Taking a humorous but analytical look at just about anything in the spirit of Groucho Marx: I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member!
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.
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!"
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.
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 . . .
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who was missing for about 5 days, finally reappeared yesterday and admitted he was in Argentina, seeing the woman with whom he has been having an affair. His wife was not at his side as he held his confessional press conference. Indeed, it turns out that she had known about the affair and had asked him two weeks ago to move out of their home.
Bad enough that he, a conservative Republican, trashed his marriage vows. Bad enough that he was away from his four sons over Father's Day weekend. Bad enough that he didn't tell anyone on his staff how to reach him. [And worse, that his staff felt compelled to make up a story that he was hiking in the Appalachians to cover.--Ed.]
Worse, that he was so cavalier about his official duties and responsibilities as governor. Worst of all, that he used public resources to travel to his tryst.
Failing to turn executive power over to his lieutenant governor while he was not just out of the state, not just out of the country, but on a different continent, amounts to gross dereliction of official duty. His use of a state police escort vehicle to get to Atlanta's Hart International Airport so he could fly off to satisfy his ____________________--you fill in the blank: lust, emotional vacuum, ego, whatever--amounts to misappropriation of public funds. It also raises the question of how his plane tickets and the other incidental expenses of his travel were paid for. And not just on this occasion, but on prior trips he apparently made to be with his lady-love.
Not to mention the several questions his leaked email love letters raise: did he send them while he was supposed to be in his office, seeing to South Carolina's business? From which computer(s)? On a public account or a personal one?
In short: who was minding the store?
Sanford has resigned his chairmanship of the Republican National Governors' Association [apologies if I did not get the name of that august body exactly right--Ed.]. He has not expressed any intent to resign the governorship, however. Indeed, he's implied he won't, saying that now that the truth is out, "let the chips fall where they may."
Well, if he does not resign, he ought to be impeached, convicted, and removed from office. Not for the affair per se, as disgusting as it is. After all, Sanford belongs to the party that claims to be THE defender of family values and morality in this country. [The hypocrisy of that stand is a topic for another day.--Ed]
No, not for the affair per se. But for the gross dereliction of his official duties, and his cavalier use of publicly-paid for, government-owned resources to do it--YES, absolutely.
One wonders what the next instance of governmental self-destruction will be. Lord knows, there's more than enough to go around for members of both major parties.
Feel free to indulge yourselves in a verse and chorus or two of "Where Have All The Flowers Gone." The moral of every event I'm about to comment on is: those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it.
First, the "election" in Iran. I said (repeatedly, loudly, and often) in the weeks leading up to the voting that if Ahmadinejad won by more than 3-4 percent of the vote, people around the world would regard the election results as a fraud. If Ahmadinejad had made the returns look within the realm of probability, he'd have avoided the certain mess his theft of the election has now caused in Iran.
History instructs us, over and over and over again, that unexpectedly wide margins of victory, wherever and whenever they occur, invite accusations of election fraud. But Ahmadinejad let his ego get in the way, as all megalomaniacs throughout history have, and insisted on an overwhelming "margin" of victory. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing. He just may have sown the seeds of his own political destruction, which would be a very good outcome for the Iranian people and perhaps the rest of the world, indeed.
Furthermore, the bleating of those like US Senator John McCain is not helping. McCain insists that President Obama is in error for refusing to condemn the election results outright and express support for those opposed to Ahmadinejad. WRONG. McCain's grasp of foreign policy, even after all his years of service--military and political--is, shall we say, shaky. If Obama were to condemn the Iranian election results and express support for Ahmadinejad's opponents, all he would succeed in doing is undermining those opponents' efforts to effect change in their own country. They'd immediately be labelled by Ahmadinejad and his cronies as puppets of the evil American empire. Their credibility and their ability to fight Ahmadinejad would be destroyed. That would do absolutely no good. Obama's more prudent approach is the stuff of an incredibly sophisticated understanding of foreign policy, one McCain and his cohorts would do well to support, not snipe at.
