Time Passages

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The speed at which time passes is flexible--rather, our perception of the speed at which time passes is flexible. Anyone who's ever been in a life-threatening crisis will testify to that. While the crisis is going on, time seems to stretch as though one is falling over the event horizon of a black hole. Once the crisis has passed, the putative victim is inevitably shocked to discover that what seemed like hours of agony really took but minutes, or even seconds, to pass.

I have been thinking a lot about the human brain's flexible response to the passage of time. I spent much of the first 60% of my life moving, not just from state to state, but overseas, once each to Southeast Asia and to Europe. The reality of being so frequently on the move not only helped me keep my own personal entropy under control; it helped me stay connected--plugged in, if you will--to the larger energy of world-wide events.

I have spent the subsequent 40% of my life to date living in one place. Yes, I've taken trips [though, mostly for logistical reasons connected to my lung disease, I've had to keep these trips to one day's length--Ed.], but somehow it's not the same. I still pay a great deal of attention to the events passing on the world's stage, and I still actively pursue learning so as better to evaluate the effects of those events on not just my life, but ultimately on history itself. But the sense of being "part of the flow" has vanished. And my own personal entropy has gotten totally out of hand.

Sometimes, I feel that even though I am still alive, my life is slipping away from me. I find that frightening. I'm not even distracted by the hum-drum of the minutiae of everyday living. I'm disconnecting from it. Some 40-year-old memories I have are more vivid in my brain than are memories I've generated in the past year. Maybe this should make me glad--I'm sure it reduces my levels of stress. But I cannot escape the vague sensation that somehow, it's very, very wrong, and I should fight it as hard and for as long as I can. I do not want to have to move, not ever again. But maybe it's exactly the physical jolt I need to overcome my mental entropy and the physical entropy surrounding me.

I am still quite good at working up some righteous anger over the injustices I see in the larger world, as anyone who's read more than one of these posts can attest. I have made it a habit of expressing my opinions and the reasons for them in more, and more diverse places. The beauty of a good idea is that once it's given expression, it's able to influence untold numbers in untold ways . . . not unlike the impact an excellent teacher can have on someone's life. Or such is my hope, that one of my little mental gems has sparkled and caught the attention of someone I don't even know, and that it has [in a way I cannot predict--Ed.] made a difference for the better in that person's life.

If this is mere dream or delusion, so be it. Leave me my dream, my delusion. It's all I have left.

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Another odd thing about humanity's flexible perception of time involves anticipation. Note that anticipation is not necessarily a good thing. One may anticipate happy events that are to come, such as weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, reunions, what have you. But one may also anticipate upcoming appointments with dread, as I surmise the football players of Louisiana-Lafayette must have felt as their game against the mighty University of Nebraska, played yesterday, approached. Many people who watch the History Channel are getting all het up about the upcoming end of the world that's been predicted for 12/21/2012. Getting to yesterday must have felt that same way to the Ragin' Cajuns as they came to Lincoln to accept their drubbing at the hands of the Cornhuskers. If it wasn't the apocolypse, it was a pertect storm, and the Ragin' Cajuns knew they were plunging into its heart.

The factors creating this perfect storm? (1) Homecoming for the Huskers. Every team is hyper-hyped to win its homecoming game. The Huskers are no exception. (2) The 300th consecutive stadium home game sell-out in NU history. This is the longest active streak in NCAA history; Notre Dame holds the second-longest streak, at a 1/3 shorter 207 games. The only proper way to celebrate such a milestone is with a win--a BIG win. (3) Nebraska was coming off a loss, by one point, to Virginia Tech--a loss the Huskers let happen after having had the game in hand for about 58 of its 60-minute duration. Anyone who knows anything about Nebraska knows that the opponent facing NU the week after such a painful, self-inflicted defeat is going to be chewed up and spat out. And then stomped on. And then stomped on some more.

The final score was 55-0. Yes, Nebraska won. I hope the Ragin' Cajuns' share of the take from ticket sales and pay-per-view was worth what it probably cost the Louisiana-Lafayette players' psyches. True, they could see it coming. The first two factors have been known since the game was put on the schedule. But the third factor happened only a week before, and that's what makes me wonder about how the Ragin' Cajuns perceived the passage of time in that week before their annihilation for the sake of NU's quest to get back national championship glory.

I'm guessing the week seemed to pass very slowly to the Ragin' Cajuns. No sane person looks forward to being on the receiving end of such an experience. I would think they'd want it to be over and done with as soon as possible . . . thus making the time before it happened slow to a crawl. Oddly enough, I suspect the Huskers felt the same way. Every day they had to live with the taste of the Virginia Tech loss only increased their desire to replace the bitterness with the sweetness of a huge win. Who cares that the opponent was the proverbial 97-pound weakling?

And that's what is so odd about how human anticipation affects human perception of the passing of time. It's the waiting that's the operative factor, not whether the predicted outcome is dreaded or hoped for. Not to mention that when the event finally happens, it seems to fly by quickly and be either much less painful or much less satisfying than anticipated. Doubtless there is some biochemical explanation for this, but I cannot help but hope that biochemistry isn't the end of it. My experiences tell me that when we die, we're done. We're gone. But my heart hopes my experiences aren't telling me everything.

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In our minds, we are free to jump about in time--that's why I so love history and science fiction--but our own personal time-lines are linear and one-way. And history gives us good data for making predictions about the future--if we "read the tea leaves" correctly, that is. But even though we can anticipate certain outcomes, there's always room for that once-in-a-million shocker, that upset of epic proportions which ameliorates the sense of dread and impending doom faced by, say, people about to go to the dentist, people about to go to a tax audit, and the Ragin' Cajuns last week. The shockers are rare, to be sure. That's why they are, literally, one in a million; but they CAN happen. And I suppose that that is why our sense of dread/impending doom does not overwhelm us. On paper, Team A is far better than Team B. Yet Team B can, and on rare occasions, does, win the game. That, to quote the sports cliché, is why you have to play the game.

This year's Chicago Cubs illustrate this most excellently. Last year, the Cubs won 97 games, and took the NL Central title handily. And got swept in the first round of the playoffs by the Dodgers, 0-3. So the front office made personnel changes, and the talking heads on ESPN and MLBTV thereupon agreed that the Cubs once again would be the class of the league. Not all the fans agreed, however. Many of us wish to this day that the Cubs had not acquired Milton Bradley and had kept Mark DeRosa, but why the fans so often seem to know better than management is a topic for another day.

You still have to play the game . . . and when you do play the game, things happen. Unexpected, unanticipated things. Bad things. Third baseman Aramis Ramirez missed something like 50 games with a dislocated shoulder. The Cubs were almost 10 games over .500 when Ramirez got hurt, and went straight into the tank when their leading RBI man was lost to them for almost 1/3 of the season. They were as low as 4th place in mid-summer, though they did manage to claw their way back into a brief tie for the division lead before sinking firmly back to second place by the end of the dog days of August.

Outfielder Milton Bradley, always a prickly personality, did not play anywhere near his potential, or even up to the level he'd played for Texas the year before. His acrimonious relationship with the fans shocked me. Chicago Cubs fans embrace the Cubs like almost no other fans in any sport. They follow the careers of former Cubs and continue to root for them and wish them well (except for maybe when they are actually playing against the Cubs, that is--but Cubs fans still applaud them when they are introduced and when they come to bat).

The one thing Cubs fans hate is the player who isn't giving his best efforts at all times, the player who acts like he doesn't care. To the fans, Bradley did not seem to care or to be giving his all, resulting in his being mildly chided by some. But then Bradley opened his mouth and complained about how awful the fans and the city were treating him . . . and it got so bad that he was suspended and sent home almost a full month before the end of the season. [That he's had similar problems everywhere he's played should lead him to realize something, to wit: it's him, not the fans. He doesn't seem to have that kind of self-awareness, however.--Ed.]

