Never Eat at the Midwest Grill

            This evening my wife and I decided to order take-out for dinner. It’s been a long week; yesterday was Christmas, and now, stressed and exhausted, we just wanted to enjoy some delicious food that didn’t involve the usual cooking and cleaning of dishes, in the comfort of our own home. Being a longtime user of the online food service Foodler, I logged on to the site and searched for what I had my heart (and stomach) set on: fried chicken. Living in Cambridge, MA, one of the first cities in the country to ban trans-fat, and surrounded by a bunch of anorexic yuppies, the search was not overly fruitful. There is no equivalent of KFC nearby, although one used to stand a block away from where I now live and type this. The only type of fried chicken around is chicken wings; and who doesn’t love chicken wings? Ginger Exchange has some terrific bon-chon, but the rest of their food is decently mediocre and the wings themselves make the order take 45 minutes. What I really wanted was a bucket of breaded, deep-fried drumsticks, breasts, and wings… no dice.

            Living in Inman Square for almost two years now, we have always been intrigued by the Widwest Brazilian Grill on Cambridge Street, but for some reason had not yet tried it. They, too, offered only wings in the way of fried chicken, but I decided to take a peek at their menu just the same. It certainly looked better than most of the food around here; I was in the mood for barbecue and lots of meat. The plates, for 14 bucks each, offered rice, beans, salad and fries, along with your choice of meat: I went with the eight-piece chicken wings, and my wife ordered the grilled lamb. I wanted to be lazy and get delivery, but my wife insisted it was just a few blocks away, so I agreed to pick it up. I submitted the order and waited for my confirmation email, which arrived promptly, telling me to come pick up the food in 25 minutes. Now, it’s my fault I suppose for using an online ordering service on the day after Christmas; something was bound to go wrong. I knew the estimated time was very often less than how long it actually took (especially at aforementioned Ginger Exchange, in Inman Square.) And yet, I also knew that the confirmation meant that a human being at the restaurant had acknowledged my order, and under the assumption that they would at least tell the cook to start making our food, I got ready to go out and get it, arriving at exactly the time I was told the food would be ready. When I walked in, nobody was behind the counter, but a waitress came up and I told her I was here for an order I had placed online. She looked around behind the counter and found the receipt of my order from Foodler, looked at the young cook who had suddenly materialized next to her, and read the order off to him. I felt something was off from the get-go, but I rationalized that she was just letting him know which order I was here for, and hoping that it would be ready soon. The waitress told me to have a seat, giving me the impression that it would be ready in a few minutes. I wasn’t crazy about sitting and waiting, but assumed it would be about 5 or 10 minutes… which turned out to be the case, the proverbial “5, 10 minutes” of the classic Seinfeld episode.

            I saw the waiter go to another part of the restaurant several times and return with different containers of food, so I thought he was getting the order together piecemeal, and that any moment now it would be ready to go. Then I saw another employee taking his sweet time attempting to open a plastic bag to put some of the containers in it. When he finally took the bag and went outside, I imagine to make a delivery, I approached the counter to see what the hell was going on. I had been certain that must have been my order; and yet clearly it was not. The cook, most likely sensing my impatience, assured me that it was almost ready. After a few minutes, he all of a sudden confessed to me that they didn’t have any lamb when I had made my order. I didn’t really understand what he meant, and I’m still not sure I do completely. Apparently, however, they had had to bring out some more lamb, in order to begin cooking it…which they were just finally doing now.

            I demanded he clarify: was he just bringing out the cooked lamb, to put in my container that I might go home to eat with my wife, or was he just now putting the lamb in order to start cooking it?

            The latter.

            I asked how long he thought it would take and he just shrugged his shoulders. I am generally exceedingly patient in situations like these, but at this point I became incredulous and demanded that I be given a cash refund on the spot. Why was I told to sit down when I walked in, as if my food would be ready any minute, when in fact they had not even begun to cook it? If they were out of lamb, why wasn’t I given a phone call and asked if, I dunno, maybe I would like the steak instead? There was absolutely no communication, and I was not treated like a customer at all, although I was, a customer who had already paid for my food. And yet they had not even begun to make it! I told the waitress to give me back what I paid in cash, as I had already made a credit card payment to Foodler, a third party who was paying them for me. She went in the back and (presumably) spoke to her manager, who she claimed told her that I had to go back on the web to cancel the order with Foodler. Incredible! I reached over the counter and grabbed the receipt from my order, to get Foodler’s phone number so I could call them then and there to make sure. Foodler’s operator answered promptly and when I explained the situation she said that she would have to call the restaurant to confirm with them. She put me on hold and I heard the restaurant’s phone ring immediately; however, it took a while for anyone to pick it up. After the waitress did speak to the woman from Foodler, she told me that the order had been cancelled, but I waited for Foodler to come back on the line with me just to make sure. I turned and walked out the door, never to look back. After almost two years of me living in the area, they were about to gain a potential regular customer from right down the street; instead they lost my business before they ever got it. Not once did a manager even come out to speak to me; the waitress told me at one point that she was not responsible, to which I replied, observingly, that no one seemed to know what they were doing at all…and this is forgivable, it being the day after Christmas at all. But at least try and acknowledge your customer. I have worked in the business of customer service for over seven years, and this was not it at all. The cook also tried to look at the receipt (for some reason several people kept asking for it back, but I refused to relinquish the proof of what I had paid them until I had the order cancelled) to see what time I made the order, self-righteously claiming that they had fifteen minutes to get it ready…to which I replied, I waited the 25 minutes their email had told me to, came in, was told to wait, which I did for another 20 minutes, and they were just now preparing to cook my food? I ended up getting Pizza Pie-er, saving thirteen bucks, and still have leftovers!

@dGabeEvau

'Death of a King' by Tavis Smiley

            Well, class, here’s my book report for today…

            About a week ago, I was returning some items to the public library when a book at the front desk caught my attention. The first thing I noticed was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s face on the cover. The title: Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Year. I was intrigued. Not being an expert on Dr. King, never having read a book about his life, it seemed a bit unorthodox for me to start at the end. However, with everything that’s going on in America right now, it seemed as if King was calling me. I thought of checking the book out; not just to feed my appetite for biography (and nothing gives me greater pleasure than reading the lives of great men and women,) but also to gain a deeper, more critical perspective on the issue of race in America. Ultimately, however, I knew that I was already in the middle of too many books to really give it any time. As I mature I am learning that I can’t react to every literary or intellectual impulse that presents itself: I simply don’t have the time. Then I glanced down and read the name of the author.

            Tavis Smiley is one of the most incredible men in television today. Scratch that; he is the number one television personality, in my book. (Charlie Rose is #2.) When Tavis interviews a guest on his PBS show, he doesn’t just smooch or hype up their latest promotional campaign. Tavis is certainly the congenial host; in fact, he gives the impression that he’s good friends with his guest, be they prince or pauper, rockstar or politician, intellectual or down-to-earth Joe Schmo. He doesn’t neglect his duty to inform the viewer of the guest’s latest project, either: but he broaches their story, their professional achievement, in such a personal way that it is as if we all, guest, host and audience, are longtime acquaintances reminiscing the glory days of our youth. On page 137 of your book, Tavis might say, you mention an incident that occurred when you were seven-and-a-half, while you and your sister were staying with your maternal grandfather…can you tell us why that experience had such a profound impact on your life, and how it has shaped your career, and how it has been reflected in your work? I’m making this question up, but I have heard Mr. Smiley ask similarly acute and intimate questions of many guests. Suffice it to say, I was more than curious to see how Tavis would bring this penetrating insight to the subject of Dr. King, whose life and work, and above all, passion (and compassion) are so necessary and, sadly, so lacking on the world stage today.

            I checked the book out, went to work, and cracked it open as soon as I had the opportunity for a coffee break. Immediately I knew I had made the right choice. Tavis’s writing, even more than his television show, is brilliant, both analytically and stylistically, yet also deeply personal and movingly impassioned, without becoming preachy or resorting to histrionics or sensationalism. I urge you to read the book yourself, to experience what I mean; my intent now is to help emphasize some of the points he made, some of the points Dr. King was making, some of the points that so desperately demand our attention today, perhaps more than ever before.

            As the subtitle makes explicit, the book outlines the events, both external and, as much as possible through consultation with those who were there, and Smiley’s own poetic conjecture, the internal, of the last year of his life. King gave a speech in April of 1967, condemning America’s involvement in the Vietnam War and connecting such rampant militarism with racism and the all-pervasive scourge of poverty. Exactly one year later, to the day, King was assassinated in what was part of a series of tragedies that seemed to usher in the symbolic death of an era of turbulent innocence and optimistic resistance. By the end of the sixties, protestors did not march through the streets unaccompanied; blood marched with them. But it wasn’t just that the civil rights movement lost a leader that day; it was not the black community alone that had cause to mourn. The United States of America lost one of the greatest heroes of its history, the likes of which have not been seen since.

            Despite Smiley’s almost palpable adulation for this majestic figure, the book is refreshingly honest. The author does not take sides but shows how everyone around King was taking sides, increasingly not his own, at a time when, as King himself admonished, not to take a side was to be on the worst side of all. Why were MLK’s followers, supporters, aides and friends turning against him in the struggle? Many of them asked the same question of Martin. Insolently provoking the Johnson Administration, which had so fervently backed King’s agenda of civil rights up to then, by radically opposing American militarism and questioning the moral integrity of American Democracy itself, appeared to be suicide for the movement so many had worked so hard to make a reality. Stirring up grand protests against war and poverty would court the risk of inciting more violence and destruction, many who still held to King’s ideal of non-violence warned him. In the other camp were a new generation of black activists, who were tired of the Christian practice of turning the other cheek and wanted to fight fire with fire, bitterly and to the end, if it meant burning the house down. But Dr. King made no concessions.

            How could we decry violence in our own communities while allowing it to continue unabated in Southeast Asia? How could we win equality for Americans of color while dropping bombs on dark-skinned farmers? How could we represent democracy to the world if we resorted to force in order to ensure our own dominance, at home and abroad? How could black Americans stand for a war that was being waged at the expense of a disproportionate amount of black lives? How could the professed ministers of Christ hide in their churches and remain silent about the evil that was being unleashed on the world?

            Part of the problem, which King refused to compromise with, is that these are all, in practical terms, separate questions, which demanded separate answers. King refused to see it that way. To him, it was all-or-nothing. He was on a moral crusade to cleanse the world of evil, of inequality, of tyranny. It is mind-rackingly ironic that King failed to acknowledge these to be the same values for which, ostensibly, we were waging war in Vietnam. But King was a man of wisdom and intelligence, not only passion and conviction: he knew that the ends did not always justify the means. A scientist would not arrive at objective truths without adhering to the scientific method; likewise, a freedom-fighter could not bring peace through methods that were anything but peaceful.

            If I had lived during the sixties, I probably would have opposed the war. When I was younger I held the conviction that war was wrong, and like so many of my generation, I came to view our government with mistrust and cynicism. This is in part due to the dubious actions our leaders have taken. It is also due to the overarching criticism of the United States that radical liberals, artists and intellectuals espoused during those dark days. In the absence of a conciliator like Dr. King, America has become increasingly polarized, socially, even as we become more and more culturally homogenized.

            Nowhere is this more evident than in the growing divide between rich and poor in this nation of wealth and freedom that allows the tyranny of poverty-for-profit to go unheeded. It is telling that King was murdered on the anniversary of his speech against the war in Vietnam; it is perhaps even more significant that his life was cut short just before he was set to lead an enormous march on Washington to protest the impoverished conditions that so many Americans, and an overwhelming number of blacks, faced in their daily lives. As an adult, I see now that global conflict is far more complicated than can be reduced to the idealistic stance of the pacifist, just as the leaders of America have learned that even the most powerful nation on Earth does not have unlimited resources, and not every conflict can be won, even if it should be. Vietnam is a clear example of how there are no winners in war (except Hades and his organization of weapons contractors, who all turn a substantial profit no matter whose bodies pile up – Pluto, epithet of the God of Death, means literally, “the rich.”) In a striking parallel, King’s death shows how dissention in the ranks of the progressive movement ultimately defeated the liberal causes that spawned it. By failing to unite, these splintered factions, all seeking their own idea of justice, were overpowered by a stronger, more cohesive adversary.

            The conservative backlash, at odds and yet somehow in collusion with our new, morally unchecked liberalism, has only perpetuated the class divide; meanwhile, race relations, while taking a backseat, were thought to have become innocuous, if not settled. The events in recent months, though they be just a handful of cases that give example of a continued problem countless Americans have confronted every single day since King left us, have brought to the forefront of our national consciousness the inescapable questions of racial discrimination, of institutional brutality, and of biased, partial judiciaries and blood-thirsty media outlets ready to profit equally from the tears of the innocent and the crimes of the wicked.

            In the year to come, whence will come the voice of reason? Who will stand tall, as proud leader of these American people, a shepherd to his flock; while the wolves gather ‘round us all? Tavis does not ask these questions explicitly. But to read this book in these times, is to hear these questions asked, loudly and unavoidably. Christianity is losing its sway, in a nation dominated by the secular cult of technology and financial speculation. It is dubious whether a minister can gain such appeal and influence over our country as Dr. King once achieved. However, there are plenty among the black community who would perhaps heed such a voice, were he (or she) to speak directly to the spiritual dimension of their experience, without neglecting to advocate for those social and material adjustments that were necessary to offer the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all our brothers and sisters, in every nook and corner of this Union, as Jesus was able to feed a crowd of thousands with five meager loaves of bread and two small fish. Perhaps the working poor of all races, nationalities and religions could put aside their arbitrarily embittered differences, which only serve to keep them impoverished through socio-political tactics of divide-and-conquer, to follow a new prophet who stood tall in the tradition of the great Abrahamic faiths and challenged the economic and cultural idolatry that is, like some potent soporific, lulling vast segments of the American people into a heavy torpor, the likes of which even the most terrible dictators of history have failed to accomplish.

            Dr. King is dead. Although I was anticipating the conclusion to the book, knowing with certainty the final outcome, even when it would arrive, somehow Tavis succeeded in capturing the suddenness and shock of that fatal moment. Rarely has a book, or even a film, been able to end with such powerful drama, restrained and yet explosive, an exclamation point, and a question mark upon the pages of human history. No other book save Voltaire’s Candide has caused me to weep openly upon finishing it. I repeat, King is dead…but what of King’s dream? Does a dream die, with the dreamer? Does the dreamer live on, inside that dream itself? Sometimes at night, a child will wish fervently to return to a pleasant dream they had the night before. The only way I see for America to dream Dr. King’s dream once more, is to wake up.

@dGabeEvau 

Presumed Guilty Until It No Longer Matters

            “Innocent until proven guilty.” Such is the status, supposedly conferred upon all American citizens, be they implicated in some criminal matter. This, in fact, is one of the reasons our forefathers fled England, for many were persecuted, without fair trial, often for allegedly holding political or religious views in variance with official state doctrine. The same right to a fair trial was denied to the victims of the Spanish Inquisition, which displaced many Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. The United States is now widely regarded as a safe haven for victims of such fascist persecution, and we have engaged in great military campaigns, sacrificing countless of our own sons, to fight against the spectre of tyranny and oppression, in this country during the Civil War, in Nazi Germany, in Korea, in Vietnam and, ostensibly, all across the Middle East. Although we have not had the military or economic resources, nor the brazen foolishness to engage Russia in a third World War, we nonetheless remain committed to opposing their harsh and repressive regime, at least ideologically.

