My Hero

Guillaume Morand is my hero.

It seems that on Nov 29 of this year 57% of the brave voters of Switzerland voted to ban the building of minarets in their country. At first I thought, well Switzerland, a progressive nation that granted women the right to vote in 1971. Switzerland, a valiant nation that turned away tens of thousands of civilian Jewish refugees during World War II. Switzerland, a noble nation that finally reached a settlement with survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants to allow access to dormant accounts in Swiss banks in 2000.

My favorite aspect of the efforts of the Swiss banks to deny the heirs of victims of the Holocaust access to their family bank accounts is the banks’ request for death certificates. I understand about Teutonic efficiency, but I have trouble imagining guards stacking up death certificates next to bodies at Auschwitz or Treblinka. Evidently the Swiss had no such trouble.

In an interesting sidebar, banning the construction of minarets was too much for even the Vatican. The Vatican! Yes the Vatican issued a strong and unequivocal statement condemning the Swiss vote.

There is, however, much support around the world for the Swiss position. There are people who oppose construction of entire mosques in cities throughout Europe and North America. Some of these, I regret to say, are people of my acquaintance who have patiently explained to me that the construction of mosques in European and North American cities is a threat to “western values.” Western values like religious pluralism? Or, these same people posit, why should we allow mosques in our cities when Islamist states like Iran and Saudi Arabia won’t allow the construction of churches and synagogues? To which I respond so these “western values” demand that we embrace the lowest standards of the most repressive dictatorial states as our own? Rousseau and Jefferson would be so proud.

The hate-o-sphere is currently a-flame about an even more heinous affront to “western values” being perpetrated by a group of Muslims right here in the good ole U. S. of A. Those shameless Islamists are building a mosque and cultural center in a former Burlington Coat Factory two blocks from Ground Zero. I can only assume that the haters are in such a lather because they don’t know where else to go for discount outerwear in lower Manhattan.

I cannot imagine a more powerful and appropriate gesture of reconciliation and healing. Placing that facility on that site makes the clear and necessary statement that the monstrous thugs who perpetrated the attack on the World Trade Center no more represented the teaching or values of Islam than the Real IRA members responsible for the Omagh bombing represented the teaching or values of Roman Catholicism. A mosque two blocks from Ground Zero expresses simply and succinctly the highest aspirations of universal human values.

My hero, Guillaume Morand, exemplifies the highest standard of universal human values, individual division. M. Morand owns a chain of shoe stores in Bussigny, Switzerland. When his fellow citizens voted to ban the construction of minarets, M. Morand, who is not himself a Muslim, built a minaret over one of his warehouses in protest of the vote.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. - Edmund Burke

M. Morand is a good man. M. Morand saw evil and did something. M. Morand is my hero.

And the dam breaks ...

In remarks today at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, our president said: “The time for talk is over …”

When I read that I thought dear God, is he resigning? What else does he have to offer? No more talk, no more administration. What else have we been given in eleven months? Well, troops of course, and back pedaling.

And spectacularly poor judgment. When the history of the Obama administration is writ, let it be writ large that executive privilege was claimed for the White House Social Secretary. Yes, in the view of the Obama administration, the White House Social Secretary provides policy advice to the president of such sensitivity and import that the functioning of the executive branch would be compromised if she answered a congressional subpoena.

I have been so dispirited by the ongoing saga of health care “reform” legislation that I haven’t been able to write about it in some time. (I would heartily commend Howard Dean’s op ed in yesterday’s Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/16/AR2009121601906.html?sub=AR).

I have to concede that President Obama is far from the only cowardly, craven villain in this fiasco. Harry Reid and Max “Find My Girlfriend a Job” Baucus have also helped redefine “compromise” as “total surrender.” And Ben Nelson and Olympia Snowe lead the list of those attempting to take the legislation hostage over a single issue. Clearly the greater good is only greater under limited circumstances and the motto of the United States Senate is “My Way or the Highway.” I must reserve my particular utmost personal contempt for Joe Lieberman, a narcissistic boor who wouldn’t recognize the good of the nation if it walked up to him wearing a badge reading “Hello, My Name Is: The Good of The Nation.”

Remember children, if a liberal stands up for a matter of principle, he or she is being shrill, obstructionist and, most horrifyingly of all, P.C. If someone on the right follows the same course, he or she is being stalwart, courageous and patriotic.

Although I do say all that with a touch of envy.  I wish that someone, anyone, on the left would be as resolute in standing up for a Medicare buy-in, or a woman's right to choose, or a public option, or no coverage caps ...

This whole sorry spectacle puts me in mind of the old folk tale “Stone Soup.” The peddler comes to a village with a pot and some stones. He builds a fire by the well and adds water to his stones. Curious villagers ask what he is doing and he says. “making stone soup.” Their curiosity is piqued and over time he gets them to contribute carrots and onions and potatoes and chicken and a host of other ingredients until the villagers agree that stone soup is the best dish they have ever tasted.

The Senate had the opportunity to craft legislation that started pretty close to finished stone soup. Instead the Senate has spent the last few months picking out the chicken and the carrots and the onions and all the other ingredients that might make it savory or nutritious until all that Harry Reid is going to have to invoke cloture to get us is a pot of boiling water and some rocks.

It’s not right and it’s not enough.

But don't bother calling or writing your senators, Their minds are already made up and your voice is so much inconsequential background noise.

Holy Mother******* Church

Anthony Sablan Apuron, archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Agaña, Guam issued the following statement expressing the Church’s opposition to Bill 185. Bill 185 would legalize domestic partnerships for gay men and lesbians in the U.S. territory of Guam.

I beg of you to read the statement in its entirety. Perhaps even re-read it to ensure that none of its subtleties escape you.

"Islamic fundamentalists clearly understand the damage that homosexual behavior inflicts on a culture. That is why they repress such behavior by death. Their culture is anything but one of self-absorption. It may be brutal at times, but any culture that is able to produce wave after wave of suicide bombers (women as well as men) is a culture that at least knows how to value self-sacrifice. Terrorism as a way to oppose the degeneration of the culture is to be rejected completely since such violence is itself another form of degeneracy. One, however, does not have to agree with the gruesome ways that the fundamentalists use to curb the forces that undermine their culture to admit that the Islamic fundamentalists charge that Western Civilization in general and the U.S.A. in particular is the "Great Satan" is not without an element of truth. It makes no sense for the U.S. Government to send our boys to fight Al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan, while at the same time it embraces the social policies embodied in Bill 185 (as President Obama has done). Such policies only furnish further arguments for the fundamentalists in their efforts to gain more recruits for the war against the ‘Great Satan.'"

The Vatican has yet to distance itself from this statement.

These are the same people who would deny Patrick Kennedy communion because he supports a woman’s right to choose. This is consistent with my perception that those who declare themselves in favor of the “right to life” only find life sacred from conception to birth. After that it’s “Katie bar the door.”

Having been raised Catholic, attended Catholic schools kindergarten through twelfth grade, and never sourly and smugly declared myself to be a “reformed” or
 “recovering” Catholic, it saddens me deeply to see the worst of my fears about the Church and the Church’s view of me confirmed.

The pederasts, it seems, are hardly the worst of the lot. For those cluck-clucking at my hyperbole, let me reiterate Archbishop Apuron’s greatest hit, while asking how you would respond if this was being said of you:

“Islamic fundamentalists clearly understand the damage that homosexual behavior inflicts on a culture. That is why they repress such behavior by death. …”

Taxing Our Way to Virtue

What do liquor, cigarettes, prostitution, and marijuana have in common?

Well, yes, they do each offer profound and unique satisfactions. Or so I’m told. Or read in a book.

What I was going for, however, is that their primary consumers are adults. The former two generate substantial amounts of tax revenue. The latter two would were it not for the successful efforts of priggish, overbearing guardians of public morality and welfare. If morality is defined exclusively by their private concepts of morality. And if welfare is understood as that which they dictate for your own good.

I was stirred to these musings by a television commercial that has been ubiquitous on my cable provider. At least during programs shown on CNN and HGTV. This commercial is sponsored by a group identified as Americans Against Food Taxes and features a tense young woman whining in adenoidal tones about the burden “a few cents” in tax on sugary soft drinks would place on her family and similar Caucasian families across our great land.

I am not sympathetic to her plight.

As I have argued previously, I believe in taxation. I believe taxes are on the whole a good thing. I believe that government at every level provides services that could not be rendered by any other entity. Road and highway construction (Those who whine about taxes can often be heard to advocate for private toll roads. Hello? These will take less money out of your pocket? And what commercial entity is going to build a toll road from your driveway to your church or to the mall?), public safety, national defense, education (even charter schools rely on tax dollars), Medicare, Social Security (How’s your private pension looking? Your 401K? Your investment portfolio?).

Take the socialist jackboot from the neck of private initiative and you get … 44 cent postage stamps and $25 luggage fees. Leave it to the socialists and you get electric power delivered to rural communities and voting rights.

But I digress.

I am not sympathetic to the arguments of Americans Against Food Taxes because they are against taxes.
If their argument was against using taxation as an instrument of social engineering, then I would be enthusiastically in their camp. Soft drinks aren’t really a food in any nutritional sense, but unlike the four pleasures cited above, their primary consumers are children and adolescents.

“Ah ha! Just so!” cry the social engineering crowd. And these sugary poisons contribute to the scourge of childhood and adult obesity and a wide range of resultant conditions. This is true. I am not suggesting that childhood obesity is not a serious problem. I am only objecting to the use of tax policy to effect behavior change.

Research also points quite strongly to lack of exercise as a significant determining factor in childhood and adult obesity. Is the answer to tax video games, romance novels, Fox Sports or sofa manufacturers?

