Calista's Ignominy, Part 2

Among all the stories in Calista's latest effort, Ignominy, "Doomed to Repeat It" is the one in which she most clearly wears her heart on her sleeve. "Doomed" tells the story of Rafael ("Raff") Stafford, a young black man who became politically active on campus as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. Determined to continue fighting for change, Stafford makes a long-shot run for governor of Missouri, campaigning on a promise to reform law enforcement and the justice system.

At first things go Stafford's way. A veteran Democratic politician, seemingly a shoo-in for the nomination, decides not to run due to a family health issue, and he unexpectedly endorses Stafford. Capitalizing on the endorsement, and finding an unexpected joy in (and talent for) campaigning, Stafford wins a narrow victory in the primary and prepares for the general election. His opponent, Mark Ligett, is a fellow alumnus of the University of Missouri, a smarmy white classics major who spent his college years as a right-wing provocateur, inviting controversial speakers to the campus and then capitalizing on any impropriety in the resulting protests.

Early in the race, Ligett goes on Fox News and claims that under Stafford's leadership the black students on campus had tried to "subjugate" the Mizzou football team, an explosive charge in Missouri. Stafford responds angrily, arguing that Ligett's attack is a preposterous racial provocation. The fact of the matter is that Stafford had requested that the football team enter the practice field through a pathway on the opposite side of the field from an area where BLM activists gathered during a campus protest. Stafford's request was simply meant to keep the activists from getting in the players' way and vice versa, and he can't imagine why it would be considered "subjugation."

But by this point Stafford's luck has run out. The path that he had suggested for the football team took it beneath an ornate gateway—literally, the team was being asked to walk sub jugum, "under the yoke" (that is, beneath the horizontal cross-piece of the gateway). "Subjugate," far from being a racial provocation, was in fact a refined, erudite, and completely true way to describe Stafford's proposal. Stafford faces near-universal condemnation for his ignorance of history and his haste to play the race card.

Stafford soon lags Ligett by double digits in the polls, and his campaign sheds staff as donations dry up. Stafford crisscrosses the state with a few loyal volunteers, trying to convince voters that he is not the caricature the media has portrayed him as, but as election day approaches it seems like an impossible task.

Once again, though, fortune smiles on Stafford. With just a week to go until the election, Ligett goes on Sean Hannity's show to crow about his inevitable victory. Hannity asks him what he plans to do in office, and Ligett says that he wants to fight back against all the policies that have been put in place by "Obama, Schumer, Pelosi, etc." Hannity, stunned, asks Ligett to rephrase his point. Ligett repeats himself using essentially the same words, and Hannity buries his face in his hands.

Then, his voice tinged with regret and breaking at times, Hannity explains that while et cetera and et alia both mean "and others," et cetera means "and other things," while et alia is the expression used to mean "and other people." Ligett has just referred to three politicians—a black man, a woman, and a Jew—as things rather than people. Ligett tries to plead ignorance, but Hannity, who spent hours talking up Ligett's knowledge of the classics during "SubjuGate," won't hear it. He kicks Ligett off of his program and apologizes to the audience for what they have just seen.

The next morning, Rush Limbaugh coins the nickname "Ligett the bigot," an epithet that will follow Ligett for the rest of the campaign. Republican candidates across the country disavow Ligett in an attempt to contain the damage. For the most part they succeed, but Stafford wins in a landslide that brings with it majorities in both the Missouri House of Representatives and the Missouri Senate. By this point the "subjugate" controversy has come to seem quaint and overblown by comparison to Ligett's open bigotry, and Stafford holds his victory party on Mizzou's practice field, where supporters can walk "under the jugum" in tongue-in-cheek celebration. A new day has dawned for racial justice in Missouri.

Calista's Ignominy, Part 1

Calista's latest effort, Ignominy, is hard to categorize. I suppose it could be called a book of short stories, though some aren't particularly short, or a series of novellas. Maybe it's best simply to call it a collection of absurdist political vignettes with surprisingly complicated human dimensions. I'll write a separate review for each of a handful of stories, starting with one of my favorites, "High Desert."

The story follows a Democratic political consultant, Anne Borland, as she tries to rescue what should have been an easy Democratic campaign for a Senate seat in Oregon. The problem is that the Republican candidate, Grant Sissley, has proven to be considerably more charismatic and eloquent than the Democrat, Jim O'Neal. A fourth-generation hop farmer, Sissley was an early and vocal supporter of gay rights, making it hard to depict him as a typical Republican. After a strong debate performance, Sissley takes a modest but steady single-digit margin in the polls, and Borland is sent by the national party as a "big gun" to take control of the situation.

Borland quickly launches a vigorous "oppo research" project, and before long it has hit gold. The hops that Sissley grows, it turns out, are not the strong, resinous hops used to brew the Pacific Northwest's famous "dank" IPAs. Instead, he favors noble varieties descended from the mild, herby, spicy hops of central Europe. Borland rolls out a "Cascadia Challenge" booth at political rallies, where undecided voters can sample beers brewed with Sissley's hops and beers brewed with more typical Northwest varieties like Citra, Simcoe, and Centennial. A large majority of voters leave the booth shaking their heads, wondering how they could ever have viewed Sissley as "one of us."

Borland is scrupulously fair when she procures the beers for the Cascadia Challenge—the beer brewed with Sissley's hops is a well-crafted pilsner beer that shows off the hops to good effect. But Oregon drinkers consistently reject the pilsner in favor of what, in all honesty, can only be described as a mediocre double IPA.

And herein lies Borland's ethical quandary. Borland is a beer enthusiast and she recognizes that Sissley's hops are a true accomplishment, creating some of the best pilsner she has ever tasted. She knows Sissley's beer is better, and yet voters are rejecting it out of hand. The Cascadia Challenge is everything that is wrong in American politics, trading on voters' ignorance, tribalism, and prejudice, their unwillingness to engage with anything that is different or challenging. This is not why Borland got into politics! In the voters' rejection of foreign-tasting beer she detects shades of the anti-immigrant sentiment that swept Trump into power.

And so the story hurtles toward its dramatic conclusion, with Borland out of control and drinking more and more of the Cascadia Challenge pilsner, Sissley growing increasingly bitter and desperate as his lead dissovles, and the race slipping into the dark territory that has come to grip American politics...