            So, is this right, in particular, to a defense of one’s innocence against accusation under law, actually guaranteed to American citizens, and, if so, is it applied equally to all? Only the most cynical conspiracy theorist would deny that we, as Americans, enjoy liberties undreamt of in many countries. At the same time, many Americans still believe, understandably and perhaps rightly, that not all of the liberties many of us take for granted apply equally to themselves. Well now! Let’s get to the point…do American citizens, accused of a crime, enjoy this protection under law?

            This is a difficult question to answer plainly, for even if all citizens were treated with fairness under the judicial system, which is almost certainly not the case, America enjoys another freedom, perhaps our greatest gift from the men who drafted the Bill of Rights, but also one of the greatest dangers of the modern age: the right to freedom of speech, and freedom of the press in particular. The leaders who framed our Constitution and its earliest amendments did not inhabit a world of fiber-optic cable networks, wi-fi café’s, social media, smartphones and multinational corporations subtly (and not-so-subtly) influencing, nay, controlling “the press” in virtually all its forms.

            In fact, the sensationalistic news media of today is based upon an implicit assumption of the profitability of the assumption that the accused is guilty, playing upon the public opinion and sympathies that it helps to shape, often in accordance with political and economic motivations imposed by owners, advertisers and shareholders. Perhaps one of the most controversial themes in the media right now pertains to accusations of rape, sexual harassment and sexual assault, all atrocious or pernicious crimes which completely undermine the sense of freedom and security our citizens ought to enjoy in this nation, thereby undermining freedom itself. Part of the controversy in these cases derives from the subjectivity of events, the burden of proof, and, sadly, the small but unignorable tendency to fabricate these allegations, and the political use to which such allegations, whether founded or no, may be put.

            Rolling Stone has recently suffered some controversy over its publication of an alleged gang-rape that now appears to be fabricated. If anything, sloppy journalism is just as responsible for misleading public understanding of “the news” as is outright deception. Reporters often use the term ‘alleged’ selectively and interchangeably, until the point where the public presumably fails to differentiate between, for example, “The Boston marathon bomber” and “alleged Boston marathon bomber.” This is a perfect example of how public sentiment seeks immediately to pacify its wounds with more blood, and understandably so. Perhaps this idea of vengeance-as-justice is fruitless; as Heraclitus says, “Tainted souls who try to purify themselves with blood are like the man who steps in filth and thinks to bathe in sewage.” In any case, Massachusetts has a long history of using the death penalty--- in the 17^th Century, people were hanged due to their religious affiliation. Surely, we are a hallmark of religious toleration! In 1984, MA abolished use of the death penalty. However, the marathon bombing of 2013, rightly seen as an act of domestic terrorism, does, in my view warrant the death penalty, as it is really a federal matter and not merely a state issue. Whoever did mastermind and execute the attacks surely wanted to instill fear and terror, in Boston and across the nation. For this reason, however, it does make sense to have the trial outside of Massachusetts. The basic reasoning of the public seems to be: This was an atrocious crime, I have seen this guy’s face on the news, therefore, he did it. Those who question Tsarnaev’s guilt, or merely the legitimacy of the proceedings themselves, are sidestepped in their concerns because the only thing that matters is how tragic the bombing was itself. This is how US democracy utilizes the feeble-minded nonsense teachings of Socrates to achieve an Orwellian double-think. Another good example is when our Republican legislators tack two bills together, completely unrelated. By endorsing the first bill, which any decent person with basic reasoning faculties would endorse, somehow a majority is also giving the green light to another law that has absolutely nothing in common, except that it furthers the agenda of whoever drafted the bill in the first place. I personally believe the Tsarnaev brothers were involved, but I admit that the root of that belief comes from the fact that we have been systematically instructed that they did it. This is called propaganda. In some other nations, there is no question that the government will tell its citizens whatever they want them to believe, a policy approved by Machiavelli. But in the United States, supposed land of the free, of free speech and free press, of the right to trial by impartial jury, we are fast becoming disillusioned with the government and the media, to the point where some of the more reflective citizens begin to mistrust everything that we are told, and that is perhaps even worse than swallowing it all. President Obama’s speech after the death of Nelson Mandela last year succeeded in putting a chink in my own shell of cynicism, as he pointed out how the approach of cynicism is just as fruitless as the approach of unquestioning belief. The problem for many of these disillusioned cynics is that, mistrusting the official line, they immediately fall prey to all sorts of conspiracy-theories and counter-propaganda. For example, the evidence for an FBI cover-up, if not of the bombing itself, than certainly of the Watertown triple-homicide of which the late Tamerlan Tsarnaev is the alleged mastermind, is more convincing than the evidence of the Tsarnaevs’ guilt in the 2013 bombing; again, to a person of sound reasoning capacity. But this does not prove Dzhokhar’s innocence, either! The people protesting for Tsarnaev’s right to a fair trial are champions of American justice, the topic of this article; the people claiming he is innocent or falsely accused, however, unless they know something the rest of us don’t, are just as automatic and uncalculated in their response as those who take his guilt for granted.

