I've been thinking lately of writing a small book of wisdom. You know the kind: a wafer-thin assemblage of mind farts designed to "impart some of the lessons I've accrued here..." (The quote, Grasshopper, is from Rushmore. When you can watch this film without leaving a trace on the DVD player, then you will be ready to leave the Temple.)
Where was I? Ah, yes. I want to do my part, however humble, to improve humanity by advising it, as best I can in my capacity as a mortal with an average I(and E)Q, on how to make the earth a better place for all of us. A modest ambition, really. Not unlike Lao Tsu, who wrote the Tao Te Ching on his way out of China sometime around the 5th Century B.C.E.
You see, the Empire in which he lived (plus ca change!) was also full of shit, and he, like me (like you, dear reader?), could not take it anymore. So he moved to Canada. I mean Mongolia. Well, it may not have been called that then. I didn't major in Pre-Modern East Asian History. The point is he couldn't take it anymore, and since starting a progressive blog was not an option at that time, he up and left. However...one of the border guards was tipped off. Did he arrest Lao Tsu and put his skinny ass in Abu Ghraibuson? No. He knew Lao Tsu was a wise man, so he simply asked him if, on the way out, he wouldn't mind annotating a few pearls of you know what, something for the beleaguered guard to hang onto amid all the madness. And Lao Tsu, sweet fellow that he was, composed 81 brief chapters for that guardian of Empire. Next to the Sermon on the Mount, it may be the greatest explosion of humane common and uncommon sense in history. What's it all about? For the uninitiated, the Tao is a bit like Confucius minus the authoritarianism.
Anyhoos. I want to write something equally valuable, equally concise. Because let's face it, we live in times when so-called wise men, so-called statesmen are capable of bloviating for days without saying anything at all, at least not anything worth a damn. Maybe it's a liability issue - perhaps speaking the truth can get you sued, not for malpractice, but for practice. I don't know. I do know the Turks say, "Whoever tells the truth is chased out of nine villages," and nobody needs that. Still, the truth is begging for our help. For my help. And I want to help. I want to help myself. I want to help you.
That's as far as I've gotten. The desire to help. I sit down to write, but it isn't easy knowing where to start. The baseness of contemporary politics and how we remedy that? No. Maybe greed, and how if we can overcome our avarice, we can finally create a world economic system that allows us to be good to one another and still keep our digital cable and (hydrogen powered) SUVs. No. It's got to be about religion, right? About how the left doesn't hate Jesus (although, let's face it, if this poor, oppressed, Mediterranean Jewish peasant, this hardworking carpenter and part-time rabbi, had any idea that based on a few of his speeches we'd get hillbillies shaking poisonous snakes at each other up in the hollers of West Virginny, he'd probably have kept his mouth shut and gone home) no, what we hate is the idea that because you believe in Jesus - and a peculiar version of him at that - you somehow have the right to tell the other 75% of the country how to live. Hmm...
You see how hard this is? Especially because I've been pretty busy lately what with helping plan my upcoming wedding and I haven't been getting a whole lot of sleep. I mean, let me spell it out for you folks, I'M TIRED. And that's when it hit me. EUREKA! HOOVER! DYSON! We're all so tired, maybe that is affecting the state of the world. When I really asked myself, "What would I do right now if I could do anything to get the world off on the right foot for the next thousand years?" I realized that hiring a Samurai to take out Ann Coulter wouldn't cut it, because she's just a hateful blowhard, and hateful winds blow, and hateful winds die, without any help from me. So here's what I came up with. Feel free to comment. I look forward to hearing your thoughts (just remember, I was tired when I began this post, and I'm even tireder now):
1. I would force the entire population of the world to participate in a general strike that would last one week. For a week, nobody could do a lick of work. Not the CEOs of the Fortune 500, not the janitor at your daughter's school, not the President, not Kos, not the good guys, and not the evil doers. Everybody, you're on vacation! During that same week, I would disable every electrical appliance known to man, and all the power plants generating power for them. That means for one week no lights but the sun moon and stars, no TV, no Playstation, no internets, no mobile phones, nothing. For this week, you get up with the sunrise, and go to bed with the sunset. Yep, folks, for one week you reset your clock to the old Circadian rhythms of life. In short, for one whole week, you get enough sleep. (GOD, THAT SOUNDS SO GOOD RIGHT NOW!)
That's it. After a week of the whole world finally getting enough sleep, our eyelids no longer twitching, our bodies no longer fatigued, our minds refreshed, sharp, attentive, we sit down and decide about
2.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
An Honest Question
This has been bugging me. I have a gay friend, a very old friend in fact, from high school. And he met this guy at a dance club our sophomore year in college, and by some miracle they are still together 18 years later. Among all of us in that clique of 18 year old Reagan-haters, poetry scrawlers, new wave music tasters, play makers, and academic decatheletes, they have had the longest lasting and most successful union, but they can't get married because they live in Houston. So what if they started a successful business, purchased two homes, continue to pay taxes out the yin yang like any successful couple? Because a group of angry, frightened old men (aka the Republican Congress) decided there is nothing more dangerous than homos in love, their union goes unrecognized by the state, and all that they hold in common remains in jeopardy. Gay marriage, say the angry, frightened (possibly closeted) old men, is a threat to the other kind of marriage - the kind Brittany Spears enjoyed for 48 hours one weekend when what happened in Vegas most certainly did not stay in Vegas; the kind Newt Gingrich had, so wholesome, secure and chock full of family values that he went to see his wife who was DYING OF CANCER and asked her to sign their divorce papers from her hospital bed, like the marriage of representative Henry Hyde (R - Hypocrisy) kept in fighting trim by his mistress of 17 years.
But it's OK because those folks all played it straight. Fucked up, but straight. And now here I am getting married in two weeks, and it isn't fair. It just isn't.
But my question, now I've digressed, is how the hell can these Republicans be so afraid of gay people when they've spent the last six years greedily and gleefully sucking George Bush's cock?
But it's OK because those folks all played it straight. Fucked up, but straight. And now here I am getting married in two weeks, and it isn't fair. It just isn't.
But my question, now I've digressed, is how the hell can these Republicans be so afraid of gay people when they've spent the last six years greedily and gleefully sucking George Bush's cock?
Friday, June 09, 2006
Don't Tread on Me, Kos
Pardon the belligerent sounding title. I was referring to an old flag of the American Revolution and how it might serve as one possible banner for a renewed Democratic party.
While I enjoyed Kos' recent diary "The Libertarian Dem," his suggestion sounds like yet another semantic ploy, a way of distinguishing ourselves not from the Republicans but from other Dems by claiming to be, in the words of that old chestnut, "A Different Kind of Democrat." Haven't we been down this road before? DLC, Third Way, Blue Dog Dem, Progressive vs. Liberal? All this does is buy into the premise of our opponents, namely that there is something inherently wrong with the Democratic Party as presently constituted. It buys into the Establishment Dem idea that all we need to do to win is come up with better advertising, when what we really need are candidates unafraid to stand up for traditional Democratic values. Polls and a recent diary demonstrate that when people know where we stand, we win. Tester exemplifies this. It is not our ideology or party name that needs changing. It's our candidates. We don’t need a new Party; we need new Democrats. Proud Democrats who stand and fight can win. New labels do nothing but contribute to the idea that we are running away from who we are. If "Democrat" was good enough for Harry Truman, it's good enough for me. This might seem like nitpicking, but if we are afraid of our own name (and its proud tradition), why would anyone vote Democrat?
As for the Libertarians, can we please avoid any association with their ilk? These are people who read too much Ayn Rand as undergrads and never fully recovered. Their philosophy is slightly less coherent than Scientology. If we hope to pluck the low-hanging SOBS (which I define as moderates and conservatives who are Sick Of Bush's Shit), why not attack Republicans "from the right" by adopting the glorious motto of our own American Revolution: Don't Tread on Me.
Americans can't seem to get enough of the Founding Fathers and the Revolution they started. One of the flags of that Revolution may hold the key to a Democratic resurgence. Called a Gadsden flag, it shows a coiled rattlesnake on a yellow field with the famous motto: Don't Tread on Me. I think this is a better response to Bush's bullshit than ill-advised name games. NSA hacking your computer and listening in on your calls: DON'T TREAD ON ME. Santorum between your sheets? DON'T TREAD ON ME. Tom De Lay paying bedside visits to your dying wife: DON'T TREAD ON ME. Christianists telling you your Jesus ain't their Jesus, and their Jesus is the right one: DON'T TREAD ON ME. Isn't it simpler to say to the disaffected: Republicans may once have defended your liberties against an encroaching state, but no more. Today it is the Democratic Party which defends the traditional, "conservative" values of our Founding Fathers (who are no doubt rolling over in their graves at the mockery this administration has made of their intentions).