And Mark DeRosa, traded into the American League (to Cleveland) so he wouldn't compete directly against the Cubs, got traded again. To St. Louis. Where he wound up playing directly against the Cubs after all. He is now an important part of the Cardinals' unpredicted rise to the NL Central title, which they clinched last night.

As September proceeded, and the Cardinals' "magic number" to clinch the division title shrank, several strange things happened. The Cubs started playing the way we fans knew they could, and they got back to several games over .500 (as I write this). St. Louis started playing a bit erratically, and lost some games the Cardinals should have won. The Cardinals' "magic number" to clinch hovered at "1" for several days. What that "magic number" means is that any combination of 1 win by the Cardinals OR one loss by the Cubs would make it mathematically impossible, even if the Cubs won all the rest of their remaining games, for the Cubs to wrest the title from the Cardinals.

Seeing a "magic number" hover for days at "1" is something I do not remember ever experiencing before. In my heart of hearts, knowing it was totally silly, I yet began to let a little hope for the impossible take root. Could the Cubs do it? Could they really win all their remaining games? That half of the equation seemed eminently possible. But would the Cardinals in turn lose ALL their remaining games? Not bloody likely. They're too good. And even if the Cards did, there'd still have to be a one-game playoff for the division title.

But as the Cards proved last night in coming from behind to beat the Colorado Rockies 6-3 and thus clinch the NL Central crown, they were in fact too good to let the title slip away. No matter that the Cubs earlier yesterday had beaten the San Francisco Giants.

Still, it kept the NL Central division race interesting a lot later into September than I'd have predicted (had anyone asked) back in August. What does all this has to do with time passing? Once again it comes back to anticipation. The hoped for, no matter how unlikely, can make our perception of the speed of time's passing slow down. In this case, unlike the case of the Huskers football team, however, it was not because of a rush to get beyond a prior insult or injury, but because of how good it felt to have a germ of hope springing to life inside.

What's even odder is that now that that hope has died, its death doesn't seem to hurt as much as its lack of existence at all, back in August, pained me. I wonder how the Cubs players themselves feel about the events of September, 2009. I suspect that they'd given up on any realistic chance to win the NL Central back around Labor Day, which is about when they started playing better again. For even though this year's team is not responsible for the Cubs' lack of a World Series title for more than 100 years, that century must weigh on them. They know their fans have come to expect a winner, and they [except for Milton Bradley, that is--Ed.] want to be that winner. This desire doubtless is reinforced every time the litany of all the close calls and missed opportunities ever since 1984 is replayed.

What the Cubs need to do as a team is learn a little Zen. They must embrace the burden by letting it go. To focus and concentrate on the big goal while not thinking about it during each at bat and each defensive play. To play to their capabilities without forcing them, without feeling obligated to carry around those 100-plus years of expectations. They have to feel the pressure, but not feel it; they must channel it to enhance their moment-to-moment performance, not let it swamp and thus overwhelm their thinking. I know from my own participation in various organized sports that this is the hardest thing to do and yet it is the only thing that separates champions from also-rans.

And I am taking some comfort in the Cubs' performance these past few weeks. Almost to the second they knew realistic pressure was off, they began playing like the winners they can be. I just hope they can internalize that during the off-season, and come back in 2010 to play the way it says they should "on paper." Just don't let them read it!

Honest Questions

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While contemplating several news items of interest over the past two weeks, and in between attending multiple doctors' appointments, I have been trying to formulate several questions to which I would like self-styled conservatives to answer. Not in a spirit of combativeness, but in a spirit of honest inquiry.

I'll admit it: I am not alone in being quick to the mark, and making assumptions about other people's goals, motives, and aspirations--it's a normal human analytical shorthand. We all do it. But I am trying hard to gain some understanding here, some genuine understanding. I hope it results in civil, and civic-minded, conversation. Maybe if we all worked a little harder at trying to understand viewpoints that are not normally our own, we could actually begin to resolve some of the most contentious issues of the day. That is all I'm trying to get at with the things I am about to ask. Honest!

I should also note: this post is a work-in-progress. I am going to refine and add detail as time and energy allow. Please revisit it periodically. I'll make a note to myself to add a comment whenever I add to the body, as a way of flagging the additional content I will have included.

Question the first: Why are for-profit companies presumed to be better at almost everything than is government? Government must be good at some things, or else there'd be no reason for it to exist at all. For-profit companies exist to benefit their owners--that, by definition, is the meaning of "for-profit." While they provide goods and services that people want and need, they do not exist for the good of those people. They exist to make profit--to take in more than they give out--again, all for the benefit of their owners.

In an ideal world, this trade is a "win-win." People get the goods and services they want and need for a price they are willing to pay; the company gets more in terms of value than it gives, thus fulfilling its "for-profit" status, and also stays in business because it keeps making profit, thus incidentally continuing to provide what people want and need.

This is not an ideal world, however. Too often, people have needs; not just "wants," or "nice-to-haves," but genuine "needs," or "must-haves." [Think "I will literally die without obtaining the benefits of this good or service."--Ed.] Too often, these needs are beyond their means to obtain.

Please note: I am not talking about big houses and fancy cars. I am talking about the things most basic to modern life: food, shelter, physical safety and security, medical care, meaningful work, transportation. Perhaps you disagree, especially about the last two items. However, please consider: we are living in the 21st century, not the 17th. It is literally impossible for everyone on the planet to be 100% self-sustaining. Technology has made it so. We must deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it were. People must work to get the money to exchange for the goods and services they cannot provide by themselves for themselves. And in these days, where one works and where one lives are not typically within reasonable walking distance of one another.

Please also note that I am not talking strictly about money. People's time and energy have value, too--value that must be included in any calculations about whether any particular good or service is worth its asking price.

I also included medical care in the "needs," not "wants," category because I know from personal experience that without good health, it is impossible to do the work required to earn the money that will pay for the other goods and services we do not just want, but truly need, just to stay alive.

So to refine my first question, let me ask it this way: why are so many people not just willing, but seemingly eager, to entrust their health care decisions to companies whose very reason for being requires them to take in more money than they pay out--to put it bluntly, to accept your premiums but deny your claims? Health IS life. I've said that before. And since life is the most fundamental of our unalienable rights, and health care literally promotes, preserves, and protects life, isn't running our health care system on a for-profit basis simply wrong? Why not have a not-for-profit system of health care, where decisions are made based on their merits, and there are objective, written standards that can be consulted--and an impartial decision-maker to use those standards to resolve disputes about care . . . instead of an anonymous corporate employee whose own job depends on increasing his employer's profit margins?

I really just don't get it. I would hope someone would explain it to me. But please, not with references to non-existent government "death panels." Private, for-profit insurers are operating those now. [Which leads me to a tangential question to wit: Have you ever noticed how quickly many people who do bad things are to accuse their opponents of doing the same bad things that they, themselves, are already doing? It is an effective way of distracting attention from the real issues.--Ed.]

Hence my question the second: Whence comes this presumption that "government" equals "bad"? I do not deny for a second that government screws things up. All that government consists of is a lot of people, and none of us is perfect. However, I do deny that government is some evil, alien entity that exists to suck the life and freedom out of the people. In this country, the government IS the people. Isn't that still taught in elementary school civics classes? And if not, why not?

Let me point out that the only time government doesn't work is when you put people in charge of the government who say they don't believe in government. After all, they have a vested interest in proving their point. For just one example, contrast the lack of effective response to Hurricane Katrina to, oh, say, the US space program in the sixties. Large parts of New Orleans STILL haven't been rebuilt, 5 years later . . . and yet we went from not even having put one human being into orbit to landing two of them on the moon, and bringing them home safely, in about 8 years. Furthermore, we already have the technology we need to rebuild New Orleans, whereas we had to create everything for the moon shots from scratch.

Also, have you ever wondered why our national infrastructure seems to be falling apart of late? Here's why: between 15 and 20 years ago, the Reagan Administration removed infrastructure maintenance funding from all federal budgets. It made that administration's budget numbers look better, and the price wouldn't have to be paid till decades later, long after its architects [and I use that term loosely--Ed.] have moved on--and we're reaping those rotten fruits now. I keep thinking of the old Fram oil filter commercials--ironically, also dating from the Reagan era. Fram turned the higher retail price of its oil filters into a positive by reminding people that they could spend a bit more up front, to get a Fram filter . . . or they could wait, and have to cover the cost of a total engine rebuild when their less-expensive, and thus presumably lesser-quality, filters did not do the job. As the mechanic in the Fram commercials said, "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later." Well, as far as our infrastructure goes, it's now "later." And we can thank the Reagan administration for that.

This is the same reason I do not understand why certain members of Congress claim to be so worried about the expenses associated with certain new legislative proposals, such as health care reform ans switching us over to more environmentally-friendly energy production. YES, it's all expensive. But the longer we wait, the more expensive it's going to become. The only things delay will do are (1) increase the costs to us when we finally have no choice but to change, and (2) keep those costs coming out of the pockets of those least able to afford them, instead of making everyone pay a fair share for the societal benefits that changing now will give us all.

Part of living in a civil, civilized society, is that we ALL have not just rights, but responsibilities to one another. Some people have forgotten this. They are fighting against returning tax code rates even to their levels during the Reagan Administration . . . rates that were (to that point) the most favorable the rich had seen in many decades. I do not understand why so many people who are being hurt financially by these attempts to disable the government go along with them. I've heard some say that to do otherwise would endanger all our precious freedoms, which sounds good--but since when is "freedom" the same thing as "irresponsibility"? You wouldn't be able to make your fortunes without taking advantage of all the things government provides us all--from transportation systems to coinage to physical safety. Everyone who gets the benefits should cover their fair share of the costs. As Oliver Wendell Holmes once pointed out, "Taxes are the price we pay for civilization." I really do not get why so many people do not get that, and I wish someone would make a serious attempt to explain it to me.

Question the third: why isn't everyone totally appalled by the dramatic increase in hateful behavior, threats, name-calling, baseless accusations, and--let's face it--racially-biased crap spewing out of the mouths of some people in this country? I am willing to bet that a lot of the people doing and saying the hateful things consider themselves to be good Christians. I would like to understand why they think their expressions of hate do not contradict their religious beliefs. Do they honestly think that Jesus would agree with them? If so, what Bible are they reading? I do not get it, but I'm willing to at least try to understand. I really do hope someone tries to explain these things to me. As long as anyone who disagrees with me is willing to engage in civil discussion, so am I. Please, help me understand "where you're coming from."

Overshadowed In Yesterday's News

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I watched the president's speech last night. It was excellent. I'm glad he's showing the leadership backbone that those of us who voted overwhelmingly for him expected of him. But there was another story in yesterday's news, overshadowed by the speech, that could result in as much devastation to this country as failing to enact real health care reform assuredly will do.

The Supreme Court, meeting nearly a month before its official opening date of the first Monday in October, yesterday heard arguments in a case that may well result in the overturning of a near-century's worth of election campaign finance laws. Some corporations want to use corporate money to pay for partisan campaign ads. The legal argument is that restrictions on corporate and union campaign spending are illegal and unconstitutional infringement of First Amendment rights.

I almost laughed when I first heard this, for two reasons: (1) unions have lots of money, but not nearly as much as corporations; (2) more seriously, the Supreme Court itself has, since at least the mid-1930s, consistently recognized that corporations do not have the all same rights as do individuals under our Constitution and laws.

Then I realized that the forces of reaction, those who despise the New Deal and all it (and every subsequent advance in civil and real individual rights) means, are not going to try to stop dragging us backwards, to the days where money and privilege meant you got all the benefits of government and civil society without having to share any of the responsibilities that are literally the other side of the coin of being a member of that civil society.

It's called the social contract, people. And it galls me no end that the most strident preachers of "individual responsibility" are the ones who mean "for everyone else" but not for them. As if their money somehow makes them exempt from paying their fair share for the costs of building and maintaining the roads and infrastructure of this country, paying for the military and other mechanisms that allow our country to exist.

This is really sad. There is no First Amendment interest at stake here, period. Corporations are not people. Corporations do not cast ballots in our primaries and general elections. They are business entities. Our government was not created "of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation." The rights contemplated by our Founding Fathers were the rights pertaining to free and unfettered political discourse. Business/commercial speech has never had as much protection under the First Amendment as your or my right to say "the president is a doofus." That's why the government has the authority to keep cigarette ads off TV, for example. And that's why campaign finance laws have never been questioned or successfully challenged in our courts--until, scarily, possibly now.

Americans by and large believe in fair play. That's one of the major reasons the Founders were so adamant about protecting the free expression of opinions in "the marketplace of ideas." Our Founders considered that the best ideas would rise to the top, and bad ideas would sink, and eventually disappear, based on those ideas' own merits. But the infusion of corporate money tilts that playing field, skews it to the point that's it's no longer even close to being level--or fair. People will not be able to tell whether an idea is good and popular because of its merits or because the money behind it has artificially inflated its presence. It's exactly the same reason we decry the presence of steroids in baseball. There's no way to tell whether all the home run and other records were the product of genuine athletic prowess or of artificially-inflated strength.

And the solution, as with steroids, is to keep the corporate money out. If you doubt the skewing effects of the presence of "tons o' dough," consider Fox News. Rupert Murdoch has said flat out that his goal was to promulgate HIS political agenda. Judging from the number of people who buy the crap his "news"papers and TV networks spew, his money is having its intended effect. Also look at all the insanity spit out by the crazy people at the town hall meetings last month. They got attention all out of proportion to their numbers because the opponents of health care reform put their money behind getting those people into position to cause as much disruption as possible. They didn't even hide it--they were wearing polo shirts sporting their insurance company logos as they chaperoned the buses and shepherded the people on them into the meetings.

Yet there is a real chance that, by the slimmest 5-4 margin, the Supreme Court could undo all the good that nearly a century's worth of campaign finance regulations have done. That possibility terrifies me. The amount of noise one can afford to make will drown out the meritorious ideas which do not have rich special-interests behind them. I fear that we are going to forget [presuming many of us ever knew--Ed.] that money does not flow to ideas because of those ideas' merits; money flows to ideas because of the self-interest of those who have the money.

Money is not merit; money is power. And power corrupts. The love of money may be the root of all evil, but the presence of money is the corrupter of all political discourse.

Is This What Obama Is Really Up To?

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I have struggled, mightily (for the past several weeks especially), to figure out why the heck President Obama is being so passive about his stated goal of passing real health care reform to fulfill a promise he made to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Even more, I've tried to figure out why the heck the president has backpedalled so much on all the other major promises we thought he made during last year's election campaign. The Justice Department is going to investigate not the people who violated our Constitution and laws by authorizing the use of torture and other crimes--it's going to investigate ONLY those who violated even the illegally-relaxed standards the Bush Administration put in place to begin with.

Even though he got the total dollar amount he said he wanted in the economic stimulus bill, Obama allowed 40% of that total to be calculated by tax cuts--cuts that are much more responsible for the truly horrific deficit numbers we're facing than would be anything engendered by passing health care reform which includes the public option.

Obama said he was going to get us out of Iraq and close the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities by the end of this year--and he's trying, but the process has been slower and less comprehensive than expected. He said he was going to undo the previous administration's excessive claims of executive power, but his administration has been, to date, just as secretive and arrogant as his predecessor's in terms of not releasing White House visitors' lists, using executive signing statements, and arguing FOR Bush administration positions in legal suits brought against the government for violations of the Constitution and laws of this land.