            Now, the problem with the rape accusations, as I believe I have stated, is where do we assign the burden of proof? It is unfair and cruel to heap disbelief and criticism upon a woman who has already undergone one of the most traumatic experiences a citizen of a free country can be made to endure. However, if the allegations turn out to be false, then the criticism has not been harsh enough, for false allegation of rape is essentially a crime equally atrocious to rape itself: not merely for the damage it does the accused, whose tarnished reputation may never be salvaged even by his vindication (thus the title of this essay) but perhaps more importantly, that, like the boy who cries wolf, the increased incidence of false or misleading accusations can only add to the wall of disbelief that victims of rape must bravely penetrate in order to get any justice. Of course, on the other hand, a suspect may be ultimately found not-guilty, of rape or any crime, when in fact he (or she) did commit the act (as has apparently happened with two highly-publicized grand jury findings of late.) In this case, we would be condemning a rape victim for lying, when in fact she was a victim twice, first of rape, second of a trial with a false verdict, and now a third time, as victim of the public’s assessment that she lied, tarnishing her own reputation beyond vindication…and if, by chance, as is not infrequent, she should be raped again by another assailant, any further accusations on her part would likely be taken with more than a grain of salt, like that same boy when the wolf does in fact show up. Well then! We can see why, perhaps, it is so difficult for women to come forward.

            In closing I would like to bring our focus to the media circus that surrounds Bill Cosby. The media almost seems doubly guilty, first of immediately presenting Cosby’s guilt (which is becoming harder and harder to doubt) but also of criticizing and scrutinizing many of these women who have come forward (some of whom do seem, if not uncredible, than at least not of pure motive.) But what is the reason that these women are all coming forward now? It seems peculiar, in the midst of all the racial tension broiling across the nation, that one of America’s most amiable and respectable black television personalities is having, not just his deeds but his character called into question. Perhaps he is guilty; but is this fact, like the Socratic axioms we have already pointed to in our biased US justice policy, going to be used politically to cause the masses (or at least the white masses) to jump to some conclusion that simply doesn’t follow from the evidence? To brand an entire people as thugs and hooligans, and thereby exonerate those who would execute them with prejudice before they had reached maturity? Such, my fellows, would not be democratic journalism, but the propaganda of a military-state.

            These are not easy questions, and they do not have easy answers; perhaps they do not have answers at all. One thing is certain: if our media is not held to higher standards, rather than rule of law, by the people, for the people, we shall have mob-rules. Perhaps this is confused with democracy, but its proper Greek term is ochlocracy, and John Adams warned against such “tyranny of the majority” 225 years before the Boston Marathon bombing.

@dGabeEvau