Another One BItes the Dust

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient
is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion,
but allow very lively debate within that spectrum
--Noam Chomsky  

Are you ready, hey, are you ready for this?
Are you hanging on the edge of your seat?
Out of the doorway the bullets rip
To the sound of the beat 
--Another One Bites the Dust, 
Queen

Equality may perhaps be a right, 
but no power on earth
can ever turn it into a fact
-- Honore de Balzac
_____________________________

Once there was a newsman named Paul Harvey who was famous for his "Rest of the Story" radio show. By fleshing out the details, one could come to understand the ground of the story. This is the thing we are least inclined to do today.

In fact, we are loathe to move beyond the salacious. Too difficult, too sobering. But we will do that here.

This is not an apologia for Eric Schneiderman, newly-retired former New York Attorney General, three hours following the publication of a New Yorker piece in which two of his former girlfriends indicted him of what amounts to either rough sex play, or abuse.

Judged in the court of public opinion, he was already dead in the water. Another one bites the dust.

"Some women like this," he told one of the women, after he allegedly slapped her. He very likely believed it, or he would not have said it, and done it. Each of these two women stayed in relationship with Schneiderman for over a year.

This is not to victim-shame, but to state a fact: If the man you are with thinks this behavior is good, and you comply even if only in your continued presence in the relationship, how is he to know that it is not appreciated? Seen another way, could this not be part of an archetypal master-slave game?

Do we not read and watch films based on books like 50 Shades of Gray? Was it not heralded as some sort of revelation for women's empowerment? Some pain -- that's how the master-slave game is played. It's all good.

Sacher-Masoch's classic, Venus in Furs, argues for the power of the slave in such relationships, for the master does not exist without it.

One episode recounted in the article has Schneiderman's girlfriend Ms. Selvaratnam saying that after being slapped, "(I) got up to try to shove him back, or take a swing, and he pushed me back down." If this were a typical case of outright abuse, the woman would be unlikely to come back at a much stronger perpetrator and "take a swing".

This sounds like game playing gotten out of hand. Maybe not your cup of tea, or mine, but for some, this is cricket.

When dungeon games are played correctly, there is always a "safe word", a way for the slave to stop any activity deemed outside the realm. This apparently works well for couples who abide by the rules.

But Mr. Schneiderman was too damaged to play the game well. His life is now ruined by the testimony of two women with whom he failed to be a consistent all-powerful character. He was weak, and not strong.

The New Yorker story states he awoke in pools of his own blood following injuries sustained while in drunken stupors. One woman bandaged his bleeding leg injury following one such episode, returning to re-bandage the newly-bleeding injury in his office the next day.

She had also seen him fall face down like a log following one episode of his getting wasted. Reading between the lines one finds a more nuanced story.

The woman said she had hoped that maybe she could help him stop his alcoholism. Of course, anyone in addiction treatment knows that cannot be done. The recognition and desire must come from the addict himself.

What seems evident is that Mr. Schneiderman was a runaway train in his illness, and it was only a matter of time before he was revealed. Unfortunately, there is no "#metoo" for the sick perpetrator of what he imagined a slice of society to approve. And Mr. Scheiderman is sick in the medical sense of the word, as the article belies his epic alcoholism and epsiodes of self-injury.

Like any typical functional alcoholic, those around him enabled his sickness to continue. As someone stated, he was "too valuable" of a commodity. So for all of his alleged objectification of the women in his life, the sadist was an object, too.

When the story broke, I told Ranger there would be a woman of color involved, and there was. Her statement that she was made to say that she was Schneiderman's "dark slave" is precisely in line with the sado-masochistic game. But it so offends our sensibilities that nothing can be heard beyond that.

As much as being a story about dysfunctional relationships and abuse, this is a story about a sick man who did not get the help he needed to be well.

So are we a prim bunch of morality policemen, or do we smile upon the panoply of sexual congress and call that freedom a good?

It would be nice if the rest of the story were told.

Never Say Goodbye

Ignatius Hruska

There in the room as I wake from sleep
this vision presses upon me;
The engagement opens there and then in fantasy unreal
The skirmishers begin, they crawl cautiously ahead,
I hear the irregular snap! snap!
I hear the sounds of the different missiles, the short t-h-t!
t-h-t! of the rifle-balls,
--The Artlleryman's Vision, Walt Whitman

It’s winter in America, and all of the healers
have been killed or been betrayed
--Winter in America, Gil Scott-Heron

And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly;
and his sweat as it were great drops of blood
falling down to the ground
--Luke 22:44

I asked my dad where Lily I could find
He said, "Son, now don't be silly"
"She's been dead since 1929"
--Pictures of Lily, The Who
____________________

Our Memorial Day 2011 essay is dedicated to the memory of Ranger's uncle, Ignatius (Iggy) Hruska, WW II seaman.

Iggy has been long presumed dead, though his body was never recovered. He did not die of wounds or in combat, though a case could be made that his death was service-connected, just the same. He was a frequent and long-term patient in the Pittsburgh VA long-term care facility. Specifically, Iggy was a nasty, habitual alcoholic.

He saw much combat, but fair is fair, and his brother (my father), also a WW II combat vet, remained sober and functioning throughout his life. Ironically, my father was drafted while Iggy was a volunteer. Family lore has it that Iggy joined the Navy by fraudulently enlisting (before WW II) by tricking his Slovakian mother into signing his enlistment papers. He told her the papers were required for him to purchase a rifle (from Sears), and in a sense they were. Since she neither spoke nor read English, she affixed a signature -- so long, Iggy.

(As an aside, this unlettered immigrant (Ranger's grandmother) had four sons -- two born in the old country, two in the U.S. Both U.S.-born sons earned their rights of citizenship, a dying concept today, but that's another topic.)

Memories of Iggy are those of a young child, and include seeing him on leave wearing a black wool Navy Class-A uniform with ribbons on the chest. There is no memory of what these ribbons signified other than that he fought in the Pacific war; later he became an air crew member. He survived the sinking of his ship, though my father was told by one of Iggy's former shipmates, "You'll never see your brother alive again." In a sense, that, too, became true.

Suffice it to say Iggy was probably drunk the day he died -- a harsh way to commemorate his life and death, but there are a lot of Iggy Hruskas in the back streets and VA facilities of your hometown, and this is their truth. It's hard to pin Iggy's hard-drinking on his service experience, and it's a fool's errand to try. The fact remains, he served, and seldom thereafter had the ability to climb out of the bottle. He was probably denied reenlistment due to his alcoholism.

Ranger has had numerous friends and associates who followed the same template, and for some, it is too facile to dismiss them as old drunks. Combat stress often results in alcoholism, drug addiction and many other long-term and debilitating behaviors; what the world sees as slovenly was once a functional human being. Such was the life of a long gone sailor named Iggy Hruska.

Iggy disappeared while on unauthorized absence from the DVA hospital and was never seen again; years later, he was officially declared dead. He would never say "Goodbye" while on leave; always, "So long". He believed that if you said "goodbye" that was a jinx that might come true. Sailors are a special breed, and most have their mojos, like ball players.

Since we can't put a flag on his grave, we will say one last thing to Seaman Ignatius Hruska -- "Goodbye".