you so much.

'Cause I woke up this morning
on Pluto, but found a local station playing
Astral Traveling (from Thembi, Pharaoh Sanders w/Lonnie Liston Smith, ABC-Impulse, 1971),
“A gentle rain on the African veldt.”
But here’s no veldt here,
just miles of rock and ice
and the occasional "no smoking" sign.
And parentheses inside brackets inside parentheses,
but no clear order of operations.

The deejay claims Pluto’s no longer a planet
but still takes 248 years to circle the sun.
Which is why I’m going back to bed.

So could you please put all that shit back where it belongs?

(Sorry.)

What was with that McDonald’s Commercial We Saw on TV a Couple of Weeks Ago?

Perhaps you saw it too: The one that showed a vaguely Hispanic guy sitting in a hammock or lawn chair on a sunny stage set decorated with fake blooming flowers and buzzing birds and/or bees? The guy is happily feeding his face with a wad of grease from McDonald’s while an announcer yammers something about the entrée costing only a dollar now and in the future, too, apparently because the dollar is so strong (which was news to us and the rest of the world, English-speaking and non-English speaking). Then you see another, similarly Euro-ish Hispanic guy who for some reason is holding up a hand-lettered sign that says “8.75 pesos” (it may have said “9.3 pesos,” as we weren’t taking notes, saw the ad only twice and didn’t snap-to to pay attention until the second viewing*) while standing against a dark, moody, urban-ish backdrop. The guy in the hammock smiles and waves the guy with the sign over, the non-verbalized message being that he needs to be over in the sunshine, where he can unload those shaky pesos and enjoy the still-only-a-dollar feed from McD’s. Next thing you see is the guy with the sign, except now he’s in the sunshine/on the hammock, eating some artery-clogging McDonald’s fare and motioning over a woman who’s standing against the dark backdrop and holding a sign reading “10.75 pesos” (maybe 11-something), a fairly remarkable slide in the space of 60 seconds.

This was one of the most bizarre things we’ve seen on television in a half century-plus of watching**---stranger, even, than the mere notion of the oreo pizza, our new favorite metaphor for early 21st century America---and not just because it’s the only commercial we can recall that uses currency exchange as a hook to sell a product. We can only conclude that McDonald’s is urging all of Mexico to come on over, have a hamburguesa and enjoy our strong, stable dollar (at least when compared to the peso, which may not qualify as a real currency).

But a multinational corporation wouldn’t encourage illegal activity just to sell hamburgers, would it?

We only hope one of our Republican U.S. senators will promptly sponsor a resolution condemning this outrageous abuse of free speech.


*This was about three weeks back and though we have waited eagerly for its return we have not seen the ad since, suggesting someone at McDonald’s may have sobered up.
**We’ve fallen into a deep depression after realizing the implications of that line. Excuse us while we sit down.

Sunset Over the Freeway, 09/24/07

The other evening at dusk we found our self in the parking lot of a small shopping center off a major thoroughfare in the metro area, just as a class was being dismissed at a storefront karate school. Almost all the exiting acolytes appeared to be under 12 and white---a curiously large percentage were tow-headed---although there were a couple of blacks and a Hispanic or two in the mix. Right next door to the dojo was one of those franchised “learning centers” where parents send their kids for help with their homework or to sharpen their English skills or bone up for their SATs. The learning center also was letting out for the evening and we couldn’t help but notice that every child leaving that establishment was Asian, mostly Korean and a few Japanese (we’re the attentive round-eyed type who can differentiate, even at a distance).

We duly noted the mild cross-cultural irony the scene presented but also were moved to ask our self a rhetorical question: Thirty years from now, who among those divergent crowds of kids will be working for whom?

Wherever Injustice Rears Its Head, City Councilman Jarvis Johnson Will Be There to Loose His Terrible Swift Sword, Or at Least to Write an Op-Ed Piece

City Councilman Jarvis Johnson, who when last we noticed him was pitching on behalf of a no-bid contract extension for an airport concessionaire, and previous to that was knee-deep in December's raging CAFR controversy (you remember it, do you not?), was accorded 14 or so inches* on the opinion page of Friday’s Houston Chronicle to explain why he motored over to Jena for Thursday’s big march. We’re not sure that anybody asked for or needed a justification from the councilman, or even noticed him there among the estimated 10,000 (according to the New York Times) or “tens of thousands” (according to lefty Amy Goodman of radio’s Democracy Now!) of protestors who took to the streets (street?) of the Louisiana town.

But there it is, as they say.

The councilman, of course, was way too young for Selma and Montgomery or even the Herman Short-TSU riot, so it’s understandable that he’d be moved by the opportunity to make his bones as a front-line combatant against injustice. And right here, lest we find our humble blog being linked by David Duke’s Web site, we’d like to stipulate into the record that we do believe there was an injustice committed in LaSalle Parish and that the prosecution of the “Jena Six” has been way out of proportion to the crime. Alleged crime.

Yes, there is an allegation of a “crime” at the back of all this, and while it may have been only one small crime in a string of crimes large and small dating back to the beginnings of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, somebody got hurt. There’s a lot of murk in the entire story---here’s a quick summation by Meagan McArdle---but there doesn’t seem to be any question that the six black boys stomped a white boy’s ass, and if you get knocked unconscious in a brawl, or somehow “fall” into unconsciousness, as has been suggested, then you have indeed suffered an illegal ass-kicking, whether or not you’re up and about three hours later, as the victim is said to have been. But the councilman, who’s quick to invoke the Scottsboro Boys and Jim Crow, gives the crime the following passing mention:

… a schoolyard brawl ensued as a direct result of several white students hanging nooses on a tree that certain whites assumed was reserved for Whites Only…**

A schoolyard brawl … and that’s it. The crime is just an inconvenient fact that doesn’t fit Johnson’s assumed narrative, which seems to be that this one episode in a backwards and out-of-the-way burg*** somehow means the entire nation is a seething cauldron of double standards and racist motive.

Most of the information we’ve gleaned on the story has come from listening to Goodman’s show on KPFT-FM, 90.1. Goodman’s been on the story for months (by contrast, our local daily newspaper, the largest daily newspaper in the region, belatedly decided to parachute a reporter in for some undistinguished wire service-style reportage on the protest) and despite her biases has been talking to all comers and occasionally wandered into the realm of even-handedness. Today we heard her interview the mother of the white schoolboy victim, a manager at the local Super Wal-Mart, who asked whether the protestors believed the Jena 6 should escape any punishment at all for the beating of her son. This is a good question (although we personally think the kid who’s already done 10 months while appealing his conviction has done more than enough time). It’s a question that possibly Councilman Johnson could answer in his next op-ed contribution.

In the meantime, we must agree with the councilman’s explanation for his trip to Jena:

Some might say a Houston City Council member has no business meddling in the affairs of an issue in Central Louisiana. I beg to differ, because if an injustice can happen in Central Louisiana, it can also happen in Northeast Houston in District B.

Yes, it sure can. It can happen anywhere. It can even happen in Durham, N.C.


* Rough estimate.

**The nooses and the Honky Tree are the sort of phenomena that give us pause whenever we start fantasizing about moving away to enjoy our old age in a quiet little town.

***We attribute some of our own interest in this story to our having once worked with a girl from Jena who told wickedly funny stories about the place (she was a female Junior Samples), most of which we cannot repeat on a family blog.

Does Philip Roth Hate Houston, and If So Why Does Philip Roth Hate Houston?

Damned if we know, and it’s probably premature to raise the question, but we’re moved to ask after reading Christopher Hitchens’ withering (yep) dismissal in the recent Atlantic Monthly of Roth’s forthcoming novel Exit Ghost.

Apparently Houston has a bit part in the book, not as setting but as touchstone for the pork-eating goyishe heartland beyond the metropolitan New York area that the septuagenarian novelist seems to now view with an alarmingly deluded fear and loathing, if you’ll pardon our imprecise application of that overworked phrase. In Exit Ghost Roth revives his longtime alter ego, the novelist Nathan Zuckerman, once unbound but now, according to Hitchens’ description, forced to “wear Pampers and to endure the regular humiliation of feeling sodden.” Zuckerman has left his hideaway on a Massachusetts mountaintop to return to New York “in the hope of an operation to repair his urinary arrangements” and there crosses paths with Jamie and her “slavish husband,” Billy, which is where Houston figures in. Hitchens quotes at length from a Rothian passage he finds especially uninspiring, prefaced by Zuckerman’s inquiring of Billy about Jamie’s background:

And so he told me, lavishly expatiating on her accomplishments: about Kinkaid, the exclusive private school in Houston from which she’d graduated valedictorian; about her stellar academic career at Harvard, where she graduated summa cum laude; about River Oaks, the wealthy Houston neighborhood where her family lived; about the Houston Country Club, where she played tennis and swam and had come out as a debutante against her will; about the conventional mother she tried so hard to accommodate and the difficult father she could never please ...

Hitchens continues:

The dull reported speech with which Roth economizes (so much easier to do the background of WASP-dread secondhand, rather than evoking it directly as he used to do) is limpid and engaging when set beside the great swaths of soliloquy-as-dialogue* in which the remainder of Exit Ghost is bogged down. (One of Billy’s later answers, about old and new money in the Greater Houston area, and its relation to anti-Semitism, goes on for almost two and a half pages. We are not spared further deep thoughts about country clubs. Everything is a cliché …

So it seems Roth is conveying the notion that the very upper crust of Houston, consorting behind the high walls and greenery of River Oaks and the Memorial-area villages, still nurses some Gentleman’s Agreement-style anti-Semitism, or, perhaps, is preoccupied with it. We, of course, don’t move in those circles and have no interest in defending the smug and the comfortable, of any stripe or economic station, but let us go on record here as saying we ain’t buying it.

Hitchens’ review, however, has whetted our appetite for Roth’s book, at least two and a half pages of it, and we now anxiously await what is surely the impending rebuttal of the novelist’s slander by our favorite port commissioner from the 77019 zip code.

*Although we admire Roth’s late-century trilogy, especially The Human Stain, Hitchens here hits on something that we’ve always found bothersome about the novelist. It’s why we often find our self going “Aww, nobody talks---or even thinks---like that” when reading recent Roth (us=stickler for “reality”).

Don’t Vote for Zaf Tahir If He Persists in Running for Houston City Council (A Special Slampo’s Place Non-Endorsement)

Zafar Tahir may be a prince of a fellow and for all we know would make an exemplary public servant, but he shouldn’t be running for city council, at least in Houston, and if he continues with his charade we call on all right-minded readers of this blog---at least the two or three who are registered to vote in the city---to shun his candidacy in favor of some suitable alternative (your choice).

Last week the Chronicle’s indefatigable Matt Stiles reported that Tahir and another candidate for the Position 5 at-large seat, former state board of education member Jack Christie, had both assumed addresses of convenience in the city in order to meet the loosely interpreted “residency” requirement for candidates. Each lived outside the city in before launching his campaign---Christie in the wealthy northwest enclave of Bunker Hill, Tahir in the rapidly diversifying burg of Sugar Land. Stiles proceeded to beat on Christie with his reportorial Ugly Stick---and it was beauteous thing---by revealing that Christie not only was claiming two homesteads for tax purposes with his estranged wife but had allowed an unsightly build-up of algae---what some would call “scum”---in the swimming pool at his in-town rental digs. Stiles’ reporting apparently led not only to a health department citation for the algae but to Christie’s quitting the race (results!). That was a good thing, because we're fairly certain we weren’t the only Houstonian unwilling to vote for a man who couldn't keep his pool clean.

Tahir, meanwhile, has of this writing escaped further blows from the Ugly Stick, apparently having no algae-infested pool---and possibly no pool at all---at his throwdown address, and no marital complications that might result in dual homestead claims. He has called for a return to a discussion of, ahem, real issues, whatever those are, presumably with the idea that the residency matter is but a temporary and minor obstacle on his road to taking his rightful place on City Council alongside his sponsor, fellow Paki-American and former (still?) non-Houston resident M.J. Khan. (And isn’t it a little odd for an incumbent council member to be so out front in backing an aspirant for another, open council seat at so early a date? It’s not, you say? Sorry we asked.)

We notice that Stiles’ stories have generated some discussion over whether “residency” really matters. Let us resolve the issue by explaining why it does: When you move into a jurisdiction solely to run for an elective office, you’re telling us (at least me) that you view the office first and foremost as a vehicle for your personal ambition(s), not as an opportunity for public service or to engage in the setting of public policy (yes, we know, most candidates for office are slightly touched egomaniacs driven by an admixture of motives, personal ambition being foremost, but the taking-an-apartment-in-town ruse makes it just too damn obvious). What you’re saying is that place doesn’t matter, that one is just the same as the other (false), and, above all, that commitment to place is meaningless. Commitment as in establishing a home and paying property taxes (at the least) in the jurisdiction where you want to serve, becoming part of a neighborhood (and not some phony-baloney “community”) and, if you want to get real crazy, sending whatever kids you have to the area public schools (okay, that might be asking too much).

We don’t know much of anything about Tahir, but we see his campaign Web site is full of blather about transforming Houston into a “truly global city” and so forth. We didn’t see the word “potholes” on the site, but maybe filling ’em is kinda passé and boring in our new borderless, place-less, flattened-out, gimme-the-money globe. Tahir himself apparently is in the business of expanding global economic opportunities, through an entity called International Spectrum Development and his affiliation with the government of Pakistan’s Board of Investment.

We suspect Tahir could find a similar opportunity for service on the Sugar Land City Council, although it might leave something to desire in the personal ambition category (less money, fewer outside business contacts/opportunities, less ass-kissing and having your ass kissed, etc.). But at least he wouldn’t have to bed down in that little townhouse all by his lonesome for the next two months.