Fumar puede matar

Still-life of a dinner eaten by my compañero de piso. I have altered nothing.

The game is the game

State senator Clay Davis, Baltimore, MD.

Illinois governor Rod R. Blagojevich, via wiretap:

“I know Obama wants Quinn for it, but they’re not willing to give me anything but appreciation. Fuck them.”

“I’ve got this thing and it’s fucking golden, and I’m not going to give it away for fucking nothing. I’m not going to do it. And fuck, I can always use it. I can parachute me in there.”

From the text of the complaint [bowdlerized]:

p. 58 I learn via civics teacher Bob Greenlee, deputy governor of Illinois, that Secretary of Energy is the one that “makes the most money” – talking about trying to get Blagojevich into a cabinet post. Though “it’s hard not to give it to a Texan.”

p. 59 On November 6, 2008, Blagojevich tells his spokesman to leak to a particular columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times that a candidate is in the running for the Senate seat. Blagojevich wanted “to send a message to Obama’s people,” but didn’t want it known that the message was from him. “The two discussed specific language that should be used in the Sun-Times column and arguments as to why Senate Candidate 2 made sense for the vacant Senate seat. A review of this particular Sun-Times column on November 7, 2008, indicates references to the specific language and arguments regarding the candidate, as discussed by Blagojevich & [spokesman].” The Fourth Estate continues to serve as a valuable & intelligent addition to the discourse.

p. 37 Contemplating punitive measures against a children’s hospital because the chief executive of the hospital hasn’t thrown him a $50,000 campaign contribution, Greenlee & Blagojevich have the following exchange:

BLAGOJEVICH: The pediatric doctors – the reimbursement. Has that gone out yet, or is that still on hold?

GREENLEE: The rate increase?

BLAGOJEVICH: Yeah.

GREENLEE: It’s January 1.

BLAGOJEVICH: And we have total discretion over it?

GREENLEE: Yep.

BLAGOJEVICH: We could pull it back if we needed to – budgetary concerns – right?

GREENLEE: We sure could, yep.

BLAGOJEVICH: Ok. That’s good to know.

The game is the game.

p. 45 Other odds and ends from the case include a scheme to play around with withholding $100 million in tax breaks to Wrigley Field, owned by the Tribune Co. in order to sweeten Chicago Herald Tribune owner Sam Zell into firing his top editor after articles critical of Blagojevich were published. Blagojevich: You say to him, “We’re doing this stuff for you, we believe it’s right for the state of Illinois, this is a bill deal to you financially . . .”

p. 45 Greenlee picks up the ball & runs with it: “You say, I’m not sure we can do this anymore because we’ve been getting a ton of these editorials that say look, we’re going around the legislature, we . . . “

p. 43 Greenlee gives a few vague examples. Better, from a footnote in the complaint: Endorsing a State Rep on Oct. 25th, the Tribune writes, “House Speaker Michael Madigan resists Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s worst impulses. Actually, he resists all of Blagojevich’s impulses. Now it’s time for Madigan to create a House committee to study if there are valid grounds to impeach the governor.” And in a separate State Rep endorsement on the same day: “David Miller is a quality legislator, well-versed in education, health care and human services issues. (He’s also the only dentist in the legislator. Can he extract a governor?)”

p. 45 Blagojevich clarifies Greenlee’s mealy-mouthedness: “You tell him, Maybe we can’t do this now. Fire the fuckers.”

The $100 million in tax breaks went through. The top editor was fired. The whole thing puts me to mind of season 5 of The Wire. How different is pay to play from the game is the game? My favorite thing about the news reports, amidst a lot of the handwringing and professed outrage you would expect from national political figures, is the pull quotes from the Chicago people, the ones without much of a public profile.

A professor of political science at U. Chicago can only be induced to say, “It’s over the top, even for the governor.” Another city figure: “This is a Senate seat, not an alderman election or a liquor license.” As in: It’s not that this isn’t how the game is played, but a Senate seat? When the man knew he was under federal investigation? Shit, man, no wonder he got caught.”

Washington, D.C. criminal defense attorney Robert S. Bennett, quoted in The New York Times, 16 December:

“This town is full of people who call themselves ambassadors, and all they did was pay $200,000 or $300,000 to the Republican or Democratic Party,” said Mr. Bennett, referring to a passage in the criminal complaint filed against the governor suggesting that Mr. Blagojevich was interested in an ambassadorial appointment in return for the Senate seat. “You have to wonder, How much of this guy’s problem was his language, rather than what he really did?”

This is, incidentally, more or less Blagojevich’s defense. And you and I can call bullshit & string him up, but for me the interesting question afterwards isn’t whether Blagojevich was an asshole — just look at his hair — but rather the extent to which his conduct is the everyday couched in unacceptable terms. The lesson is that people, it seems, really do use journalists as mouthpieces to float notions in the press so that they can play strategy, & that media corporations aren’t exactly the free press, and if this doesn’t seem revelatory, maybe it’s just that I’ve been keeping a naive distinction between received wisdom (these things happen) and ocular proof (look, these things are happening).

Final thoughts, State Senator Clay Davis, Baltimore MD:

“If some federal motherfucker comes walking through the door, I say, ‘It’s all in the game.’ But a city police? Baltimore city? Hell, no, can’t be happening – because I know I done raised too much god-damn money for the mayor and his ticket. Naw, ain’t no soul in the world that fucking ungrateful.