Second, an issue of local, but large, import. One of the blessings of living in the greater metro Omaha area is being able to watch not one, but two states' public television offerings. We are just across the Missouri river from Council Bluffs, Iowa, which has its own Iowa Public TV broadcasting substation, so we get both Nebraska Educational TV (NETV) and Iowa Public TV (IPTV). They do not carry the same programming, not by any stretch of the imagination. For one thing, IPTV has a larger population, so it has more money, so it can afford to air programming NETV cannot at present purchase. And even when they do carry the same programming, they do not always carry the shows at the same time, which makes it easier for those of us with varying schedules and no DVR not to miss anything we really want to watch.
However, when "Digital Transition Day" came and went, Cox Communications moved IPTV off the Nebraska Basic and Expanded Basic tiers of service, which came as a rude shock to many, many people. After all, Cox had been advertising for the better part of a year that people with Cox Cable service would not have to do anything to survive the transition to digital TV. Turns out they are either going to have to do without an important channel or spend more to continue to get it.
Cox is hiding behind legalisms and excuses, to wit: (a) IPTV officials signed off on the switch months ago, so blame IPTV, not Cox; and (b) Cox is required by law to carry only one PBS station, and for Nebraskans, it's NETV. I know IPTV made one announcement about a year ago that it was going to all-digital broadcasting, AS OF AUGUST 2008. No one from IPTV said anything about that having an effect on anyone's ability to receive IPTV after the transition to all-digital broadcasting. And Cox may be required by law to carry only one PBS station per market, but the reality is that an awful lot of people on the Nebraska side of the Missouri not only watch IPTV, they contribute to IPTV on a regular basis. They thus have now been denied something they actually already paid for.
Cox's slogan is "your friend in the digital age." Right. If the people at Cox would take that seriously, plus study a little history, they'd realize that people and organizations which routinely hide behind legalisms and technicalities instead of stepping up and doing the right thing wind up despised. To use an apt (though vastly more important, on a cosmic scale) example, compare the reactions of the US public to JFK's speech after the Bay of Pigs with Nixon's days and months and years of denials and obfuscations about Watergate. Kennedy's reputation never took a serious pounding, and indeed, has grown over time--for he stood up, did the mature thing, told the truth, and got on with the nation's business. Nixon was hounded and hounded and hounded and eventually had to resign. And while some fanatics would have you believe otherwise, the general assessment of history is that Nixon's behavior rightly resulted in his being ranked as one of the very worst presidents in America's history.
Third, the illegally-leaked information that Sammy Sosa tested positive for performance-enhancing drug use back in 2003. I don't think anyone is shocked by the news itself. It's been an open but unacknowledged secret for years that Sosa was not immune from the taint of the "steroids era" in baseball. [But only a few names of the 103 total players on the list have become known. Heck, the list was supposed to have been destroyed six years ago.--Ed.] But I, for one, am shocked by the fact of the leak at this time. I cannot help but think it has more to do with some people's need for petty vengeance than with reporting news the public needs to know right now. For the leak came just a day or two after Sosa officially announced his retirement--and his hope, given that he ranks 6th on the all-time home run leaders list, that he'll someday be a Hall of Famer.
But there's a larger issue in all this that troubles me. I read a slew of comments posted to an online USA Today story about the leak, and most of the comments were venomous in their condemnation of Sosa--a black Latino. I don't remember seeing anyone else in the entire "steroids era" mess get ripped to such shreds. Certainly not the white Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire; not even Rafael Palmiero and Alex Rodriguez, who are both Latino, but not black.
Not only is racism NOT dead in this country, it's spitting fire every chance it gets. It's almost as if the racists realize they can't attack our president, so they are spewing their venom even more violently at anyone else who they can shoehorn into their stereotypes.
They are even slamming Sammy [pun intended--Ed.] for being a cheater for using a corked bat in a game. Well, it did happen. I saw that game, and I was suitably embarrassed for Sammy by it. However, what the haters are forgetting is this: that corked bat shattered when Sosa put the ball in play, and after he was thrown out at first base, he didn't run around frantically gathering up the pieces of the bat before anyone else had a chance to examine them. He calmly went back to the dugout. That tells me that Sosa's use of the corked bat during the game was inadvertent. Using that incident to condemn him further is just piling on; it's also intellectually dishonest. All great power hitters in baseball traditionally have used corked bats during batting practice to give an extra thrill to the fans who came early to watch them "do their thing." Thus it's not like his having the corked bat per se justifies the thrashing Sosa has received.
Sosa was naive if he expected his retirement announcement and his expressed desire to be selected for the Hall of Fame to come without negative comment. Even Babe Ruth was not voted in unanimously. I was naive for not expecting an anonymous leak about his inclusion on the list of those who tested positive back in 2003. And anyone who thinks that President Obama's election meant the end of racism in America is beyond naive. No progress comes without backlash, and in this case the potential for hate-filled, violent backlash is a frightening certainty.
That being said, I still wish the president's approach to domestic policy would show a little more backbone and a little less willingness to water down or even renege on campaign promises he made. He's giving the GOP minority much more clout that it deserves to have in terms of its absolute numbers. And the GOP is learning the wrong lesson from that. The GOP perceives that the louder it bleats, the more influence it will have. So every time Obama lets the GOP have any genuine input, the bleating gets louder instead of dying down. Remember, the present GOP "leaders" got the idea that they lost the November 2008 elections because their party was not far enough to the right. Their analytical skills are clearly about 180° out of whack.
Yes, Obama is a masterful politician. And yes, I recognize that he operates under the correct assumption that politics is the art of the possible. And I admit to suffering from a bit of "issue fatigue." But he's doing the minimum possible, not the maximum possible, right now. Besides, at an even deeper level, I am mad as hell that the minority with money is continuing to exert undue influence over the way the rest of us have to live, while it goes on its merry way, controlling the vast majority of the power in this country, making those of us who can afford it the least pay for and otherwise bear all the burdens of the benefits they enjoy entirely out of proportion to their numbers.
As an honest study of US history demonstrates, most of us will eventually acquiesce. We don't have the time or the money or the energy to do much more than cope with our daily lives. And those with enough money and power to stall progress will once again wait us out. They can afford to. The president does know history; he thinks his cautious approach is warranted. I, however, disagree. We don't need a mediator--mediators are for parties with relatively equal bargaining power. We need a champion--someone who can build up our side of the playing field so that it's level at last.
The crash of the Air France Airbus A300 into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil is at once a tragedy, a farce, and a mystery. A tragedy because of the loss of life. A farce because of the initial, erroneous reports by the Brazilian military of wreckage found and the general incompetence of the investigation until the past day or so. I am relieved that both the US and French navies have been asked to get involved in the hunt for the plane's black boxes.
A mystery? Not just because of the missing black boxes, thereby leaving investigators groping around for the reason(s) the plane crashed. But also because, for the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone would use the Airbus's "fly-by-wire" technology. You sure won't catch me flying in a plane that uses it.
Fly-by-wire systems make the pilot rely on sensors and computers instead of his/her own "feel" to fly the plane. If the sensors and computers conk out or give conflicting readings, the pilot has no way to control the plane. S/he cannot "feel" the plane through the stick. It's not unlike the difference between a car with an automatic transmission and power steering, and a car with a stick shift. If the automatic transmission and/or the power steering goes out, most drivers would be totally at the mercy of gravity and inertia. But with a stick shift, even if the clutch dies, drivers can still control enough of the vehicle's operating systems to bring the car to a safe, controlled stop.
So far, the scanty corroborated evidence in the Air France crash suggests that the computers and sensors got "confused" due to the extreme weather conditions in which the plane was flying. The scenario currently entertained is that the plane's sensors were providing contradictory data, which froze the computers, which kept the pilot from being able to control the plane, which caused the crash. Yes, it's speculative at this point, but it does fit all the facts as we know them so far.
Now, I know a few pilots (heck, I'm related to one of them). None of them likes the fly-by-wire system, period. None of them ever wants to be responsible for other lives when being forced to fly while using it.
So for me, the deeper mystery of the crash is why the heck anyone is using the fly-by-wire system in the first place. As with nearly everything else in this business-driven world, however, I suspect it has to do with the making of money at all costs, including the loss of many, many lives.