Remember the realignment that occurred when Southern Dems became Republicans, because that's where the racism had gone and race-baiting was their favorite sport? Imagine the realignment that will occur when people realize Republicans have abandoned the values of our Founding Fathers. It doesn't require us to change our name, only clarify that we stand for what they stood for. It's the same idea Kos is pushing, but it's simpler and strikes me as a better tactic than buying into the sham notion that there is something inherently wrong with the Democratic Party, which must now reinvent itself as a hybrid beast with the head of Brian Schweitzer and the body of the Cato Institute.
Friday, May 05, 2006
The Earth is Nothing
Damn we are insignificant next to the sun.
It got me thinking about the end of life as we know it. Again. I feel like young Alvy Singer in Annie Hall, who stops doing his homework because "the universe is expanding." If the universe is expanding, that means it will break apart someday and that'll be the end of everything. "What's the point?" he asks. We're supposed to laugh at his lack of perspective - this cold fate lies billions of years in the future - but I was young Alvy's age the first time I saw the film, and I remember thinking, "Holy crap, he's right! What's the point?"
Of course with the benefit of age I now realize it's much worse than I thought. The sun will burn out long before the universe breaks apart. What then? The end of the earth means the end of Sophocles, Shakespeare, Schopenhauer, Whitman, Thoreau, Bach, The Beatles, Kurosawa, Godard, my porn collection. Forget my little films. It all seems so futile. Like donating money to Democrats.
I recently traveled to Niger where I spent some time trying to buy yellowcake KIDDING! among the Touaregs. What, a herd of German SUVs? No, silly American, the original nomadic population of the Sahel. Nomads. The very concept strikes us as quaint. But looking at that picture of the sun, I realized that if we survive its extinction (big if, given the way things are going) it will be as space-faring nomads strung out through the heavens, confined to soup can city-states, each with its own sovereignty, style, politics and culture, and artificial gravity (we love being grounded). This will not be a happy time. I just don't see the nomadic lifestyle doing it for us. Do you?
The life of a Touareg nomad is extremely difficult, despite having more than a thousand years of practice. We who have been raised in the West, among abundant supplies of water, food and shelter, have developed a murderous attachment to comfort, and though we may cop to the guilty pleasures of Star Trek Voyager, TV is one thing, reality another. What worries me is that we only have a billion years or so before that is brought home to us once and for all.
It got me thinking about the end of life as we know it. Again. I feel like young Alvy Singer in Annie Hall, who stops doing his homework because "the universe is expanding." If the universe is expanding, that means it will break apart someday and that'll be the end of everything. "What's the point?" he asks. We're supposed to laugh at his lack of perspective - this cold fate lies billions of years in the future - but I was young Alvy's age the first time I saw the film, and I remember thinking, "Holy crap, he's right! What's the point?"
Of course with the benefit of age I now realize it's much worse than I thought. The sun will burn out long before the universe breaks apart. What then? The end of the earth means the end of Sophocles, Shakespeare, Schopenhauer, Whitman, Thoreau, Bach, The Beatles, Kurosawa, Godard, my porn collection. Forget my little films. It all seems so futile. Like donating money to Democrats.
I recently traveled to Niger where I spent some time trying to buy yellowcake KIDDING! among the Touaregs. What, a herd of German SUVs? No, silly American, the original nomadic population of the Sahel. Nomads. The very concept strikes us as quaint. But looking at that picture of the sun, I realized that if we survive its extinction (big if, given the way things are going) it will be as space-faring nomads strung out through the heavens, confined to soup can city-states, each with its own sovereignty, style, politics and culture, and artificial gravity (we love being grounded). This will not be a happy time. I just don't see the nomadic lifestyle doing it for us. Do you?
The life of a Touareg nomad is extremely difficult, despite having more than a thousand years of practice. We who have been raised in the West, among abundant supplies of water, food and shelter, have developed a murderous attachment to comfort, and though we may cop to the guilty pleasures of Star Trek Voyager, TV is one thing, reality another. What worries me is that we only have a billion years or so before that is brought home to us once and for all.
My Privates
Interesting New York Times article on the deal a private US real-estate investor had to make to buy into the public-housing market in Germany.
Why aren't our mayors demanding these kinds of concessions when similar deals are made here? Privitization will continue apace unless the Bolivian model suddenly takes off in el Norte (a fantasy outcome that would warm the cockles of my Communitarian heart) but will it be done right? Much like globalization, the question isn't if but how.
Re: real estate, the real question stateside is new development, an issue very much on my mind as Bruce Ratner prepares to turn a large swath of downtown Brooklyn, blocks from my apartment, into a mini-Vegas Strip. The project has elicited a lot of controversy: is Vegas worse than the hole in the earth currently occupied by an MTA trunk line? Can we learn more from a subway routing station than we can from Las Vegas? Community activists are demanding more affordable housing units to be included in the project.
In Germany they demanded similar protections and got them. Why not here?
Why aren't our mayors demanding these kinds of concessions when similar deals are made here? Privitization will continue apace unless the Bolivian model suddenly takes off in el Norte (a fantasy outcome that would warm the cockles of my Communitarian heart) but will it be done right? Much like globalization, the question isn't if but how.
Re: real estate, the real question stateside is new development, an issue very much on my mind as Bruce Ratner prepares to turn a large swath of downtown Brooklyn, blocks from my apartment, into a mini-Vegas Strip. The project has elicited a lot of controversy: is Vegas worse than the hole in the earth currently occupied by an MTA trunk line? Can we learn more from a subway routing station than we can from Las Vegas? Community activists are demanding more affordable housing units to be included in the project.
In Germany they demanded similar protections and got them. Why not here?
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Incompetent President Blames Press, Democrats for His Failures
Washington, March 9 2006. George Bush continued his lifelong vacation from personal responsibility today when he called a surprise press conference to blame a surprised press and quivering Congressional Democrats for the catastrophe in Iraq.
With that country teetering on the edge of civil war – a situation that could easily have been avoided if the President and the civilian leadership of the Pentagon had 1) actually planned for the post-invasion phase of the war, and 2) sent enough troops to quell looting and properly stabilize post-Saddam Iraq, as General Shinseki recommended to the Senate Armed Services Committee well in advance of the invasion – the President today lashed out at his critics as bearing the primary responsibility for his failures there.
“I don’t care if the Republican Party controls the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate. I don’t care if I’ve got Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs wrapped around my finger. I don’t care if Shinseki warned me this thing would take 400,000 men. Fuck it! Those are facts, and facts don’t mean shit! Nietzsche said that. I’m paraphrasing. I don’t care about a complacent Supreme Court, and I don’t care if the press rolled over like a dead dog in the run-up to this thing. They’re criticizing me now, and that’s why we’re going to lose this war. Sure, any sane person would look at the situation and say the buck stops here. Well, I’ve got one word for Harry Truman: SCREW YOU! America isn’t governed by sane people anymore. Sure, a nation of true patriots, driven mad by my unending incompetence, would have risen up and driven a pitchfork through me by now. Lucky for me the loud, rude, rebellious gang who founded this country have been replaced by snivelling, servile sycophants. What? Surprised I know what sycophant means? I got better grades at Yale than John Kerry did, don’t forget. Sure, in the past a man with his hands on every lever of control might be held responsible for his actions, but that demands a burning passion for justice and an iron grip on reality. Those days are long gone. We no longer inhabit a reality-based world. The future is faith-based, baby! My faith tells me that we were just about to turn the corner in Iraq when the press started carping about how I do things. If only I’d listened to the evil doers in the Congress and France, if only I’d planned more better, if only I’d adapted quckerly, if only I could admit my mistakes. What mistakes? I’ve got one thing to say to the press: Boo fucking hoo. If it weren’t for you I could’ve won this thing. Despite your spinelessness, powerlessness, and general ass-kissing irrelevance, I hold you 100% responsible for all the questions I never asked, for all the plans I never made, for whatever actions I failed to order, and for every problem that has arisen or will arise in the future. It may appear that as President I have something to say about the final outcome in Iraq. Don’t make me laugh! This war is going to end in the biggest clusterfuck since Little Big Horn, and for that I hold the press entirely responsible. Now, if you’ll excuse me, the Vice President wants to show me how you shoot a man in the face and manage to turn yourself into the victim. I have a feeling that’ll come in real handy in the midterms.”
The President then gave the gathered journalists the finger, wiped his ass with the Constitution, and left the room.
Congressional Democrats, when asked for their reaction to the President’s statement, wet their pants and immediately called a press conference of their own to blame radicals in their party and a handful of progressive bloggers for their expected upset defeat in the 2006 midterm elections.
With that country teetering on the edge of civil war – a situation that could easily have been avoided if the President and the civilian leadership of the Pentagon had 1) actually planned for the post-invasion phase of the war, and 2) sent enough troops to quell looting and properly stabilize post-Saddam Iraq, as General Shinseki recommended to the Senate Armed Services Committee well in advance of the invasion – the President today lashed out at his critics as bearing the primary responsibility for his failures there.
“I don’t care if the Republican Party controls the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate. I don’t care if I’ve got Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs wrapped around my finger. I don’t care if Shinseki warned me this thing would take 400,000 men. Fuck it! Those are facts, and facts don’t mean shit! Nietzsche said that. I’m paraphrasing. I don’t care about a complacent Supreme Court, and I don’t care if the press rolled over like a dead dog in the run-up to this thing. They’re criticizing me now, and that’s why we’re going to lose this war. Sure, any sane person would look at the situation and say the buck stops here. Well, I’ve got one word for Harry Truman: SCREW YOU! America isn’t governed by sane people anymore. Sure, a nation of true patriots, driven mad by my unending incompetence, would have risen up and driven a pitchfork through me by now. Lucky for me the loud, rude, rebellious gang who founded this country have been replaced by snivelling, servile sycophants. What? Surprised I know what sycophant means? I got better grades at Yale than John Kerry did, don’t forget. Sure, in the past a man with his hands on every lever of control might be held responsible for his actions, but that demands a burning passion for justice and an iron grip on reality. Those days are long gone. We no longer inhabit a reality-based world. The future is faith-based, baby! My faith tells me that we were just about to turn the corner in Iraq when the press started carping about how I do things. If only I’d listened to the evil doers in the Congress and France, if only I’d planned more better, if only I’d adapted quckerly, if only I could admit my mistakes. What mistakes? I’ve got one thing to say to the press: Boo fucking hoo. If it weren’t for you I could’ve won this thing. Despite your spinelessness, powerlessness, and general ass-kissing irrelevance, I hold you 100% responsible for all the questions I never asked, for all the plans I never made, for whatever actions I failed to order, and for every problem that has arisen or will arise in the future. It may appear that as President I have something to say about the final outcome in Iraq. Don’t make me laugh! This war is going to end in the biggest clusterfuck since Little Big Horn, and for that I hold the press entirely responsible. Now, if you’ll excuse me, the Vice President wants to show me how you shoot a man in the face and manage to turn yourself into the victim. I have a feeling that’ll come in real handy in the midterms.”
The President then gave the gathered journalists the finger, wiped his ass with the Constitution, and left the room.
Congressional Democrats, when asked for their reaction to the President’s statement, wet their pants and immediately called a press conference of their own to blame radicals in their party and a handful of progressive bloggers for their expected upset defeat in the 2006 midterm elections.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Krazy Kats
If you want the best roundup on the Danish cartoons, a topic that seems more important in the grand scheme of things than local - by which I mean national - politics (you know, things like destroying the Republican party and impeaching the President - important to be sure, but nowhere near as important as drawing a line in the sand against those who would outlaw laughter, especially mocking laughter) then you've got to read Sully.
Keep scrolling. It's all good.
Keep scrolling. It's all good.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Funny Business
Two great articles about the Danish cartoons and the violence that erupted in their wake (a wake that rolled along quietly for months until someone gave it a little help).
In the right corner, Claudia Rossett. I happen to agree with most of this, despite the fact that I'm a bleeding heart liberal and a pacifist (until someone really pisses me off).
If there was ever a moment when the left could agree with the right (who am I kidding? I mean show up the right) it is in rejecting the fundamentalist attitude that places the delicate sensibilities of some above the free speech rights of all. It's an attitude not unknown among our American fundamentalists, which may explain why Bush's State Department and its dependents abroad are making statements like this. Nothing like playing both sides in the War on Terror!
In the left corner, Digby. His apologia for Muslim fury and his indictment of Western indignation at that fury is food for thought. Nevertheless, the violence the cartoons have engendered is beyond the pale and gives creedence, sadly, to the idea that we are involved in a "clash of civilizations." If we are, better to get it out in the open.
Finally, I wonder if it has occurred to any of the outraged Muslims currently boycotting Danish products, setting fire to Scandinavian embassies, or issuing death threats to cartoonists and their publishers, that a prohibition on ridiculing the powerful – even the holy – is one of the reasons most of them live under tyrants? I know I enjoy being able to belittle our little tyrant, Shrubya, without fear of being beheaded. Spied on, yes. Beheaded, no.
In the right corner, Claudia Rossett. I happen to agree with most of this, despite the fact that I'm a bleeding heart liberal and a pacifist (until someone really pisses me off).
If there was ever a moment when the left could agree with the right (who am I kidding? I mean show up the right) it is in rejecting the fundamentalist attitude that places the delicate sensibilities of some above the free speech rights of all. It's an attitude not unknown among our American fundamentalists, which may explain why Bush's State Department and its dependents abroad are making statements like this. Nothing like playing both sides in the War on Terror!
In the left corner, Digby. His apologia for Muslim fury and his indictment of Western indignation at that fury is food for thought. Nevertheless, the violence the cartoons have engendered is beyond the pale and gives creedence, sadly, to the idea that we are involved in a "clash of civilizations." If we are, better to get it out in the open.
Finally, I wonder if it has occurred to any of the outraged Muslims currently boycotting Danish products, setting fire to Scandinavian embassies, or issuing death threats to cartoonists and their publishers, that a prohibition on ridiculing the powerful – even the holy – is one of the reasons most of them live under tyrants? I know I enjoy being able to belittle our little tyrant, Shrubya, without fear of being beheaded. Spied on, yes. Beheaded, no.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
His Name is Shi Tao
More on the Chinese journalist sentenced to ten years in prison with a little help from your friends at Yahoo. Amnesty International is on the case.
The greatest hope for increased openness and democracy in China comes from the internet. It can provide tools not just to members of the Politburo, or the business class, but to ordinary citizens. And though the internets threaten the very survival of this (or any) authoritarian regime, it would be suicide to bar the door. The market dictates that the internet be admitted. And that means free speech and open debate must be admitted along with it.
At least that was the idea.
Who expected American tech companies, most run by right (make that left) thinking Liberals from sunny Sunnyvale and other West Coast Edens, would in fact bolster the longevity of tyrants by voluntarily de-democratizing their revolutionary applications?
Oh well. As Sergio Leone might say, Per Qualche Dollaro in Piu. I have asked those of you who Yahoo to stop. I ask again. You have other choices (so far). And even if other companies have signed the Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Chinese Internet Industry, none have assisted the Chinese secret police in prosecuting a journalist. Only Yahoo can claim that dubious distinction.
It's up to you to make them pay.
howardbealestreet.blogspot.com
The greatest hope for increased openness and democracy in China comes from the internet. It can provide tools not just to members of the Politburo, or the business class, but to ordinary citizens. And though the internets threaten the very survival of this (or any) authoritarian regime, it would be suicide to bar the door. The market dictates that the internet be admitted. And that means free speech and open debate must be admitted along with it.
At least that was the idea.
Who expected American tech companies, most run by right (make that left) thinking Liberals from sunny Sunnyvale and other West Coast Edens, would in fact bolster the longevity of tyrants by voluntarily de-democratizing their revolutionary applications?
Oh well. As Sergio Leone might say, Per Qualche Dollaro in Piu. I have asked those of you who Yahoo to stop. I ask again. You have other choices (so far). And even if other companies have signed the Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Chinese Internet Industry, none have assisted the Chinese secret police in prosecuting a journalist. Only Yahoo can claim that dubious distinction.
It's up to you to make them pay.
howardbealestreet.blogspot.com
Thursday, January 26, 2006
The Tao of Yahoo
A while back I posted an entry entitled "Die, Yahoo!" (excitability in the defense of liberty is no vice) about that internet provider's kowtowing to the Chinese government, which it has helped quash the free exchange of ideas ever since signing the Orwellian "Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the China Internet Industry." The pledge works like this: the Chinese government asks you to block certain search terms - the really radical ones, like "democracy" - and you kiss their Communist ass and do it. Yahoo is the most egregious offender, but Microsoft and now Google have joined them in the hall of shame.
Well, Congress has taken note.
Chris Smith is a Republican, but before you run in horror, I'd like to tell you about him. He is an important supporter of the maternal health work that NGOs (like the one my fiancée works for) are doing in Africa. He's one of those nutty Christians whose faith actually compels them to seek out and assist the poor wherever they are found. (I think Jesus said something about it. That guy couldn't shut up about the poor!) Without his advocacy, obstetric fistula would not be getting the attention and financial resources it deserves from the US Government. Now he is taking on the sniveling greedheads of Silicon Valley. These corporate cowards had the power to stand up to China (yes, it would have cost them, after all, "Freedom isn't free") but instead they caved.
Please write Congressman Smith - and your own - and urge them to take your internet provider to task. A billion people are counting on you.
howardbealestreet.blogspot.com
Well, Congress has taken note.
Chris Smith is a Republican, but before you run in horror, I'd like to tell you about him. He is an important supporter of the maternal health work that NGOs (like the one my fiancée works for) are doing in Africa. He's one of those nutty Christians whose faith actually compels them to seek out and assist the poor wherever they are found. (I think Jesus said something about it. That guy couldn't shut up about the poor!) Without his advocacy, obstetric fistula would not be getting the attention and financial resources it deserves from the US Government. Now he is taking on the sniveling greedheads of Silicon Valley. These corporate cowards had the power to stand up to China (yes, it would have cost them, after all, "Freedom isn't free") but instead they caved.
Please write Congressman Smith - and your own - and urge them to take your internet provider to task. A billion people are counting on you.
howardbealestreet.blogspot.com
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Funny Games
Are what Austrian director Michael Haneke likes to play. He's a sick fuck. I like that in a filmmaker. That said, Haneke's work is far from gratuitous. Funny Games is no Saw. His latest, Caché is his most infuriating so far. I like that too. I like being thwarted by a film. I like not knowing what's going on. I like not getting what I want. Maybe I'm a masochist. It helps to be a masochist if you intend to watch Haneke's films.
Yes, Haneke is a sick fuck, but there's method to his sickness. He appears to have a very low opinion of the human race, and he would like to punish it. Why does that make my heart sing? I guess I'm a sick fuck too. All I can say is, after watching one of his films, I want to scream I feel you, dog! I guess that makes me as much a misanthrope as Haneke. I consider Humans are an accursed lot a step up, as a moral position, from Those humans over there are an accursed lot, but we are blessed. The latter view, and not the love of money, is the root of all evil. Haneke chucks in the distinction, sketching nasty portraits of the class - the European bourgeois - most likely to cling to it, and sets about kicking their teeth in. It's fun to watch, but only if you like seeing people who richly deserve and are long overdue for a thrashing receive one. I do.
K. and I went to see Caché last night. Afterward we couldn't stop talking about it. It's never easy getting a handle on allegory (usually because the writer isn't sure what he's trying to say) which is why I tend to avoid it, but as we were hunting for the film's hidden meaning, the "real meaning," which we naturally assumed was political (I blame Hollywood for its infantilizing tendencies, yet I desperately seek refuge in the literal!) I remember saying, "It's so fucked up. He accuses this poor guy whose life he ruined of attacking him. Then he fucks his life up some more and all the while acts like he's the aggrieved party. That is so-" We both sort of looked at each other. "Oh... That's what it's about."
Yeah. THAT.
Yes, Haneke is a sick fuck, but there's method to his sickness. He appears to have a very low opinion of the human race, and he would like to punish it. Why does that make my heart sing? I guess I'm a sick fuck too. All I can say is, after watching one of his films, I want to scream I feel you, dog! I guess that makes me as much a misanthrope as Haneke. I consider Humans are an accursed lot a step up, as a moral position, from Those humans over there are an accursed lot, but we are blessed. The latter view, and not the love of money, is the root of all evil. Haneke chucks in the distinction, sketching nasty portraits of the class - the European bourgeois - most likely to cling to it, and sets about kicking their teeth in. It's fun to watch, but only if you like seeing people who richly deserve and are long overdue for a thrashing receive one. I do.
K. and I went to see Caché last night. Afterward we couldn't stop talking about it. It's never easy getting a handle on allegory (usually because the writer isn't sure what he's trying to say) which is why I tend to avoid it, but as we were hunting for the film's hidden meaning, the "real meaning," which we naturally assumed was political (I blame Hollywood for its infantilizing tendencies, yet I desperately seek refuge in the literal!) I remember saying, "It's so fucked up. He accuses this poor guy whose life he ruined of attacking him. Then he fucks his life up some more and all the while acts like he's the aggrieved party. That is so-" We both sort of looked at each other. "Oh... That's what it's about."
Yeah. THAT.
Everything is Connected
Some very interesting questions raised in this New York Times article on Quantum Physics. The key paragraphs:
Now this is fascinating, a recapitulation among physicists of the whole argument between Berkeley and Hume about whether reality exists outside the act of our perceiving it.
Are scientists suggesting the physical universe sits in reserve, waiting for the moment when we observe it to come into existence? In other words, the question isn't: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? The question is: Is there a forest at all? Isn't that the meaning of "Properties cannot be said to be there until they are revealed by an actual experiment."
This would answer many of the questions I never received a satisfactory answer to as a child (and later, as a college student) like: What lies beyond the Big Bang? Because if the universe is expanding, there is a limit to the expansion. What lies beyond that limit? Nothing? Are the far reaches of the universe being created as the Big Bang expands into them? Wouldn't that mean that the universe exists and doesn't exist at the same time? How can that be?
It doesn't matter, these experiments suggest, because what doesn't yet exist won't exist until we look for it. Then it will. (Is that what Jesus meant when he said "Seek and you shall find." Was Jesus more than a rabbi? Was he one of the first quantum physicists?)
There's a potential explanation for the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle here as well, although I can't completely grasp it, other than to picture time and space as a single sheet of matter in which we all form constituent, as opposed to discrete, parts. Make sense?
Well, it's like the tagline from the Syriana poster: Everything is connected. Literally.
...Many of those who care to think about these issues (and many prefer not to), concluded that Einstein's presumption of locality - the idea that physically separated objects are really separate - is wrong.
Dr. Albert said, "The experiments show locality is false, end of story." But for others, it is the notion of realism, that things exist independent of being perceived, that must be scuttled. In fact, physicists don't even seem to agree on the definitions of things like "locality" and "realism."
"I would say we have to be careful saying what's real," Dr. Mermin said. "Properties cannot be said to be there until they are revealed by an actual experiment."
Now this is fascinating, a recapitulation among physicists of the whole argument between Berkeley and Hume about whether reality exists outside the act of our perceiving it.
Are scientists suggesting the physical universe sits in reserve, waiting for the moment when we observe it to come into existence? In other words, the question isn't: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? The question is: Is there a forest at all? Isn't that the meaning of "Properties cannot be said to be there until they are revealed by an actual experiment."
This would answer many of the questions I never received a satisfactory answer to as a child (and later, as a college student) like: What lies beyond the Big Bang? Because if the universe is expanding, there is a limit to the expansion. What lies beyond that limit? Nothing? Are the far reaches of the universe being created as the Big Bang expands into them? Wouldn't that mean that the universe exists and doesn't exist at the same time? How can that be?
It doesn't matter, these experiments suggest, because what doesn't yet exist won't exist until we look for it. Then it will. (Is that what Jesus meant when he said "Seek and you shall find." Was Jesus more than a rabbi? Was he one of the first quantum physicists?)
There's a potential explanation for the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle here as well, although I can't completely grasp it, other than to picture time and space as a single sheet of matter in which we all form constituent, as opposed to discrete, parts. Make sense?
Well, it's like the tagline from the Syriana poster: Everything is connected. Literally.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Munich
K. and I went to see Munich at BAM last night. The house was packed, and we were forced to sit off center left. When I go to the movies, do I enjoy being forced into a seat that mirrors my politics? I do not. Enchanted at a very young age by Ptolemy, whose flawed cosmology placed the earth, and therefore man, at the center of the universe, seduced by the perfect symmetry of Palladio, whose buildings are best appreciated from their central axis, I've got to see a movie from the middle of the middle of theatre. Like Woody Allen in Annie Hall, I've got to see the movie from beginning to end, including credits. Finally, like God, I require silence. The cinema is after all a cathedral projecting our dreams and nightmares. Last night the parishioners' observance was far from golden. The guy behind me verbally close-captioned the movie for his historically challenged companion: "That's Golda Meir." Asshole.
I explained to K. some of the right wing bloggorrhea preceding the movie's release. As we were leaving K., who is Jewish, said, "I don't get it. The movie made everyone look bad." Exactly. People hate that. You want to remain a member in good standing of Team America, you've got to hate all the right people. Politics becomes more like high school with each passing day.
Here is what some people hate: making a Mossad agent look like a cold-blooded killer, even when he's killing in cold blood; making a Palestinian terrorist look (almost) human, even though he is. To the Manichean, good and evil are always pure. When the bad guys make war, it is bloody, cruel and intolerable. When we make war, it's a bake sale. Our warriors - on the right side of God and History - bake cookies and cupcakes. If they have to blow off a few heads now and again, well that's just the icing on the cake.
