Taking a humorous but analytical look at just about anything in the spirit of Groucho Marx: I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member!
Count me among those stunned by the news of Michael Jackson's death yesterday. After all, he was younger than I am, and supposedly in substantially better health than I. He had recently passed a physical taken to confirm his ability to carry out his 50-performance "comeback" tour that had been scheduled to start in London next month.
What saddens me the most about Jackson is that he never learned how to accept himself. All those plastic surgeries . . . and he was actually better-looking in the "Before" photos than he was in the "After" ones. He spent virtually all his life under public scrutiny; he was incredibly talented; he was shrewd and smart about many, many things [he created the moniker "The King of Pop"--Ed.]--but at the same time, he was very lonely, and he repeatedly engaged in what can be most charitably described as ill-considered behavior which produced unintended and unpleasant (for him and us) consequences.
It's an archetypal story, that of the genius who attains true brilliance at an early age and who spends the rest of his life trying, unsuccessfully, to match, let alone exceed, past successes. It typically comes to such a sad end. The greatest sadness is that in this case, it didn't have to. I learned yesterday that Jackson idolized Sammy Davis, Jr., and regarded his as a mentor. It makes perfect sense, and it reveals (to me, at least) an entire new dimension to Jackson's dancing style. It's just too bad that Jackson didn't learn some of Davis's mental grit. But then again, most of us idolize those whose character traits seem somehow better than ours . . . and in important ways, Jackson was a gentle child who never had to face adult realities until it was too late for him to develop the grown-up perspective and mental toughness (รก la Davis) to comprehend the consequences of some of his actions, let alone to deal with the fallout from them.
I mourn his passing. I celebrate his genius. I kick myself for hearing in my head Weird Al Yankovic's parodies of some of Jackson's best mature work instead of Jackson's originals. Most of all, however, I hear the angelic tones of the 10-year-old Jackson's lead on "I'll Be There." I hope he finds the inner peace and self-acceptance suggested by that vocal that eluded him during his time with us mere mortals.
South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who was missing for about 5 days, finally reappeared yesterday and admitted he was in Argentina, seeing the woman with whom he has been having an affair. His wife was not at his side as he held his confessional press conference. Indeed, it turns out that she had known about the affair and had asked him two weeks ago to move out of their home.
Bad enough that he, a conservative Republican, trashed his marriage vows. Bad enough that he was away from his four sons over Father's Day weekend. Bad enough that he didn't tell anyone on his staff how to reach him. [And worse, that his staff felt compelled to make up a story that he was hiking in the Appalachians to cover.--Ed.]
Worse, that he was so cavalier about his official duties and responsibilities as governor. Worst of all, that he used public resources to travel to his tryst.
Failing to turn executive power over to his lieutenant governor while he was not just out of the state, not just out of the country, but on a different continent, amounts to gross dereliction of official duty. His use of a state police escort vehicle to get to Atlanta's Hart International Airport so he could fly off to satisfy his ____________________--you fill in the blank: lust, emotional vacuum, ego, whatever--amounts to misappropriation of public funds. It also raises the question of how his plane tickets and the other incidental expenses of his travel were paid for. And not just on this occasion, but on prior trips he apparently made to be with his lady-love.
Not to mention the several questions his leaked email love letters raise: did he send them while he was supposed to be in his office, seeing to South Carolina's business? From which computer(s)? On a public account or a personal one?
In short: who was minding the store?
Sanford has resigned his chairmanship of the Republican National Governors' Association [apologies if I did not get the name of that august body exactly right--Ed.]. He has not expressed any intent to resign the governorship, however. Indeed, he's implied he won't, saying that now that the truth is out, "let the chips fall where they may."
Well, if he does not resign, he ought to be impeached, convicted, and removed from office. Not for the affair per se, as disgusting as it is. After all, Sanford belongs to the party that claims to be THE defender of family values and morality in this country. [The hypocrisy of that stand is a topic for another day.--Ed]
No, not for the affair per se. But for the gross dereliction of his official duties, and his cavalier use of publicly-paid for, government-owned resources to do it--YES, absolutely.
One wonders what the next instance of governmental self-destruction will be. Lord knows, there's more than enough to go around for members of both major parties.
Feel free to indulge yourselves in a verse and chorus or two of "Where Have All The Flowers Gone." The moral of every event I'm about to comment on is: those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it.
First, the "election" in Iran. I said (repeatedly, loudly, and often) in the weeks leading up to the voting that if Ahmadinejad won by more than 3-4 percent of the vote, people around the world would regard the election results as a fraud. If Ahmadinejad had made the returns look within the realm of probability, he'd have avoided the certain mess his theft of the election has now caused in Iran.
History instructs us, over and over and over again, that unexpectedly wide margins of victory, wherever and whenever they occur, invite accusations of election fraud. But Ahmadinejad let his ego get in the way, as all megalomaniacs throughout history have, and insisted on an overwhelming "margin" of victory. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing. He just may have sown the seeds of his own political destruction, which would be a very good outcome for the Iranian people and perhaps the rest of the world, indeed.
Furthermore, the bleating of those like US Senator John McCain is not helping. McCain insists that President Obama is in error for refusing to condemn the election results outright and express support for those opposed to Ahmadinejad. WRONG. McCain's grasp of foreign policy, even after all his years of service--military and political--is, shall we say, shaky. If Obama were to condemn the Iranian election results and express support for Ahmadinejad's opponents, all he would succeed in doing is undermining those opponents' efforts to effect change in their own country. They'd immediately be labelled by Ahmadinejad and his cronies as puppets of the evil American empire. Their credibility and their ability to fight Ahmadinejad would be destroyed. That would do absolutely no good. Obama's more prudent approach is the stuff of an incredibly sophisticated understanding of foreign policy, one McCain and his cohorts would do well to support, not snipe at.
Second, an issue of local, but large, import. One of the blessings of living in the greater metro Omaha area is being able to watch not one, but two states' public television offerings. We are just across the Missouri river from Council Bluffs, Iowa, which has its own Iowa Public TV broadcasting substation, so we get both Nebraska Educational TV (NETV) and Iowa Public TV (IPTV). They do not carry the same programming, not by any stretch of the imagination. For one thing, IPTV has a larger population, so it has more money, so it can afford to air programming NETV cannot at present purchase. And even when they do carry the same programming, they do not always carry the shows at the same time, which makes it easier for those of us with varying schedules and no DVR not to miss anything we really want to watch.
However, when "Digital Transition Day" came and went, Cox Communications moved IPTV off the Nebraska Basic and Expanded Basic tiers of service, which came as a rude shock to many, many people. After all, Cox had been advertising for the better part of a year that people with Cox Cable service would not have to do anything to survive the transition to digital TV. Turns out they are either going to have to do without an important channel or spend more to continue to get it.
Cox is hiding behind legalisms and excuses, to wit: (a) IPTV officials signed off on the switch months ago, so blame IPTV, not Cox; and (b) Cox is required by law to carry only one PBS station, and for Nebraskans, it's NETV. I know IPTV made one announcement about a year ago that it was going to all-digital broadcasting, AS OF AUGUST 2008. No one from IPTV said anything about that having an effect on anyone's ability to receive IPTV after the transition to all-digital broadcasting. And Cox may be required by law to carry only one PBS station per market, but the reality is that an awful lot of people on the Nebraska side of the Missouri not only watch IPTV, they contribute to IPTV on a regular basis. They thus have now been denied something they actually already paid for.
Cox's slogan is "your friend in the digital age." Right. If the people at Cox would take that seriously, plus study a little history, they'd realize that people and organizations which routinely hide behind legalisms and technicalities instead of stepping up and doing the right thing wind up despised. To use an apt (though vastly more important, on a cosmic scale) example, compare the reactions of the US public to JFK's speech after the Bay of Pigs with Nixon's days and months and years of denials and obfuscations about Watergate. Kennedy's reputation never took a serious pounding, and indeed, has grown over time--for he stood up, did the mature thing, told the truth, and got on with the nation's business. Nixon was hounded and hounded and hounded and eventually had to resign. And while some fanatics would have you believe otherwise, the general assessment of history is that Nixon's behavior rightly resulted in his being ranked as one of the very worst presidents in America's history.
Third, the illegally-leaked information that Sammy Sosa tested positive for performance-enhancing drug use back in 2003. I don't think anyone is shocked by the news itself. It's been an open but unacknowledged secret for years that Sosa was not immune from the taint of the "steroids era" in baseball. [But only a few names of the 103 total players on the list have become known. Heck, the list was supposed to have been destroyed six years ago.--Ed.] But I, for one, am shocked by the fact of the leak at this time. I cannot help but think it has more to do with some people's need for petty vengeance than with reporting news the public needs to know right now. For the leak came just a day or two after Sosa officially announced his retirement--and his hope, given that he ranks 6th on the all-time home run leaders list, that he'll someday be a Hall of Famer.
But there's a larger issue in all this that troubles me. I read a slew of comments posted to an online USA Today story about the leak, and most of the comments were venomous in their condemnation of Sosa--a black Latino. I don't remember seeing anyone else in the entire "steroids era" mess get ripped to such shreds. Certainly not the white Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire; not even Rafael Palmiero and Alex Rodriguez, who are both Latino, but not black.
Not only is racism NOT dead in this country, it's spitting fire every chance it gets. It's almost as if the racists realize they can't attack our president, so they are spewing their venom even more violently at anyone else who they can shoehorn into their stereotypes.
They are even slamming Sammy [pun intended--Ed.] for being a cheater for using a corked bat in a game. Well, it did happen. I saw that game, and I was suitably embarrassed for Sammy by it. However, what the haters are forgetting is this: that corked bat shattered when Sosa put the ball in play, and after he was thrown out at first base, he didn't run around frantically gathering up the pieces of the bat before anyone else had a chance to examine them. He calmly went back to the dugout. That tells me that Sosa's use of the corked bat during the game was inadvertent. Using that incident to condemn him further is just piling on; it's also intellectually dishonest. All great power hitters in baseball traditionally have used corked bats during batting practice to give an extra thrill to the fans who came early to watch them "do their thing." Thus it's not like his having the corked bat per se justifies the thrashing Sosa has received.
Sosa was naive if he expected his retirement announcement and his expressed desire to be selected for the Hall of Fame to come without negative comment. Even Babe Ruth was not voted in unanimously. I was naive for not expecting an anonymous leak about his inclusion on the list of those who tested positive back in 2003. And anyone who thinks that President Obama's election meant the end of racism in America is beyond naive. No progress comes without backlash, and in this case the potential for hate-filled, violent backlash is a frightening certainty.
That being said, I still wish the president's approach to domestic policy would show a little more backbone and a little less willingness to water down or even renege on campaign promises he made. He's giving the GOP minority much more clout that it deserves to have in terms of its absolute numbers. And the GOP is learning the wrong lesson from that. The GOP perceives that the louder it bleats, the more influence it will have. So every time Obama lets the GOP have any genuine input, the bleating gets louder instead of dying down. Remember, the present GOP "leaders" got the idea that they lost the November 2008 elections because their party was not far enough to the right. Their analytical skills are clearly about 180° out of whack.
Yes, Obama is a masterful politician. And yes, I recognize that he operates under the correct assumption that politics is the art of the possible. And I admit to suffering from a bit of "issue fatigue." But he's doing the minimum possible, not the maximum possible, right now. Besides, at an even deeper level, I am mad as hell that the minority with money is continuing to exert undue influence over the way the rest of us have to live, while it goes on its merry way, controlling the vast majority of the power in this country, making those of us who can afford it the least pay for and otherwise bear all the burdens of the benefits they enjoy entirely out of proportion to their numbers.
As an honest study of US history demonstrates, most of us will eventually acquiesce. We don't have the time or the money or the energy to do much more than cope with our daily lives. And those with enough money and power to stall progress will once again wait us out. They can afford to. The president does know history; he thinks his cautious approach is warranted. I, however, disagree. We don't need a mediator--mediators are for parties with relatively equal bargaining power. We need a champion--someone who can build up our side of the playing field so that it's level at last.
The crash of the Air France Airbus A300 into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil is at once a tragedy, a farce, and a mystery. A tragedy because of the loss of life. A farce because of the initial, erroneous reports by the Brazilian military of wreckage found and the general incompetence of the investigation until the past day or so. I am relieved that both the US and French navies have been asked to get involved in the hunt for the plane's black boxes.
A mystery? Not just because of the missing black boxes, thereby leaving investigators groping around for the reason(s) the plane crashed. But also because, for the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone would use the Airbus's "fly-by-wire" technology. You sure won't catch me flying in a plane that uses it.
Fly-by-wire systems make the pilot rely on sensors and computers instead of his/her own "feel" to fly the plane. If the sensors and computers conk out or give conflicting readings, the pilot has no way to control the plane. S/he cannot "feel" the plane through the stick. It's not unlike the difference between a car with an automatic transmission and power steering, and a car with a stick shift. If the automatic transmission and/or the power steering goes out, most drivers would be totally at the mercy of gravity and inertia. But with a stick shift, even if the clutch dies, drivers can still control enough of the vehicle's operating systems to bring the car to a safe, controlled stop.
So far, the scanty corroborated evidence in the Air France crash suggests that the computers and sensors got "confused" due to the extreme weather conditions in which the plane was flying. The scenario currently entertained is that the plane's sensors were providing contradictory data, which froze the computers, which kept the pilot from being able to control the plane, which caused the crash. Yes, it's speculative at this point, but it does fit all the facts as we know them so far.
Now, I know a few pilots (heck, I'm related to one of them). None of them likes the fly-by-wire system, period. None of them ever wants to be responsible for other lives when being forced to fly while using it.
So for me, the deeper mystery of the crash is why the heck anyone is using the fly-by-wire system in the first place. As with nearly everything else in this business-driven world, however, I suspect it has to do with the making of money at all costs, including the loss of many, many lives.
At least we can feel somewhat confident that the plane crash wasn't a terrorist act, if for no other reason than that no terrorist group has tried to "take credit" for it.
I just heard a report on National Public Radio that said one of the reasons the far right is opposing the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court is her opposition to Second Amendment guarantees of the right to own and bear arms.
No surprise there, really. But the "reasoning" behind the far right's stand is surprising, and may ultimately boomerang against it in other and unexpected ways. In a US Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision rendered earlier this year, Judge Sotomayor joined in an opinion that said the state of New York had the right to prohibit private ownership of the martial arts weapon called nunchuks, and that the US Constitution's Second Amendment was not triggered by (and thus did not override) the state's law. In other words, she agreed that the Second Amendment prohibited only the federal government from restricting individuals' rights to own and bear arms. The several states are free to regulate the ownership of arms as they see fit.
One Ken Blackwell, from the Family Research Council, claims that Sotomayor is wrong, and that the Second Amendment trumps any other attempt to regulate individual ownership of weapons. If he is correct, he has just reversed the traditional right wing position on the entire Bill of Rights and the concept of federal power. He is arguing AGAINST the concept of states' rights, just as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia did last year in a ruling that struck down Washington, D.C.'s law restricting private ownership of handguns. As I implied in a post dated 6/27/08 entitled "Strict Constructionist--NOT!", Scalia, and now Mr. Blackwell, did not heed the admonition to beware the law of unintended consequences. Let me quote from my own prior post:
The irony here is that Scalia's ruling actually confirms that the US Constitution implicitly affirms the people's right to privacy. Scalia believes no right to privacy exists because it's not "within the four corners" of the document. But his ruling makes it the sine qua non for implementing the Second Amendment (you have the unfettered right to keep handguns in your home, remember). This is the identical rationale the Court has cited in the past for implementing the other rights explicitly enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Oops! Scalia didn't see that one coming, I'll wager.
To inject a bit of sanity into the current discussion, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh noted that while Judge Sotomayor can be expected to take a different view of the Second Amendment from the preferred view of, say, the National Rifle Association, the judge was not plowing radical ground by her joining in the majority opinion in the nunchuks case. Nunchuks are a weapon, but they are not guns; apparently, there is a lot of US Supreme Court precedent supporting Judge Sotomayor's position in the nunchuks case.
I made the observation in an undergraduate US Constitutional History class that it was ironic that the Fourteenth Amendment, designed to protect individual civil rights, wound up (through Supreme Court rulings) protecting businesses and commerce while the Court wound up using the Constitution's Interstate Commerce Clause to protect individual civil rights and liberties. I see a similar irony here. The Second Amendment, designed to protect militias' rights to own and bear arms, has now been used (albeit not intentionally) to enshrine the concept of the right to privacy and the supremacy of federal power at the expense of states' rights . . . states' rights being the concept traditionally favored by those who insist on an unfettered right to own and bear arms.
Kind of makes me wish I were still able to practice law and to bring a case before the Supreme Court. I would love to see Justice Scalia's face when his own ruling regarding an individual's rights to gun ownership is used to support an argument favoring federal supremacy over a state's right to restrict other individual liberties.