Now, and here I may be accused of sophistry, I do not object to taxing liquor, cigarettes, prostitution, marijuana, soft drinks, ice cream, video games, romance novels, Fox Sports, sofas or any other discretionary consumable. So long as the tax is premised solely upon raising funds to support the functions of government.

Key word for me: discretionary. If it is something that one chooses to purchase rather than needs to purchase it should be fair game for taxation. I would argue that food, clothing and utilities should be exempt from taxation, but that’s a battle I’m willing to lose to allow most goods and services to be taxed.

A commercial which airs as frequently as the grocery shopping mamma features a smarmy attorney in a Stetson looming Godzilla-like before a photo of Bank of America Plaza offering his firm’s services in pursuing Social Security Disability claims.

I will address the scourge of mercenary aged cripples attempting to rip-off the struggling tax payer in a later entry.

Queers: Beware Your Friends

"I'm a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman."

That was the week that was. Also:

Virginia Democrats saw the worst campaign since Al Gore’s put out of its misery by a wide, wide … Oh baby could the campaign have really been that bad? Oh yes it was! … wide margin. On the upside, while he’s going to do incalculable harm, at least Bob McDonnell is not going to lie Virginia into a war.

New Jersey voters turned out their most embarrassing governor since Bill McGreevy. It was no mean feat to be both embarrassing and dull. At least McGreevy’s crash and burn had some tawdry juice.

Voters in New York’s 23rd Congressional District are still writhing on the ground, rending their garments and crying out to an implacable god, “Why us, Lord, why us?”

Gay men, lesbians and bisexuals who are starting to make up their minds are also troubling deaf heaven with their bootless cries. The good citizens of Maine passed Question 1, a referendum overturning their state’s law recognizing same-sex marriages. More than any election closer to geographic home, this result gave me a sense of my world and my options becoming a bit more constricted.

But was it a surprise? After prop 8 in California? After going down in flames in every state (31 in all) in which gay marriage has been put before the generous spirited electorate? This time it was going to be different? Because it was New England? Boy are we headed for more painful wake-up calls in Vermont and New Hampshire.

Let’s face it, beyond the thin gruel of domestic partnership (Can it be said enough? “Separate but Equal is inherently unequal.”), we can’t expect much from our fellow citizens. No more than African-Americans could. Or women. One shudders to consider the result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965 being subject to a plebiscite. Every act of enfranchisement, of providing the rights incumbent upon simple humanity, never mind citizenship, since the founding of the republic has come from legislation or through the courts. The actions of a mob whether wielding ropes or tea bags or ballots are an ugly thing to behold.

Oh yeah, that Christian is Barack Obama.

Barack Obama who was the keynote speaker at this year’s annual dinner of the Human Rights Campaign, “America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality.” Much to the shock, shock of all, Christian Obama’s remarks contained reassuring platitudes without a word about implementation.

Evidently the Human Rights Campaign was taking the same approach as the Norwegian Nobel Prize committee, recognizing promise without waiting for accomplishment. I assume that each holds the unspoken fear that promise is all they will ever see.

The First Tuesday After the First Monday in November Comes but Once per Year

My uncle Bob, the smartest person I know, once explained to me his approach to the most sacred franchise of citizenship. I collect literature, he said. I consider endorsements, he went on. The Monday before the election I give everything I have read and heard careful consideration. And then on Tuesday I enter the booth and vote a straight Democratic ticket.

I continue to find Uncle Bob’s practice eminently sound. It should also be helpful to voters in New Jersey and Virginia in the week ahead.

After a campaign of barely five months duration (A cry of “is that all?” rings across the Garden State.), the choice facing New Jersey voters comes down to the fat one, the incumbent and the other one. Yes, Mr. Christie and his allies have spent tens of millions of dollars to persuade the people of New Jersey that Mr. Corzine is indeed the incumbent. While Mr. Corzine’s campaign has expended even larger sums to bring to the attention of New Jersey voters that Mr. Christie is fat. (Mr. Corzine and his staff have been gobsmacked to learn that ad hominem does not mean “false.”)

The other guy pretty much flew under the radar until two events changed his fortunes. First, the people of New Jersey, or at least 15% of them, discovered that they had a choice other than the incumbent and the fat one. Second, Mr. Christie realized that a candidate who couldn’t even get the endorsement of the Newark Star-Ledger might not be needing that gracious, funny, self-deprecating acceptance speech.

Since pointing at Mr. Corzine and shrieking “incumbent! Incumbent!” wasn’t doing the trick, Mr. Christie turned on the other guy, shrieking “other guy! other guy!”

As neither candidate is fat nor the incumbent, the people of Virginia would seem to face a more difficult and subtle choice. Nothing could be farther (or further, I don’t have my Strunk and White handy) from the truth. Any woman who votes for Bob McDonnell deserves to spend the rest of her life in a chador. As, of course, does any man.

Although there are many municipal elections being held across the country on Tuesday next, they aren’t worthy of your attention or mine as none of those candidates will receive endorsements from the paper of record or the second one, nor the benefit of campaign/fund-raising appearances from our latest Nobel-laureate. And, clearly, nothing brings out A-list checkbooks like a whiff of the Nobel-prize.

Oslo Syndrome

Thanks to the work of the Nobel Prize committee, this day will forever be remembered as the day the Obama presidency jumped the shark.

Bull Durham: The Metaphor

On Nov. 3 of this year, voters in Virginia and New Jersey go to the polls to elect their governors. These voters are inevitably thinking why couldn’t we be in one of the normal years? Then everyone wouldn’t be staring.

Virginia voters have a choice between a man who never met a position he could hold. Or couldn’t hold. Or could hold but not too tight. And one who advocates the imposition of sharia law. Although, he insists that the document in which these covenants were put forth was a youthful indiscretion. It seems to me that the indiscretions of a married father and army veteran of 34 are rarely characterized as youthful.

Most New Jersey voters are probably quoting Noel Coward for the first time in their lives: “If I had to choose between them I’d take hemlock.”

Regardless of the caliber of the candidates put before me I have never missed a primary or general election since turning 18 in 1974. This makes me ineligible to run for governor of California.

If you are Democrat holding office in Virginia, you may thank me for supporting your primary opponent. If you are a woman running for the state senate, Congress or the presidency and you see me approaching with an open checkbook run, run like the wind.

Now that I have relocated to Atlanta, the electoral politics before me is table rasa. Since I don’t know the players, I am starting with the candidates for City Council in my district. To that end, I recently attended a candidates’ forum.

The four men and two women sat at two long folding tables, facing the audience from a middle school stage. The whole thing could have been over in 20 minutes as little was revealed over the course of ninety minutes that changed the impressions created by their opening statements.

The first candidate seemed ill-informed and possessed of no particular platform. I would have been embarrassed for him had he not seemed so impervious, serenely confident and self-satisfied. He was only killing time until his inevitable election.

Next up was a young woman who was clearly quite intelligent, but also anxious and only marginally better informed. She was more excruciating to watch as she clearly knew how inadequate her answers were.

She was followed by an Ichabod Crane-ish fellow who had done his time in the trenches. He knew the community, he knew its issues and he had thoughtful proposals for addressing them. He even had responsible ideas for funding his initiatives. Unfortunately, his was not a legislative disposition. He was arrogant, impatient and given to hectoring. I couldn’t imagine him building the coalitions necessary to advance his good ideas.

Then came his mirror image, mild, amiable, a bit cuddly looking, with occasional flashes of a surprising edge. He gave the impression of a man who thought enough to get by and not one iota more. He didn’t so much have fire in the belly, as a few glowing embers of ego. He struck me as someone whose name was frequently preceded by “good ole.”

The other woman running was tall and patrician, with a natural graciousness that made it possible for her to put all and sundry, from the largest donor to her housekeeper, at ease. She seemed to know every organization mentioned, and several she brought up herself, intimately and authentically. She was, however, the only candidate to pull a gimmick. The other five candidates sat through their opening statements while she made a rather ostentatious point of standing. And her solution to most municipal concerns was outsourcing. I might have respected her if she had offered to put her own position first.

The final candidate was the most intriguing. A successful entrepreneur with roots in the community, but not the history of civic engagement of Ichabod or Lady Bountiful. The most poised and articulate speaker. He knew the issues facing the district and the city cold. His proposed solutions were a little vague and his funding mechanisms even vaguer. Both his vagueness and his hint of charisma made him seem a natural.

And aren’t city councils and county commissions and the like really political farm teams? They provide most players with their final stop and a chance to parade before small, but intense legions of followers. A few players are groomed for bigger things. Sometimes a natural talent will emerge; sometimes the most disciplined player will advance. We all think we can pick ‘em, but really we only know in retrospect.

In fairness, someone should tell Lady Bountiful if she sees me approaching with a check book to run, run like the wind.

Bang. Bang.

Bang.

Perhaps you are aware of the great kerfuffle this week regarding Facebook? You’re not?!? Bless your heart. May I please come live on your planet?

The rest of us know that a poll was posted on the social networking site Facebook last weekend with the title, “Should Obama Be Killed?” This set off a firestorm of self-righteous indignation among the sort of people whose fourth grade motto was “I’m telling.” These people seemed to fall all over themselves to be the first to report the perpetrator(s) to the mother superior at Facebook and loudly denounce the right-wing hooligan(s), indisputably racist, who must have devised such an affront to decency.

Boy must their faces have been red when the Secret Service reported that the perpetrator was a juvenile, that no threat to the president had ever existed, and no charges would be filed.

Of course the poll never, ever posed any sort of threat to the president. Not even a little, bitty, teeny, tiny one. “Should Obama Be Killed?” does not pose a threat. “Obama should be killed.” poses a marginally greater threat. “I am going to kill Obama with the Gluck I have in my storage locker when he speaks in Sheboygan on Tuesday.” Now that’s a threat.

Not only does “Should Obama Be Killed?” not, in and of itself, constitute a threat, the four possible answers, "yes," "maybe," "if he cuts my health care" and "no," make clear that the whole exercise was a satire. The technical term for anyone who misses the fact that this is satire is “moron.” Hint, it’s the third answer that gives it away.

But let’s say that the poll hadn’t been posted by a child with a wicked sense of humor, but rather by the prissocracy’s worst nightmare. Let’s say that the poll was posted by a disaffected thug in fatigues and a wife beater who was way, way, way off his or her thorazine and who believed Obama was not legitimately president because he was born in Kenya otherwise he would be able to produce a birth certificate. Would I still see it as harmless and humorous?

Absolutely not. But I would argue with greater urgency that he or she had every right to post it and that we all lost something immeasurable when it was taken down. I acknowledge that Facebook is a private enterprise with the right to remove any application or expel any member. But with over 300,000,000 members Facebook has more than ordinary influence in determining how freedom of speech is construed in our society.

I’m also going to pursue this line because much of the commentary I have read and been directly subject to hasn’t made a distinction between Facebook and America. The poll was not right, it was offensive, things like that just shouldn’t be allowed. My favorite was directed at me as part of a discussion thread on, yes, Facebook: “But this is just not an issue one debates...a poll like this is disgusting and entirely inappropriate. Free speech gets trumped by safety...you just do not talk about killing the president...period.” The ellipses are the writer’s not mine.

In a democracy, in a constitutional democracy, in a constitutional democracy with our particular constitution, free speech should be trumped by safety only very rarely, with great regret and after careful deliberation.

Disgusting and inappropriate speech has the absolute protection of the first amendment. Ask George Carlin or his estate. Ask the folks at Westboro Baptist Church (of “God Hates Fags” at funerals fame). Ask those given to cross burnings. Now the last two give me great pause. Hatred that virulent is not an easy thing to contemplate. I have to take a deep breath before going on to say that I believe that speech or expression that repugnant should be protected. But I do. I believe it requires vigilant protection.

Free speech doesn’t exist on a continuum. Or, when it does, it’s a downward slope. Once we say speech can be limited, speech can be restricted, then each subsequent limit, each subsequent restriction is only a matter of degree. The fundamental premise that speech can be limited or restricted has already been established. History does not offer much evidence of rights being restored incrementally, but they can be dribbled away.

In closing, I want to bring it the heaviest of guns – my betters. The great linguist Noam Chomsky who understands the power of language on many levels reached the conclusion: If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

A few words from E.M. Forster, dedicated to the multitudes who couldn’t wait to drive the offending poll from Facebook: We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.

Finally, because we have the rule of three, because he was there at our creation, and because he’s Mr. Jefferson: We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.

H1N1: Another Update

For those of you keeping score at home:

Paul Donnelly - 1
Dr. Margaret Chan - 0

What has become clear in the five months since H1N1 raised its not particularly ugly head?

1) As predicted, the effected cohort has skewed young.
2) There have been few hospitalizations and even fewer deaths attributable to H1N1.
3) As with 2, this assertion is entirely based on anecdote. Anecdotes from dozens and dozens of hospitals and individuals across the country reported in numerous media. Most of those infected report symptoms indistinguishable from other strains of flu.

"Oh the humanity, the humanity!"

For my regular readers who may be forgiven for asking "why won't he let this go?" and new readers asking "what is he talking about?' (See H1N1: The Rant, 08/19/89.)

I won't let go because of my strong belief that creating needless fear and panic is never justifiable, always reprehensible and a spectacularly ineffective public health strategy.

I also remain astonished that the term "pandemic" refers to some obscure bureaucratic metric that is not related to number of infections, severity of reaction or number of deaths. Really. So the next time you see the term pandemic you can just yawn and turn the page.

Deeds to Make Heaven Weep

A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.

W. H. Auden

Although I attempt to make them generally thoughtful and well researched, I know that my postings can sometimes tend toward the snide and snarky. This will not be one of those postings. I am fairly resilient (see snide and snarky) in facing the despair and frustration that can be triggered by events around. I am an optimistic person, but sometimes that resilience and optimism are profoundly challenged.

That challenge can come from single momentous event.

For me the most shattering public event of my lifetime was the assassination of Robert Kennedy. I idolized Robert Kennedy and his death came at I time when I was too young to see evil in the world, but old enough to see very clearly what had happened. It was a vertiginous loss.

I have never met anyone of my parents’ generation, not one single soul, who could not say where they were when they heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor and how they heard about it. Or where they were when they heard that Franklin Roosevelt had died and how they heard about it. Sixty and sixty five years later, those events are as vivid as wedding days and the births of children. The memory of those events gained power for having been shared as a culture.

There have only been two such events in my lifetime. The assassination of Dr. King has, I think, gained iconic status and universality over time, but in 1968 our culture was too fractured to embrace his true significance. The two events were the assassination of President Kennedy and the horrors of September 11, 2001.

I was in third grade when President Kennedy was shot, an event that was beyond my comprehension in a literal way at the time. However, in the same day I saw nuns and my father cry. That terrified me. I felt that the most horrible thing that could ever happen must have happened.

There are very few Americans who didn’t see and respond in very personal ways to the events of September 11, 2001, but we also responded as part of a nation with a sense of unity and purpose that it would be a gift to be able to recapture today. My own effort to cope that day was to watch news coverage for twelve hours, watch tape of those planes flying into those towers over and over again. I wasn’t looking for a different outcome or indulging a morbid preoccupation. I was watching for the moment of impact that would suddenly make the whole nightmare make sense. That coin has yet to drop.

Sometimes resilience and optimism can be worn away by an accumulation of incivility and inhumanity.

The so-called “tea baggers,” whether they brought 40,000 or 400,000 people to the mall, reflect a disconnect and a rage that runs far deeper than any of the particular policies they espouse or oppose. They are terrifying for the fissures they reflect and for visceral hostility with which they express them. There is a there there no matter how painful that is for some of us to acknowledge. Americans seem to be an angry people, driven into bunkers with no apparent way out.  Does it really take planes flying into buildings to put our differences in perspective?

I also find that the numerous global and individual horrors reported in the news, today alone, have battered my spirit. CNN headlines for today include: Iran fires long-range missile in latest test, 3 charged with murder in Chicago teen's beating, and Boy says he was held in closet for years. From the intractable to the horrific and unimaginable. Maybe that’s the most debilitating part of all, that these horrors, children killing children and the vilest sort of abuse of children, have become not just imaginable but mundane.

In the face of such a world words feel wholly inadequate. Words can’t describe, words can’t prevent, words can’t heal.

That’s a difficult and debilitating thing for a writer to say and mean.

The first thing we do,

let's kill all the cyclists. (With apologies to Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2; act iv: scene ii.)

A few days ago I was making a right turn from a quiet side street onto a main through street in my quiet Atlanta suburb. The through street seemed too quiet for the middle of the day. After gratefully making my right I looked in my rearview mirror and saw two cyclists, carefully and deliberately occupying the center of the roadway, followed by a long, long, long line of motorists.

I thought at once of a similar journey along Massachusetts Avenue from Union Station to Dupont Circle in Washington, DC. At the height of the evening rush hour I enjoyed being part of a long line of vehicles slowed to a crawl by a single cyclist who was clearly enjoying the inconvenience and discomfort he was causing dozens of motorists.

These cyclists often claim to be friends of the earth as they employ a mode of transportation said to be friendlier to mother earth than the internal combustion engine. I do wonder how the environment is served by backing up and slowing down dozens of cars for blocks on end. Doesn’t this force them to belch their heinous polluting exhaust into the atmosphere far longer than if they had been able to proceed at a reasonable pace?

“Our bikes have as much right to the road as your cars,” these cyclists whine. Well, no. The reason for which most roads from suburban cul-de-sacs to surface streets to the interstate highway system were built (the doctrine of original intent as Mr. Justice Scalia might have it), was to support automobile and heavy truck traffic (Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2004).

Also no, because bicyclists contribute almost nothing to the maintenance and upkeep of roads at any level. Road and highway maintenance is funded primarily by gasoline taxes so unless there is a cyclist lead movement to heavily tax the sale of inner tubes, I’m not sure that bicycles do have the same right to access public roads as the cars for which they were built and that support their maintenance and upkeep. Perhaps toll bike lanes might be an answer?

Granting for a moment the unsupportable proposition that bicyclists do have the same right to access public roads as automobiles, then I must ask why bicyclists are under no obligation to observe laws governing vehicular traffic. Are bicyclists incapable of grasping what it means when the little light in the sky turns red? Or what the letters S-T-O-P mean? Or what lanes are for?

My observation of cyclists’ behaviors and attitudes lead me to offer, some time back, a modest proposal. Laws should be enacted requiring every licensed motorist to carry a handgun. These will be for use on inconsiderate and belligerent cyclists (redundancies, I’ll grant). Not only should there be no penalty for shooting cyclists, motorists should be offered a bounty for every cyclist skin they bring in.

I have come to realize that my proposal just won’t do. Shooting out the window of a moving vehicle is probably as dangerous and distracting as texting or exfoliating by a driver. I don’t want to endanger motorists or their passengers.

Considering the narcissistic, smug, superior conduct that typifies the cyclist and the benefits to society of their eradication, there is too much risk of distracted drivers missing. So I have revised my proposal (with apologies to my sisters) to require that all those who even own bicycles be smothered in their sleep.

