Mark Rauterkus gets endorsement

: Source: Wednesday, March 1, 2006 from msmonongahela 
==Mark Rauterkus for City Council ==
"It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper." Jerry Seinfeld
March 1, 2006
Can a great father and husband make a great city councilperson, too? 
If you check out rauterkus.com, you'll read the pleas to not view him as "unemployed." Oh, please, take that word out of your vocabulary! Promote yourself as a kind of a modern-day Benjamin Franklin. Some of the greatest historical figures never had what you'd call a real job anyway. (Most of them were men, too, but that's another post which may rival in long-windedness Whitman's Leaves of Grass ... ) And I never considered being a politician in the category of any of the connotations of real job, anyway. So you're actually over-qualified for the position. And I am starting to like to hairdo more, really I am. Besides, I know someone with a hairdo that's a lot worse than yours, and he's on TV every day.
As the Moody Blues sang, "Red is grey, and yellow white. But we decide which is right. And which is an illusion?" Which totally brings me back to Ben -- while the orchestra-infused pop group (OK -- some referred to them as rock-and-roll, but I neither rocked nor rolled to any of their songs, and if you did, please explain) was pondering the outer (and possibly marijuana and other psychedelic-induced) fringes of existential philosophy and lamenting the apparent fact that they'd sent letters that perhaps they shouldn't have, Electric Ben loved writing letters, and better still, loved sending them. His piece d'resistance was having them published. But the newspaper biz was a pretty open market back in those days, anyway, not like it is today. (See: The Chopping Block, Pittsburgh City Paper )
In fact, Ben wrote those letters under several aliases, including my favorite, Silence Dogood, who Franklin invented at the tender age of 16. She was conceived as the widow of a country minister, and naturally this meant an ardent "Enemy to Vice, and a Friend to Vertue." According to the web site The Electric Ben Franklin, she loved the clergy (in what ways we -- or I -- may not want to imagine) and good men (again, good how?) but was the "mortal Enemy to arbitrary government and Unlimited Power." She was also a bit of a yenta who would "observe and reprove the Faults of others." Sounds like Silence had some issues a therapist would love to tackle (that would be listed under "limited-thinking patterns," particularly "shoulds." Meaning that Silence Dogood had a list of ironclad rules about how people should behave and people who broke those rules angered her.)
Now, back to the knights in white satin. How impractical can you get? Was it for dramatic effect? I mean, afterall, knights were, by nature, defenders of evil, and any defender of evil worth anything surely had to shed a lot of blood, and what could be more Akira Kurosawa than red blood splattered on white satin? According to my (by choice) limited research on the subject, knights usually wore more practical things, like hundreds of pounds of shining armour. And if you're to believe what you see on the latest Renaissance and Midieval wear runways, a knight seemed more apt to wear a blue suede tunic. I'm sorry to report that at least on the site mentioned previously, the "White Knight Midieval Wedding Tunic" for the groom has been discontinued.
As an advocate for civic-oriented youth, I can tell you what most impressed me about Mark and his lovely wife Catherine are the way they are raising their children on the South Side of Pittsburgh. Jerry Seinfeld once joked that children are our replacements. But we must think, who are they replacing, e.g., who are we?
The stoic suburbs depress me, the lack of pulse I feel in the people who live there, and the detachment from what's going on in the world which I see encapsulated into an occasional, if not forced, teary-eyed response to a television commercial asking you to help feed the children. (I'll just defer to Camus on this one.) Is life in the city just too hardscrabble to keep your kids and your Keds clean? 
This is from Rauterkus.com: 
"For few, voting is the ultimate hinge for civilization's future. I count myself in this minority. I lean to Green, Libertarian, Georgist, and principles of vigilant dissent, while being Unitarian Universalist and a Free Market Republican. 
The Commons are important. The concept of the commons includes technology, economy, society. Sports, politics, parenting, religion, learning and communication are more universal pursuits. These are the domains of a multi-dimensional generalist. An affinity label, spiritual humanist."
And just how many people are going to dig that? An unfortunate few, since first, these concepts are strange to most, and secondly, with their very mention, Rauterkus taps into the heart of what's sorely lacking in America -- and the word religion will scare some, but put in its context, its evident he's not promoting one in particular, but seems to me to include it as a necessary to the path to spiritual humanity. He neither proselytizes nor judges; his statements possess simple, intrinsic value.
And what the hell does any of this have to do with politics?
Declaration of Independence
And damn wouldn't you know it, Ben Franklin got his grubby little paws on that document, too. 
I think Mark Rauterkus is the kind of thinking, progressive person that Pittsburgh City Council needs. 
posted by msmonongahela @ 5:58 AM  
Category:endorsements