One of the most sophisticated of the late Law & Order series, before Jesse Martin left and the fat poster boy for nigger grievances took over, now making his drum roll rapid timing on black-ish, is "Bottomless". Purely as a story, it opens like an exquisite floral bouquet, with an implicit acknowledgement of the fact the we're all expendable on the basis of income, career skill set, and age. It doesn't quite come out and call Walmart a devil, or simplify old school identity politics through Lieu and her retired boss of yesteryear, but it is a rather deft spin on ableism, white privilege, and the truth that one person's pain may initiate an investigation, in this case, grieving Chinese dry cleaners with a dead daughter fresh off her bar exam, with a frivolous lawsuit opening into criminally complicit sex which winds its way back to how deft Beijing is at playing the lack of accountability game, to the point the initial manslaughter is virtually obliterated from view. We're all little drops in the bucket, blanketed over by multi-billion dollar corporations, and I ridicule what, in contemporary terms, is a mortal emotional wound, one which I can no longer quite control (it's hot), with nicotine or fish oil or my usual methods, by tap dancing a mafia godmother game. Psychologically, it no longer is one, but for the fact I soften dissolute menace by putting the people with power on a pack of cards, and trying to hold myself together by rationalizing that I do not want to be placed in a psychiatric facility over ignorant vermin. Fine, but the problem: I've never, ever, gotten a victory for the cruelty I have sustained. Trudy Richardson and Debra Horne will no more than likely get a slap on the wrist for the devastating damage I've been forced to swallow for 32 years with "fraternal corporate" contractors with HUD's localized housing authorities. I've only ever had one of them, but they are all collusionary, and complicit, with inept federal civil servants. In the end, it is all the same. Politburo or federal civil servant. I cannot sit and cull law firms on my cell when I have a fissure in my chest ready to burst my body and spray the walls with hemoglobin. The day I spoke to the gentleman at Silver & Silver I held the oar steady and just said okay, resigned. He is the one who said "wait," and gave me a referral, but it is too late. I hate Debra. I hate Trudy. And the disability activists. My humanity, at the moment, is too compromised for my grit. I am 56, battling elisions, repetitions, fear of my family, fear I'll never publish a brand article again (ie, people who publish in The Philadelphia Inquirer don't wind up like half-assed idiots on niume, or do they?). I had to reach for William Shatner's name, an actor I've known as Captain Kirk since I was a baby.
Libertarian writers only hit liberals on the most general terms when it comes to Walmart. They need to take better aim, and have my courage, if not the cliff face on which I am so precariously ready to topple, to illustrate that it is also federalism which leads companies like V Halter to stick its thumb up its ass, as there are no private contractors for naval fleets. Today is my 27th, corrected, anniversary with AT&T, as the grand old utility reminds me. I almost left them in 1999 for unlimited Internet, never howled at them, or complained, and they've rolled over for me like a beached whale. This is my stand in for interpersonal intimacy.
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