This would not only benefit motorists and the environment. Think of how much less stressful urban streetscapes will be when pedestrians need no longer fear dismemberment by bike messenger. Think of how much more enjoyable weekend walks along shaded paths in bucolic parks will be if one doesn’t have to fear being jostled by bicyclists who are incompetent or overconfident. Will anyone really miss hearing the bellowed “LEFT!” followed by the vision of an adult who is not actually competing in the Tour de France whizzing by in a spandex Italian racing costume?

Let’s look for a moment at the other side of the coin. What benefits do cyclists provide to society? What contributions do they make to the world around them? In what ways would their loss be felt?

I couldn’t think of any either.

I’m sure if he were with us today and driving on urban streets, Shakespeare’s Dick the Butcher would agree that lawyers should most certainly be spared over cyclists.

The Threat to All of Humanity: An Update

My esteemed colleagues at CNN Health reported on Tuesday: "Since August, 13,434 cases of the flu have been reported by the 253 schools contributing data to the American College Health Association. Of the cases, there have been 21 hospitalizations." "The flu" meaning the dread threat to all humanity, the H1N1 virus. 21 hospitalizations out of 13,434 cases. That means that .0015631% of those infected have required hospitalization. These kids should be buying lottery tickets.

I am not going to be glib about the death rate. Both represent terrible losses to their families and friends. In 2004, 2,497 young people of college age took their own lives. Anecdote suggests that rate is not in decline. That puts two deaths in 13,434 cases into perspective for me.

It may be clear to even the casual reader that I have strong feelings about the hysteria that has surrounded the marketing of H1N1. I would refer anyone who would like to see how strong to my post of August 19, "H1N1: The Rant."

As a reminder to all, I was particularly offended by the assertion made by Dr. Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization: "After all, it really is all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic." Not this pandemic, Dr. Chan. All humanity is under greater threat from a meteor the size of Australia hurtling into the Pacific.

In a Crowded Theater.

""Ma! Ma! Where's my pa? Gone to the White House, Ha! Ha! Ha!"

That slogan was not prepared in anticipation of John Edwards being the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee. No, that scurrilous attack was launched by the campaign of the Republican candidate James G. Blaine against his Democratic opponent, Grover Cleveland  in 1884. It seems that a woman of Mr. Cleveland’s acquaintance was simultaneously acquainted with several of his colleagues. When the inevitable child came along Mr. Cleveland stepped into the breach and offered financial support, as these colleagues were all married.

The Cleveland-Blaine imbroglio raises two observations of contemporary relevance. One, Mr. Cleveland was not married at either the time of his acquaintance with the lady in question nor at the time of the campaign. This left him with no spouse to betray or humiliate. Well might one ask, where’s the sport? Good lord, even Larry Craig had a wife to trot before the cameras.

Two, since the slogan took a man’s decency and kindness and used them to cobble together a venomous and mostly inaccurate personal attack I have to conclude that Blaine’s campaign was managed by the great-grandfather of Karl Rove.

Former President Jimmy Carter recently offered some observations on the context of Congressman Joe Wilson's outburst during the President’s health-care-reform-I-guess-if-Max-Baucus-says-it’s-okay address: “I think it’s based on racism. There is an inherent feeling among many people in this country that an African-American ought not to be president and ought not to be given the same respect as if he were white,”

To be fair, Cleveland was only a candidate when subject to the Blaine campaign's abuse.  Are there examples of non-African American presidents being subject to extreme disrespect?

“Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?”

How does “You lie” compare with “Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?” on the respect/disrespect-o-meter? I know how I’d vote based on visceral fury of delivery, based on capacity to wound, based on capturing of the zeitgeist. But then, I don’t twitter so perhaps I am missing the piercing, elegant brevity of “You lie.”

“Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?”

This was chanted by hundreds of thousands (not 40,000 sad, motley tea-baggers) of (okay, pretty motley) protestors carrying signs full of hate and rage and loathing who surrounded the White House, furious with a man who was wrong, just wrong in the decisions he had made and the advisors he had trusted and who prosecuted an immoral war that ultimately cost the lives of 60,000 members of our armed forces. It is all our tragedy that that war is his most enduring legacy, for Lyndon Johnson did exponentially more tangible good for African Americans and for Americans living in poverty than Barack Obama will ever consider doing but then set aside because it won't be possible to achieve consensus with enough Republicans to arrive at a bi-partisan mandate.

So, Mr. Carter, if things head south in Afghanistan, I will be chanting because I oppose a war and don’t want to see young Americans die the victims of wrong-headed leaders and not because the president is African-American. I have to admit that my great fear is that if things do come to that point, many who oppose the war will not step forward because they won’t want to be seen opposing our first African-American president.

And I did see where you attempted to qualify your NBC remarks, Mr. Carter: “I think it’s unprecedented to attack a president, wishing he were dead, and equating him with animals and Adolf Hitler. That was the point that I made.” Sir, did you spend the years before and after your presidency in some kind of suspended animation chamber? I have personally held signs that were every bit as vicious and personally pointed and that often referred favorably to Hitler before (Nixon/Vietnam) and after (GHWBush/AIDS) your administration.

It seems to me that violently and vehemently objecting to the policies of an African-American president is not inherently racist. Quite the opposite, it is reacting to him as we in a free society are entitled to react to all public figures. Even Joe Wilson.

The president’s press secretary, Mr. Gibbs has made it clear that the White House is determined not to view citizens’ engagement in public policy, however intemperately addressed, through the prism of race. For that I sincerely salute the president. There are too many real issues of racial disparity, prejudice and injustice that need to be addressed in our society to allow this false issue to become a distraction.

Bozo & His Cherished Foes

Pop Quiz –

Who is Marcia Fudge?

Wally Herger?

John Spratt?

Joe Wilson?

You’re one for four on the quiz, I’ll bet.

I’ll return to the one you know momentarily. I picked the other three names at random from the Official Alphabetical List of the House of Representatives of the United States, One Hundred Eleventh Congress.

It seems that none of these poor souls has ever behaved inappropriately on camera. None has unleashed a string of profanity at a child, spouse or staffer. None has had a spouse change residence in the middle of their term. None has even been seen kicking a mangy dog.

How do they ever expect to achieve clout and renown? How will they ever have their fundraising enhanced by censure from their colleagues? How will they ever achieve buzz about higher office or a book deal or an appearance on America’s Next Top Chef, if tape of their misconduct isn’t played over and over and over and over and over and over … again on Fox and ABC/CBS/NBC and CNN or some media outlet people actually watch?

Given their media savvy deficits, I want to briefly answer the “who is” question for the first three members:

Marcia Fudge is a Democrat representing Ohio’s 11th Congressional District. She serves on the House Science & Technology and the House Education and Labor Committees. She is in her first full term, having been elected to fill the remainder of the term of the late Stephanie Tubbs Jones in November 2008.

Wally Herger represents California’s 2nd District. As a Republican, he is the ranking member of the Health Subcommittee of the House Ways & Means Committee. This is a man upon whom our President would undoubtedly love to do a full Lyndon Johnson.

John Spratt is a Democrat representing South Carolina’s 5th District. He is the CHAIR of the House Budget Committee. Yes we’ve all heard of Bozo the Clown. I wager you can tell me the state if not the actual district he represents. That would be the 2nd. It is directly south of the 5th. Still few of us have heard of Rep. Spratt who arguably has more impact on the course of our daily lives than our mothers.

So thanks to his rudeness and violation of House protocol Bozo has raked in over a million dollars. Can’t beat bad press if you’re a right wing zealot. Now Bozo is clearly a flavor of the week so his renown and fundraising prowess should decline pretty rapidly (I give you Joe the Plumber) as a new flavor of the week predictably emerges. Unless the Democratic caucus does as the Democratic caucus seems hell bent on doing and censures Bozo for his outburst.

This will be the most useless sort of political grandstanding, it will send either side scuttling back to their base while accomplishing nothing. At best, the Democrats will appear like a prissy, constipated, purse lipped seventh grade teacher shrieking, “This … this will go on your permanent record!” We all know how much that meant and so does Bozo.

But Bozo’s base will be able to carry on as though some grievous injustice has been perpetrated and that Bozo is a hero and a martyr. Not a martyr as in arrows and a loincloth or being stoned to death or flayed alive, but martyr in the sense of “click on donate and send what you can today.” Or, I’m a martyr now, no more flavor of the week for me. Martyrs have staying power.

Why can’t the Democratic caucus see that if they stiffle their ersatz outrage, ignore Bozo and move on with the business of the House, that the media will quickly grow tired of Bozo and he will fade back into the grey legion of ill-mannered Republican back-benchers? Back benchers who follow an equally ill-mannered leadership.

If the Democratic caucus needs to censure someone for his conduct during the President’s address, I commend to their attention Eric Cantor. Censuring Cantor would send a valuable signal to all Americans that texting or otherwise attending to a devise while an actual human being is in the room speaking to you is completely unacceptable and worthy of the highest censure.

I could then be prevailed upon to send a generous donation.

Bartleby, the President.

In Herman Melville’s brilliant, if rather odd, short story, Bartleby, the Scrivener, the title character responds, I would prefer not to to every request that he take action no matter how trivial, no matter the source. The 24 hours that have elapsed since the leader of the free world delivered his remarks on revising the nation’s health care system have done nothing to abate my feeling that I had listened to Bartleby the President.

Let it not be said that the leader of the free world can’t build a smokin’ cadence. Let it not be said that the leader of the free world doesn’t know when to go up in volume and when to come down. Let it not be said that the leader of the free world can be beat for oratorical flourishes when he and his teleprompter are in sync.

Never let it be said that the leader of the free world is going to let his soaring rhetoric be bogged down with substance. Clearly, he would prefer not to. This is a man who was for the public option before he was against it. In the same speech. (Hint to my fellow progressives, or liberals as we were known when I was a boy, enjoy the view from under the train because that’s where we’ll be riding for the next 3-1/2 or 7-1/2 years. And the public option was just the beginning. I give you no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.)