A quote I will never forget came in response to scattered criticism in the world press of the brutality of the US-led assault on Fallujah. A young Marine (who reminded me a lot of my brother after he returned from the first Gulf War) spoke with canny cynicism and a hint of regret about the things they were called on to do (like Bartelby, they would prefer not to, but that is up to the politicians, whom they universally despise):
He went on to say that if people had so many qualms, maybe next time they shouldn't rush [into war] so much.
But what I appreciated most was Munich's unflinching portrayal of the cost of violence on the men who perpetrate it, regardless of what side they are on, regardless of how justified the cause. One thing utterly lost on most politicians and pundits, entirely on the media and those members of the public without a relative serving on the front lines, is any sense that American men and women who return from Iraq alive and physically intact are still casualties of war. The psychic cost of killing another human being is one we prefer not to tally.
What is more human than seeing yourself in the the man facing you? It takes a lot of training to get a soldier to set aside his humanity and see another person - even his enemy - as worthy of death. This training, perfected by the military and by intellgence agencies, does irreparable harm, and the men and women who do the killing are well aware of it. One of the saddest scenes in Munich is when Avner finally returns home to Israel and asks his mother if she wants to hear what he did for his country. She says no, and we understand it is as much to spare herself as him. How many times will this scene be played out in the wake of Iraq? Soldiers will return home to loved ones eager to "spare" them any recounting of the horrors they have seen, and those warriors will understand that they are to shut up. We who have been spared do not wish to be infected by the inhumanity of those who have not.
One last thing: all the wingnuttery, the pre-release attempt at a takedown of the movie, has been carried out by people who haven't seen it. (It opened only yesterday.) How are they any different from the mullahs who condemned The Satanic Verses without having read the book? How do you condemn a work of art in advance? Are they that afraid of what the movie might say, what it might make people feel? The critics pay this work greater respect than it perhaps deserves. As Artaud said, The theatre never saved a man from starving so let's not get our panties in a wad (I'm paraphrasing). Still, Munich's critics are right about this: a work of art in its complexity (and yes, ambiguity) offers a picture of the world that mere ideology is powerless to control. It might make us think anything, that revenge is futile, that the cycle of violence must be broken, even though our enemies started it (and they did...didn't they?). So the attempt is made to kill it in its crib. For past successes of this type, see: Moses.
One of my favorite proverbs, from the Middle East as it happens, states: Whoever tells the truth is chased out of nine villages. You'd think Munich's critics would be too busy chasing al-Qaeda out of ninety-nine villages to go after Steven Spielberg, but then again, look what they did when they had Osama trapped in the mountains at Tora Bora. They went after Saddam. At last, their strategy begins to make sense.
I explained to K. some of the right wing bloggorrhea preceding the movie's release. As we were leaving K., who is Jewish, said, "I don't get it. The movie made everyone look bad." Exactly. People hate that. You want to remain a member in good standing of Team America, you've got to hate all the right people. Politics becomes more like high school with each passing day.
Here is what some people hate: making a Mossad agent look like a cold-blooded killer, even when he's killing in cold blood; making a Palestinian terrorist look (almost) human, even though he is. To the Manichean, good and evil are always pure. When the bad guys make war, it is bloody, cruel and intolerable. When we make war, it's a bake sale. Our warriors - on the right side of God and History - bake cookies and cupcakes. If they have to blow off a few heads now and again, well that's just the icing on the cake.
A quote I will never forget came in response to scattered criticism in the world press of the brutality of the US-led assault on Fallujah. A young Marine (who reminded me a lot of my brother after he returned from the first Gulf War) spoke with canny cynicism and a hint of regret about the things they were called on to do (like Bartelby, they would prefer not to, but that is up to the politicians, whom they universally despise):
What do they think we do? Marines don't shoot rainbows out of our asses. We fucking kill people.
He went on to say that if people had so many qualms, maybe next time they shouldn't rush [into war] so much.
But what I appreciated most was Munich's unflinching portrayal of the cost of violence on the men who perpetrate it, regardless of what side they are on, regardless of how justified the cause. One thing utterly lost on most politicians and pundits, entirely on the media and those members of the public without a relative serving on the front lines, is any sense that American men and women who return from Iraq alive and physically intact are still casualties of war. The psychic cost of killing another human being is one we prefer not to tally.
What is more human than seeing yourself in the the man facing you? It takes a lot of training to get a soldier to set aside his humanity and see another person - even his enemy - as worthy of death. This training, perfected by the military and by intellgence agencies, does irreparable harm, and the men and women who do the killing are well aware of it. One of the saddest scenes in Munich is when Avner finally returns home to Israel and asks his mother if she wants to hear what he did for his country. She says no, and we understand it is as much to spare herself as him. How many times will this scene be played out in the wake of Iraq? Soldiers will return home to loved ones eager to "spare" them any recounting of the horrors they have seen, and those warriors will understand that they are to shut up. We who have been spared do not wish to be infected by the inhumanity of those who have not.
One last thing: all the wingnuttery, the pre-release attempt at a takedown of the movie, has been carried out by people who haven't seen it. (It opened only yesterday.) How are they any different from the mullahs who condemned The Satanic Verses without having read the book? How do you condemn a work of art in advance? Are they that afraid of what the movie might say, what it might make people feel? The critics pay this work greater respect than it perhaps deserves. As Artaud said, The theatre never saved a man from starving so let's not get our panties in a wad (I'm paraphrasing). Still, Munich's critics are right about this: a work of art in its complexity (and yes, ambiguity) offers a picture of the world that mere ideology is powerless to control. It might make us think anything, that revenge is futile, that the cycle of violence must be broken, even though our enemies started it (and they did...didn't they?). So the attempt is made to kill it in its crib. For past successes of this type, see: Moses.
One of my favorite proverbs, from the Middle East as it happens, states: Whoever tells the truth is chased out of nine villages. You'd think Munich's critics would be too busy chasing al-Qaeda out of ninety-nine villages to go after Steven Spielberg, but then again, look what they did when they had Osama trapped in the mountains at Tora Bora. They went after Saddam. At last, their strategy begins to make sense.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Merry Friggin' War on Xmas
Maybe I'm being obtuse, but what's with all the gnashing of teeth over Christmas? I don't care if there is or isn't a war on Christmas, because Christmas is a holiday created by Department Stores to get a bunch of sentimental saps to confound the meaning of the birth of the proto-communist Prince of Peace with an annual consumer orgy, the better to get them to go out and spend their hard-earned money on highly unspiritual, I might even say material possessions, all this in supposed celebration of a guy who thought the best thing you could do with money was give it away to the poor.
And even if you don't buy that, none of it matters anyway, because there's one fact all the nattering nabobs of givitivity forget: Jesus was a JEW! Jesus never owned a fucking Christmas tree! Jesus never celebrated Christmas, and he doesn't care if you do. Hell, Jesus never even celebrated Hannukah. (It hadn't been invented yet.) So will all the eager practioners of Christian self-victimization who are currently too busy wailing about their favorite Jew being taken out of Christmas to get into the proper holiday spirit, will you please shut your pie holes and have yourselves a Merry Little Xmas?
And even if you don't buy that, none of it matters anyway, because there's one fact all the nattering nabobs of givitivity forget: Jesus was a JEW! Jesus never owned a fucking Christmas tree! Jesus never celebrated Christmas, and he doesn't care if you do. Hell, Jesus never even celebrated Hannukah. (It hadn't been invented yet.) So will all the eager practioners of Christian self-victimization who are currently too busy wailing about their favorite Jew being taken out of Christmas to get into the proper holiday spirit, will you please shut your pie holes and have yourselves a Merry Little Xmas?
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Good and Evil
In discussing the Iraq situation with a friend recently, I commented that America, in my opinion, was on the brink of moral collapse. (Why be reasonable when one can be dramatic.)
I felt afterward that I owed my friend an explanation of the insidious, unstated philosophy - or more simply put, the attitude - that I personally believe lies behind our current foreign policy, an attitude slowly taking hold of the American mind and endangering us all.
I was immediately reminded of Nietzsche, that acid-tongued lover of aphorism, who famously warned: Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
"How could George Bush answer Nietzsche?" I wondered. With all that has happened, all that has been disproved (WMD, an al-Qaeda connection) and proved (torture, the use of white phosphorus as an anti-personnel - aka chemical - weapon), how could our Commander in Chief justify this war? But he's George Bush, so you just know he'd try. Then it came to me:
I suppose a morally bankrupt individual - a chancre of a man, a malignant tumor in human form - could argue that there is a tissue thin difference between the two and that the former is preferable, but then you'd have to be...well, you'd have to be the President of the United States, or the Vice President of the United States, or the Attorney General of the United States, or the Secretary of Defense. That's what we have come to. That is our position, the final justification for this immoral misadventure measured in human lives. When we kill we do it for the right reasons. We are good. It has about as much chance of succeeding as a moral distinction as the Germans did of reaching Paris during the Battle of the Bulge. (That's a double entendre, for you non-war buffs.)
