Another lost guru Part 5

Origins

As evasive as George Peters tended to be about his life prior to becoming a guru, much of what he did reveal to journalists, prospective biographer Lionel Rolfe and Church of Naturalism collaborator Susan Shore turns out to be verifiable.  Census records confirm George Peters’ real name was George P. Fitzpatrick and that he was the son of Cyril G. and Ada Florence (Farwell) Fitzpatrick.  He was born in 1938 or 1939 and spent the first decade plus of his life being raised in New York.  Corroborating information revealed to Lionel Rolfe, newspaper reports indicate his father was a New York City detective, but Cyril’s alleged wartime stints in Army Intelligence and White House Secret Service could not be confirmed.  In fact, the exploits of Cyril G. Fitzpatrick, New York City robbery detective, appear in newspaper accounts both before and after World War 2, making it clear that whatever intelligence work he may or may not have been involved with during the war ceased when he returned to his robbery division gig after the war ended.  Following Cyril’s death in 1953, Peters’ mother married Ward McCarron in 1954, and the couple along with George resided in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  

As Peters revealed to Rolfe, it was around this time, when Peters was 16, that “he married a young woman who claimed to be French.”  Indeed, newspaper reports from October 1955, describe an episode where George Fitzpatrick, son of Mr. and Mrs. Ward McCarron, eloped with Jo Ann LaNette, 15, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Jacques LaNette, Fort Lauderdale.  The pair had planned to go to New York, but only had enough money to buy bus tickets to Baltimore.  Eventually, the teenage couple returned home to Fort Lauderdale, and in 1956 George P. Fitzpatrick joined the Navy.  An announcement in the Fort Lauderdale News dated March 18, 1956 confirms he graduated from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center north of Chicago.  While not an official Navy confirmation of service, it seems unlikely Peters and his parents would falsely fabricate such an announcement, and it backs up Peters’ account and other previously unverified newspaper reports. 

With much of Peters’ origin story seeming to conform to reality, the questions become even more relevant: did the Navy and/or CIA perform mind control LSD experiments on the future cult guru George Peters?  Could the American military or intelligence community bear some responsibility for creating the LSD promotor and new age occultist?

Whether or not George Peters was one of its subjects, it is absolutely the case that the Navy performed LSD experiments on human subjects.  A Department of Defense memo dated September 20, 1977 revealed that the Navy participated in five programs where drugs were administered to human subjects for the purpose of mind control or behavior modification.  The programs ran from 1947 to 1973, and probably the most well known was called Project Chatter.  Led by Navy Lieutenant Charles W. Savage, Project Chatter research was conducted at the Naval Medical Research Institute, Bethesda, Maryland and ran from 1947 to 1953.  Peters claimed his experience occurred in 1957, placing it outside the timeframe of Dr. Savage’s involvement.  However, it’s possible the program continued under someone else’s direction, or Peters could have participated in a myriad of other LSD programs underway at the time.

It is widely reported that at one time the CIA purchased a significant portion of the world’s LSD supply and seemingly made it available to just about any researcher or institution willing to study its effects on humans.  Famously, author Ken Kesey participated in LSD experiments at the Menlo Park VA hospital around the time he began One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1960.  Also, in the 1950s, LSD pioneer Dr. Sydney Cohen conducted experiments at Wadsworth VA Hospital in Los Angeles, California.  Where George Peters was introduced to LSD cannot currently be determined, but California would be as likely a place as any.  

By 1960, it appears Peters had abandoned his family, which included a wife and three children.  In a newspaper feature from the 1980s, the then remarried but former Mrs. George Fitzpatrick describes being broke in San Diego in 1960 with a five-month-old baby she could no longer care for.  So she put the child up for adoption, as she would do with Peters’ two other children.  As a member of the U.S. Navy, it seems probable that he and his family spent some time living in San Diego.  While in California, did he become a subject of the LSD experimentation going on at the time, and did that experience cause him to become disillusioned and wander from his family?  Whatever life-altering, consciousness scrambling experience befell him, the trip was only going to get much longer and much stranger. 

Sources:

The Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Herald Examiner

The San Francisco Examiner

The Chicago Tribune

The Fort Lauderdale News

The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN) 

Fat Man on the Left: Four Decades in the Underground by Lionel Rolfe  

Mind Styles, Life Styles by Nathaniel Lande 

General Counsel of the Department of Defense memo, September 20, 1977

More Snapchat predators arrested

Last July, Kegan Kline of Peru, Indiana was sentenced to 40 years in prison on 25 counts ranging from child exploitation and possession of child pornography to obstruction of justice.  During the Kline investigation, it was revealed that he had communicated through social media with 14-year-old Liberty German of Delphi, Indiana in the days leading up to the murders of Liberty and her 13-year-old friend Abigail Williams in February of 2017.  According to 13WTHR, “Court documents show Kline saying he would talk to girls, even if they were under the age of 16, and that he found them on Instagram and then told them to message him on Snapchat.  Kline allegedly claimed to have received pictures from all of the girls he chatted with and had saved them.”  The investigation revealed Snapchat was Kegan Kline’s preferred platform for soliciting sexual abuse material from underage girls.  

As this blog has previously pointed out, Snapchat comes up time and again as the platform of choice among Indiana predators apprehended by state and federal law enforcement.  Undoubtedly, a little research would likely reveal that the Snapchat platform is quite popular among child predators outside the Hoosier state as well.  With that in mind, a reasonable person might assume that if a company’s product is routinely utilized for victimizing children, and if that company’s name keeps appearing in news item after news item as the go to platform for perverted criminal low-lifes, then that company might seek to eliminate the problem, if for no other reason than to quash the endless stream of bad publicity.  However, it’s hard to see where Snapchat is doing anything of the sort.

On November 11, Westfield, Indiana police arrested 20-year-old Benjamin Owen Rollo of Westfield and charged him with seven felony counts, including child molestation, sexual misconduct with a minor and possession of child pornography.  According to 13WTHR, Rollo “is accused of using a Snapchat account to pressure young girls into meeting up with him, or into sending explicit photos.”  

If you thought Snapchat alerted authorities to Rollo’s predatory behavior on its platform, you would be wrong.  The mother of a 12-year-old victim discovered the messages on her daughter’s phone and contacted Westfield police.

As 13WTHR reports, “The victim’s mother learned of the attack by confiscating her daughter’s cellphone, where she found messages between her daughter and friends about the attack. The victim told friends she snuck out with a friend to meet Rollo on July 22, 2022. Rollo allegedly drove to the friend’s home, then drove the victim and the friend to Grand Park. 

“When the victim asked where they were going, Rollo would not say.

“Rollo allegedly forced the 12-year-old in the back of a car during the attack. The victim deleted Rollo’s contact from her Snapchat in the hours after. 

“Through her Snapchat account, investigators found Rollo had dozens more victims throughout the area, and that he used his Snapchat account, ‘johnny.backer,’ to target young girls. 

“Police served a search warrant to his home in West Lafayette on Nov. 11, and he consented to a police interview.

“When asked about photos and images sent and received, specifically on Snapchat, Rollo advised he has asked young girls and teens for explicit images and has sent his own images, ‘15-20 times.’ Rollo also confirmed to police 12- and 13-year-old females are who he is attracted to. When asked further, he advised that he did not know, it is just ‘what he’s into.’

“His Snapchat account also revealed he raped a 14-year-old girl who he picked up in Carmel in December 2022. Multiple messages reportedly showed Rollo telling the girl what happened was not rape, and to please delete their interactions.

“Rollo confirmed the “johnny.backer” account was his secondary account, because he was not comfortable using his real name. While en route to the Hamilton County Jail, detectives asked Rollo how many images were on his phone of younger girls — he said well over 1,000 images.”

While it may be the case that Snapchat has no way of identifying the individual behind an anonymous account, and maybe they’re unable to determine in what area of the country the messages originate, surely the content of these messages should be cause for alarm and referral to federal authorities.  It seems likely that some of the victims probably used their real names and locations, would it not be possible for Snapchat to notify local police that there is a predator in their midst?  Rollo was able to determine that the girls he was messaging were local.  Why can’t Snapchat identify potentially criminal and predatory behavior and notify the appropriate law enforcement agencies?   

It would be nice if Rollo was the only serial Snapchat predator terrorizing tweens and teens in the Hoosier state.  Then everyone could breathe a sigh of relief that finally the Snapchat rapist was behind bars and everyone could feel safe again.

For immediate release, November 14, 2023, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Indiana:

“Jacob Glenn, 26, of Cicero, Indiana, has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of a child.

“According to court documents, Jacob Glenn used Snapchat to communicate with girls between 13- and 15-years-old, falsely claiming to be a teen boy and offering to purchase nicotine or vape pens in exchange for sex. Glenn’s Snapchat username, ‘theplugfogshyde’ was intended to indicate that he could obtain vape pens for others he met online.

“On two occasions in 2021, Glenn coerced and enticed a girl between 12- and 15-years-old, to sneak out of her home after midnight to get vapes from him, including on Christmas Eve. Glenn picked the child up and drove her to a nearby truck stop where he told her that he would not accept cash for the vapes. Instead, Glenn stated that they could work out a “deal” where she could pay him with sex. Glenn picked up the same child again on January 17, 2022, and coerced and enticed her to engage in sex acts in exchange for vape pens. He used his phone to record the sexual conduct he engaged in with the child and instructed her to not tell anyone about his abuse. Glenn later used Snapchat to send a copy of the child sexual abuse video to two other minor girls.

“Glenn engaged in a similar course of criminal conduct with another minor girl he met on Snapchat between December 2021 and January 2022. The second victim was less than 14-years-old. On January 9, 2022, after a conversation via Snapchat, Glenn picked the second victim up near her home, drove her to a nearby truck stop, and engaged in sexual conduct in exchange for vape pens. Glenn also attempted to convince a child who was a friend of the second victim to engage in sex in exchange for vapes, but they did not meet in person.

“A law enforcement review of Glenn’s Snapchat account found conversations between Glenn and multiple other girls between thirteen and fifteen years old. In some of these conversations, Glenn offered nicotine or alcohol in exchange for sex or nude images.”

Two serial Snapchat predators, who were practically neighbors, locked up within days of one another.  Surely now the children of Hamilton and Marion counties in Indiana can use Snapchat without being solicited for sex.  

For immediate release, October 19, 2023, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Indiana:

“Isaiah Austin, 21, of Indianapolis, Indiana, was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to coercion and enticement of two minors while required to register as a sex offender, and illegally possessing a firearm.

“In February 2021, Marion County probation officers conducted a compliance visit on Austin at his home. During their search, officers located a cell phone which contained multiple images and videos of child sexual abuse, as well as images of Austin holding firearms. Officers also uncovered text and Snapchat messages between Austin and a 14-year-old girl, beginning in early January 2021, less than a month after he was released from custody. In these text and Snapchat messages, Austin detailed sexual acts he wanted to engage in with the child and instructed her to send him sexually explicit images of herself.”

So in one small geographic area of central Indiana, during a time span of just a few weeks in the fall of 2023, three men were either arrested or convicted of child sexual abuse and/or child exploitation, and they all utilized the social media platform Snapchat as a tool to facilitate their depraved, criminal deeds.  That’s without even mentioning another Westfield man who got 38 years for similar offenses made possible by the social media platform Kik.  Maybe central Indiana is just a hotbed of child predators, but it’s probably more likely that this is happening in hundreds, if not thousands, of communities around the country.  Setting aside the disturbing question of how there can be so many sexual deviants preying on American children, why is eliminating this threat not priority number one with Snapchat and other social media companies?     

In testimony Tuesday before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on social media and the teen mental health crisis, Arturo Bejar, formerly of Facebook and Instagram testified that a survey of 13-15-year-olds on Instagram revealed that 13% of respondents had received unwanted sexual advances in the last seven days.  The number is astounding.  In any seven day period, a teenager has about a one in eight chance of being approached by a predator on Instagram.  Given enough seven day cycles, it is a near certainty that a young person will receive unwanted sexual advances about every two months or so.  It should be clear to anyone that social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Kik are cesspools of child exploitation and predatory grooming.  Making these platforms safer for young people should be the top goal of executives at these companies above all other considerations.  If a skate park or an arcade or a coffee bar existed where every week kids had a one in eight chance of receiving unwanted sexual advances, that place would be shut down.  Social media companies should face the same threat.

Office personnel have no answer for “The Deflector”

Employees of Graphplex Corp. are running out of options when it comes to dealing with a shifty employee who stumbled into their mix some time ago.  Known to office staff as The Deflector for his ability to deflect any projects or tasks thrown his direction, management and staff find themselves struggling for answers of what to do about the scourge in their midst.  Emails that land in his inbox immediately get bounced to another.  Questions brought to his attention are deftly waved off in another direction.  Tasks planted on The Deflector’s desk are quickly and stealthily transplanted onto another.  Even efforts to develop a Deflector detector to keep oneself from falling prey to The Deflector have thus far proven unsuccessful.  Nearly all Graphplex employees have at one time or another discovered an unexpected document on their desk or had a surprise phone call thrust upon them courtesy of The Deflector.  All this while The Deflector reclines in his office chair, scrolling casually through his mobile device and posting to social media.  

Of course, the thing everyone knows but cannot talk about is where The Deflector derives his extraordinary powers of deflection.  Born and raised the dull and dim witted son of a politically connected family, he was placed in the midst of this group of unsuspecting office workers due to his parent’s connections to upper management and their desire to be rid of the dependent pest.  Unable to productively contribute in even the most superficial and half-assed manner, it was then that he quickly and expertly honed his powers of deflection.  The Deflector can spend hours viewing videos of game shows or shopping for ugly sweaters on Amazon.  Some have even taken to cozying up to The Deflector in the hope that participating in his devilish schemes is the only way to avoid falling victim to them.

Even as the author rushes to put the finishing touches on this anonymous memo, The Deflector is peppering his inbox with forwarded emails.  A vacation would be nice, but a week away from work would merely guarantee The Deflector a free and unguarded workspace in which to deposit his manifold deflections.

Massive interstellar doobie passing through solar system continues to puzzle scientists

Scientists have confirmed that an object first identified in 2017 passing through our solar system is a massive, deep space doobie hailing from a distant galaxy.  Calling the object Oumuamua, astronomers have traced its origins to the Sativa star system located 35 light years away in the obscure Crystal Skull Galaxy.

Little is known about this hidden galaxy except observers in 2008 were able to identify a handful of habitable planets, and that deep radio bursts originating from that location were broadcasting Hawkwind’s Space Is Deep off their 1973 live album Space Ritual.  This left scientists puzzled as to why a recording by an earthbound rock band would be disturbing the neighbors in a far flung galaxy.

“We don’t consider our music to be bound by this earth at all.  It is totally unsurprising that our music is rocking outer space,” said Hawkwind founder Dave Brock in a recent interview.        

The object is believed to be a minimum of 100 meters long and 35 meters thick, making it three times longer than the largest known terrestrial doobie.  Unable to identify its means of propulsion, scientists have noticed that its tip usually glows more brightly when it accelerates, and that it emits a long swirling plume of exhaust.     

Efforts to communicate with the object have produced modest results.  Revealing a lack of familiarity with earth measurements of space and time, a communication from the space joint claimed it had been travelling for over 10,000 Dopesmokers, presumably referring to the length of time it takes to listen to legendary stoner rock band Sleep’s 1998 classic, Dopesmoker, which clocks in at a little over an hour long.

Astronomers agree more study is warranted.  As for Brock, “Just imagine the wicked cosmic jam I could produce if I got a hit off that spliff.”

Foul brew

On a recent morning, I decided to grab a cup of dark roast coffee at a Starbucks I often stop at on my way to work.  A great group of young people work there and they nearly always serve up a fine brew with kindness and courtesy.  On this particular morning, however, things started going south shortly after I pulled up to the drive-through window.  I gave the young man $2.85 for my $2.84 order, and he handed me the cup of coffee.  Almost immediately, the 85 cents in coins seemed to confuse the young gentleman.  Granted, I had fished around in my change drawer to come up with a quarter, five dimes and two nickels, and the combination of coins seemed to present quite a challenge to his powers of arithmetic.  Eventually, he had to pull out a calculator to finish the job.  In the meantime, I’m sitting there feeling like the lord of all tightwads while waiting for my penny in change, but I didn’t want to just drive off because sometimes I screw up and hand over the wrong amount.  As I waited, however, a foul odor that can only be described as the smell of decomposition began to fill the inside of my car.  Penny in hand, I began to pull away as the odor of dead, decaying animal carcass grew in power and potency.  Thinking perhaps some varmint had crawled up under the hood and died, and the vent was blowing the smell into the cab, I quickly turned off the fan.  But this did nothing to stifle the inescapable smell of death that now surrounded me.  Then my attention turned to the cup of coffee.  I picked it up and took a sniff.  The horror!  From what ancient crypt did this foul brew flow?  Quickly, I weighed my options.  There was no way I was going to drink this roadkill roast that currently sat in my cup holder.  But I couldn’t survive a morning of work without a cup of joe.  Fortunately, another coffee shop lay up ahead and I swerved into their lot.  After pouring the java of death into a sewer grate, I went inside and explained my predicament to the young ladies behind the counter.  They set me up with a fresh cup of brew for which I tipped them generously.  I held the steaming cup to my nose and took a big whiff.  Ahh, it smelled like charred wood and fresh dirt, just the way I like it.

People are talking about all the times they were “quiet baked” at work and the internet is buzzed

Quiet quitting, quiet firing, quiet hiring, it seems you can’t pick up the internet these days without reading about how the workplace is being transformed in very subtle ways by Millenials and Gen Z.  

Sensing a change in attitudes about how we think and talk about work, Gen Xers are also beginning to unburden themselves regarding the unspoken practices they’ve brought to their working routine.  

“I’ve been ‘quiet baked’ at work for decades,” said Roger Ambrose, a line cook at a very upscale Chicago eatery.  “I used to wait until my shift was over to fire up a bowl, but eventually I just said, ‘fuck that.’  I need to establish a more healthy work/life balance.” 

So Roger started getting baked before work, at break and sometimes even in the restroom.  But rather than ask his supervisor for permission, Roger took it upon himself to quietly carve out a little time for himself to attend to his mental health. 

“Well, the truth is, my boss was getting super stoned as well.  I mean, he was so bloodshot and pie-eyed, I just figured he’d never notice if I snuck a toke or two,” Roger said.

“‘Quiet baking’ is a rejection of extreme ‘hustle culture,’” said leadership expert and Tik Tok guru Emily Armstrong.  “These workers are turning their back on the notion that if they go above and beyond their regular duties, then they will be rewarded with raises, bonuses and promotions.”     

“That sounds about right,” said Roger.  “Often I make sure I get a little ‘quiet compensation.’  As long as I get the waitstaff ‘quiet baked,’ they don’t notice if a few bucks go silently missing from the tip jar.”

Ryder Cup and the spirit of Seve

After making things interesting for a few hours during Sunday’s singles matches, the United States Ryder Cup team once again experienced defeat at the hands of their European counterparts.  Unlike previous years, you can’t say that “on paper” the Americans had a clear advantage over the Euros.  Rocking a top three power trio of Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy and Viktor Hovland, the Euros posed a massively formidable challenge on their home soil.  Commentators pointed to match ups and course set up as tipping the playing field slightly in the European direction, but Golf Channel commentator and former Ryder Cup captain, Paul McGinley, kept returning to one strategy that he felt really made the difference.  Time and again McGinley pointed to engaging the heart as the most important strategy for eliciting the finest play out of the European squad.  And the primary method of engaging the heart was through invoking the spirit of Seve.  

On opening day, Seve’s presence was loudly proclaimed when fans unfurled a colossal Seve banner that covered an entire section of bleachers next to the first tee.  On Golf Channel, McGinley revealed to his fellow commentators that one of Seve’s old Ryder Cup jerseys hung in the Euro locker room to further inspire and engage the hearts of the players.  If these invocations of the spirit of Seve were not enough, McGinley revealed that on the reverse side of the European logo adorning the left breast of the player’s shirts was an image of the great golfing Spaniard.  The image of Seve literally covered the player’s hearts, as if his spirit was speaking directly to their hearts.  When McGinley spoke of the significance of engaging the hearts of the player’s, he was not just paying lip service.  For some, all of this may have seemed a bit melodramatic, over the top, or even a bit loony.

Yet no one could argue that the European team didn’t come out on fire.  Inspired by the spirit of Seve, they were performing signs and wonders.  They were chipping in and holing long putt after long putt.  At times, they were literally chuckling and shaking their heads in disbelief at how well they and their teammates were playing.  This is not to say that the disembodied presence of Seve Ballesteros hovered over the golfers manipulating them into great play like they were golfing marionettes.  However, whether you call it group mind or collective consciousness or “being on the same page,” the European team designed, assembled and harnessed a spirit of greatness and excellence, symbolized by Seve, that became manifest in their exceptional play.  At times, it all seemed shockingly pagan. 

When the match ended and the Euros were victorious, most of the players pointed to playing for their teammates, not wishing to let them down.  Playing for their country, for Europe, for past European champions, for the tradition of the Ryder Cup, all of it came to be symbolized in the spirit of Seve and they felt it in their souls.  They played not for individual glory but for completely selfless reasons, for a spirit that brought out their best and allowed them to achieve something that none of them could have attained acting individually. 

It is not unusual for people to talk about spirit when they talk about sport.  They talk about team spirit, or the spirit of the game.  Outside of sports, though, what are we all playing for?  In this era of deconstruction and dismantling, are the spirits that animate our lives ones of cooperation, tradition, striving for a higher purpose and bringing out the best in one another?

Looking at the thing you assume to be there

Scrolling through some old notes, I stumbled across one that really stuck out to me.  A man, who is not a guru and whose name I wish I’d written down, was explaining how we perceive and engage with our surroundings and with one another.  He was saying we create in our minds sufficiently useful low representations of the world.  The thing you see in front of you, or the person with whom you are speaking, is almost always a representation that is a consequence of your memory.  Instead of looking at the thing itself, you look at the thing you assume to be there.  The thing you see in front of you is almost always much richer than your apprehension of it.  There’s always more there than meets the eye, and God only knows how much more there is.

The preceding is my insufficient representation of the thing he actually said.  The point he was making goes much deeper, but my memory seems only capable of apprehending this much.  On one level, what he is saying is obviously true.  We are constantly bombarded by stimuli.  We can’t take the time to fully appreciate each thing, each moment we experience.  We rely on our memory to apprehend and put the moment in context, and then we move on to the next.  But, of course, in doing so, we could be skipping past so much.  

The thing you see in front of you is almost always much richer than your apprehension of it.  Sometimes, as we’re stuffing mundane moments into sufficiently useful low representation boxes, a glimpse of the richness slips through.  Here’s another note I made:  Sometimes, the thing you thought you were conversing with is not the thing you thought, and that manifests itself in error, and that’s where you get the transcendent.       

Clearly, my notes were insufficiently useful to bring that last point into clarity.  But I guess what he was saying is that sometimes, either purposely or by chance, we experience the depth of a thing, or something novel about it breaks our cartoonish memory of the thing, and the resulting experience is transcendent. 

I feel like I didn’t nail down that last part.  But one thing that seems clear is that if we stopped relying so heavily on our memory of things to make sense of the world, and started letting the richness emerge, it would literally feel like a transcendent experience.  How often do we put people and experiences in boxes and write them off as purely one dimensional representations that we’ve encountered many times before?  Not to mention, what are we doing to ourselves when we look at the thing we assume to be there instead of trying to apprehend it more fully?  There’s always more than meets the eye, and God only knows how much more there is.

Shot callin’ Pickleballin’

Pickleball has found itself in something of a pickle.  Its two biggest professional leagues have declared all-out war on one another, leaving fans wondering if the sport can survive this division within its ranks.  Players are being forced to take sides and millions of dollars are at stake.  Not since the East Coast-West Coast hip hop feud of the 90’s has a rivalry loomed so large in the public consciousness.   

“I’m not saying this to be conceited, but usually when I call someone in pickleball they call me back,” Connor Pardoe, one of Pickleball’s biggest ballers, told Yahoo Sports.  He’s the founder of the Professional Pickleballers Association.  The gentleman not returning his calls would be Major League Pickleballs owner and billionaire Steve Kuhn.

We had a truce, but you was only stallin’

Since last November, an uneasy truce has reigned in the world of professional pickleball with players allowed to compete in both leagues.  All that ended when Kuhn started recruiting pickleball’s top talent and offering million dollar contracts to the game’s biggest stars, household names like Tyson McGuffin.

It’s all a game until the bodies start fallin’

Both sides agree, a pickleball war isn’t good for anybody.  But when so much money and power is on the line, the temptation to assert who has the biggest pickle gets in the way of peace and prosperity for all.  Pardoe still holds onto hope, “We gave clarity to TV networks. We gave clarity to sponsors. We were able to put the Wild Wild West to bed. We had a tour where the best players played.…If I could bring that back, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

Media clairvoyants intuit hidden meaning in viral country hit

Unbeknownst to most pop culture consumers, members of the elite popular media are in possession of exceptional powers of discernment that permit them to identify a particular pop culture phenomenon and expose the often hidden or obscured meaning behind the seemingly straightforward message presented.  

That’s how the press was able to alert everyone that the low-budget indie movie Sound of Freedom was actually a QAnon conspiracy flick that failed to depict a strictly factual and dispassionate account of the problem of child trafficking in favor of a more dramatic and sensational rendering of the subject.  Because why would a Hollywood movie take such liberties?

Then these remarkably observant media scribes succeeded in identifying an obscure country song that had slipped under their radar for several months and exposed it as a dog whistling call to violence.  

While all this was happening, most of us probably didn’t realize how this song and this movie were dividing our country.  If not for the heads up, fast action of the elite media, these pop culture hits had the potential to literally tear our nation apart.  

Now along comes the latest viral sensation that is not only sweeping the nation, but also pitting neighbor against neighbor.  “Rich Men North of Richmond: The hit song that has divided the US” a BBC headline proclaims.  Despite sensing a palpable tension in the air almost everywhere I go, I’ve been unable to put my finger on the source of unease that seems to be gripping the nation these days, that is until this informative article enlightened me.  Sometimes it takes an astute observer of American culture from across the pond, like journalist Caryn James, to alert someone to what’s going on in their own backyard. 

Although I’d heard the Oliver Anthony song a few times and seen the video on YouTube, I was unaware of the hidden meanings, the imperceptible dog whistles and the mysterious circumstances surrounding the song’s creation.  I just thought the country hit was the product of a poor, rural, working-man, pouring his heart out about his economic struggles and laying the blame for his troubles at the feet of the rich and politically powerful.  

Once again, I’ve been royally duped.  As Eric Levitz of New York Magazine points out, the song conceals some subtle racism that can’t be recognized unless you have ears to hear.  The line “people like me and people like you” to the untrained ear would undoubtedly refer to folks who work for “bullshit pay,” like Oliver Anthony himself.  The overworked and underpaid clearly seem to be who the song is for and about.  Not so, says Eric Levitz, there is something far more sinister at play here.  Levitz writes, “The sphere of the virtuous that includes Anthony and his target listener might not be racially defined…. But it is not unreasonable to wonder whether a color line divides those who deserve more to eat from those who deserve less, at least in the song’s account.”  

Again, I’m made painfully aware of my shortcomings as a music listener and consumer of popular culture.  Rather than give the song a direct and reasonable interpretation, I should instead engage in some “not unreasonable” speculation about what the songwriter actually means, despite the songwriter’s failure to provide any reference that would push the listener toward a “not unreasonable” conclusion.  Therein lies the power of the elite media scribe.  They possess remarkable abilities to intuit meaning where it has been so thoroughly obscured as to render it invisible to mere mortals like me.

Staying with “not unreasonable” interpretations for a moment, take another clairvoyant like Matthew Cantor of The Guardian.  He points out that Rich Men North of Richmond punches down because of one strange line that seems to call out welfare recipients.  Media professionals like Cantor always know which direction the blows are flying.  Nevermind the song title and the clear references to the rich and politically powerful, for media elites like Cantor, the song is an anthem to beating up on 300 pound welfare recipients.  

Additionally, Cantor, as well as a number of other elite journalists, seem to have a problem with Oliver Anthony “punching down” on mega-rich, now deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.  “Still, a reference to politicians ‘looking out for minors on an island somewhere’ – apparently a reference to Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to elite figures – has also prompted speculation that Anthony could be nodding to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory positing that Democrats and Hollywood stars are drinking the blood of children,” Cantor writes.  

Inside each of these media clairvoyants, a QAnon alarm goes off everytime the subject of child trafficking, or the name of a known child trafficker is invoked.  Legions of right-wing bobble heads nodding to QAnon suddenly appear in their imaginations.  “‘Rich Men’ also nods to conspiracy theories and grievances that are deeply rooted in far-right circles. (QAnon believers often cite Epstein as proof that a global cabal of elites has been trafficking children.)”  The preceding nod is brought to you by Anne Branigin of the Washington Post.  

Clearly, my critical thinking skills are desperately in need of recalibration.  What I would interpret as a fairly straightforward populist protest song is actually a racist, QAnon conspiracy drenched beat down of the poor.  Presently, I’m not even going to touch on the astro turf conspiracy posited by these media elites that claims Oliver Anthony is not organically grown, but rather an artificial construct, the creation of right wing media figures like Matt Walsh or Ben Shapiro or some other mustache twirling conservative working behind the scenes.