I am authentically surprised that even Joe Wilson could have topped the laugh that followed, And while there remain some significant differences to be ironed out … as the defining moment of the speech. At the time I thought it could potentially be the defining moment of the presidency. At another point in his remarks, the leader of the free world spoke critically of cynicism. Yet what could possibly be more cynical than to introduce a “plan” with significant differences yet to be ironed out a month after his initial deadline for congressional action? Might the time to offer a plan have been three or four months ago? Perhaps he preferred not to.

The plan, its timing and its lack of specifics were not the most egregiously cynical aspects of the leader of the free world’s remarks. He made his most cynical point several times, among them:

Second, we've estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system, a system that is currently full of waste and abuse ...

Or …

The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud...

Or …

Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan.

Waste, abuse, fraud, inefficiency … these are the last refuge of the demagogue. The other hallmark of demagoguery being a certain facility for public speaking. Waste, fraud, inefficiency and abuse do exist, but I don’t believe that calling for their elimination as a funding mechanism is any more effective than proposing harnessing unicorns to replace fossil fuels. I am willing to wager that when Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus addressed the Roman Senate in the sixth century BC he called for eliminating waste, inefficiency, abuse and fraud to pay for public works projects. I would not be surprised to learn that in the election of 1800 Adams and Jefferson pilloried one another for the waste, abuse, fraud and inefficiency that blighted construction of the new capital city.

At many points in the national debate over reforming our health care system a committed and responsible leader of the nation or even his party might have chosen to offer a plan that he was willing to own, a plan which enumerated specific mechanisms for achieving its stated goals, a plan that offered realistic cost estimates and honest strategies for how to meet them.

President Obama clearly preferred not to.

Oh happy day!

I don’t know why it has taken so long for this to come to my attention, but the August 9 edition of TIME.com contains an article by the evidently brilliant and insightful John Cloud called “Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin.” (http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857-1,00.html)

Take a moment, as I did, to savor the concept. Let the mix of delight and relief wash over you as it washed over me.

Notice the delicious absence of doubt. This is no namby-pamby “can exercise make you thin?” The underlying premise that it won’t is here a given.

Oh that we had known this truth for the past 50ish years! The abuse I took from Coach Earhart and Coach Jasper! (You think I could forget their names?) The hours I jogged. The gyms I joined. The Jane Fonda Workout Tapes (no, really). The goddamn Marine Corps Marathon!

And for what?

"In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless," says Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism at Louisiana State University and a prominent exercise researcher.

"In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless," say it loud and there’s music playing,
"In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless," say it soft and it’s almost like praying,

My man John … May I call you “my man,” John? … Later in his canonical article observes:

Exercise, in other words, isn't necessarily helping us lose weight. It may even be making it harder.

I would do a little happy dance, but I don’t want that much exercise to ruin my diet.

Lest Dr. Ravussin’s LSU credentials seem a little second tier, I give you Harvard:

"The most powerful determinant of your dietary intake is your energy expenditure," says Steven Gortmaker, who heads Harvard's Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity. "If you're more physically active, you're going to get hungry and eat more."

I’ll be right here on the sofa, watching HGTV while watching my weight.

Integral to the whole wrongheaded premise that exercise benefits weight loss (No it doesn’t. No it doesn’t! Ha, ha, no it doesn’t!!), is the assertion that “muscle weighs more than fat.” As I never tire of explaining, gently, to my loved ones, that’s idiotic. A pound of muscle weighs sixteen ounces, while a pound of fat weighs … ah … um … sixteen ounces. I will let Obesity Research shoot down the point this crew may be trying to make:

…, a pound of muscle burns approximately six calories a day in a resting body, compared with the two calories that a pound of fat burns. Which means that after you work out hard enough to convert, say, 10 lb. of fat to muscle — a major achievement — you would be able to eat only an extra 40 calories per day, about the amount in a teaspoon of butter, before beginning to gain weight.

I was with them right up until “a teaspoon of butter.” Who would eat a teaspoon of butter? I just went to the kitchen to measure. It would take four or five teaspoons of butter to cover half a baked potato. Just like doctors and auto mechanics and colorists, these science people would be a lot better off if they spoke in ways that reflected real people’s lives.

And I know exercise isn’t the only problem. I’ve been down the “I need more butter on this cheese, I’m on a diet” route. It was the only time I had a doctor call me an idiot to my face.

Exercise does have demonstrated benefits in alleviating and preventing any number of health problems. So? Does anyone exercise for health? No, really. I’m sure people say they do, but what’s the real skinny?  Are the grim and drawn faces atop the Stairmaster there for their health? Do the red-faced and grunting power lifters grunt for their health? The brightly-colored wide-hipped step aerobecizers? The huffing spinners competing with the air?

Health, my ass. 

But like this post, John’s article isn’t just about exercise or weight, it speaks to universal themes:

In 2000 the journal Psychological Bulletin published a paper by psychologists Mark Muraven and Roy Baumeister in which they observed that self-control is like a muscle: it weakens each day after you use it.

Self control weakens after you use it. This is a principle that has long guided my life. I am on a perpetual quest to conserve my self-control. I practice this conservation at the mall, as well as at the buffet table. I apply it to all my appetites with equal rigor. I think you will find great benefit in being as sparing with your self-control as I am with mine.

Doing Larry King

Well not “doing” in the frisky sense.

I'm so pleased to have that image in my head.

No what I meant was just vomiting out a string of poorly punctuated free association. Well, not vomiting ... too late, that filly is out of the chute.

My salute to the Kingster will take the form of an enumerated list:

1. Was Ted Kennedy the Michael Jackson of politics, or was Michael Jackson the Ted Kennedy of pop?
2. For a few hours I thought Farrah was robbed, then I realized that Michael saved us from weeks of Alana Stewart and Ryan O’Neal.
3. Please somebody; anybody beat Roger Federer in the Open! Even Tiger Woods has the grace to lose occasionally.
4. Is there a statute of limitations on the “youthful,” when candidates for public office are distancing themselves from “youthful indiscretions”? “Maybe I did write that stuff about the Jews in my thesis at Hermann Goring U., but don’t judge me on a youthful indiscretion judge me on the arc of my public career. I haven’t desecrated a synagogue in over 20 years!”
5. And since when was 34 youthful?
6. It’s easy to say $20,000 for a kidney is a bad thing when you have a job!
7. Whatever became of Barack Obama?
8. And how painful were the past six months for anyone who supported him before June 7, 2008?
9. Or were all those giddy campaign rallies just a string of youthful indiscretions?
10. Where is the Body Magic for men? We’re every bit as tired of diet and exercise.
11. Why is it easier to get sprung if you're a member of the Manson family than to get justice if you're a member of the Norfolk 4 or the Jena 6?
12. Are the Yankees on top of the AFC East? Do they currently have the best record in baseball? This is what is meant by the natural order of things.

Convergence

Several years ago I was at my sister and brother-in-law’s for a Super Bowl party when the conversation turned, as conversations do at such occasions, to longstanding team loyalties. I pledged my firm allegiance to the New England Patriots (whom I had recently learned not to call the Boston Patriots). My sister asked “Since when?” with a tone that hit the “when” more crisply than seemed absolutely necessary. “Since,” I replied brightly, “they got that cute boy as quarterback.” My brother-in-law’s shaking head plunged into his hands.

Time has passed. Tom and my sister and my brother-in-law have gotten older (See “My Gift to You”). Each now has a child. Two of them have the same child. I am headed north to visit my family and will spend time at my sister and brother-in-law’s home. How fortuitous to find Tom Brady on the cover of the September issue of Details magazine. Or not. Details? How could that be a good sign? GQ without the pedigree.

It got worse. If you had told me that it would be possible to be embarrassed for Tom Brady under any circumstances … I would have smirked. I soared beyond the idea that neither he nor Bridget Moynihan understood the basic mechanics of contraception. But these pictures!!! There’s one in which Tom Brady is wearing more eyeliner than I wore in three years of doing drag. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew.

There is no one, Tom, no one, male, female, gay, straight or four-legged, who ever again wants to see you depicted as a brawny waif. Is that how you want your son to see you? Although I’m sure there will be times in his life when he will be grateful that you aren’t very bright and can be lead around by the anatomy, when he says “Whew, I am so glad that he didn’t understand about birth control. And I’m so glad that I do.”

And Tom, no matter what kind of hard times they’ve hit, the folks at Esquire would never have done that to you. The photos, I mean.

Fraternal Twins?

Separated at Birth?

The parallels are uncanny. Both these men of the people vacationed on Martha’s Vineyard. Both had first terms blighted by failed health care reform proposals (come on, it’s only a matter of time). Both were proclaimed the first Black President (one by Toni Morrison, one by everyone in the universe). Both are wildly charismatic.

Given the uncanny parallels, if I were you Michelle I’d fire all the interns. All of them. Every last one. ‘Cause you’d probably be moving from the White House to the Big House when you were done with him.

There is one huge difference between these men. When the wrong speech was loaded into the teleprompter for an address to Congress on (conspiracy theorists take note) healthcare reform, one of them spoke for seven minutes from memory. And no one in the House chamber was any the wiser. There is some question as to whether the other can bid his wife good morning without benefit of a teleprompter.

More on Birth

I was terrified by a quote in a column in Politico by Glenn Thrush in which the press secretary for almost birther Congressman Trent Franks (R-Ariz) explains that the good Congressman believes: “It should not be too much to ask for the leader of the free world to allay the concerns of a large number of the people he represents by producing his long-form birth certificate, which is the definitive, inarguable way that he can put people's concerns about his national identity to rest for good.” Not that the Congressman himself doesn't believe President Obama is a natural born American citizen and quite eligible to be president.