At least we can feel somewhat confident that the plane crash wasn't a terrorist act, if for no other reason than that no terrorist group has tried to "take credit" for it.
I just heard a report on National Public Radio that said one of the reasons the far right is opposing the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court is her opposition to Second Amendment guarantees of the right to own and bear arms.
No surprise there, really. But the "reasoning" behind the far right's stand is surprising, and may ultimately boomerang against it in other and unexpected ways. In a US Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision rendered earlier this year, Judge Sotomayor joined in an opinion that said the state of New York had the right to prohibit private ownership of the martial arts weapon called nunchuks, and that the US Constitution's Second Amendment was not triggered by (and thus did not override) the state's law. In other words, she agreed that the Second Amendment prohibited only the federal government from restricting individuals' rights to own and bear arms. The several states are free to regulate the ownership of arms as they see fit.
One Ken Blackwell, from the Family Research Council, claims that Sotomayor is wrong, and that the Second Amendment trumps any other attempt to regulate individual ownership of weapons. If he is correct, he has just reversed the traditional right wing position on the entire Bill of Rights and the concept of federal power. He is arguing AGAINST the concept of states' rights, just as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia did last year in a ruling that struck down Washington, D.C.'s law restricting private ownership of handguns. As I implied in a post dated 6/27/08 entitled "Strict Constructionist--NOT!", Scalia, and now Mr. Blackwell, did not heed the admonition to beware the law of unintended consequences. Let me quote from my own prior post:
The irony here is that Scalia's ruling actually confirms that the US Constitution implicitly affirms the people's right to privacy. Scalia believes no right to privacy exists because it's not "within the four corners" of the document. But his ruling makes it the sine qua non for implementing the Second Amendment (you have the unfettered right to keep handguns in your home, remember). This is the identical rationale the Court has cited in the past for implementing the other rights explicitly enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Oops! Scalia didn't see that one coming, I'll wager.
To inject a bit of sanity into the current discussion, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh noted that while Judge Sotomayor can be expected to take a different view of the Second Amendment from the preferred view of, say, the National Rifle Association, the judge was not plowing radical ground by her joining in the majority opinion in the nunchuks case. Nunchuks are a weapon, but they are not guns; apparently, there is a lot of US Supreme Court precedent supporting Judge Sotomayor's position in the nunchuks case.
I made the observation in an undergraduate US Constitutional History class that it was ironic that the Fourteenth Amendment, designed to protect individual civil rights, wound up (through Supreme Court rulings) protecting businesses and commerce while the Court wound up using the Constitution's Interstate Commerce Clause to protect individual civil rights and liberties. I see a similar irony here. The Second Amendment, designed to protect militias' rights to own and bear arms, has now been used (albeit not intentionally) to enshrine the concept of the right to privacy and the supremacy of federal power at the expense of states' rights . . . states' rights being the concept traditionally favored by those who insist on an unfettered right to own and bear arms.
Kind of makes me wish I were still able to practice law and to bring a case before the Supreme Court. I would love to see Justice Scalia's face when his own ruling regarding an individual's rights to gun ownership is used to support an argument favoring federal supremacy over a state's right to restrict other individual liberties.
Don't get me wrong. I know I make plenty of grammatical errors, especially while speaking. Let's face it: none of us talks as carefully and as formally as all of us do while writing. Still, some errors are so egregious that they must be noted, if only to help avoid repeating mistakes with potentially dangerous consequences.
In an NPR news report this morning, repeated reference was made to North Korea's recent testing of "an underground nuclear device." NO, NO, NO! North Korea did not test "an underground nuclear device." North Korea tested a nuclear device underground.
Believe it or not, the placement of the modifier (in this case, the adjective "underground") radically changes the meaning of the sentence. What the news report literally said was that North Korea tested a nuclear device that was to be used underground. What the news report meant was that North Korea blew up a nuclear device in a test it conducted underground. The device itself could be used at ground level or even high in the atmosphere.
None of us would have much to fear from a North Korean underground nuclear device. It would be virtually impossible for North Korea to plant, undetected, an underground nuclear device where it would do us serious harm. Indeed, an underground nuclear device by definition cannot do anyone relatively great harm--that's why the first nuclear test ban treaties banned testing only in the atmosphere or otherwise above ground. Underground testing, considered the safest of the available options, was allowed because none of the treaties' signatories was willing to forgo testing entirely.
