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.

All The (Dead) Horses

CNN.com, my source for pressing news of the day, recently ran a video with the headline “Lottery Winner Loses Ticket.” As in the most elegant journalism, the headline conveyed the essence of the story. The only detail missing from the headline was that the lost ticket was worth $500,000. I suppose a headline that read “Lottery Winner Loses $500K Ticket” would have given away too much.
If ever an argument could be made for suicide, assisted or other, this would be the occasion. This would be a public shame from which there can be no recovery. (I refer to losing the lottery ticket, not being featured on CNN.com.) Honor demands hauling out the knives and performing ritual seppuku.
My views on the more assisted sort of suicide have evolved over the years. When I was in my twenties, Karen Quinlan was all the rage. I told anyone who would listen that I didn’t think any measure was extreme if it was keeping me alive. At the time I said “If the vegetable has my social security number, keep the machines humming.”
Time passed. Life experiences mounted. Holding hands. Cleaning up. Sitting by hospital beds. Watching robust and healthy, strong and beautiful men lose every part of their health and strength and seeing the beauty become entirely internal. The man I loved wasted and went blind. I know that I do not have the grace and strength and forbearance of those men. The questions to which I don’t have an answer are does that give me the right to end my own life? And, if so, when?
There are days when I think that if I have to start using the Large Print Reader’s Digest, call Dr. Kevorkian. Most days the answers are: I don’t know and I don’t know if I will ever know. I’m a riot at parties.
What I do know is that this painful and difficult decision should be left entirely to me and to you and to our parents and to all of those who come after us. God knows it should never be forced, but nor should it be forbidden.
Government, at any level, has no place in private choices. Not in our sickrooms, not in our living rooms (weed, porn, stuff I can’t even imagine), not in our bedrooms. Maybe marrying siblings isn’t such a great idea. On the other hand, if there is a right to privacy implicit in the Fourteenth Amendment shouldn’t it be an absolute right? One person may wish to draw the line at miscegenation, another at gay marriage. I may wish to draw the line at polygamy. Where is the line really? And who has the right to say? I would argue that, as uncomfortable as certain choices make me, the only line should be one that protects children.
Oh my god. I’m getting in touch with my inner Libertarian. This is going to be one of the happiest days in my brother-in-law’s life.

Opening Salvo.

The whole St. Ted issue has started to get under my skin. "Lion of Senate." Oh absolutely. Has contributed more to the life and welfare of our nation than anyone might have predicted in 1962, or 1969, or even 1980. Without question. In a lawless society, Roger Mudd would have disappeared without a trace.
But his salad days are behind Senator Kennedy, along with his single malt scotch days and his recognizing the legions of fawning courtiers pressing around him without the slightest concern for his welfare days. It is horrifying that this great man is combating a malignant brain tumor and his struggle has been, and I offer this without a trace of irony, a profile in courage. But he has been incapacitated. He is no longer able to serve the interests of the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. When commentators speak of a 60 seat Democratic majority in the Senate, who doesn't think "59-1/2"? At best. Perhaps the United States Senate is not the place to test the outer reaches of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The oath of office taken by members of the United States Senate includes the phrase: "I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter." Is there anyone? What's left of Senator Kennedy? Any of the hordes of sycophantic toadies (including those family members not named Caroline or Victoria) who sully his sickroom? Who may seriously claim that Senator Kennedy has the capacity to "well and faithfully discharge" a walk around his room, never mind the duties of a United States Senator?
The graceful thing for a man of honor to do as he enters his waning hours is to resign a Senate seat in which he is no longer capable of serving. It suggest an unfortunate narcissism to refuse to accept this reality. Yes, Senator Thurmond held on well past a vegetative state. And Senator Byrd is headed that way. And there have certainly been others. But Senator Kennedy, do you want your final legacy to be that you held on as long and as hard and to as unseemly a degree as Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd?