A Nazi in the White House

           Imagine if FDR was defeated by the paranoid isolationist Charles Lindbergh in his 1940 bid for the Oval Office.  Yes, I’m talking about the “Spirit of St. Louis” American hero Charles Lindbergh.  Now imagine if Lindbergh, riding high on all the glory from his flight and new found political power, came to an “understanding” with Hitler at a discreet meeting in Iceland.  As you can imagine, this ominous “understanding” most certainly would have concerned the fate of the world’s Jews.  Never mind that just two years prior in October of 1938, Lindbergh proudly received the Service Cross of the German Eagle, a gold medallion featuring four small swastikas directly “by order of the Fuhrer.”  It’s no surprise that Lindbergh once wrote of Hitler, “He is undoubtedly a good man.”    

Fact and fiction blur in Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Roth’s historical fiction novel, The Plot Against America.  In a Lindberg administration, anti-semitism builds to a point where Kristallnacht type destruction and frequent pogroms are commonplace and where Walter Winchell gets assassinated along the campaign trail on his own personal bid for the White House.  In Lindbergh’s America, multiple unenthusiastic law enforcement agencies have to collaborate and plot on how to protect America’s Jews from rampaging hordes bent on their destruction.  The big question is, “Will Lindbergh consent to build concentration camps in the USA?

I don’t want to ruin the end of the book for you.  Roth weaves through his story many important characters of the time including Henry Ford, NYC Congressman Fiorello H. La Guardia, J Edgar Hoover, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, and a number of high ranking Nazi officials.  There are even bios of many true life characters to help put events into conte

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Remember, “The Plot Against America” is not Lindbergh’s evil attempt to control, suppress, and possibly destroy the Jews’ destiny.  No, no, that would be too easy.  “The Plot Against America” is the secret blood sucking networked system the Jews came up with, through their pervasive control of banking and media institutions, to usurp control of nothing less than the entire United States government.  That’s the real plot these greedy bastards have planned for us.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

“DEFORMER” Captures Bleak Reality

          Deformer is Ed Templeton’s high quality, smoothly designed coffee table photo book.  The volume also includes random notes, journal entries, and original art.  A former pro skateboarder, Templeton’s bold and intensely personal vision documents his dysfunctional childhood and the dark side of growing up in melancholy Orange County.   Templeton’s is a dark journey, yet one well worth taking.

          Possessing a grotesquely natural eye for the camera lens, Templeton takes photos of a detached pigeon head, a little girl holding a gun, dying handicapped people traveling bare streets on little motorized carts, a dead dog, a punk wearing a germ mouth mask, a homeless person, a white power sign, teenagers smoking, essentially the foreboding, bleak nature of life itself. 

          It seems Catholicism or Christianity or some other religion that worships Christ is scorned and mocked throughout the book.  Templeton’s photos make a striking statement about religion being forced on children, one that can be interpreted in a myriad of ways.  His photos, sometimes subtly, but usually in an in your face manner, have a throbbing energy and distinct ominous cloud aura.

          Templeton’s wife, Deanna, is featured throughout Deformer.  She is thanked at the end of the book as follows, “Finally, I would like to shower adoration on my wonderful wife, Deanna Templeton, whose bravery and constant support are the backbone of this project and my life.”  It’s interesting to see how Templeton documents their strong trusting relationship through images instead of words.

          One of the coolest pages of the book is nothing but ticket stubs.  The names of the different bands that played each show are on every stub.  This page gives rare insight into Ed’s and Deanna’s states of mind.  When you know someone likes a certain band and you like that band too, of course music provides an excellent method of bonding.  I identified with some bands and that made me feel closer to the book, and thus inevitably Ed and Deanna themselves.

          Deformer opens with lyrics to the song “Hidden Wheel” (1986) by the band Rites of Spring. 

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Is this the first time I’ve seen the size of these walls?

Is this the first time?

Yes.

Now I’m the angry son-

Everything I’ve learned was wrong

I’m the burning door-

Once I’m opened I can’t be closed.

            The Rites of Spring quote kicks the book off with volcanic message.  At the beginning of Deformer, Templeton explains the book as, “The shaping and misshaping effects of growing up a specimen in the suburban domestic incubator.”  It would be tough to find a more apt description.  Of course Deformer can be interpreted in multiple ways, yet of one fact there remains no debate, Templeton is a survivor.