Despite how my column may appear at times, I’m a pretty tolerant person. I do my best to try and understand where someone is coming from before I pass judgement. While I don’t always agree with someone’s chosen path, I at least try to see how they got to where they are now. But even I must take a step back at times, for some people out there make absolutely no sense to me.

Take politicians, for example. I do not understand why anyone would want this job. I know I talk a lot of politics here, but at the end of the day, I would rather clean industrial sewage tanks with my tongue than hold office in this country. Many believe that politicians take the job because they feel a sense of civic duty. Even if that is the reason why someone gets started with politics, after watching this country fall to pieces over the last 15 years, I think we can all agree that it’s not why most stick around.

Some would like to think it’s money, but the politicians were rich before they got into office and would be richer if they had stayed out. Some say it’s power, but even the president is beholden to outside influences. Some believe it’s notoriety, but I bet few of us can name more than a handful of politicians. And to top it all off they must subject themselves, their families and their secrets to repeated and unflattering scrutiny and vicious attack ads. One thing’s for sure, I’m glad they do it so I don’t have to.

Perhaps it’s self-preservation. Congress is said to decide whether the Bush tax cuts should be extended for people who make more than $250,000 per year. Clearly the politicians have a stake in the decision as most fall within that grouping, but what about everyone else? A vast majority of the country wouldn’t be directly affected if these tax cuts expire, and yet some of these same people fight to make sure they won’t.

It’s easy to couch their enthusiasm as part of the American Dream, but that doesn’t answer the question. Why do so many at the bottom believe in the American Dream at all? For generations, their families have toiled and served those at the top, watching their masters grow ever more powerful while they remained still or even worse, slipped backwards. Any economist or historian will tell you that the American Dream is a fallacy. And while the poor protect and even embolden the rich, the rich wipe their asses with the problems of the poor. The top 1 percent threatens self-exile when the poor ask for the basic necessities at the expense of the rich. They use their lobbyists to beat us down time and time again, and they almost always win. So, what do the poor do?

They gamble. They take what little money they have, or even money they don’t have, and they gamble it away. The odds of winning are clearly against them; otherwise casinos wouldn’t exist. They must believe that casinos are really in the business of giving away money. There are those out there who claim they can beat the system, but at the end of the day, in its most base form, they are still playing games of chance subject to the whims of that bitch Fortuna and her wheel of despair.

In truth, most of us have no idea what we are doing. We misread luck for skill, and when we lose a little, we believe we have won. Somehow these massive losses and paltry winnings become an addiction. “Next time will be different!” They will throw everything away chasing a dream that is statistically less likely than being struck by lightning. And when everything and everyone is gone, they keep gambling.

It’s a crazy world we live in. I try to make sense of it as best I can, but sometimes, it’s impossible. As kings and queens of this trash heap, we really only have ourselves to hold us back, and some of us do a magnificent job at it. Some of us do such a great job that they hold the rest of us back in the process. Them, I will never understand.

Bocephus Chigger
bocephus@submergemag.com

The other day, Submerge contributing editor/my personal life coach (it’s not a paying gig) Mandy Johnston had to stomach through yet another one of my woeful diatribes. You know, I have to tell you, being white and somewhat privileged in America just hasn’t been as easy as I’d heard it was going to be. I was bemoaning the death of the American Dream or some such ennui-laden bullshit. But it would appear that the American Dream is alive and well–just look at Antoine Dodson.

You should know who he is by now. Last month, his sister Kelly was the victim of sexual assault, perpetrated by “some idiot from out here in the projects,” in Hunstville, Ala. That wasn’t the big news, though. Sadly, rape has become all too commonplace in cities all across the United States. No, the story here was the news clip that reported the incident. In the segment (originally aired on WAFF 48, Huntsville’s NBC affiliate), reporter Elizabeth Gentle questioned the Dodson family about the trying incident the night before. A man–still at large–used a garbage can to climb into Kelly’s window and attempted to rape her. She fended him off, and the altercation caused enough of a ruckus to alert her brother Antoine, 24. The two were able to repel the attacker’s advances, and Kelly and Antoine emerged from the fracas more or less unscathed.

Still, the incident left everyone involved understandably frazzled. “Emotions were running high,” as the WAFF news anchorman put it. Interviewed at the scene, Antoine took the mic, went on a fantastic tirade and uttered, amongst other things, “Hide your kids, hide your wife, hide your husband, because they’re raping everyone out here.” I’ve seen the video about a billion times, especially if you include the brilliant Auto-Tuned remix version crafted by the Gregory Brothers. I laugh every time.

I realize rape is serious. It’s not funny. But it’s so rare you see something real on television. Here was a man who was angry, fed up and extremely charismatic. He didn’t care that the camera was on him. He didn’t have some safe, saccharine, calculated response to the incident. He just chased off a man who broke into his house and tried to rape his sister, and he was righteously pissed. His rattling, strangely poetic response skittered in a million directions and was delivered with such flair, you’d think it had to be scripted. He just had to be prepped by some producer, but he wasn’t. This wasn’t an aside from a famewhore Survivor contestant, or some contrived Real World confessional. This was the real world. This might have been your back yard.

But then there’s the dark side of this. Here we are having a hearty laugh at some underprivileged family’s misfortune. I can see how someone can get satisfaction from snickering at the Real Housewives of Wherever. They had everything handed to them, and they’re still wastes of life. The Dodson family is in the projects of Alabama, worried that another intruder might climb through their window–and maybe the next time they won’t be so lucky.

I’m happy it’s Antoine that’s having the last laugh. Once he became an instant celebrity, he did the smart thing. He hired a lawyer, started selling merchandise and set up a website with a PayPal account so people could donate to his family. The Gregory Brothers’ remix of the Dodson news interview made it on to iTunes, and the musicians split the proceeds 50-50 with the family. In the end, Antoine put together enough money to move his family out of the projects, according to an interview with ABC News.

So maybe I don’t have to feel so bad about breaking into cackles every time I see Antoine’s fiery rant.

Or maybe I should? In his Aug. 5 article for News One, writer Claudio E. Cabrera posed the question, “Is Antoine Dodson embarrassing to black people?” His conclusion read as follows: “Too many Blacks care about what other ethnic groups/races think of them. That has to stop. We have to realize that for every Black Antoine Dodson, there are plenty of Whites and Latinos who act just like him.”

The closest things I guess I can equate his sentiments to from my own experience are the “characters” on MTV’s Jersey Shore. As an Italian American from Staten Island, N.Y. I think they’re giving all of us a bad name. They’re just perpetuating every stereotype that we’re just a bunch of image-obsessed, gum-smacking, fake-tanning, brainless douchebags (I do, however, admit that when I chew gum, I sound akin to a cow chewing its cud). Perhaps Antoine Dodson maintains negative stereotypes of African Americans. But at least Antoine can say that he helped stop the rape of his sister and, in so doing, earned enough money to help his family’s situation. For lack of a better word, I’d say he’s a hero. The kids from the Jersey Shore haven’t done shit for humanity, except perhaps drink and tan so much that they’ve rendered themselves sterile. One can hope.

Immigrant’s Song

It’s been a busy spring for Elk Grove-based photographer Andri Tambunan—even though he’s now unemployed. Tambunan worked retail for eight years with Verizon Wireless and worked up to the point where he had his own house, two cars and a salary that was roughly $80,000 a year. He even had a collection of shoes that numbered around 80. All in all, it sounds like the American dream, especially when you consider that Tambunan and his mother didn’t have a lot when they came to this country from Indonesia.

When Tambunan was 10, his family moved to San Bernardino from Jakarta. He lived in “a three-bedroom, cockroach-infested apartment” and that he “used to collect cans for money.” He says he learned how to speak English by watching Sesame Street.

“I was a sponge,” he recollects. “I was absorbing everything.”

A year later, Tambunan moved north to the Sacramento area where he eventually attended Elk Grove High School, where, as a junior, he took his first photography class. He was a straight-A student, and by 21, he had a good job and had bought his own home in Elk Grove.

While the cars, house and money were enough to make Tambunan comfortable, they didn’t make him happy.

“I think as I mature, I prioritize things in life,” he explains. “It’s not about having the most expensive things or having a nice car. For me, it’s about pursuing my dream, pursuing my goal, doing what I want to do.”

Another reason for his change of career path was shifting values, Tambunan was looking to simplify his life, and part of that process was separating himself from his stuff. He says that working in retail for eight years changed the way he viewed materialism.

“I just realized people are just raised to become consumers,” Tambunan says. “We’re buying things we don’t really need—big fancy cars and big rims. I mean, I used to be like that, so I don’t really blame them.”

His evolving viewpoint wasn’t catalyzed by any specific incident, Tambunan says, but more a byproduct of growing older. His extensive travels also have played a part in the person he’s become.

“When I’m away, I want to leave everything behind. I do a lot of introspective thinking about what my place is in this world, and what I want to do with my life,” he says.

“One of the things I really enjoy about traveling is that everything is so simplified. You live out of your backpack. I think we make things more complex for ourselves; we make them more difficult than they need to be.”

Tambunan’s travels have also greatly affected his work as a photographer. From June 13 through 15 at the Negative Space Studio, Sacramentans will had the chance to see photos from his journeys through Cambodia, Peru and Thailand in an exhibit dubbed The Art of Life. Tambunan says the three-day event will be a different experience for local art and photography enthusiasts. He believes The Art of Life will be “something I don’t think has ever been done in Sacramento before.”

The Art of Life will feature all black and white photos—”photojournalism sort of stuff,” the photographer says. In addition to photography, the event had a full roster of music, with acts including Cawzlos, Crazy Ballhead, The Bennies and DJ Elevation performing each night beginning at 8 p.m.

“I actually went back to my roots and it’s going to be nothing but black and white,” Tambunan says of the series of photographs. “I shot everything in film and I had to develop everything by hand, print everything by hand. This will be the last time I do black and white, just because the pace of the world is so fast. They want instant results, you shoot something, they want to see it right away, and it’s going to be published in minutes, on the Internet, on Myspace. But I really took my time with this one, because I wanted to go back to my roots.”

This coming July, Tambunan will also look to return to his roots in a different way. The photographer has cashed in his 401k, sold his cars, given his house to his mother and bought a one-way ticket to his native Jakarta.

“I’m at a crossroads, so I’m going to re-find, rediscover myself,” he says. “I’m going to the same places I went when I was a kid. It’s like a cycle. After that, I want to go to China for the Olympics, and then Tibet. I’ll be gone for a couple years, more if I’m lucky.”