NUDES, KNEELING AND PLAYBOY

ENDLESS OUTRAGE ABOUT PETTY ISSUES

I believe in standing at precise attention for O Canada.
I believe in kneeling.
I believe in nudes.
I believed in Playboy.
My beliefs have been jostled by a lot of jerks spouting off a lot of crap which demonstrates to everyone, as if there was any doubt, that they really don't give a damn about what anyone else thinks about anything, including the latest grabbag of minor issues.
Now I do. And if you want to kneel in protest or in prayer or to propose, go right ahead. There is an honourable foundation to that. And we don't need a mouthy jerk who rode outrage against the awful  politics of today into the White House to wrap himself in the flag as a shield against all those who  see that the Emperor wears no clothes.
I played a lot of football. I remember the game when the lineman beside me was hit so hard, the resulting concussion had him wear glasses for the rest of his life and we had trouble taking him to hospital because he couldn't remember the combination to get his street clothes out of his locker.
It is insulting to give publicity to some weakling who has dodged combat and contact sport only to criticize the penalties for high hits in football. He couldn't tackle a scarecrow. He doesn't even have enough guts to pay his debts and to stop cheating and lying.
I was already standing stiffly at attention before I was in the RCAF Reserve. A year ago at the CNE Air Show, I unloaded on three youths in the VIP section who slouched and talked during our anthem.
They looked shocked when I pointed out profanely that they could take their hands out of their pockets and shove them up their ass.
Let's move on to a pleasant topic, nudes, and particularly nice pictures of nude women, and particularly how they were displayed in Playboy.
Now when I was a teenager in the 1950s,  Playboy still had an illicit keep-it-under-the-mattress flavour. Yet I actually did read it for the articles too. It was an excellent magazine even if the publisher was sleazy.
I was astounded as the kid editor of The Whitehorse Star to find that the famous Marilyn Monroe nude picture in the first Playboy (she was clothed on the cover and nude inside, and was never paid) hung in full view over the desk on which I laid out the paper, a desk once used by a local bank accountant named Robert W. Service.
The publisher didn't really care what people thought of that. And he certainly proved that by having a luscious nude painting of his wife hang in his living room. Not everyone realized it was his wife. The United Church minister who roomed with them didn't until I pointed out the resemblance. Which meant that he blushed every time he saw her.
It was in the Yukon that I learned to be careful about how much I argued about something because one irate reader was inclined to come to the newspaper office to complain. He had very brittle bones and was very pugnacious so I was afraid of getting into a fatal scrap with him. He also occasionally came with a shotgun.
That was thousands of columns and editorials and blogs and commentaries ago. But after I make my point, I try to shut up, because I remember that it can be dangerous not to.
Not only is it safer, it's infuriatingly boring to have Trump or trolls or Fox anchors go on and on in their inept language without ever managing to say anything graceful or new.
The reality is that too many politicians and commentators worry at anthem protests like a dog with a bone. Yet it's all a diversion!  In the end these issues don't matter as much as more difficult topics like taxes, health care, education etc. And so we are stuck, like insects on pins in a collector's box, with a rebellion against politicians that elected Trump and Trudeau.
And so I return to playboys.