Ventilator Blues

From sea to shining sea aging white males gather on playgrounds confused about who they are and certain that someone has it in for them. They may be playing golf or pickle ball rather than putting on the pads for football, but many still worry about how to gain and keep power and how to affirm their sexual identities. For many, women are trophies.

As I write this, those with time to ponder such things are mesmerized by the senate hearings on a proposed appointment to the Supreme Court.  The CEO behind the nomination is a white male. The nominee is a white male. Every member of the Senate Judiciary Committee from the majority party is white and male.  Could the hearings be a last hurrah for the hegemons?

I’m writing this before we find out if Dr. Ford’s accusations will be taken seriously or if Judge Kavanaugh’s defensive tactics will prevail.  But even in this early stage we are witnessing an important cultural moment where almost everyone has an opinion, values are challenged, and emotions are transparent.  Whatever finally happens, we can be pretty sure that the proceedings themselves and the endless discussions after will become the reality-TV circuses we are already so used to.

Back on the playgrounds and the country-club watering holes, those no longer in the fray are still seeking validation. “I’m sure glad I’m not being scored on all my high-school indiscretions.” (Read: “I’m not now and never was gay.” What is the real point of preppie-boy parties where women are toys for public displays of manly force?) During hydration breaks, pissing and moaning floats through the air: “Why is this woman piping up only right before the election?  Why didn’t she come forth before?” (Read: “Damn liberals.  They’re lucky we don’t send the bimbos to Bedlam like in the good old days.”) What was once shouted proudly may now be spoken in a hush: “Crazy as women are now, if any of what she says really happened, she would have been screaming long ago.”  Drum roll, trumpet call, spontaneously cleansing but getting just a bit tentative in its blues phase: the laughter that comes easy with privilege. And with it even more certainty that they are right and someone now is out to get them.  (They don’t need Foucault to tell them sex is all about power.)

Dr. Ford is 100% sure.  Judge Kavanaugh is 100 % sure.  The boys with pitching wedges and tennis rackets are 100% sure.  Many of the girls jumped on by boys being boys acquiesced to the when-you’re- not-licking-‘em-join-‘em suburbs where they raised their own little men to be in charge. Not everyone on a ventilator is old, and these spitting images of dad and grandpa from Brokaw’s “greatest” generation are feeling the foundations of their inherited privilege beginning to wobble. Unlike dear old dad who is off for a day of rock climbing, the younger ventilator crowd is fighting school admissions biases, stacked hiring practices, child care responsibilities that again challenge their manhood, and the inconveniences of no longer basking in the praise of adoring females everywhere. It’s all there on racquet ball courts, in hair restoration clinics, plastic surgeons’ offices, ED prescription proliferation, and long rambling stories about “back-in-the-day,” the healing power of degrading jokes, the outcries against almost defunct affirmative action…

The New Orleans parade march music is increasingly brushed aside by wistful blues songs performed with hints of what used to be Caucasian swagger and “sincere” tears befitting a judge standing in for all the choir boys blindsided by victims who sound all-too human. “Bring back when men were men.” “It was only locker room talk.”  “She says ‘no-no’ but means ‘yes-yes.’”

Of course not every white male aligns with misogyny or patriarchy. But intervention with “the boys” on the fairways or tennis courts is made particularly difficult because the jokes and disparaging comments are not meant directly as insults.  Those who smilingly refer to bitches or recall fondly “nailing” a cheerleader see nothing offensive about what for them is more an assertion of manhood than an expression of disrespect.  They see themselves as open minded and fair. They care about many of the women in their lives. Their reflexive dismissiveness and ridicule is closer to what Raymond Williams has called a “structure of feeling” than to any conscious degradation.

It’s all arranged around a patriarchal core. “Happy wife, happy life” is a guffaw about pushy women, and it is almost always met with smiles of inadvertent approval. There’s pathos when doddering old gents single out a “looker” but these may be power moves too. “I’d go back to work if it was alongside that chick” doesn’t do much for equal pay. “She might learn to keep her legs crossed” or “all they want is handouts” are not referring to their granddaughters. Raymond Williams also reminds us that “residual values” are still operative even when the facts aren’t there. “I worked hard to get mine, and they want stuff handed to them.” “She’s so cute when she is angry.” “The wife is shopping spending my money” draws applause from latter day hunter gatherers who still want dinner on the table at a prescribed time.

Those still darkening the door of a church see God as the source of inherited wealth, the government as the main obstacle to their divinely ordained freedoms, and gay rights as a threat to their marriage. Retorts of any kind bring charges that one is an atheist, a socialist, an anarchist, or a “pussy-whipped libber.” A poor shot might be greeted with “does your husband know you are playing today?” Any tone less than “manly” is still scorned as “whining like a woman.” On tennis courts and in country clubs, Horatio Alger lives, manifest destiny is never questioned, “American exceptionalism” is celebrated though seldom scrutinized, and it is still the right of aging white males ruling over court rooms and congressional committees to decide the limits of control women have over their own bodies.

This kind of stoney mindset fends off questioning as trouble-making, dismisses attacks as “political correctness,” disparages banana republics elsewhere while laughing about dressing up for “deplora-balls” and chanting “lock her up.”  No one has explained why institutionalized sexism gets more rigid as the privileged get flaccid, but it no doubt has something to do with felt threats that privilege by its very nature is meant to preclude.

With ventilators firmly in place, rapidly maturing white males work out and play hard to stave off looking even older. All the while trying to be more subtle with what used to be blatant, they check today’s performance of their retirement portfolios, and they turn off the hearings aids when the women coming to take them away come into view.  Kavanaugh? Does it matter who? Why this?  Why now?  The Wild West was long gone when we still rode with Roy Rogers, and the privileged gray beards will be ashes in an urn long before this court finishes its plan to put women “back in their place.”  Why now?  All plotted out.  POTUS is worried about his eroding base.  People of color and women just might take many steps forward in the next election—unless the Great White Father can keep that ventilator going for a while.  On those playgrounds there is fear in the nervous but still cocky laughter.  The feeling is palpable that someone is going to pull the plug soon. The fly is dying.  The fly has been mortally wounded and is furiously and erratically making circles as it expires. Only time will tell how much destruction lies in its path.