The president is maintaining his stand that the Afghanistan war is the necessary one, which he will prosecute to a successful conclusion . . . even though many experts are now saying that our initial reasons for that war [getting Osama bin Laden and Al Qaida, for example--Ed.], while correct at the time, have been rendered moot by events, and that maybe it's time to pull out . . . instead of doing an Afghan version of the Iraq War surge, which seems to be his current intention.

None of it has made sense to me, especially given my impression that President Obama has a tremendous grasp of politics as "the art of the possible." In every instance I've cited, he's settling for much less than what's possible. He has tried to hang this on the desire to change the way things work in Washington, to promote real bipartisanship. The problem with that notion, however, is that the other side has to be willing to play--and so far, the GOP has not only been not willing to play, it's decided that naked political advantage is more important than what's really in the best interests of the country, which is paralyzing the process even more than it had been before Obama was inaugurated.

But I think I finally figured it out. Now that Ted Kennedy has been laid to rest along side his brothers Bobby and John, Obama's policy backpedalling and missteps have got all three of them rolling over in their graves--at so many RPMs that all Obama has to do is hook up 3 sets of jumper cables from Arlington National Cemetery to the nation's power grid, and: Lo! Behold! Our nation's energy crisis has been solved . . . for free!

I usually agree that any bill or other governmental action that disappoints the extremists on both ends will, as a rule, succeed. By definition, it has found the middle ground, that vast, blessed area wherein most of us live. However, the preceding 8 years tilted things so far to the far right that just getting back to the center is going to keep things tilted too far over to the right. [You want proof? GOP legislators are trying to undo Reagan-era laws and regulations because even they are "too restrictive"--Ed.]

Count me among the incredibly disappointed in the behavior of the Obama administration to date. I still think it's a far sight better than anything the GOP has to offer, but that, too, will be rendered moot if the GOP manages to prove that outright lies, when shouted often and loud enough, still control the terms of the debate. It's time for this administration to start fighting fire with fire. Obama so far has been acting like most of us are educated and intelligent and will do the right thing . . . but the ones with their hands on the real money in this country, the ones who don't want to give up even one penny for the greater good, have discovered that they can exploit the fears and hatreds of just enough of us to stymie the rest of us.

Unless, of course, the president starts showing some real leadership. Bill Maher was right--as much as he hates Dubya's policies, he admires Dubya's backbone and single-minded purpose in sticking with his plans no matter what anyone else said. Obama needs to show some more of that to be the leader those of us who voted for him hoped for and expected that he would be.

You Can Kiss That Good-Bye

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United States Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) died late last night, according to a statement released by his family early today.

The ironies of Kennedy's life and death are many. He, who was very, very rich, championed the causes of the less-well-off. He, the youngest son of his generation of "America's Royal Family," of whom little was expected until his older brothers died or had been assassinated, had the most direct and lasting impact (through all the legislation he worked for over the decades) on America. He cared about reforming America's broken health care system; he died of a brain tumor. He was expected by his family to "carry the torch" and become president [which he didn't want to do, and which explains all the stupid things he did over the years to sabotage himself . . . --Ed.], but the most important thing he did towards the end of his life was pass that torch to Barack Obama.

I am hoping against hope that the current health care reform bill, with the public option, will pass--and quickly--as a tribute to the "Lion of the Senate." After all, it was his most cherished cause. I fear, however, that Kennedy's death means the end of any shot meaningful health care reform for the foreseeable future.

I've read any number of online comments about the news, and the haters are out in force. The venom spewing from "the people" is, frankly, not just vile, but shocking. I'll bet if you asked most of those hatemongers if they considered themselves to be good Christians, they'd say "of course." In a heartbeat. And never see the contradiction between their behavior and their expression of faith.

John and Robert Kennedy both appealed to Americans' better natures--they encouraged us to strive, to be better, and to do better. Ted Kennedy spent his life and his time putting those aspirations into effect for the benefit of all of us. I am ashamed that so many Americans see fit to spit on his life and his work, especially so since he did the work he did for them and their benefit--whether they are capaple of or willing to recognizing it or not.

It's The End Of The World As I Know It

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And I'm not sure I feel fine. I just read an article in "The Huffington Post," by Larry FLint . . . and, I am ashamed to admit, I agree with much of what he said. God help me--the man is a total sleazeball, who made a huge fortune off the exploitation and degradation of women, but when he's correct, he's correct. He said that the real war in America isn't between the left and the right--it's between the rich and the poor . . . and he's on the side of the poor, because the rich are systematically screwing them over while also reducing the middle class to poverty.

I cannot even begin to describe the depth of my own consternation at this turn of events. I am trying to comfort myself with the wisdom of the late, great Ann Landers: even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Granted, she was talking about an analog, 12-hour-cycle clock, but still . . .

Maybe I'll feel not so disgusted with myself about it once the shock wears off. In the meantime, I'm going to go wash. With lots of soap. "Unclean! Unclean!"

Count Me Among The Somewhat Disappointed

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I just listened to President Obama's prepared remarks and answers to questions at an Organizing For America event that was held in Washington DC and streamed over the Internet. As always, I continue to be amazed at how comfortable the president is in his own skin; how he's not afraid to engage in a little pointed humor; and how he speaks clearly and directly--and gives a straight answer to a straight question. Most of the time.

My biggest concern about the current health care reform legislation is that no reform that passes without including the so-called "public option" will have sufficient teeth to put the bite on the current excesses of the private, for profit, health insurers and the other big industry insiders (like the pharmaceutical companies) which have raked in obscene profits while literally bankrupting hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans.

But the president will not commit to the public option. He says "it's important" but that it's "only one component of real health care reform." From everything I know about the issue, and presuming that a true single-payer system is not even on the table, however, the public option seems to be the sine qua non, the linchpin, the very foundation for all the other reforms he's advocating.

So why won't he just come out and commit to it? In the past, I have expressed great admiration for his grasp of politics as "the art of the possible." I still hold that to be true. I think, however, that he's being overly cautious in his estimation of what is, in fact, possible. I cannot escape the suspicion that on this issue, the American public is way, WAY ahead of everyone in Washington. I have seen reported the results of poll after poll after poll, all showing that over 76% of Americans support the public option when its terms are described accurately. On the other hand, several other credible polls show that as the dog days of August have come and gone, public support for the "public option," when called by that name, is decreasing.

Maybe the problem really is with the term "public option." Maybe the powers that be, the ones which do not wish to see their profits drop even one red cent, have managed to poison the well. Maybe they've so polluted the waters about what a "public option" is that the president is trying to get away from the term while retaining its substance. Or maybe I'm just blowing smoke--though I doubt it. I'm a lifelong non-smoker, remember?

My own experiences with both the public and private health care industries have taught me that all the alleged dangers of the public option are already occurring at the hands of private, for-profit insurers. And that the public option [assuming that it will be structured similarly to Medicare, as the currently-proposed legislation has it--Ed.], while capable of wrongfully denying coverage, at least will have an appeals process in place--which may be slow, but will be unbiased. Wrongfully denied coverage decisions can be overturned. Furthermore, you can't be held liable for paying for the costs of the treatment(s) in question while your appeal is in process. Nor will you lose your coverage, either because of your condition or because of your appeal.

As it is now, however, if your private insurer drops you, you're dropped. Period. Yes, there are steps to appeal that you can take, but they are not just slow--they are expensive. The insurers can afford to wait you out. Assume that you have something seriously wrong with you that is treatable, but expensive [and note that the longer it goes untreated, the worse and more expensive both it and its treatment will get--Ed.], and your coverage is denied. You can choose to appeal, and spend whatever other funds you have on the costs of pursuing that. Or you can choose to pay out of pocket for the medical treatments you need and forgo any appeal--you will never get reimbursed for what you spent on treatments for wrongfully-denied claims, by the way. Or, if you can't afford either of those options, you can just spend what little money you have on your everyday expenses, and die while that which was dire, but treatable, becomes fatal due to the lack of treatment and care you were wrongfully denied in the first place.

Let's face it: all that insurance is, is a wager. Further, you are betting on yourself to lose, for that's what will trigger the release of funds from the insurer. [Why do I suddenly hear Beck singing "I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me"?--Ed] And the bet is rigged, for even if you lose, the insurer always has tons o' fine print to cite to justify its refusal to pay your claim. We are collectively being had, people. It's not just time for a change; it's overdue for a change.

But is a real change going to happen? I wonder, when I hear the president saying only that the private option is "important." I know his motive is to encourage both political parties to work together to find solutions. And while I agree that bipartisanship is a worthy goal, I also recognize that it isn't going to happen unless both sides want to play. Right now, the GOP seems more concerned with doing everything it can to mess up the Obama administration's efforts for the sake of its own presupposed electoral gains next year than it seems concerned with doing what is really in the best interests of America's citizens--all of us.

I just hope I'm the only one falling victim to issue fatigue, and that there are still plenty of people out there with the health, the strength, the energy, the vision, and the will to see genuine and substantial health care reform enacted. Because if I'm not the only one succumbing to issue fatigue, we're all SOL.

More Random Observations on the Passing Scene

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Add my voice to those who decry the loss of civic discourse in this country, as evidenced by the behavior of far too many people at the various town hall meetings members of Congress are holding during this August recess. The objections of those who oppose the current proposed health care reforms would have a lot more credibility if their proponents would present them in a calm, rational way . . . as opposed to the shouting, name-calling, blind rejection of facts with which those people disagree, and generally obnoxious behavior we're seeing now. At least the people who attended President Obama's two meetings over this past weekend understood that. People are free to "agree to disagree." That's the entire point of living in a representative democracy. But we can do it with civility and respect, and still acknowledge what we have in common, which is our love of our country and our respect for its fundamental precepts--the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

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On a related note: those who are opposed to health care reform (i.e., everyone who stands to rake in less outrageous fortunes from their roles in the current system) have recognized the truth of the above observation, and are also making more insidious intrusions into the debate. I heard a report on NPR yesterday morning in which a pollster noted pointedly that President Obama's poll ratings have been going down as this health care "debate" has progressed. The pollster was from what is generally regarded as a "conservative think-tank" (if memory serves). His interpretation of the poll results was that Obama's ratings were falling in direct proportion to the increase in public awareness of the details of the proposed health care reforms.

So far, so good. But then he suggested that the public did not want the allegedly "radical" reforms that are being proposed. That killed his ability to analyze his poll numbers, for me at least. If the president's numbers are, in fact, falling, and it's because the public at large isn't liking what it's hearing about the proposed reforms, it's as likely as not that the public thinks the reforms do not go far enough. The pollster never addressed whether the poll's questions explored that possibility, leading me to think the poll's questions did not. The pollster also cited the level of acrimony at most of the town hall meetings as support for his interpretation. This, even after it has been well-demonstrated and well-documented that the loud and angry contingent disrupting the town hall meetings is (1) being pumped up to fury by lies about and distortions of the issues at hand; (2) full of people bused in from elsewhere, outside of the districts the town hall meetings are intended to serve; and (3) being orchestrated, shepherded, and guided by representatives of the health care interests which are going to make less-obscene profits [note well that that does NOT mean "NO profits"--Ed.] should the proposed reforms actually pass.

But what saddened me the most is that no one at NPR even questioned the veracity or accuracy of the pollster's interpretation of his data. We all would have been better off if the pollster had stopped after stating what the poll results said, period. His interpretation should not have been allowed to stand unquestioned. Letting them so stand gave them a level of credibility they did not deserve.

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Then again, as I am reminded on a daily basis, my approach to things like this is not the norm. I am 100% incapable of living my life by the standard of "don't confuse me with the facts, for I've already made up my mind." But far, far too many people in this world cling to what they want to believe, what they prefer to believe, what they need to believe--as opposed to looking at things as they are and summoning up the flexibility to deal with reality.

Better the devil you know, I guess. What never ceases to amaze me about this is how frequently this behavior results in people acting against their own best interests. Disabled people without health care protesting the proposed health care reforms? Workers losing their benefits and even their jobs opposing unions? People whose families suffered generations of discrimination discriminating in turn against others? Residents of dying small towns rejecting financial reforms that would bring some measure of prosperity back to them?

On one level, it's incomprehensible to me. On another, I understand it perfectly well. It starts at home, and it's just as likely to come from the desire to justify one's own bad behavior toward others as anything else. That may seem ironic, given that behavior rooted in preserving one's perceived personal advantage manifests on the larger scale as support for things that run counter to one's own best interests . . . but the root in the same: the inability to cope with change, the fear of somehow losing a sense of control--even when that sense of control is itself an illusion.

Better the devil you know, indeed.

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Speaking of discrimination . . . my aunt recently sent me a diatribe from Patrick Buchanan about how blacks should be grateful that their ancestors were taken from their homes in Africa by force and enslaved for generations--and that even after slavery was ended and they were granted equal legal status under law [a status more honored in the violation than in the keeping, over the subsequent century--Ed.] and thus allowed to partake of the benefit of being Americans. Buchanan's ultimate point was that the lack of black gratitude is the root of all race-relations problems in this country.

I nearly puked. What a vile piece of racist crap! Consider: what value is held in higher regard by "Americans" of Buchanan's ilk than all others? Freedom. They don't like government; they don't like taxes; they don't like motorcycle helmet laws; in short, they don't like being told what to do. [They seem to have forgotten that in a society, we all implicitly contract to give up getting 100% of our own way 100% of the time for the greater benefits of living in a society, a community, which provides shared benefits AND burdens--Ed.] And yet blacks should be "grateful" that their ancestors forcibly had their freedom ripped away from them? That for centuries they were treated like property, not like human beings? That even after their legal status was made right, their factual status in society was still as beggars at the table of America's rich bounty? That they were relegated to slums, to crappy schools, and to vile jobs because they were not given the equal economic opportunity to partake of that bounty in the first place?

Puh-leeze.

What's worse, Buchanan, as a son of Irish immigrants, should be well aware of the history of discrimination against the Irish in this country. No, the Irish were never enslaved. Slavery was infinitely worse than anything they experienced. But that doesn't mean the white male Protestant power structure welcomed them. Even in job advertisements, "NINA" was noted clearly. "NINA." "No Irish Need Apply." If you look at political cartoons from the mid-19th century, the Irish were depicted just as savagely as were blacks--drunken, irresponsible brawlers, with monkey-like faces and childish [as opposed to "child-like"--Ed.] attitudes. The only discernible difference was in the color of their skin.

But Buchanan has assimilated himself into that same white male Protestant power structure. He was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon, for heaven's sake. Either he loathes himself and his background or he has sold it out for the sake of his own place close to the top of the power structure in America. Like Bill O'Reilly, he spouts the far right-wing GOP party line. They are both an embarrassment to people of Irish Catholic ancestry everywhere.

What's funnier (in a sick sort of way) is that they have so ingratiated themselves to the system that oppressed their ancestors, they have become oppressors themselves. "If I made it, anyone can make it. People who fail in America have no one to blame but themselves." Note that they have conveniently forgotten that they "made it" by becoming part of the traditional power structure, not by broadening that power structure to accept anyone not just like those already there. Reminds me of what has truthfully been said about George W. Bush: he was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.

Which is why we are seeing such hate-fulled backlash against the president in certain quarters. They don't recognize that the "American pie" is big enough to feed everyone, and feed everyone quite well. They perceive only that their piece of the pie--or their tenuous connection to the present power structure--is going to shrink, and they think they are going to lose. When South Africa ended apartheid, similar fears were unleashed. The white minority, which had always held power, feared that giving any power to the black majority would result in their being treated as poorly as they had treated the blacks. By and large, however, such reprisals have not happened.

Nor will they happen [except in isolated incidents--I'm not saying anyone is perfect--Ed.] here. Nor am I singing "Kum-by-ah." There will always be threats and dangers in the world. But they are external, not internal. Just because the center of the power structure has shifted doesn't mean that "the haves" will suddenly become "the have-nots." We are ALL Americans, and the sooner we realize that, the better. For all of us.

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Several religious [I use the term advisedly--Ed.] "leaders" of late have encouraged their flocks to bring their guns to church. No, not to turn them in, but to show support for the Second Amendment to the US Constitution and the individual's alleged right to bear arms at any time in any place. The GOP managed to attach an amendment allowing people to carry loaded guns in our national parks to a bill imposing long-needed and long-overdue restrictions on the excesses of credit card companies--a bill that President Obama signed. The larger goal was, on balance, more important than the loaded weapons provision. [The national parks amendment did include language prohibiting the carrying of such weapons where state laws prohibited it, however. I am a bit perplexed by this, but I gather that the concept of "states' rights" trumps even the "right to bear arms" in the eyes of those who wrote the amendment. But that weirdness is most properly a topic for another post.--Ed.]

Am I the only person in America who thinks this obnoxious insistence on carrying loaded guns is infantile? Some babies carry blankies; some suck on their pacifiers; some suck on their thumbs; some must have their weapons everywhere they go. Their guns are nothing but metal binkies.

In some ways, this juvenile--and loud--insistence on having their guns with them at all times is no different from the far-right Muslim insistence that women wear the burqa. It says a lot more about them and their lack of ability to control themselves than it does about what's going on in the world around them.

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Still, this blind, unreasoning, stomp-your-feet insistence on having your "guns today, guns tomorrow, guns forever" is going to produce a whopper of an unintended consequence if the rich in this country keep getting richer at the expense of the disappearing economic middle class. Stable, successful societies have stable, large, and relatively prosperous economic middle classes. When that balance is upset, and there is a mountain-sized group of the poor at the bottom and a mole-sized group of the über-rich at the top, there will eventually be violence. The Second Amendment fanatics sense this; that's why they insist on having their guns with them at all times and their gated communities to which they can retreat.

But if Second Amendment rights are absolute and inviolable, the poor are going to have plenty of guns of their own, too. And that's what the gun nuts have forgotten. I am mind-boggled by this, because it's plain as the news in the daily paper that where guns are not just allowed, but encouraged, murder rates go up. Omaha passed a concealed-carry law a couple of years ago; the murder rates subsequently have skyrocketed. So far, the majority of the violence has been in the poorer parts of town [self-inflicted wounds, if you will--Ed.], but the hopeless rage that unremitting poverty can engender is going to spill all over the "nicer" areas of town at some point. As much as I want to live forever, just to see how everything turns out, I do not want to see this. I hope I am dead and long gone before it happens, because that's an end for America I simply do not want to see.

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On a lighter note: Have you seen the Gas-Ex commercial wherein the HR manager is reviewing an applicant's resume? He has certain bodily function problems on his mind, and at one point, he hears her saying, "You're flatulent in three languages." I roar with laughter every time I hear that. I wonder if it's because my ex-husband fancies himself to be a linguist . . .

If I Could Change Certain Things, I Most Certainly Would

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Have you seen the Kingsford Matchlight charcoal ad wherein the husband shoos his wife away from the barbecue grill, essentially telling her that since he doesn't go into the kitchen to make salad, she shouldn't try to light his fire [pun intended--Ed.]? He says "there's a technique," and then strikes a match and tosses it in . . . and the charcoal ignites. His wife, with appropriately subtle sarcasm, says "Wow." She then backs away, telling their guests that everything is OK.

I don't know the "genius" [and I use the term very loosely, indeed--Ed.] who created the ad; nor do I know the "geniuses" [ditto--Ed.] at Kingsford who approved it. So I am left with no way even to speculate a possible answer to my question: Why would ANYONE want to buy a product that says its users are idiots?

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I used to think that language was the thing that held America together, given our collective fundamental diversity of ethnic backgrounds and life experiences; but I am beginning to wonder. I've been doing a great deal of proofreading work of late. I am appalled by the lack of care and attention that intelligent and otherwise educated people give to their native tongue. And that's after I've made allowance for the fact that everyone, myself included, speaks less precisely than s/he writes, even in relatively formal situations, such as testifying under oath.

No one seems to care whether his/her subjects, verbs, and/or pronouns match--or even whether he/she includes subjects, verbs, and/or pronouns in the first place. No one seems to care whether his/her questions or answers to questions are understandable or responsive. [I especially hate it when someone is asked a "yes or no" question and gives an answer that says everything under the sun EXCEPT for "yes" or "no."--Ed.]

People have been making similar complaints about such signs of the decline and fall of civilization from, well, the decline and fall of Rome (if not earlier). Between the twin battering rams of modern high technology and the lack of organized, official grammar education in our elementary and junior high schools, however, we have exponentially increased the rate of decline. If we cannot understand each other, how can we expect to hang together as a society?

Then again, why am I spitting into the wind? Entropy increases. Still, whenever my time comes, I'd like to leave this "mortal coil" knowing I did my best to leave things better, not worse, for those who will follow.

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And what in the world is wrong with the people who still insist that Barack Obama is not legitimately the president because he's supposedly not a native-born US citizen? His birth certificate HAS been produced (despite all claims to the contrary); two different 1961 newspaper notices reporting his birth have been discovered and publicized; his election was certified by the US Congress, in accordance with the terms of the Constitution--and Congress never would have done that if there had been any legitimate doubts about Obama's ability to satisfy all Constitutionally-mandated requirements. Before the election last November, a right-wing web site even published all the information confirming that Obama is, in fact, a native-born US citizen. Besides, his mother was a US citizen, which automatically confers US citizenship on him. And Hawaii WAS a state in 1961.

The sad, simple truth is that these people are racists, pure and simple, but they don't want to say so--at least, not overtly. So they've latched onto this "issue" to spew their venom while disguising their real agenda. They are a bunch of small-minded, sad, hateful fools. And no matter how much proof is presented, they won't believe it. And they do America, the country they supposedly love so much, a great disservice.

I really hate willful ignorance. But I must remind myself that no one is ever going to be able to change their minds. Mark Twain was right: Never teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

Things You Can't Get Out Of Your Head

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On Wednesday, I heard Frank DeFord's weekly NPR commentary for "Morning Edition." I usually look forward to hearing Mr. DeFord's comments. He knows his subject (sports), has a sharp wit, and is not afraid to use it. I was disappointed in this week's broadcast, however. Unless he was being satirical in a manner too subtle for me to pick up when I was not 100% awake and alert, he seemed to lay the blame for the relative unpopularity of women's professional sports squarely at the feet of women everywhere.

I would love to hear his answers (yes or no), and then his reasons for each of them, to the following:

(1) Did he consider that women still make much less than men, thus severely reducing their ability to spend the money it takes to attend women's sporting events?

(2) Did he consider that women still bear--disproportionately--the burdens of keeping up the home and the daily care of the family, leaving them with much less free time and energy to attend women's sporting events?

(3) Did he stop to think that maybe not enough time has passed since the inception of Title IX to build a base of women who have played women's sports and who thus can be expected to be fans for life?

(4) With the same observation about Title IX, does he not recognize that women's sports have not received major TV coverage for a long enough time to reinforce and build that budding fan base?