Long form birth certificate? Could I be Kenyan? My Certification of Birth issued by The City of New York is 7”x 6”. Could it be shorter? And New York issues a long form! My state of birth issues a long form and yet I only have the short form. How do I have the nerve to vote? Will I be given time to say goodbye to my “family" before I’m deported?

Now I can never live my dream of being President. A big house in a quiet neighborhood with full time security and a staff that someone else pays? I’m shocked there aren’t tens of thousands of candidates every four years. But I don’t have what it takes to stand up to Ron Paul (the original birther; and even if there is a certificate, both parents have to be American citizens so he still can’t be President; and oh, how about that Kenyan birth certificate? Talk about a smoking gun!). The man makes Michelle Bachman look sane.

No matter how you cut it, the birth issue hasn't treated the leader of the free world kindly. Good thing the house is so nice.

Where Does the Danger Lie?

From July 1989 until July 1999 I lived in an apartment on 16th Street NW in Washington DC. But for the break-ins (3) and the mugging (1, but germane to this discussion as it was at gunpoint), my first 43 months in that apartment were a tranquil oasis. Then William Jefferson Clinton was sworn in as the 42nd President of the United States. Unlike ostentatiously Christian first families before them and since, the Clinton’s faith required of them regular attendance at Sunday services. The church they attended, Foundry United Methodist, was directly across the street from my apartment.


And thus commenced my intimate acquaintance with the quirks and foibles of the United States Secret Service. At first, the progress from the White House would lead to rolling intersection closures and closure of the street in front of the church just before the motorcade pulled up. The street and sidewalk between my building (a single family home long broken into three apartments) and the church would remain closed to automotive and pedestrian traffic until shortly after the family’s departure. This seemed reasonable.


That reason was not to prevail became clear as I was sitting on my porch reading one spring Sunday morning. A Secret Servitrix strode onto my front walk and told me that I would have to go inside. This memory is among those that bring me down firmly on the side of the 2nd Amendment wingnuts who prompted such hysterics by displaying their legal firearms in the vicinity of rallies featuring President Obama. These were pathetic, juvenile acts of provocation, and boy were they effective.


My next encounter with a Secret Servitrix came a few months later. My apartment did not have central air, so in the warmer months I preferred to keep front and rear windows open to provide cross-ventilation. This particular Sunday morning, I heard “Excuse me,” bellowed in a tone suggesting that she didn't really care if she was excused or not. This one was off the walk and in the middle of the lawn. Evidently the Secret Service field manual doesn’t have a chapter on trespassing. With a dismissive flick of the wrist she commanded, “You’re going to have to close those.”


I grew up in the Washington area, so I knew that expressing my initial thought, “What? You think I can’t shoot through glass?” would not have been in my own best interest. But 15 or so years later I remain disappointed that I couldn’t let myself ask “Why?” I was so sure that seeking a simple explanation would get me arrested that I was as meekly compliant as any gulag fearing Soviet. I felt far more threatened that morning that I have ever felt by the antics of the most lunatic tea baggers.


By the time I moved in 1999, the Clintons’ attendance at Sunday services included marksmen and sharpshooters on the roofs of buildings up and down the block. I found myself thinking, “Holy shit. That’s a lot of firepower to keep a pudgy middle-aged homosexual from opening a window.”


Without question, the murder of a president, any president traumatizes the entire nation and shatters our collective sense of well being. It is emotionally devastating and it profoundly undermines public order. It would not be possible to overstate its impact.


I would, however, argue that the presence of individuals carrying legal firearms at a significant remove from the President presents no danger what-so-ever to the President and that to suggest otherwise is shrill fear-mongering with an agenda no more related to protecting the President’s well-being than parading firearms so comically has to do with threatening it.


New Hampshire: I maintain that the President could not possibly be threatened by a man standing at a church several blocks from the town hall in which he was speaking no matter what the type or caliber of the man's legally permitted weapon. The only way that man could pose a threat to the President would be if his objection proved the tipping point in the national debate on health care/insurance/flapdoodle reform.


Arizona: Around a dozen people carried guns outside the convention center where the President was speaking. Yes one even carried an assault rifle. And he could not have been more pleased to claim it as a publicity stunt. A very, very, very successful publicity stunt. Be that as it may, unless construction of the Phoenix convention center is of unprecedented shoddiness, no amount of angry protesters, with any sort of weapons that could be legal, even in Arizona, would have had the firepower to be a threat to the President from outside the convention center. Big thick walls and all.


Now you may think, and I may think (and I do) that most, if not all, forms of firearms should be illegal or licensed or subject to strict regulation, but we do nothing other than reinforce our sense of our own moral superiority and virtue, while simultaneously diminishing our own credibility, to hyperventilate over threats where none exist or to suggest that Americans are in some way remiss to exercise their legal rights. The law is the ultimate arbiter of rights at any given point in time, but all legal rights are precious.


If you believe less, you might consider taking the Secret Service exam.

H1N1: The Rant

On June 11, 2009 Dr. Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) held a press briefing at the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva to announce that in response to surveillance data regarding the new strain of the H1N1 virus that was first detected in April, “I have therefore decided to raise the level of influenza pandemic alert from phase 5 to phase 6.” This is rather like when the Secretary of Homeland Security raises the National Threat Level from Orange (High) to Red (Severe). Except that the Secretary of Homeland Security’s announcement does not receive saturation coverage from international media, is not carried live by major networks around the world, and does not lead reporting in most print, broadcast and electronic media outlets.

Dr. Chan’s remarks and the media frenzy around them disturb me for two reasons. First, I think a more appropriate venue for her remarks might have been a conference call among health ministers or a conference of epidemiologists. Her remarks offered directives for national and international agencies, as well as drug companies. They had to do, primarily, with ramping up prevention efforts on a macro scale. Of course I believe that developing an effective vaccine and ensuring that adequate distribution mechanisms are in place are vital. But do I believe that those efforts were advanced by Wolf Blitzer bloviating immediately after Dr. Chan finished speaking ? Or by the coverage provided by Al Jazeera, the People’s Daily, the BBC or the Newark Star-Ledger? No. And I say that even though most media outlets offered responsible coverage (although People’s Daily got a little snarky with the British in later stories on vaccine development and distribution).

A more specialized audience might not have been given to widespread confusion over the concept of a “pandemic.” Until fairly recently I had no idea the term pandemic did not reference severity of impact. Number of reported cases and number of deaths? Not of interest to pandemic adjudicators. For instance if 700,000 people die of a virus in Indonesia, but the virus is contained to Indonesia, then there’s no pandemic merely a lowly epidemic. Bad week for the Indonesians perhaps, but the WHO has bigger fish to fry. Now, if a dozen people in each of 11 countries come down with the very same virus, yee-ha ma!, crank up the fund raising machine ‘cause we got ourselves a pandemic! I believe it was a reported case in the Netherlands that lead our strain of H1N1 to the promised land.

A posting by The Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research (MFMER) on the Mayo Clinic website points out that the phase 6 classification does not even reflect the severity of individual infections. So a virus doesn’t even have to make people very sick to achieve the coveted pandemic status?

My point is not that statistical modeling is without value, my point is that because the public’s (public=me) understanding and the public’s concerns are so different (life, death, human suffering in a non-abstract way) that the terms of art of the public health establishment are not useful in communicating with the public. Since pandemic apparently doesn’t mean lots of people will get very sick and many will die, which is, I believe, the understanding of much of the public it is probably a term that confuses more than it clarifies.

In short, a pandemic is like pornography. No one can define it but everyone knows it when he or she sees it. Lest you think I’m being glib, until the week after Dr. Chan’s memorable press briefing the WHO had a definition on its web site saying that a pandemic flu causes "enormous numbers of deaths and illness." When this was brought to WHO’s attention by CNN, a WHO spokeswoman told CNN that the definition was in error and had been yanked. She explained, "It was put up a while ago and paints a rather bleak picture and could be very scary.”

That explanation is particularly startling given the statement that denoted the high water mark of Dr. Chan’s press briefing. Threading her way between fear mongering and reassurance, Dr. Chan finally came down firmly on the side of fear mongering, "After all, it really is all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic." I’m going to repeat that for those who are experiencing for the first time my slack-jawed astonishment. The woman said:: "After all, it really is all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic." To which I can only respond, no. That is a lie. A simple, unadorned lie. A lie.

No war, no weapon, no incident-of-widespread-serious-contagious-illness-with-a-high-mortality-rate-that-we-may-or-may-not-call-a-pandemic has ever been a threat to “all of humanity.” It’s just a ridiculous thing to say. From the Director General of the World Health Organization in the context of an international press briefing, it’s a good deal more pernicious.

Starting in the 1330’s Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and much of Asia endured the ravages of the Bubonic Plague. Scholars offer estimates ranging from one-third to one-half to as high as 60% of the population of Europe perished in 5 horrific years. The Chinese province of Hubei was said to have lost 90% of its population in a single year, 1334, at the start of this pandemic. At any point in the Fourteenth Century was “all of humanity” at risk? Emphatically not.

As World War I drew to a close in 1918, the world was struck with an influenza pandemic that killed somewhere between 20 and 40 million, or 50 million, or 100 million people worldwide in a year or less. (This is what is meant by scholarship – “you say something and I’ll say something different and we’ll both have work for a decade.”) An article in Fortune magazine called “Viruses of Mass Destruction" offered the vivid vignette of mass graves being dug by steam shovel for bodies being buried without coffins. Was “all of humanity” ever at risk? Not for one single second.