Conducting a test of a nuclear device underground, however, means that the device is of risk to us--because the device's use is not limited to the nether realms. North Korea punctuated this point by also testing several short-range missile launching vehicles this past week.
Many people who read this [that is, if any of them do--Ed.] are probably rolling their eyes and accusing me of being too picky, because "we all know what the news report meant." Maybe. Maybe not. Sloppy grammar indicates sloppy thinking. Sloppy thinking makes cogent communication impossible. Lack of cogent communication all too often starts arguments, feuds, even wars.
Though it may not make much difference, Eats, Shoots, and Leaves ought to be mandatory reading in everyone's junior high school curriculum. Maybe, just maybe, that would indirectly prevent some future bloodbath. Winston Churchill himself said it was better to "jaw, jaw, jaw" than to "war, war, war."
Has anyone codified a set of Laws of Political Dynamics? I have a suggestion for one law that must be included on such a list: the level of brilliance of a President Obama decision is directly proportional to the level of hysteria amongst the far right in reaction to it . . . the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to become an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court being the quintessential illustration thereof.
There are absolutely NO principled reasons on which to oppose her nomination, so the lies, distortions, and outright nastiness of the über-right have gone way beyond hysteria and into out-and-out incomprehensibility. Consider just a few of the smears and mud being flung: (1) She is from a historically underrepresented minority ethnic background; therefore, she is a racist. (2) Her remarkable achievements in rising from the poverty that is the South Bronx to attend an Ivy League university and Yale Law (with summa cum laude graduation and editorship of the Yale Law Review being only two of her accomplishments while doing so) mean she is not at all smart and therefore must be "an affirmative action" beneficiary. [I will not even get into the side issue, which is that even if that's true, it doesn't mean she's unqualified per se--it means only that her merits would have been totally ignored and undeveloped without a little institutional assistance; in other words, a recognition of the fact that the playing field is not in fact level for all of us.--Ed.] (3) Her ability and willingness to speak her mind and argue cogently for her point of view means she's a bully. (4) Her years of experience as a prosecutor, an attorney in private practice, and as a federal judge (both at the trial and the circuit court levels), the most any nominee has brought to the Supreme Court in over a century, mean she is totally unqualified.
To anyone out there who believes the tripe: want to buy a bridge? I can get one for you wholesale!
The far right of the GOP is so caught up in talking to itself to reaffirm its own prejudices that it's losing sight of reality. [You know, if this weren't so pathetic, it would be amusing. The GOP is so out-of-touch that it cannot even see how out-of-touch it is.--Ed.} The rest of the world is NOT going to come beating down its doors to join it. We've moved way beyond its limited ideas and ideology. If the GOP wants to stay a viable, credible, nationwide influence, the GOP must stop contemplating its collective navel and start bridging the gap between its rigid ideology and where most of us actually live.
That bridge is still for sale, guys. But a deal like this won't sit around forever. You have to act now!
I'd be happy if the Cubs were playing baseball now. They just finished an 0-7 road trip . . . they scored only 5 runs TOTAL in 7 games . . . and they are falling back toward the bottom of the pack in the NL Central Division. This is after the Cubs were picked by nearly everybody to win their division, the National League, and to (finally) get back to the World Series for the first time since their loss in the fall classic in 1945. Not to mention that it's been 101 years since they won one.
Baseball in October is irrelevant if they're not playing good enough to get there in the first place.
I'm still rooting for them. Several key players have been injured all at the same time during these last 10 days or so; I don't think the offense is going to get back on track until Aramis Ramirez comes back--healthy--whenever that might be.
Yes, I'm still rooting for them, even through my current agonies. I'm a Cubs fan. I have a lot of bad habits.
In Wausau, Wisconsin, a woman was just convicted of negligent homicide. She and her husband and her prayer group did not seek medical help while her ll-year-old daughter lay dying . . . until it was too late. The woman's husband, who is scheduled in July to face trial on the same charges, decried the verdict and claimed this meant the end of freedom of religion in America. He says he'll appeal the case all the way to the US Supreme Court if necessary.
Here's a small news flash: the man is wrong. Freedom of religion has not died in America. In America, anyone is free to believe--or not--as s/he wishes. What anyone is NOT free to do is to endanger someone else's life while acting out those beliefs. There exist an uncounted number of Supreme Court decisions over the decades which establish that. The most famous case, the first one taught to law school freshmen, is the infamous "snake-handling" case. A particular stripe of fundamentalist Christians believed that handling poisonous snakes was a necessary part of their religious service, a demonstration of their faith that God would not let them suffer harm. The Supremes said the believers were perfectly free to believe that handling poisonous snakes was a necessary demonstration of their faith, but they were not free to do it. For one thing, children were present. For another, the snakes could escape and put non-believers at risk. Not to mention the risks to any medical personnel who would be called to the scene if a church member were, in fact, bitten.
In short, the Court determined that there was a larger, overriding public good in preventing the church members from putting their beliefs into action. They were still free to hold their beliefs; they just were not free to endanger themselves or others to act them out.
What appals me most about this Wisconsin case is that any attorney would raise the smokescreen of "freedom of religion" as a defense. It has been thoroughly repudiated by an unbroken string of Supreme Court precedents. Yes, every defendant is entitled to make the state prove its case. Yes, every defendant is entitled to the most zealous representation possible. But to take money for using such a thoroughly rejected argument borders on the unethical. Once again, the attorneys are unclear on the concept. "Zealous representation" is NOT the same as "going along with whatever your client says s/he wants." Sometimes, "zealous representation" means making the realities of the situation plain to the client, and working out the best possible plea bargain.
Still, I shouldn't be surprised that so much fuzzy thinking is still going on in the world of the law. After all, the governors of several states are suddenly talking about secession again. Excuse me for throwing water on you, governors, but the Civil War established once and for all time that secession is not an option in the American system of government. You lost. One-hundred-and-fifty years ago. Get over it, already!
But why do I waste my electronic ink pointing out such obvious truths? I keep hoping that reason and rationality will win the day. However, there are too many people out there who do not want to be confused with the facts, as they have already made up their minds. I understand from the published quotes of several Republican politicians and fund-raisers that they've already put together a package condemning whomever President Obama nominates to replace retiring Supreme Court Associate Justice David Souter. They're just waiting to fill in the name.
If that's a joke, it's not funny--for any number of reasons. Despite the oblique reference to Groucho Marx in Horse Feathers ("Whatever it is, I'm against it!"), it's not funny. Despite the ludicrous implication that everyone Obama nominates will have the identical and specific set of negatives to expose, it's not funny. Despite that fact that it makes a mockery of the US Senate's duty to investigate and confirm (or reject) presidential nominees, it's not funny. Despite the fact that the GOP claim to be ready to do battle was said with a perfectly straight face, it's not funny.
Then again, these are the same people who think they lost last November because the GOP was not far enough to the right. They've completely lost sight of reality. Reality is that no one who cannot attract moderate and independent voters can win a national election in this day and age.
So the GOP is flushing itself down the proverbial toilet. But that's not funny, either. That the party of Lincoln has sunk to this is just plain sad.
So the GOP is trying to change the subject--again. Instead of recognizing that "who knew what, when" is a problem for the entire country when it comes to waterboarding, Republicans in Congress are trying to taint Democrats with the same dirty brush. "They knew and they did nothing, so leave us alone!" seems to be the gist of their defense and their justification for what truly is unjustifiable.
News flash: this is NOT about partisan politics. It is about the good of the entire nation. As far as I'm concerned, any Democrats who knew that waterboarding was going on and who did nothing about it are just as guilty as the Dubya Administration toadies who authorized it and used it. Those Democrats, too, should be punished for their transgressions of the law and of treaties to which the US is a signatory.
Period.
So stop trying to change the subject; stop trying to skew the discussion; stop trying to argue that since "everybody else knew," it's not wrong. Face up to facts, and let all the facts come out. And let EVERYBODY who shares responsibility face the consequences of their actions--or non-actions, as the case may be.