So my merry thoughts were raging when I came upon Harold Pinter's recent lecture accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature (a prize richly deserved, I might add, with all the authority of a dusty BA in Drama backing me up) and he wiped the floor with my one liner. The theme he descants upon is the same - that of moral distinctions that aren't, particularly ones that happen to favor the US - but he is far more eloquent and far more angry than I - as you might expect from a man who is dying.
Conventional wisdom states that those on the brink of extinction find, at long last, their way to the truth and the courage to speak it without fear of consequences. And there are always consequences. As the Turkish proverb says, Whoever tells the truth is chased out of nine villages. No doubt a certain gun-loving law professor from Tennessee and a certain paranoid, fawning babydaddy from the upper Midwest are even now preparing to attack this ailing genius, but since they have yet to volunteer for the war on which our very existence hinges, according to them, they've not been issued rifles and can only fire digital blanks at their enemies.
Here is what Pinter had to say. Read it and weep.
I felt afterward that I owed my friend an explanation of the insidious, unstated philosophy - or more simply put, the attitude - that I personally believe lies behind our current foreign policy, an attitude slowly taking hold of the American mind and endangering us all.
I was immediately reminded of Nietzsche, that acid-tongued lover of aphorism, who famously warned: Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
"How could George Bush answer Nietzsche?" I wondered. With all that has happened, all that has been disproved (WMD, an al-Qaeda connection) and proved (torture, the use of white phosphorus as an anti-personnel - aka chemical - weapon), how could our Commander in Chief justify this war? But he's George Bush, so you just know he'd try. Then it came to me:
When we torture and kill we do it for the right reasons. We are good. When they torture and kill they do it for the wrong reasons. They are evil.
I suppose a morally bankrupt individual - a chancre of a man, a malignant tumor in human form - could argue that there is a tissue thin difference between the two and that the former is preferable, but then you'd have to be...well, you'd have to be the President of the United States, or the Vice President of the United States, or the Attorney General of the United States, or the Secretary of Defense. That's what we have come to. That is our position, the final justification for this immoral misadventure measured in human lives. When we kill we do it for the right reasons. We are good. It has about as much chance of succeeding as a moral distinction as the Germans did of reaching Paris during the Battle of the Bulge. (That's a double entendre, for you non-war buffs.)
So my merry thoughts were raging when I came upon Harold Pinter's recent lecture accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature (a prize richly deserved, I might add, with all the authority of a dusty BA in Drama backing me up) and he wiped the floor with my one liner. The theme he descants upon is the same - that of moral distinctions that aren't, particularly ones that happen to favor the US - but he is far more eloquent and far more angry than I - as you might expect from a man who is dying.
Conventional wisdom states that those on the brink of extinction find, at long last, their way to the truth and the courage to speak it without fear of consequences. And there are always consequences. As the Turkish proverb says, Whoever tells the truth is chased out of nine villages. No doubt a certain gun-loving law professor from Tennessee and a certain paranoid, fawning babydaddy from the upper Midwest are even now preparing to attack this ailing genius, but since they have yet to volunteer for the war on which our very existence hinges, according to them, they've not been issued rifles and can only fire digital blanks at their enemies.
Here is what Pinter had to say. Read it and weep.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Off Target
First I got this message from Planned Parenthood via my ever-vigilant fiancée:
This kind of thing burns me up. You think we're fighting over a woman's right to choose? No. We've taken such a great leap backward during the Bush years that we're fighting over birth control. So I clicked, then typed, then clicked, and sent my outraged form letter off to Target. Because I'm an activitst of the usual type - you know, a little lazy, but I do care. I DO! I clicked! I typed! I clicked! And I'll do it again if I have to. Oh, and I forwarded the email to most of my mailing list with this message:
So today Target got back to me:
A form letter? Are you freakin' kidding me, Jennifer? Sure, I sent a form letter, but I'm a civilian. I've got a job to slack off at every day, for Christ's sake! But responding to inquiries and objections from customers is Jennifer's one and only job. And on reading her letter more carefully, I decided she wasn't doing it very well. There are so many things wrong with her response, so many implicit statements about Target policy which are absolutely outrageous that I was forced to shift in pro-activist mode and write a real-live, bonafide, hand-crafted letter expressing my seething outrage at her half-baked bullshit. It goes something like this:
Dear Friend:
Imagine walking into a pharmacy with a prescription and being told by the pharmacist, "I won't fill it. It's my right not to fill it." It's outrageous to think this is possible, but this is exactly what happened to a 26-year-old woman who presented a prescription for emergency contraception at a Target in Fenton, MO, on September 30. Join Planned Parenthood in demanding that every woman's pills be filled -- now!
http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/fillmypillsnow_target2?rk=DpzhfI91HmQWW
This kind of thing burns me up. You think we're fighting over a woman's right to choose? No. We've taken such a great leap backward during the Bush years that we're fighting over birth control. So I clicked, then typed, then clicked, and sent my outraged form letter off to Target. Because I'm an activitst of the usual type - you know, a little lazy, but I do care. I DO! I clicked! I typed! I clicked! And I'll do it again if I have to. Oh, and I forwarded the email to most of my mailing list with this message:
Maybe that's why I took this outrage to heart - I do shop at Target. They recently opened a store here in Brooklyn. I've given them my money on several occasions. Hell, I grew up on Target. Back in Houston, Target was our main man, for all the times we didn't have enough money to shop at Sears. BASTARDS!A forward from Katie...
I know you're all really busy, but this is really easy (a few clicks) and really important. It isn't about abortion. It's about birth control! But that's the fight. So let's fight it. Ever shopped at a Target? Love their ads? Me too. Now let'em have it.
-t
So today Target got back to me:
Dear Target Guest,
Target places a high priority on our role as a community pharmacy and our obligation to meet the needs of the patients we serve. We expect all our team members, including our pharmacists, to provide respectful service to our guests, particularly when it comes to their health care needs.Like many other retailers, Target has a policy that ensures a guest’s prescription for emergency contraception is filled, whether at Target or at a different pharmacy, in a timely and respectful manner. This policy meets the health care needs of our guests while respecting the diversity of our team members.
Your thoughts help us learn more about what our guests expect, so I’ll be sure to share your feedback with our pharmacy executives.
Thanks for taking the time to share your questions, thoughts and comments. I hope we’ll see you again soon at Target.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Hanson
Target Executive Offices
A form letter? Are you freakin' kidding me, Jennifer? Sure, I sent a form letter, but I'm a civilian. I've got a job to slack off at every day, for Christ's sake! But responding to inquiries and objections from customers is Jennifer's one and only job. And on reading her letter more carefully, I decided she wasn't doing it very well. There are so many things wrong with her response, so many implicit statements about Target policy which are absolutely outrageous that I was forced to shift in pro-activist mode and write a real-live, bonafide, hand-crafted letter expressing my seething outrage at her half-baked bullshit. It goes something like this:
Dear Jennifer,
Thank you for your timely response. It was not good enough by a longshot. I wrote to you in regard to a specific incident at your Fenton, Missouri store.
I would like to know how the issue was resolved. A young woman in need was turned away by someone who decided that providing a legal prescription was not in her job description. Given your response, I must assume Target agrees with her action. You stated:
Target has a policy that ensures a guest’s prescription for emergency contraception is filled, whether at Target or at a different pharmacy, in a timely and respectful manner. This policy meets the health care needs of our guests while respecting the diversity of our team members.
If someone has to go to a different pharmacy, then the service is not timely, is it? As for "diversity" you're simply using that as cover to avoid confronting a handful of religious extremists in your ranks. You call it respect. I call it cowardice.
Frankly, I fail to understand the logic of an employee who opposes abortion AND contraception. I thought we were done fighting over the pill. Not at Target, I guess. As you know, if a woman cannot obtain contraception, she is more likely to have an abortion later. Withholding birth control, emergency or otherwise, increases the rate of abortion. Until I hear otherwise, I will assume that Target supports an increase in the number of abortions in this country. Make no mistake, unlike your employee in Fenton, most people in this country are intelligent enough to support contraception whether they oppose abortion or not. Since your policy directly contributes to an increase in the number of abortions in this country, it will please neither right nor left.