From 2003-2005 the WHO worked nights and weekends to gin up a crisis for the Avian Flu Pandemic. It was the next big thing in public health. Worse luck that it was so hard to find someone who hadn’t spent 8-10 hours a day standing waist deep in chicken refuse, or hadn’t swilled the blood of a recently deceased fowl (very big at weddings), or who wasn’t a family member or intimate of one of the former who would appear to be infected. Heading to a conference in Vietnam in 2003 a WHO official worried that an Avian Flu global pandemic could kill “millions.” He went on to add that the world is “now overdue” for an influenza pandemic, since mass epidemics have occurred every 20 to 30 years and it had been nearly 40 years since the last one.

Avian Flu is known among its associates as H5N1. Since the initial cases were reported in Southeast Asia in 2003, the WHO has been forced to concede that the total number of cases, worldwide has only reached 281, with 169 fatalities. Vietnam, the epicenter of the H5N1 pandemic, reported 93 cases, with 42 deaths through 2005. And none since.

After such a disappointment, one can see why the folks at WHO would be pulling for a threat to “all of humanity” to cover lost ground.

But there’s another reason, for WHO, for member governments and big international donors, for drug companies and the better off citizens of industrialized nations. Something new, something headline grabbing, something the Director General of the World Health Organization can get up on the bar and really twirl her tassels over will distract all of the above from the seemingly intractable problems of hunger and disease and clean drinking water and sanitation that do not lend themselves to the quick and profitable fix of this year’s vaccine and a still patented antiviral or anti-bacterial medication.

The United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal is to reduce the 1990 child mortality level by two-thirds by 2015. The most recent progress report was issued in 2006. Looking at deaths among children under five worldwide, the figure in 1990 was 12.7 million and in 2006 it was 9.7. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 4.1 million children under five died in 1990 and 4.8 million children under five died in 2006. The hard number increased substantially, but the relative change is almost incomprehensible. Did I mention these are children? Under five?

That a sustained effort on the part of the United Nations cannot get the children of sub-Saharan Africa the assistance, simple, basic assistance - wells , sewers, food assistance, common antibiotics – to advance their very survival suggests to me that “all of humanity” is under threat in very profound ways. And if those children remaining, who have been denied so much and have seen such horrors ever come to have my access to anger it will be the greatest threat that “all of humanity” has ever faced.

Even counting Legionnaires’ Disease.

Since I started with H1N1, I want to come full circle. I leave the final word to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): “Most people who have become ill with this new virus have recovered without requiring medical treatment.”

My Gift to You

I recently had a devastating experience. It haunts me still. I am a member of AARP (Okay, 1 – stop your snickering, and 2 – no that’s not the disturbing experience. Sheesh.) and so receive AARP’s monthly magazine. The front cover of the September/October issue of the AARP magazine (“World’s Largest Circulation Magazine” – Don’t Fuck with the Boomers) features a photo of Bruce Springsteen at full throttle and the appalling headline “The Boss Turns 60.”

Painters turn 60. Opera singers turn 60. Investment Bankers turn 60. Rock gods do not turn 60. Especially not my personal rock god. I first saw Bruce Springsteen in a concert at Memorial Gymnasium at the University of Virginia in October 1974. Memory has tended to embellish that night. I’m sure he didn’t actually play for six days and six nights. Perhaps he didn’t play all of The White Album, Electric Ladyland, Quadrophenia, and Tannhäuser. He did play all of an as yet unreleased album called Born to Run. This is not hyperbole, if someone hadn’t lead me out I would still be standing on the floor of Mem Gym too stunned to move. Which might, I will grant you, have posed laundry issues.

I had never been so glad not to have been high on a Sunday night.

On the walk home I proposed marriage to the senior RA in my dorm. She was from the Jersey Shore and had seen Springsteen back in New Jersey, in the environs of Asbury Park. She went pretty much door to door in our dorm urging us to buy tickets for this concert that wasn’t selling well and featured this guy none of us had ever heard of. She actually said to me, “You will thank me for the rest of your life.” You were right, Cindy, thank you. Thanks too for not marrying me.

Bruce is not the only boomer of some accomplishment, of course. I’d like to give a shout out to two of my acquaintance. (“Shout out!” Who says I can’t keep up with the young people?) Each has a book coming out this fall. (A book! I’m over a year into the same short story.)

I commend to you Denis Lipman’s A Yank Back to England: The Prodigal Tourist Returns (http://www.amazon.com/Yank-Back-England-Prodigal-Tourist/dp/1934848247/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247347401&sr=1-1). Denis is insane. But I mean that in the best possible way and in the he has produced a really great quirky read way.

Stephenie Overman’s Next-Generation Wellness at Work is as a little bit less light-hearted and would be well-served if you would recommend it to your local public and/or university librarian. Those of you who are employed could also recommend it to your human resources department. I hope to. Some day.

And now for the gift. This is a rule I devised for myself that I am pleased to share with you. If enough of us adhere to it, it could become a national and international phenomenon. Reaching fifty is a significant accomplishment, a cause for gratitude and celebration, but it is also enough. To go any further would seem greedy. I determined that I would reach 50 and stop. Then, with each subsequent birthday I am reversing field. Hence 48-49-50-49-48 … My favorite part of this system is that this year I will be the same age as my baby sister and ever after I will be younger.

More David

I heard from David yesterday. What a relief after that misunderstanding about our phone call. He’s a busy man, y’know. Or maybe I just got something wrong. That’s probably it. It was probably me. (Damn. I thought I smothered that voice years ago. So much for therapy.)

Anyway, it was another note. This one was addressed “Dear Friend.” When it was his people, it was “Dear Paul.” Now we’re just friends. Or am I being too sensitive?

I’ll let you judge for yourself. He said to forward the whole email, but I like to leave a little mystery. (Please don’t tell him I didn’t do exactly like he said. He’s a great guy. Really, really great. But he has anger management issues. Who wouldn’t? He had parents as a child.)

8 ways reform provides security and stability to those with or without coverage
--Ends Discrimination for Pre-Existing Conditions: Insurance companies will be prohibited from refusing you coverage because of your medical history.
--Ends Exorbitant Out-of-Pocket Expenses, Deductibles or Co-Pays: Insurance companies will have to abide by yearly caps on how much they can charge for out-of-pocket expenses.
--Ends Cost-Sharing for Preventive Care: Insurance companies must fully cover, without charge, regular checkups and tests that help you prevent illness, such as mammograms or eye and foot exams for diabetics.
--Ends Dropping of Coverage for Seriously Ill: Insurance companies will be prohibited from dropping or watering down insurance coverage for those who become seriously ill.
--Ends Gender Discrimination: Insurance companies will be prohibited from charging you more because of your gender.
--Ends Annual or Lifetime Caps on Coverage: Insurance companies will be prevented from placing annual or lifetime caps on the coverage you receive.
--Extends Coverage for Young Adults: Children would continue to be eligible for family coverage through the age of 26.
--Guarantees Insurance Renewal: Insurance companies will be required to renew any policy as long as the policyholder pays their premium in full. Insurance companies won't be allowed to refuse renewal because someone became sick.

Okay now. And this isn’t about the “Dear Friend” thing. Although that is starting to frost me just a little. But see, these are all great ideas. Really great. They’re things that we shouldn’t still be talking about in 2009. But I didn’t see anything in David’s whole note or hear anything in any of Mr. Obama’s speeches or the parts of his press conferences where he sticks to talking about Heath whatever Reform that tell us how any of these eight things will be accomplished.

I want to know how. By what mechanisms? And I’m not even talking about how they will be paid for. How will they be done? I want all 8 of those things and lots more, but I won’t believe in a single one of them until someone explains how they will be accomplished. So far I haven’t heard anything more credible than “Glinda will wave her magic wand …”

I’m actually less anxious about how these reforms will be paid for. I like taxes. People who don’t should stay off my nice paved roads and stop complaining about the quality of public education and keep their parents from the socialist quagmire of Medicare and take the “support our troops” ribbon off their SUV. You’ll “support” them, but you won’t pay for them? I bow to no one in patriotism and admiration for our troops. These are people making sacrifices I don’t have it in me to imagine, but each and every one is a government employee. Their (wholly inadequate) salaries aren't funded by bake sales outside the base gate or those damn magnetic ribbons sold in convenience stores.

And I know that his failure to tell the truth thus far, either as a candidate or as a sitting president, limits Mr. Obama’s options. Can’t raise any taxes now, promised not to. But the American people will never catch on if we call them “user fees.” No, we’re not raising your income tax, that’s an income user fee. No, no, no, that’s not a charge for your ER visit, that’s a gurney user fee.

There are things that are necessary and that must be paid for. If you can’t step up to that plate, Mr. Obama, why did you run for President?

David, I Hardly Knew Ye

Well I was going to write a bit about my experience on a conference call tonight with David Axelrod, arranged by a group called Organizing for America. The call was to start at 8:00 p.m. As instructed, I was crouched (to be fair, the instructions didn’t say I had to crouch) by my home phone at 7:45. When signing up for the call I had to look up my home number as I don’t use my land line at all. Ever the good soldier, I wanted to give Organizing for America a land line as requested. I am not sophisticated enough to have an i-thing of any sort or any of the knock-offs, but I do depend entirely on my trusty cell phone.

7:45 came and went, as did 8:05, and 8:20. At 8:50, it occurred to me that the call might not be coming. (I was like this when I was dating. Sad. Very sad.) The good folks at Organizing for America sent an email confirmation (Addressed to me personally! After tonight I have to ask how many others were there? How many others?) this afternoon with the reassuring instruction: “And if you're having any trouble getting on the call, email ofainfo@dnc.org and we'll help you get connected.”I emailed “ofainfo@dnc.org.” At 8:05, 8:20, and yes, 8;50. I know I should learn. I know I should have more pride, but David, I would have been perfect for you. Eager. Attentive. No gag reflex. (Oops. Different blog.)