(5) Did he not consider the effect that women not being allowed to play the single most popular sports, football and baseball, have on their willingness to become fans of those or of other sports?

(6) Did he not consider that for many, many, many people, women's sports are for wimps? One example: softball is what guys with beer bellies play on the weekends, and women may prefer to play or watch baseball to women's softball--even though women play the game at a level and with a speed that is actually scary, even to men. Furthermore, Mr. DeFord's "lament" at the quick demise of women's professional soccer is disingenuous. Nobody in America likes soccer enough to support a sustainable professional league, and it's only the bias favoring men's sports that's keeping men's major league soccer alive at this point.

(7) Did he consider the plight of women of my generation (those of us old enough to have finished most of our domestic responsibilities yet still young enough to work and thus have some discretionary income)? I was an only child and my dad wanted a boy. He got me, which was fine with him, but his idea of family time was to raise me to love the sports he loved, watched, and played. And women's sports in those days, except for Olympics-related ones [thus inaccessible to most of us because we didn't have the opportunity or talent to participate--Ed.], did not exist for the average sports fan, on TV or anywhere else. What is worse, whenever a woman of my generation exhibited any real knowledge of sports, the men all fled in horror. They claimed they wished the women in their lives would care about sports, but whenever one did, they feared being shown up, and their fragile egos made it that much harder for women to develop the habit of being sports fans in the first place, let alone fans of women's sports.

(8) Did he not consider that as women have come to participate in traditionally "men's" sports, that viewership of those sports has increased, and that it may be just a matter of TIME before the kind of female fan base needed grows to self-sustainability?

Maybe the key is to stop having separate leagues when at all possible. I'd like to see some studies done to determine whether, at the professional level, women really are too small, too fragile, and/or too slow to compete on the same turf as men. Bowling, golf, baseball, even tennis [how many male tennis players do you know who'd be willing to play either of the Williams' sisters?--Ed] . . . indeed, every sport that relies more on skill than on brute strength, can and maybe ought to be played co-ed at the professional level. But again, it would take time to develop the players, change the attitudes of the financial backers, and develop programs to air, thus increasing the viewership, thus increasing the fan base.

Dare I say that it's men and their fragile egos who once again are thwarting the sports dreams of women--and thus that Mr. DeFord's commentary thus is just full of it?

Where Apologies Are Owed, Apologies Will Be Given

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I learned earlier today that the woman who made the initial 911 call about the possible break-in that turned into the controversial arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates [see previous blog post, "A Whole Lot Of People Are Missing The Point"--Ed.] said absolutely nothing about the race(s) of the two men she thought were breaking into what turned out to be Professor Gates's own home.

My apologies to her for the unwarranted assumption I made within the body of my previous post. Not only did she not say anything to the 911 dispatchers about the race(s) of the two men she saw, she didn't even see their faces, and so probably could not have known who apparently was forcing open the front door of Gates's house.

Again I apologize. I regret my error, and will try to learn from it. The moral of this story is that no one is 100% free of prejudice, and one of mine tends to be that rich people are prejudiced against minorities. I will watch my own presumptions more carefully in the future.

I also hope my error does not distract from the larger point of my previous post, however. Professor Gates had every right to be angry and upset about being confronted by police, and even though he did not keep his cool, the police still should have walked away the second Gates produced his identification. And to anyone who says that the black police officer on the scene totally defended the arresting officer's actions, I ask: what else is he going to say? He is a cop. He has to work with Sgt. Crowley and the other members of the Cambridge police force every day for the foreseeable future. If he challenged Sgt. Crowley's account, he'd be ostracized by his fellow officers. If he said nothing, he'd be seen by his fellows as not being supportive, and thus be ostracized just the same.

I will see no need to change my ultimate conclusion until and unless I am shown that exactly the same thing that happened to Professor Gates has happened to white men accused of breaking into their own homes and who also were less than pleased with the police coming to investigate.

And remember, my ultimate point is simply this: sometimes the most effective use of power is NOT to use it. Prof. Gates may well have been hypersensitive, but he was in his own home, and I cannot understand why Sgt. Crowley, trained as he was in not just avoiding racial profiling, but in teaching other police officers how to avoid it, did not simply walk away.

One suspects that in the end, this entire incident had less to do with race than it did with excessive testosterone, on both sides.

A Whole Lot Of People Are Missing The Point

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Forgive me for throwing in my two-cents' worth, but I must post my thoughts about the recent arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates for "breaking into" his own house. Gates, who is black, was arrested in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by a white police sergeant, James Crowley, for disorderly conduct when Gates continued to upbraid Crowley after Crowley had seen proof that Gates was in his own house. Many are defending Crowley, who is by all accounts an excellent officer, and who indeed teaches younger police officers the wrongs of racial profiling. Many (myself included) are outraged that Crowley arrested and handcuffed Gates at all, despite the fact that the charges were later dropped. President Obama called the officer's actions "stupid" at the end of his press conference Wednesday night. I have to agree.

First, the real source of the problem has been totally ignored so far. That source? The woman who called in an apparent break-in and robbery in progress. Yes, she was correct to call for help instead of investigating herself, but here's the problem with what she did: if she was so aware of what was going on in her neighborhood that she saw Gates leaning his shoulder into his front door in an effort to get it to open, why didn't she recognize Gates? Her brain seems to have shut itself off the moment she noticed that the man at that door was black. That's the real root of the problem.

Yes, Gates could have restrained himself and his tongue--but why should he have had to? He was in his own home. He'd proven to the police it was his own home. The ER character Halle once pointed out to a white character that "for black folks, it's always about race." And it is. People who say Crowley did nothing wrong because he would have done the same thing had a white suspect so berated him are forgetting that no white suspect ever would have found himself in the position in which Gates found himself in the first place. Let alone the fact that Gates is a professor at Harvard. His status and his skin color simply don't match in the minds of way too many people in this country, and they mix and match their reactions to Gates' behavior by pointing to whichever factor suits their prejudices. He is a professor, in his own home? He should have understood the neighbor's concerns and been grateful that the police responded so quickly to protect his property values. But he was out of line in the way he spoke to the officer? He's a hypersensitive [read that "uppity"--Ed.] black man. In short, he's in a no-win situation, a situation no white person would ever have had to face.

The other major point that occurred to me, and which seems to have occurred to no one else besides Joseph McMillan, the head of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, is that the police contact with Gates should have ended the second Gates proved who he was and that he was in his own home. Crowley should have just walked away, even if Gates continued to excoriate him verbally. He should have closed his ears and kept on walking. The man was in his own home. He had every right to be upset. Let him blow off steam. Don't try to talk him down; don't even listen to him. The fact that the disorderly conduct charges were dropped proves Crowley could have just walked away. The charges were not dropped due to adverse publicity, for the charges were dropped before the events had become widely publicized.

No, Crowley technically may have done nothing wrong, but he of all people should have known that exercising his police power under the circumstances would come to no good end. He may claim it's because he doesn't look at people's races in making his decisions, and he may really believe it. He may even be right. But that's not really the point. The point is that some people on the receiving end of the exercise of police power have collectively been on the receiving end of centuries of abuse of that power. Crowley was in the position of power and authority in the situation in which he found himself vis-a-vis Gates. He could have chosen NOT to exercise it out of deference to the right of a man in his own home to be, well, pissed off. He should have made the choice not to exercise his power in that situation. The fact that he did not choose just to walk away demonstrates that he still has a big blind spot in his thinking about and understanding of the realities of race relations in this country. Judging from much of the subsequent commentary, Crowley is not alone. And that is very, very sad.

The World Is Diminished

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I just heard the news that Walter Cronkite died earlier this evening, at the age of 92. Long regarded as "the most trusted man in America" (seriously--a Gallup poll in the 70s confirmed it), Mr. Cronkite was hands-down the greatest of a great generation of journalists.

He'd have preferred the term "working reporter." And that's what made his stint anchoring the CBS Evening News for nearly 20 years so extraordinary. No one knew his personal political proclivities; no one cared. They knew he'd give them the facts, as unadorned as possible by even a nuance of opinion, and that he'd never either inflate his own importance or talk down to his audience. He created and embodied, for all practical intents and purposes, the original concept of the "anchorman."

Yes, he let his feelings on occasion seep through. I saw his broadcast of the news of President Kennedy's assassination, and even at the age of six-and-a-half, I recognized the since-famous moment where he removed his glasses and wiped a tear from his eye as genuine grief . . . for the loss of Kennedy the man, for the loss of Kennedy the president, for the loss of hope in the country and even the whole world.

I also remember him removing his glasses in July of 1969, wiping the sweat and tension from his brow, as the whole world got the word that "The Eagle has landed" and that men were for the first time on the Moon.

It's more than a bit ironic that his death comes as the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission is upon us. Mr. Cronkite lived to see the 40th anniversary of the lift-off. Alas, the 40th anniversary of the actual landing is still a few days away. Funny how it seems so immediate in my memory and yet so distant that I have to squint my mental eyes to see it . . .

I know that Mr. Cronkite was not happy retiring from his anchor desk when he did. He was essentially forced out. Not that he let that stop him from continuing to read, learn, and study the events of the world, participating in special reports on momentous subjects as he saw fit. But in a way, I'm glad he was taken from the anchor desk when he was. He was a working reporter who wrote his own copy. His early training with UPI during World War II trained him to get all the details, get them right, and get them out fast. He would have died long ago if he had stayed and been forced to turn into the purveyor of shallow entertainment that too much of our 24/7 news cycle has forced news anchors to become.

He was born in Missouri, and he got his journalism education at Texas. He was an educated man, but educated in a very plain-spoken way. Not unlike certain other famous Midwesterners: Mark Twain and Ulysses Grant. [If you doubt me about Grant, please go read his "Memoirs," which Twain edited and made sure were published so that Grant, dying of throat cancer, could provide for his soon-to-be widow and family. The work is a monument to plain-speaking.--Ed]

Mr. Cronkite also had "the voice." His stentorian baritone, delivered with perfectly measured modulation, has been oft copied--but never equalled. I think one of the most subtle on-going tributes to Mr. Cronkite's influence and importance is Keith Olbermann's occasional adoption of the Cronkite delivery. He tends to do it while reporting a bit of fluff, but it is done with respect and to make the point (without ever being so crass as to say so) that anchoring a newscast "ain't what it used to be." I'll bet Olbermann is sick at heart that he was away from his "Countdown" desk this night.

Walter Cronkite made the world a better place. He embodied the call to our better selves, the call to strive for greatness, that was the hallmark of the best of John Kennedy's speeches--and which attitude is about impossible to find much of anywhere these days. The world is a darker, lesser place without him in it. We were lucky we had him while we did. Requiescat in pace.

Some Man Wrote That Editorial

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I was reading the editorials in today's Omaha World-Herald, a paper whose editors frequently make Attila the Hun look like a reasonable person, when the following (reproduced in its entirety) caught my eye:

It was a strange scene when U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer of California cried foul during a recent congressional hearing. Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh referred to her as "ma'am" during his testimony, and she pointedly directed him to refer to her as "Senator."

In this age when a traditionalist mind-set sometimes collides awkwardly with a progressive one, the term "ma'am" has become an oddly divisive term in certain situations.

To many progressives such as Sen. Boxer, the term evidently is a symbol of retrograde thinking, a throwback to the day when married women went dutifully by their husband's name ("Mrs. John Smith").

To Gen. Walsh on the other hand, the term "ma'am" was merely one common in formal military usage.

In any case, the general's intention clearly was to show respect. By no means did he deserve such a hard-edged, public reprimand.

Although the taste of self-righteousness was no doubt satisfying to Sen. Boxer, it is excessive for a U.S. senator to make such a show of taking offense when obviously none was intended.

On such matters, the senator should beware of leaping to be so judgmental. It would help if she would raise her consciousness and devote more energy to appreciating cultural diversity.

There are so many errors of logic in this that it is difficult for me to know where to begin. One thing I will admit up front: I did not see the hearing in question, so I have no idea whether the World-Herald editor's description of the event is even accurate.

Is it possible that Sen. Boxer had, at some point prior [either before the proceedings began or earlier during them--Ed.] politely asked the general not to use "ma'am" and he ignored her request, which caused her to make the more pointed comments she made (presuming the editorial recounting is correct)?

Is it possible that the editor's description of the incident is not totally accurate? One person's upbraiding is another's mild request--especially when it's a woman speaking to a man.

What would the World-Herald editor have said if the tables were turned? I have had the personal experience of being excoriated by a judge for calling him "sir" instead of "Your Honor." But the judge was an older, white, male, in charge of the proceedings, and I was merely a participant, the child and spouse of career Air Force members, trying my darnedest to be polite, but getting the protocol wrong. No one thought the judge was out of line. Maybe Sen. Boxer wasn't, either.

How does the World-Herald editor know that "no disrespect was intended"? Did the editor call the general and ask? Words reduced to writing and descriptions of events (once reduced to paper) have an odd habit of sounding neutral. Why, this is the very stuff of diplomacy, to say the meanest thing in the nicest way, so that the other diplomats get the point but the general public does not. The editor was awfully quick to ascribe noble motives to the general and evil ones to Sen. Boxer. Maybe she didn't intend any disrespect, either, but she just wasn't as subtle about making her point as the general apparently was in making his.

Besides, even though "ma'am" is a term "common in formal military usage," the general was not in a military setting. In this country, the civilian authority controls the military. Hasn't the World-Herald editorial staff ever heard of "When in Rome, do as Romans do"? He was testifying before Congress. Yes, he is a military officer speaking in his official capacity. But he is speaking to his employers, the American people, via their elected civilian representatives. His military duty is to show them the respect THEY expect, not force them to accept his version of same.

Of course, the key to the entire snide little piece is the use of the word "evidently." Using it lets the editor ascribe all sorts of nasty motives to Sen. Boxer, yet deny nefarious purpose because the editor was only "speculating." He doesn't really know. Since many people do not read editorials with the skeptical care they should, they forget the "evidently" and go on about their lives believing that Sen. Boxer is a bad, bad, bad--liberal--bad, bad human being. Even if that's not "technically" what the editorial said.

The editor even got careless: "married women went dutifully by their husband's name"? Unless the World-Herald offices are a hotbed of fundamentalist Mormonism, it should have said "married women went dutifully by their husbands' names." Good grief! The World-Herald could use some better copy editors.

Not to mention that the closing line about "cultural diversity" is entirely irrelevant, and contradictory to the main point of the editor's comments. He was defending the use of traditional terminology by a traditional wielder of power against the exercise of a protest to same by a female, non-traditional wielder of power--who actually was the one in charge in that situation. The only cultural diversity the World-Herald seems to accept is the cultural diversity of white males.

The World-Herald editorial staff could do much worse than to take its own advice: "Although the taste of self-righteousness was no doubt satisfying . . ., it is excessive . . . to make such a show of taking offense when obviously none was intended. On such matters, [one] should beware of leaping to be so judgmental."

You may ask me why, when it exasperates me so much, I continue to read the World-Herald's editorial tripe. All I can say is, "keep your friends close--but keep your enemies closer."

Still, I may have to quit reading the paper in any event. I don't know how much more of its official hypocrisy and stupidity my blood pressure can stand.

Le Roi Est Mort! Vive Le Roi!

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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 (á 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.

Gross. Simply Gross.

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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.

When Will They Ever Learn? When Will They Ever Learn?

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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.