Two great minds melded the other night in a discussion of all that ails our nation in general and the Black Lives Matter protests in particular. In the course of their chat, I believe it was the social commentator and reknowed deep-thinker Kevin Bacon who told late night host Jimmy Fallon that it was time for us old white guys to shut up and listen.
So, as I check both the box labeled “old” and the second as “white,” I did as told and largely “shut up.” I like to think of myself as being obedient. I haven’t visited this space in a while and figured I’d best re-visit my little corner of the inter-webs soon, lest the station rent it out to others–times are hard, y’know.
Our summer of discontent grinds on unabated with COVID 19 showing no sign of relenting. We’re approaching the four-month anniverary of the start of Safer At Home in Wisconsin which saw cases leveling off before the Supreme Court intervened. Seems a lot of us were champing at the bit to get a haircut and a tap beer. While the Badger State isn’t experiencing the case spikes other states are enduring, our numbers are up in a whole bunch of counties. Coronavirus isn’t just a thing in Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay anymore.
This was to have been the week our city would’ve been on display for all the world to see as we were to host the 2020 Democratic National Convention. Now, instead of the promised 50,000 folks sampling our wares, filling our hotels, AirBnB’ing our homes, and snagging every restaurant table in sight, these next few days will be like, well, all of the others before it since mid-March: downtown streets left to construction crews tearing up virutally every intersection as sidewalks and businesses remain eerily quiet. We’re told to expect, what, maybe a thousand visitors when the DNC stages a largely virtual event from the friendly confines of the Wisconsin Center District next month.
So much else has gone by the wayside since COVID came along: Summerfest and its associated ethnic celebrations, church festivals, concerts in general, fun in particular. The folks running the Ryder cup this past week did what everyone expected and joined the rest of right-thinking civilization in deciding this is no time to be gathering en masse, putting off the 2020 tournament at Whistling Straits until next year, the operative words here being “putting off.” Not cancelling and moving on, put simply delaying while hoping for better days in 2021.
The tragedy of the DNC having to morph from a once-every-four-years bachannal into a gathering that will compariatively fit into a phone booth (kids, ask your parents to tell you what a phone booth was) is that this is no postponement: it’s a lost opportunity. Don’t let partisan blinders skew your vision here either–red or blue, conventions are green. They bring in kazillions of dollars our city could’ve used, not to mention the afterglow. A first-ever political convention would’ve opened us up to the world–certainly, our own nation–as a destination to do business. The aformenetioned Wisconsin District center is on the cusp of the desperately needed expansion so many pined for since its convention center first opened, the prevailing beef about the venue being that it wasn’t big enough from day one.
That’s gone.
Sure, we may get another sniff in four years when both parties again are seeking homes. Gary Witt of the Pabst Theater Group famously suggested blowing off the 2020 event altogether and urged Democrats to give us a permission right now to host in ’24. That’s not how things work. While next month’s event is about as close to “canceled” as you can get with Milwaukee serving as the host of what will be perhaps the biggest ZOOM meeting ever, there are no guarantees when it comes to politics and Dems aren’t about to change that metric by handing us the next one. Such events are tools and are used as needed. We got 2020 because Dems in general and 2016 stand-bearer Hillary Clinton in particular thought Wisconsin was a lock.
Wrong.
What happens in November goes a long way in deciding where party head Tom Perez and other Democratic strategists draw the “X” for the next convention. The good news: we’ve established ourselves as contenders, as a region more than capable of certainly being considered and then even chosen to pull off the task. We’ll never know how a full-blown 2020 Milwaukee event would’ve come off but for now, we’ve done nothing to blow our chances for a next time, be it blue or red–what’s to keep Republicans from coming here four years hence if we remain purple?
All that is at least four years away, if not longer, which is what sets the DNC apart. Sure, it’s still gonna happen–the history books will say Milwaukee hosted the party’s convention this summer, but it’ll always have a mental asterisk, surely in the minds of locals who know what was promised, what was actually delivered, and all that was truly lost. Summerfest and its associated summertime events will be back, as will be State Fair and all else that had to be scuttled in 2020. Sheboygan County gets a Ryder Cup 2021 mulligan.
Bigger concerns linger: a pandemic that shows no sign of relenting, at least not in the U-S. Hot spots rage as we still can’t come together as a nation to agree on wearing masks, much less as to whether or not COVID 19 is real. The coronavirus battle was compared early on to a war that we needed to battle as if it were a challenge to life as we know it. How can we fight when we can’t agree on the enemy? School districts struggle to deal with fall classes that are a mere six weeks away from starting. Colleges do same. Gleeming downtown Milwaukee office towers will, in some cases, remain empty until at least the first of the year. Millions are unemployed, and too many are still waiting for desperately needed support checks. Busineses teeter on the brink as we learn that badly needed federal support seems to have gone not to the neediest but instead to the best connected.
Sports leagues hope to rekindle schedules either interrupted or delayed, in part to give us a sorely-neeed diversion but, let’s face it, to earn back some of the scads of money lost because of COVID. No one would like to see baseball, football and basketball again more than yours truly, but deep down, this feels like a fool’s errand, one that’s going to be rife with positive tests, canceled games, breaks, and perhaps even canceled seasons. The only game in town right now is the one called “waiting”, to see if schedules will get off the ground and play out to their completion. First, they have to make it through Spring Training 2.0 or whatever training awaits, be it at Lambeau or the Orlando “bubble” or Miller Park where the Brewers warm up for a season that is to play out before acres of empty seats. Is that what fans truly want? Ratings will ultimately decide, me thinks. Hard to fall in love with something that could be taken from us at any moment, but that’s just me.
Downtown Milwaukee won’t be awash in delegates, media types, and political hangers-on this week. Private parties and celebrity sightings will be virtually non-existent. Construction barrels and barricades will far outnumber the reporters, bloggers, and political talking heads. As is the case with so much of this colossal belly-flop of a year this has been, we’re left to wonder what might’ve been. That’s truly depressing, which is why we can’t live there. It’s time to ponder what the new normal will look like, after realizing there won’t be giant switch flipped that brings us back to January again. We have to accept the fact we may not ever return to those days in their entirerity. We’ll have to make accomdations, accept new rules and be ready to adapt. that includes being told “no,” as in no big gatherings, no sitting elbow-to-elbow at the corner tap and “no” as in “no shoes, no shirt, no mask, no service.”
COVID 19 already showed us where the cracks are in our society. Are we up to the task of fixing them? Bigger minds than mine have some great ideas. This old white guy is gonna keep taking a page from the Book of Bacon, believing that it’s time for us old white guys to keep shutting up while doing more listening.
Stay safe.
"lose" - Google News
July 12, 2020 at 11:54PM
https://ift.tt/2OgqNaK
Gene’s Blog: Use It Or Lose It - WTMJ
"lose" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3fa3ADu https://ift.tt/2VWImBB
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Gene’s Blog: Use It Or Lose It - WTMJ"
Post a Comment