“Money laundering? They’re gonna come talk to me about money laundering? In West Baltimore? Shit, where do you think I’m gonna get cash for the whole damn ticket? From laundromats and shit? From some tiny ass Korean groceries? You think I got time to ask a man why he giving me money? Or were he get his money from? I’ll take any motherfucker’s money if he giving it away.”

Desayuno

From California-based photographer Jon Huck's series of portraits of people with their breakfasts.

i.

You typically don’t eat much of a breakfast in Andalucía. My kids tell me in class that they eat milk-and-biscuits, “biscuits” here meaning galletas, which straddle the cookie-cracker divide. They are marketed as digestive aids, made with whole wheats or grains, vegetable or sunflower oil, and sugar, though they are sometimes unsugared, and there are so many different varieties sold that I have actually stood before the supermarket section in bewilderment, trying to figure out what I’m looking at.

The whole milk is generally heated in a saucepan on the stove, with cacao powder or soluble coffee stirred in afterwards: early morning food, the blue gas flame hissing in darkness, dull grey light outside.

You see more croissants in Boston than you do Andalucía.

ii.

A little later in the day – ten or eleven a.m., say – you have tostada- a short barra de pan sliced in half & toasted – usually served con tomate y aceite in Jaén – that is, with olive oil, salt, and tomatillo spooned out of a communal ceramic bowl and spread on the hot half of bread over the oil, which you drizzle on out of a spout.

You drink a café con leche in the morning, espresso & steamed milk, which varies depending on locale from a café au lait to something approaching a very wet cappuccino, and I’ve seen it with and without foam.

This is generally what I do at school, just before recreo, the half-hour break at 11:15 – I order my tostada & café at the little school bar, & talk about the weather, & chat with the teachers, my second breakfast.

There is, of course, no lunch served in an Andalucían school. You don’t eat until you get home at 2 or 3, la comida.

One more. This is something you would never see a Spaniard eating before 3 p.m.

iii.

If you don’t have tostada, or milk & biscuits, or a stomach filled running with espresso & steamed milk, you might go to the Plaza del Pósito & lean up against the zinc-topped bar of the café that opens onto the cobbles & the wicker chairs & the tables & the gas lamps, and you could order a croissant & a fresh-squeezed orange juice, even though it’d be a little touristy, & the croissant would be split in half with a pat of butter inside & toasted & served with marmalade, and honestly there is nothing I like better than to read the paper & eat a Saturday breakfast in a café in the bright clean morning light & listen to the city start to wake up, even though I do it very rarely.

You could, as I did on my first day of school, eat churros, those fried loops of dough, served with chocolate for dipping (though I didn’t know to order it), at the diner at the bus station while birds cluster around the newer church bell across the way.

And if you’re in Granada, sleeping on a seteé in the Albaycín courtesy of a Parisian friend of a friend of a friend who lived for 6 years in Mexico – then in the morning, rain outside pooling in the white courtyards, the red flowers in the windows, you might have crêpes with chocolate & strawberry jam, a plate of kiwis, a loaf of nutty bread, tea.

But Granada’s a different sort of place.

iv.

I like Huck’s series, if you can’t already tell – it’s aesthetically well-presented, & has a nice hooky concept, and I like the pinched, ascetic faces of those with a single cup of coffee below them, the number of different ways something so fundamental gets consumed.

One thing I notice now, though, after living in Spain, is how heterogeneity is itself a kind of American cultural marker. The photographs aren’t anthropology; they’re drawn from what seem to be Hurt’s friends & acquaintances. It all reads very California – and not just any California, but a California made up of a particular class position & aesthetic. All of these people look interesting, atypical, their personalities defined by the care & beauty of their consumption.

What would happen if you took these pictures in Bédmar? Jaén? (Granada doesn’t count – cosmopolitan cities have more in common with each other than they do with the countryside. New York hipsters would get on better with the grenadinos than with our equivalent of a campesino – Appalachian mechanic? itinerant strawberry picker?).

Spain is, as I’ve already noted, a pretty homogeneous place. You define yourself as a Spaniard by the things you take part in communally, that you do just like everyone else. A common approving adjective I hear is típico (de España). “Typical Spanish,” my dueña generally announces, to translate for me, even though I’ve understood. You would say of a good tapas bar, this is a sitio típico. Everyone eats what everyone else eats, because this is what it means to be Spanish, to be typical, & to be typical is what you aspire to, not what you define yourself against.

Those photographs – Jaén, Bédmar: row upon row upon row of small ceramic mugs, hot milk, a few galletas piled up, children’s faces above. Row upon row of old men’s faces, creased, wearing a collared shirt & a buttoned cardigan over immense bellies, dark pants, hair combed always straight back from the forehead, tostada con aceite y tomate below, a few with a shot of anís liquor & a glass of water in front of them & nothing else. Miles of café, steamed milk, sugar stirred in.

About a week ago, in my Wednesday 1º de ESO Íngles B. Picture this: A 12-year-old girl says to me, “Eggs?! You eat eggs for breakfast?!” – and dissolves into incredulous laughter.

Flora & fauna, ii

Trellis in Victoria Park.

A house in the Peñamefécit, my barrio, the strip of houses between the Avenida de Barcelona & the Calle de Andalucía (Gran Eje) against the mountain, stretching west & north from the city center.

The newstand & florists’ are next to a handful of good tapas bars – Bar del Pósito, El Bodegón, Deán’s – & an old marble column, out of frame, & on the stairs is my favorite piece of graffiti in the city.

Sevillana billy

Listening to him right now. Courtesy of Juan, art teacher.