A woman in need of emergency contraception is in a difficult situation, often desperate and emotionally fragile. If refused service, she will naturally assume that refusal represents official company policy. She is unlikely to challenge the employee and demand that someone else fill the prescription. She will go home, agonize, maybe go to another pharmacy, maybe not. She is likely to become pregnant, and then, because of your shortsighted policy, have to face the horrifying prospect of obtaining an abortion at a later date. Shame on you!
Further, as your policy makes clear, an entire store could refuse to fill a prescription. Why else promise to have it filled "at a different pharmacy"? Am I to believe that if an entire store opposes birth control, its employees will nevertheless provide the information necessary to get a prescription filled elsewhere? Where in Fenton did your customer have her prescription filled? If the Target in Fenton refused to deliver birth control, am I to believe a local mom-and-pop operation stepped up in your place? Do you know? I assume you keep a record of these referals?You just opened a new Target a few blocks from my home in Brooklyn, at the Atlantic Center on Flatbush Avenue. I will not be shopping there again. Nor will my hundred contacts, nor their hundred contacts in Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Washington, Michigan, Florida. A form letter will not get our business back. If you continue kowtowing to religious extremists and refuse service to the vast majority of Americans, you will never get it back.
Thank you for your time.
-Todd Smith
Friday, October 07, 2005
Contractual Obligations and Metooism
A recent CBS News' poll shows the President's approval ratings on, well, everything at all-time lows. There has been much celebrating over at Daily Kos, and in the left-wing blogosphere generally. I'm not sure why. There is an assumption that the scandal-plagued Republican party is near collapse and that all Democrats have to do to retake the House and Senate in 2006 is pick up the pieces. Forgive me, but that sounds suspiciously like the Democratic strategy of 2000 and 2004. Call it the stealth strategy: You can't see us, but we're here, and we're not as bad as those guys. Really! We all know how well that worked. Keeping your head down in a shooting war may save you getting your head blown off, but it isn't likely to produce the kind of victory (in the form of an earth-shaking electoral re-alignment) that the country is ripe for. That would require the Democrats to buy a clue and come up with a program informed by a governing philosophy, in short their own version of the Contract With America. The Gingrich Revolution could not have happened without the Contract, which offered voters not the sense that the Republicans stood for something, but the proof in black and white.
I'm no Bob Shrum, but I have a few ideas for a Democratic version of the Contract. We have the right to be bold, even visionary. We can over-reach. The public will forgive us. The key is to fearlessly describe the America we all dream of living in. Each item in the Contract should be a direct repudiation of Crony Republicanism.
1) Ban Senators, House members, and political appointees from engaging in legalized bribery - i.e. lobbying - for the length of any Congress or Administration in which they serve. That could mean a 7 year ban from K Street in the case of White House staffers who leave a two-term administration in its first year.
2) Institute public financing of campaigns, and ramp up the McCain-Feingold limits. Choke the influence of corporate cash. Donations to candidates are not a form of free speech - as Mitch McConnell once claimed - they are bribes. I keep hearing candidates say things along the lines of, Enron only donated $10,000 to my campaign. You think I can be bought so cheap? Which I don't consider an entirely rhetorical question. It sounds more like a warning to potential donors that influence costs a lot more than 10 grand. The idea that certain amounts do not affect a poltician is utter bullshit. My brother loans me 40 bucks, I kiss his ass until it's paid back. That's human nature.
3) Push for a Constitutional amendment to eliminate the electoral college and institute direct election of the President. Had this democratic reform been in place in 2000, we wouldn't be discussing this Bushit.
4) Raise the Minimum wage by the exact same percentage that Congressional pay has been raised each of the last ten years. Begin paying male Senators and Congressmen the minimum wage. (Female Senators and Congresswomen can stay at their current pay grade.)
5) Require the conversion of every automobile sold in America to hybrid technology by 2010, rather than the generation GWB has given automakers to come up with hydrogen fuel cell technology. Hybrid technology exists now, and we should begin curtailing our use of Saudi Arabian, Venezuelan, Iranian and Russian oil now.
6) Etc. etc.
I can't think of a better time for a Democratic Contract With America than right now. In a few days we may see Karl Rove being frog-marched out of the White House. If God exists, we may even see the Vice President taken into custody (let me dream). If at that time the Democrats aren't ready to say enough is enough and present the electorate with a real alternative, our best chance will be lost. As others have noted, people want something to vote for, not just against. In the absence of a well-defined alternative to the Republican party, Americans will seek out incorruptible Republicans, those hardy few who will return the party to its true Conservative roots. Some Republicans understand this and they are already stepping up to the plate. Yesterday the McCain bill passed the Senate 90-9. Here we have a Republican standing against torture and the worst offenses of the Cheney Administration (Lindsay Graham and Chuck Hagel also come to mind) while even the bravest Democrats seem content to whisper Me too!
Me too! doesn't win elections. Never has, never will.
I'm no Bob Shrum, but I have a few ideas for a Democratic version of the Contract. We have the right to be bold, even visionary. We can over-reach. The public will forgive us. The key is to fearlessly describe the America we all dream of living in. Each item in the Contract should be a direct repudiation of Crony Republicanism.
1) Ban Senators, House members, and political appointees from engaging in legalized bribery - i.e. lobbying - for the length of any Congress or Administration in which they serve. That could mean a 7 year ban from K Street in the case of White House staffers who leave a two-term administration in its first year.
2) Institute public financing of campaigns, and ramp up the McCain-Feingold limits. Choke the influence of corporate cash. Donations to candidates are not a form of free speech - as Mitch McConnell once claimed - they are bribes. I keep hearing candidates say things along the lines of, Enron only donated $10,000 to my campaign. You think I can be bought so cheap? Which I don't consider an entirely rhetorical question. It sounds more like a warning to potential donors that influence costs a lot more than 10 grand. The idea that certain amounts do not affect a poltician is utter bullshit. My brother loans me 40 bucks, I kiss his ass until it's paid back. That's human nature.
3) Push for a Constitutional amendment to eliminate the electoral college and institute direct election of the President. Had this democratic reform been in place in 2000, we wouldn't be discussing this Bushit.
4) Raise the Minimum wage by the exact same percentage that Congressional pay has been raised each of the last ten years. Begin paying male Senators and Congressmen the minimum wage. (Female Senators and Congresswomen can stay at their current pay grade.)
5) Require the conversion of every automobile sold in America to hybrid technology by 2010, rather than the generation GWB has given automakers to come up with hydrogen fuel cell technology. Hybrid technology exists now, and we should begin curtailing our use of Saudi Arabian, Venezuelan, Iranian and Russian oil now.
6) Etc. etc.
I can't think of a better time for a Democratic Contract With America than right now. In a few days we may see Karl Rove being frog-marched out of the White House. If God exists, we may even see the Vice President taken into custody (let me dream). If at that time the Democrats aren't ready to say enough is enough and present the electorate with a real alternative, our best chance will be lost. As others have noted, people want something to vote for, not just against. In the absence of a well-defined alternative to the Republican party, Americans will seek out incorruptible Republicans, those hardy few who will return the party to its true Conservative roots. Some Republicans understand this and they are already stepping up to the plate. Yesterday the McCain bill passed the Senate 90-9. Here we have a Republican standing against torture and the worst offenses of the Cheney Administration (Lindsay Graham and Chuck Hagel also come to mind) while even the bravest Democrats seem content to whisper Me too!
Me too! doesn't win elections. Never has, never will.
Monday, October 03, 2005
Die, Yahoo!
You know how everything is so fucked up these days it's hard to know where to begin? How it's hard to distinguish one level of fuckedupness...really fucked up, for example, like when Google kowtows to a Chinese government desperate to apply democracy retardant to Market Maoism by agreeing to censor certain incendiary terms - among them, democracy and freedom - from its Sino Search Engine, from a whole other level of fuckedupness...mind blowingly, earth threateningly, Communist cocksuckingly fucked up, like when Yahoo assisted the Chinese Ministry of Information, aka the Secret Police in their recent effort to track down a journalist who forwarded an internal government memo (warning Chinese reporters against covering the upcoming anniversary of Tiananmen Square) to his colleagues in the West. As if fingering this freedom fighter wasn't enough, Yahoo then provided information that helped guarantee a conviction. His sentence for Yahooing: ten years in a Chinese prison camp.
It may be hard in times like these to make such fine distinctions, hard to point to a single instance of injustice and say, "Other things are fucked, but this so perfectly epitomizes the true fuckedupness of the world we live in that this must be our singular and unyielding point of attack," but we have no choice. We must prioritize, and having prioritized, we must be willing to point fingers and scream, J'ACCUSE!
So let's dig our conscience and our passion for justice out of the black hole we tossed them in years ago and commit to taking on these corporate Eichmans. Because this isn't about China persecuting a democrat. It's about an American company enabling that persecution. Or as Yahoo put it: "just abiding by local laws." (Sounds a lot like "just following orders" doesn't it?) If we don't put a stop to this, the future of freedom is threatened, and not just in China.
Now I don't Yahoo. I hate their name, their ads, their site and their search engine. But some of you do. Well... STOP! Cancel any and all services you have with the company, urge all your contacts to do the same, and let Yahoo know exactly why you are taking this action. Something along the lines of -
It may be hard in times like these to make such fine distinctions, hard to point to a single instance of injustice and say, "Other things are fucked, but this so perfectly epitomizes the true fuckedupness of the world we live in that this must be our singular and unyielding point of attack," but we have no choice. We must prioritize, and having prioritized, we must be willing to point fingers and scream, J'ACCUSE!
So let's dig our conscience and our passion for justice out of the black hole we tossed them in years ago and commit to taking on these corporate Eichmans. Because this isn't about China persecuting a democrat. It's about an American company enabling that persecution. Or as Yahoo put it: "just abiding by local laws." (Sounds a lot like "just following orders" doesn't it?) If we don't put a stop to this, the future of freedom is threatened, and not just in China.
Now I don't Yahoo. I hate their name, their ads, their site and their search engine. But some of you do. Well... STOP! Cancel any and all services you have with the company, urge all your contacts to do the same, and let Yahoo know exactly why you are taking this action. Something along the lines of -
Dear Yahoo,
I don't do business with sniveling cowards who suck Communist cock. I don't do business with companies that enable dictatorships to crush democracy.
I once hoped the internet would break the back of totalitarian regimes everywhere by giving people unrestricted access to the marketplace of ideas. Little did I suspect Yahoo would come along and collaborate with the Chinese government in the same way the Vichy government once collaborated with the Nazis, turning over democrats to Chinese authorities just as Vichy once turned over Resistance fighters to the Gestapo. Little did I suspect that you would voluntarily sign the Orwellian "Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the China Internet Industry." Little did I suspect that you would go along to get along, in the name of profits.
If you had the name of that lone hero who stood down an entire column of tanks after Tiananmen Square, would you hand it over to the Chinese authorities if it was the difference between obtaining or not obtaining a lucrative contract?
I will be passing this information along to everyone I know, urging them to boycott your company and all its services, here and around the world. I sincerely hope that our protest, however modest it may now seem, chokes the life out of you, before you choke the life out of Chinese democracy.
Sincerely,
a nameless democrat
Monday, September 26, 2005
Color Blind
We live in an age of ignorance or bad faith. I can't decide which. George Bush and his disciples say they dream of a color blind society. I accept that, if you drop the word color.
New Orleans showed us the face of poverty. It is a face we are ordinarily blind to. At long last a society that seems to know no shame was shamed, not by the suffering of a third world country but by our own. The proper way to describe such places in America is third world county. Afterward, polls were taken. (Polls must always be taken!) Something like 60% of white Americans said race had nothing to do with the slow response to Katrina. Something like 80% of black Americans said, The hell you say! Can two groups holding such diametrically opposed views possibly be citizens of the same country? In a sense, no. My own view is that if there had been 100,000 white folks stranded in New Orleans, the government would have built the world's largest hurricane-proof gated community in the same time it took them to get bottled water and buses to the Superdome and Convention Center. At the same time, the real crime of Katrina's victims wasn't being black but being poor.
Is our mutual misundertanding a result of ignorance or bad faith? Maybe both. We are ignorant because the poor eke out an existence far below our country's high-flying cultural radar. We are in bad faith because we don't really want to know about it. Understanding would mean coming to terms with the grinding poverty that is a fact of life for too many Americans and accepting the unpleasant truth that economic policies that benefit us hurt them.
I have a simple fix. Repeal the Bush tax cuts in their entirety and replace them with a kind of Earned Income Tax Credit Plus for the working poor. Most poor Americans work. I hate that, and I hate the phrase coined to describe them. The category "working poor" should not exist in a country as rich as ours, but it does and we have to eliminate it, because a family of four earning $14,000 a year isn't living in poverty. It's living in hell. The credit would work like this: every family that works but earns less than the poverty level will receive a credit from the IRS equal to the difference between their salary and the median salary, which was $30,000 the last time I checked. For example, a family of four that earned $14,000 would receive a $16,000 check from the federal government - about a fifth of the average cut millionaires received under the Bush plan - instantly rendering them middle-class. Call it the Poverty Penalty, or if you prefer, the Jesus Credit (see "The last shall be first"). The difference is that this tax penalty is imposed on the society that would leave its working families indigent, rather than on the workers themselves. A bold reversal of historical trends! It may mean fewer yachts for billionaires, but that is a price we can pay! The beauty part is, this tax credit will encourage the unemployed to take any job no matter how low the pay (hell, it encourages workers to invade the service industries, housekeeping, Wal-Mart, etc.) and it will sunset the second the last American worker is lifted out of poverty, either via the credit itself, or more likely through American companies choosing to pre-empt the Penalty by paying their workers a living wage.
One last suggestion. Every year we get a little closer to Brazil, as the distance between rich and poor grows, and as those who govern from on high - at a safe remove from the floodwaters - have less and less in common with the governed, who are in them up to their neck. If we want policy that does the most good for the most people, our public servants should live as most citizens do. In short, we must eliminate that distance that separates those who govern from the governed. The easiest way to do so is to peg the salary of Senators and House members to the minimum wage. When our leaders have to live on the same pay as the majority of our citizens, a miracle may occur. A new Golden Age of enlightened policy will sweep like floodwaters through the corridors of power, and this flood, unlike the one caused by Katrina, can only benefit the citizens of New Orleans (and other third world counties) as they struggle to keep their heads above water.
New Orleans showed us the face of poverty. It is a face we are ordinarily blind to. At long last a society that seems to know no shame was shamed, not by the suffering of a third world country but by our own. The proper way to describe such places in America is third world county. Afterward, polls were taken. (Polls must always be taken!) Something like 60% of white Americans said race had nothing to do with the slow response to Katrina. Something like 80% of black Americans said, The hell you say! Can two groups holding such diametrically opposed views possibly be citizens of the same country? In a sense, no. My own view is that if there had been 100,000 white folks stranded in New Orleans, the government would have built the world's largest hurricane-proof gated community in the same time it took them to get bottled water and buses to the Superdome and Convention Center. At the same time, the real crime of Katrina's victims wasn't being black but being poor.
Is our mutual misundertanding a result of ignorance or bad faith? Maybe both. We are ignorant because the poor eke out an existence far below our country's high-flying cultural radar. We are in bad faith because we don't really want to know about it. Understanding would mean coming to terms with the grinding poverty that is a fact of life for too many Americans and accepting the unpleasant truth that economic policies that benefit us hurt them.
I have a simple fix. Repeal the Bush tax cuts in their entirety and replace them with a kind of Earned Income Tax Credit Plus for the working poor. Most poor Americans work. I hate that, and I hate the phrase coined to describe them. The category "working poor" should not exist in a country as rich as ours, but it does and we have to eliminate it, because a family of four earning $14,000 a year isn't living in poverty. It's living in hell. The credit would work like this: every family that works but earns less than the poverty level will receive a credit from the IRS equal to the difference between their salary and the median salary, which was $30,000 the last time I checked. For example, a family of four that earned $14,000 would receive a $16,000 check from the federal government - about a fifth of the average cut millionaires received under the Bush plan - instantly rendering them middle-class. Call it the Poverty Penalty, or if you prefer, the Jesus Credit (see "The last shall be first"). The difference is that this tax penalty is imposed on the society that would leave its working families indigent, rather than on the workers themselves. A bold reversal of historical trends! It may mean fewer yachts for billionaires, but that is a price we can pay! The beauty part is, this tax credit will encourage the unemployed to take any job no matter how low the pay (hell, it encourages workers to invade the service industries, housekeeping, Wal-Mart, etc.) and it will sunset the second the last American worker is lifted out of poverty, either via the credit itself, or more likely through American companies choosing to pre-empt the Penalty by paying their workers a living wage.
One last suggestion. Every year we get a little closer to Brazil, as the distance between rich and poor grows, and as those who govern from on high - at a safe remove from the floodwaters - have less and less in common with the governed, who are in them up to their neck. If we want policy that does the most good for the most people, our public servants should live as most citizens do. In short, we must eliminate that distance that separates those who govern from the governed. The easiest way to do so is to peg the salary of Senators and House members to the minimum wage. When our leaders have to live on the same pay as the majority of our citizens, a miracle may occur. A new Golden Age of enlightened policy will sweep like floodwaters through the corridors of power, and this flood, unlike the one caused by Katrina, can only benefit the citizens of New Orleans (and other third world counties) as they struggle to keep their heads above water.
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