expert

2019 in Review – 22 Snapshots and an Impeachment

~ Randy Blazak ~ Leave a comment

December 31, 2019

I guess I’ve been a crummy blogger this year. When Cozy was a baby, I could squeeze out a couple of blogposts a week on everything from housework to feminist cowboy movies. In 2019, I only managed 22 posts. To be fair, I actually taught full-time the entire year. It felt good to be back at work. My wonderful students got to be the recipients of my random thoughts about the state of the world. And now that Cozy is a kindergartener, typing up cohesive essays is more of a luxury. Plus, I’ve spent much of my spare time chasing squirrels out of our attic.

I was excited that my writing still had an audience even though every single post wasn’t about Trump’s racism. My tribute to my late friend (and Atlanta punk icon) David Dickens had the most reads (1,900). My piece on the Christchurch killings was reprinted in The Peace Chronicle, which was a great privilege.

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2018 was a year of global travel. For 2019, I managed to stay mostly on the West Coast, with a few weeks in Mexico to give a couple of lectures in my favorite anthropology field school. I still managed plenty of world media appearances (especially CNN International), but my favorite media interview was when a rare tornado came right down our street. Under my name, instead of usual “HATE CRIME EXPERT” it said, “LIVES NEAR DOWNED TREE.” Much more exciting than an appearance in Turkish TV (which I also did in 2019).

Of course the driving theme of the year was growing blackhole being created by our idiot president, culminating in his impeachment on December 18. By that point I had written so many posts about his inevitable impeachment that the actual thing was anticlimactic and I didn’t even bother to comment on it. (I do wonder what will happen to all the ITMFA t-shirts that are so common here in Portland.) I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say as the divide widens even further in 2020, with Trump loyalists promising civil war if they don’t get their way. It’s like the country is being taken over by hordes of fascist babies.

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For me, the focus of 2019 was on my family. Working steadily gave me a better foundation to be grounded in the real and not the endless yammering on social media. My classes Portland Community College and my CLE trainings for attorneys gave me the professional connections I craved and I got to work on a few murder cases that let me to put my skills to work in very important arenas. This allowed me to not worry too much about financial issues, and focus on being present for Andrea and Cozy. Maybe the best moment was taking Cozy on a surprise trip to Disney in LA that included a stop at their animation studios where a friend showed her the work he was completing on Frozen 2. There was also a trip to Las Vegas to see The Beatles’ LOVE, twice! Family times was its own reward.

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The coming year will have plenty challenges. I imagine I will be commenting directly on the rise of anti-Semitic violence and the Trump cult’s threats to peace and equality. But my personal agenda will be focused on making good educational choices for my daughter, showing my wife how much I cherish her, and finally getting the squirrels out of the attic.

2019 WTW Posts

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“Thanks, punk!” (For David Dickens) (January 10, 2019)

Watching fragile men freak out over a Gillette ad (January 17, 2019)

Raising Honest Children in the Age of Trump (January 25, 2019)

A silly love song for my wife (February 14, 2019)

The Wisdom of Double Nickels: On Turning 55(February 22, 2019)

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On not dying youngish(March 5, 2019)

He Killed My Child: Meditations on Christchurch and the Sociopathy of White Supremacy (March 19, 2019)

I have found what I was looking for, Bono.(April 14, 2019)

Globalization and Nationalism: Get Ready for More Fascist Violence(April 28, 2018)

This War on Women and a Strategy to Defend Choice (May 20, 2019)

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Just Open the Damn Border (June 18, 2019)

Female Role Models For My Daughter (and all those boys) (July 7, 2019)

How Do You Solve a Racist Problem like Donald? (July 17, 2019)

Lita was one cool cat.(July 26, 2019)

Your loved one was just killed by an angry white man with a gun. OK?(August 4, 2019)

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Matterhorn not withstanding, we have a 5-year old (August 29, 2019)

Your biography is history: Taking in the Trump impeachment (October 3, 2019)

White People: If you aren’t actively anti-racism, you are pro-racism (October 23, 2019)

I was 5 once, too!(November 27, 2019)

Reelin’ in the Tens: What was this decade about anyway? (December 29, 2019)

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 Dad’s Top Discs of 2019 (December 30, 2019)

2019 in Review – 22 Snapshots and an Impeachment (December 31, 2019)

 

Cozy’s dad is on TV again.

~ Randy Blazak ~ 6 Comments

December 18, 2014

I’m getting good at doing things with a baby on my man-hip. I’m not sure if peeing should be one of them. I am definitely not an expert in child rearing. I have Facebook for that.

When Andrea was pregnant, I felt like I was the first person to ever have this idea, reproducing. Having a kid. Apparently, women have been having babies for decades. Nearly 6000 years, according to some Christians. That’s a long time! The point is that, as it turns out, I have a bunch of friends in Portland and on-line that are experts.

I do hold some expertise on some topics. As a criminologist and sociologist with a PhD, there is a whole range of topics I can offer perspective on. I was live on KATU this morning talking about the Kim Jong Un/Seth Rogan Sony international crisis. I talked to KGW on the subject yesterday. Live interviews are always more fun. I got to say, “We spend trillions on the war on terrorism and with just one vague threat, America folds like a cardtable after a poker game” on live TV. I practiced that line so I wouldn’t say that America folded like a poker game, which half-way makes sense but requires a working knowledge of poker.

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Usually, I’m the “hate crime” guy. I’ve done a million interviews on the subject, from 60 Minutes to Good Morning America. I’ve been on shows from Gangland to (my favorite) The Sally Jesse Raphael Show (Hey, it was a free trip to NYC. And yes, I was hung over on the show.). My mom Googled me once and called me in horror finding all the hits that were connected to hate groups. “Those people really hate you,” she said. Believe me, I know.

If you’ve got a mass murder, serial killer, gang activity, terrorist bombing, police or school shooting, I’m your man. You can call me the professor of mayhem. When the news is bad and you need two more minutes to fill your newscast, call me. You know I’m good for a soundbite that will link today’s tragedy to the “big picture.” I know the research and the academic language but let me try to frame it so Joe the Plumber, who probably lives in the right-wing of society, can process it.

Now, let me say, I say “no” to lots of interviews. Even more now that I’m “with child.” I learned my lesson after a local news station asked me about a dead cat on a railroad track and the chyron below my talking head said, “Randy Blazak, Voodoo Expert.” There are lots of people at Portland State who are experts on topics I can only Google, so I often say, “Call Professor So and So in the Psychology Department. She knows more about this than me.”

[FULL DISCLOSURE: Driving into KATU at 5:30 this morning, they were discussing the Sony hack on NPR and compared it to the US hack of Iranian nuclear power plants in 2010. When I got to the green room, I Wiki’ed Stuxnet and worked it into my interview a few minutes later, like I had a big fucking brain. Expert!]

Society has an over-reliance on experts who supposedly know something more than the common schmo. I do read the research and obsess about data and so I might have some insight on something. But, personally, what I am trying to do is offer a critical perspective of power and institutions that has disappeared from the mainstream media. I can put a tie on and get a few lines in about institutional racism and maybe Joe the Plumber will think, “Yeah, that makes sense.”

Where I try to do this the most is around discussions of gender. Viewers do not expect a radical feminist perspective to be coming from a white guy in a corduroy jacket. I can use the authority of my privilege like a Trojan Horse to at least make allusions to patriarchy and destructive forms of masculinity.

After one horrific school shooting, I was live on KPTV. I turned to the camera and channelled my friend, Jackson Katz, and said, “I want all the viewers watching this to imagine that all these school shootings had been done by girls instead of boys. Don’t you think every newscast in the nation would be talking about gender right now?” There was a lot of positive response from female viewers. (One male commenter called me a “college pussy.”)

I hope this expertise is of some value to my daughter. Not that her dad is on TV all the time, but that he has something to say about power. There is value in speaking truth to power, even if you are not an “expert.” And it should never be a one-sided conversation. That would be me if I was a preacher.

Talk Box: Sociology Professor Randy Blazak on Ferguson