In some ways this makes it easier. Now instead of having to write about how the call actually went, I can write about how I might imagine it going. First, I expect it would have been like no other conference call I’ve ever been on. No collegial give and take, no bracing exchange of ideas, no toadying questions and reflexive regurgitation of the answers. No, this, I imagine would have been more like a conference harangue with one speaker and a vast eager, attentive audience.

And what do I imagine I might have heard from Mr. Axelrod? Something along the lines of “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender”? Perhaps. Vehement exhortations to shove the Obama Health (YOUR NOUN HERE) Reform proposal down the throats of the reluctant? Possibly.

What I did not expect to hear was the content of President Obama’s proposal. Members of the Senate can define theirs, members of the House can define theirs, Lou Dobbs can probably define his, but the President of the United States remains vague about his. Outlines are emerging. The public option, the last best safeguard of pricing controls and access to care, has apparently been tossed under the ambulance. Big pharma has triumphed over Big medicine and Big insurance. I thought the point of the election last November was that none of the Bigs would be calling the shots anymore, I didn’t realize that the Obama presidency would only be about picking “our” Big.

I look to that day when I can join my fellow citizens in taking to streets laughing and weeping all at once, tossing our caps in the air, saying silent prayers of thanksgiving and shouting, “Oh golden day! We’ve won nothing! Say hallelujah! Absolutely nothing!!”

Porn is the Answer

After only a week I have developed the overweening obsession that plagues many bloggers, even those with more experience and skill than me. We have one fixation that that disturbs our sleep in the darkest hours of the night. Let others worry about war and peace, global warming, social justice, Eunice Shriver’s health, we can only ask, “How do I drive more traffic to my blog?”

This frantic concern is a matter of both ego and economics. Posting a blog to the internet is not exactly locking one’s diary. And most bloggers hew to Dr. Johnson’s dictum, “"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." We are, regrettably, not allowed to say how we might get money from our blogs, but it is possible.

How to drive traffic? I have considered prose of the kittens in daisies and sunlight variety. I have considered making videos of kids doing the darndest things, but kids evidently can’t sign consent forms and I would rather eat dirt for the rest of my days than deal with their parents. I thought I had it with the diet guru racket, god knows I have enough experience with diets both rackets and real. Mine was going to be “Lose 50 pounds in 6 hours by eating brownies and watching HGTV.” I was afraid I’d forget it was mine and call to order. “Um, will it still work if I substitute blondies?”

Then it came to me as if in a vision. Porn. The answer is porn. Is there a more thriving industry in our land? If pornographers made cars there would have been no bankruptcies and bailouts. No “Cash for your Spouse” programs.

I wonder how much those young people charge? And I avoid gender quite deliberately. I realize one needs to specialize to hold a market. “Après le Softball Game” Very gauzy. “Après the Car Repair” Very clear light and shadow. “Bisexuals in Chocolate Syrup” Shot on a white sofa so people who feel they have to act as if they don’t like porn can pretend they’re at a suspense or horror movie.

Maybe I should try to revive heterosexuals. Let’s face it; no one has watched straight porn since the early seventies. It’s like watching your parents. (In a single sentence I have killed an industry.)

And all of you going “eeeeeeeeeeeeeeew” and “how could he?” You are going to be my best marketers. Express your disgust vehemently to your friends, colleagues, co-congregants, strangers. Most of them will nod their heads gravely while surreptitiously checking to make sure they haven’t lost the URL.

My new slogan:
http://seemehearmetouchme.blogspot.com/ The blog that buys chocolate syrup in bulk.

In Memoriam, Sort Of

My best friend’s mother died yesterday. She was 89. She had been in poor health for several years. Her death was sudden and shocking and painful. It is one of the great canards of bereavement that it can be anybody’s “time.”
My best friend’s mother was an important part of my life for 39 years. I remember barging into her bedroom many years ago, with a friend, and offering her and my best friend’s father Cokes. Fortunately, they were amused. Very fortunately.
I remember sitting at her kitchen table planning a beach trip with my best friend’s youngest sister. One of us referred to the other as middle-aged. My best friend’s mother summoned her full regal hauteur and declared, “You children are not middle-aged!” At the time we were 37.
On a more somber occasion, my best friend’s mother took me aside and with great earnestness thanked me for loving her daughters. As though that is difficult.
My best friend is the second of four sisters. Her elder sister was married and had a career in a congressman’s office by the time I entered the family orbit. She was glamorous and accomplished, possessed of a robust laugh and a dangerous wit. And, I was convinced, adopted, as she is the shortest of the sisters and the only blonde.
My best friend’s younger sister is adventurous. I’m quite certain that she can clean and gut a caribou or a moose or whatever it was better than Sarah Palin. And she is, as she will attest, the only woman with whom I’ve ever slept. We were both fully clothed, but that did not detract from our moment.
My best friend’s youngest sister was a partner in many crimes. We enjoyed numerous adult beverages in our youth. She is in love with language. She is a cracker-jack editor and ready to celebrate her friends’ creativity and her own. In the inexplicable way of fate, she is a bit of a lost soul.
My best friend has four children who are, in every way that could possibly matter, my nieces and nephew. Her oldest daughter was born in October of 1988. I became sober on September 17, 1988. That none of those children have ever seen me drunk is the part of my life of which I am most proud and for which I am most grateful.
How to speak of my best friend? She christened me “Piggy” at a time when it fit, but I have been more delighted to be “Piggy” with every passing year. She made me fall in love with Starbucks. She pulled me from a deep and dangerous slough of despond. She also loves language. She is a wizard with words and with a camera. And she is utterly fearless.
But none of that quite captures it. I believe that if you can make a list of reasons you are describing like. Love is richer and more mysterious and not defined by lists. A friendship of 39 years has to be more love than like. This one is.
It is not fashionable in my set, but I believe in heaven. I believe in an afterlife where things that have been taken are given back to us. I know my best friend’s mother is in my heaven. Alert and tart, she is straightening out the place and brooking no dissent.

Celebration and Sorrow

The Senate’s confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court should be a cause for celebration. That she is eminently qualified, both by disposition and intellect, cannot be disputed by reasonable people. Her elevation to the Court represents another important first in American society’s progress toward full equality for all citizens.
But that is also the first sorrow. It is disheartening that such firsts are still so prevalent and, in many cases, unattained. We should be beyond the point that the election or appointment of a Latino/a, African-American, Asian-American, Native-American, person with a disability or woman to any position would be headline news because of ethnicity or abledness or gender. It’s not an excuse that all progress takes time. Why? Why should it? What’s wrong with hurrying it along? I would argue that far from being a virtue, patience is a criminal folly.
I loved and love my University, but it staggered me then and staggers me now that I attended a school that had been integrated for six years and admitting women for two when I enrolled. The later lead to occasional confusion. As I was helping a friend move into her dorm room, her mother excused herself to use the restroom. She was back in the suite almost immediately, hands on hips, snarling: “I know that sort of thing goes on, but do they have to make it so easy for them?” Meeting blank stares she continued, “There are urinals …” As the only one able to raise his eyes from the floor it fell to me to explain that the dorm was built before the university admitted women and that the urinals were intended to keep undergraduates from pissing off the balcony.” I did not tell her they were unsuccessful.
I would make the argument that the courts, especially the California and United States Supreme Courts do more to promote progress under law than all the legislatures and referenda in our history combined. I give you Brown v. Board of Education. Absent Brown, my University might still be waiting to admit its first African-American student. I give you Loving v. Virginia, handed down in 1967 at a time when 72% of Americans opposed interracial marriage. If we had a national proposition recall system, President Obama might have been the son of criminals. But at least the wisdom of the people would have triumphed over activist judges.
On the day that President Obama was elected last November, an election that I celebrated briefly, the voters of the great State of California approved Proposition 8 which overturned a California Supreme Court ruling that had legitimized gay marriage (you see my reverence for the wisdom of the courts) and enshrined in the Constitution of the great state of California the admirable sentiment: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
Particularly painful in the passage of Prop 8 was the revelation that the proposition was supported by 53% of Latinos and 7 in 10 African Americans, an almost eerie reflection of the 72% opposition to interracial marriage in 1967. Suggesting most clearly that no group has the market cornered on ignorant bigotry. Further suggesting that the moment any group perceives itself as climbing up the ladder, its first response it to put its foot in the face of the next group below.
My disillusionment with President Obama didn’t begin with the passage of Proposition 8. Although that was a shaky time. His response to Proposition 8 seemed to be that he didn’t think it was necessary but that he didn’t disagree with a word of it.
My disillusionment with President Obama began with his selection of Rev. Rick Warren, ole’ Saddleback Rick, to give the invocation at his inauguration. Rick can prove he’s not homophobic as “I’ve eaten dinner in gay homes.” Rev. Warren evidently regrets being 40 years too late to toss off “Some of my best friends are Negroes.”
Now I do understand Rev. Warren’s appeal to President Obama. Both Rev. Warren and the Obama Justice Department equate gay marriage and incest. But at least this wasn’t hypocrisy. I am not aware of Senator or Candidate or President Obama ever saying “Oh no, gay marriage is not just like incest!” I am aware of candidate Obama’s campaign commitments to do away with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and to support expansion of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Perhaps he’ll get to them in his 104th hundred days? I do fear that the Obama policy will be called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Wed.”
Beyond the courts, the real hope for those who want to give their children a fair education, or swim in a neighborhood pool, or receive equal pay, or marry the person they just happen to love, are the brave individuals who say enough, no more, and bring their lives before the scrutiny of the courts and the harsh judgments of their fellow citizens.
I hope that I will live to see the day when the generous words of the brave and private Mildred Loving come to fruition:
Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the "wrong kind of person" for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights.