Solutions

It’s a cool, dry, late Sunday morning here in New York City and if I had the emotional strength, I could be watching the major, weekly political talk shows (Meet the Press and such) that are no doubt now taking the “long view” perspective on Tuesday’s election (in 21^st century time, that’s five days later instead of five minutes later). But I have my own long view perspective, and, I’ve received several emails over the past few days offering very specific approaches to what ails us as a nation, the contents of which I want to share with you. They show that there is hope, there are things everyone can do.

My own perspective is that what will happen legislatively over the next two years is anybody’s guess, because the Republicans are not going to stop being who they are – although it appears that the less wildly crazy wing of the party seems to now be in charge. But their core allegiance to the rich and corporate, and their inbred lack of understanding and concern for everyone and everything else, remains intact.

The President, while being genuinely willing to negotiate and compromise – which he has been willing to do since Day One, while the Republicans have been busy hating him and obstructing everything he’s tried to do – is, I believe, also more intent on pushing forward with the things he actually believes in, the things he hasn’t heretofore been very aggressive about, to the consternation of his Progressive base. So what will actually happen is a crap shoot and will no doubt be interesting and aggravating to watch.

Fortunately, there are people out there, people with actual political power, who see some opportunities for Democrats (legislators and ordinary citizens alike) to get their act together and begin to articulate a cohesive message as they move through the molasses-paced 2016 campaign that has already begun, with a simple and sensible agenda.

My first email came from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which published an op-ed on the political website, The Hill, entitled “Route to Power for Democrats: Big Ideas,” which espouses the reasonable, progressive, Sen. Elizabeth Warren agenda of “taking on Wall Street, reducing student debt, and expanding Social Security benefits,” as a primary message that all practical working people can get behind.

The second message came from Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose primary message is that the influence of Big Money in politics (a privilege for the rich so smoothly sanctioned by the Supreme Court’s legitimization of the democracy-busting Citizen’s United fundraising operation) must be eradicated. He also stresses that the enormity of Income Inequality, which pits the tiny but extraordinarily wealthy Billionaire Class (several hundred families holding 95% of the nation’s wealth) against the rest of us (that famous, or infamous, 1% vs. 99% equation) must be balanced with significant tax reform, a stronger labor movement, and a federally-increased minimum wage.

To increase public involvement in and support for this agenda, one of the many things Sen. Sanders is doing is proposing that Election Day be made a Federal Holiday called Democracy Day to promote the meaning and importance of democracy and the vital role that ordinary folks play in it by voting (and making it easier to vote because as a federal holiday, people will get a paid day off from work). He has proposed a bill and created a petition that you can sign.

Last but not least came a wonderful article by one Mark Morford published in San Francisco’s SFGate entitled “The Best Worst President Ever,” which strives to explain why much of the middle and upper classes have come to embrace the Republican Big Lie that Barack Obama is the “worst President ever.” No one can deny that the President has made mistakes and is not a perfect person or a perfect President (no human is perfect!). But many people are willing to entirely dismiss his considerable accomplishments for both political – and racist – reasons. This is a good and important read. 

Indeed, if you click on all the links in this blog post you will learn a lot more about how progressive Democrats and Independents (and maybe even secretly-rational Republicans) can work from this important point forward to avoid the United States of America turning into a full-scale oligarchy disaster.

Working For Tips

There is presently a lot of heated social conversation about people who traditionally receive tips as part of their pay for work – namely those in the restaurant-bar, hotel, taxi-limousine, beauty service and travel service industries. They legally receive what’s known as a sub-minimum wage (apx. $5.00/hour) from their employers, because their tips, supposedly, bring them up to a living wage. That wasn’t true 30 or 40 years ago and it’s even worse now. That’s because more and more Americans, either out of ignorance or cheapness, are leaving smaller and fewer tips. So the question is: should the sub-minimum wage be increased? Would it surprise you to know that many Americans are saying no?

Tipping is a uniquely American custom, something Americans traveling abroad are delighted to discover and foreigners visiting here often learn to their embarrassment the first time they stiff a waiter or cab driver. There’s an irony here, since it appears that tipping began in the 1600s in England when men drinking in taverns gave money to servers “to insure promptitude” or T.I.P for short.

When the practice started to make its way into American bars and restaurants in the late 1890s, a movement against it rose up. Many Americans felt it was in opposition to the country’s ideals of class equality and would lead to the development of a “servile class” that would be rendered financially dependent on the rich. But the custom persisted – and grew – here, nonetheless.

Over time, tipping somehow went out of favor (in some instances out of legality) in Europe, and indeed created that “servile class” in America – which has never been a classless society, despite our delusions to the contrary. This explains why many Americans resent tipping and/or look down on people who work for tips and/or are ashamed to work in jobs that receive tips.

I was the daughter of a man who spent most of his working life first as a waiter and then as a skycap. He worked for tips. He worked very hard and put up with an assortment of indignities, but still never made enough to support a family, which is why my mother worked in the 1950s when most women were still housewives.

She worked until the 1980s, pouring her considerable intelligence into the bottomless, low-paying well of the pink ghetto, first as a bookkeeper, then as a comptroller, and finally as the manager of the subscription department of an elite specialty business newspaper – where she signed her letters “L. Browne,” lest the high-powered male subscribers suspect she was a woman. And meanwhile, my black father smiled as he allowed white people to rub his head for luck in the hope it would earn him a larger tip.

Since Ronald Reagan (whom I still blame for everything), America has been creating an economy and social mindset guided by millionaire Republican belief that the population is made up of Makers and Takers, an idea that middle class and working class Republicans buy into. That’s why so many people still think that teenagers are the ones working minimum-wage jobs, when the truth is, most teens can’t find jobs because the jobs they used to have are now held by adults trying to make a living and support their families. People working for tips are also doing the same thing.

In case you haven’t noticed, unless you (or you and your partner/spouse, if you have one) are bringing in a six-figure salary, nothing in America is affordable, anywhere – not housing, utilities, food, gas, a night at the movies, nothing – except clothing, house wares, and the smart electronic devices everyone loves so much, all of which are sold cheap because they’re made by indentured and child labor through the American “job creators” who are actually outsourcing those jobs to Third World countries. Welcome to the 21^st century. 

It’s time to raise the minimum wage and the sub-minimum wage, federally. And it’s time for Americans who eat in American restaurants, stay in American hotels, ride in American taxis – etc. – to ante up and leave a decent 15-20% tip.  You’re not tipping for extraordinarily wonderful service, you’re tipping because that’s what we do here. It’s the American way.

Being and Doing

A whole lot’s been going on in the month since I last wrote a post, but I haven't enough to say about any of it to constitute a full essay. Putin’s going to keep Crimea, which a lot of its citizens seem to want and those who don’t will relocate or disappear or die. The international community won’t do anything because it doesn’t want a war, so we're just taking some of Putin’s privileges away, as if this half-naked- horse-riding, power-hungry egomaniac with lots and lots of bombs were just a naughty child, which might actually be the smart way to go. And in any case, whatever the President says or does, the Republicans will say he’s weak and wrong.

It’s unlikely we’ll ever find enough of that Malaysian plane or the 280+ persons who were on it to tell us definitively more than we already know, but that won’t stop the news channels from giving it close to 24/7 coverage until we wish we were missing. Red states across the nation will continue to take advantage of the elimination of that portion of the Voting Rights Act the Supreme Court didn’t think we needed anymore to keep advancing the suppression of voting by the young, old, and people of color.

And Republicans will keep saying outrageous things about women, then wonder why they’re not winning our hearts and minds. My current favorite is Conservative radio host Dennis Prager’s comment at a fundraiser for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: “A wife should have sex with her husband – regardless of her ‘mood’ – because it is one of the ‘mutual obligations’ of being married.” In other words, the New Normal will keep stupidly lumbering along. (And Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.)

So my concern at the moment is more philosophical – a way of thinking that has become irrelevant and downright disrespected in a society that has made the rich, even the just comfortable, extraordinarily greedy, self-centered and cruel, while the poor, even the just making it, are preoccupied with economic survival. Ideas, language and creative culture are apparently luxuries we either don’t need or can’t afford – like a liberal arts education that isn’t a straight line to a job, or well-scripted TV programs that employ good writers and actors, because trash reality TV is not only cheaper to produce, it gives us social permission to be crass, ignorant, inarticulate, and shallow.

This is why I’m particularly disturbed by what’s happening to the English language in the 21^st century, a time in which language has become smaller, more banal, and used poorly and less creatively. This seems especially true among young adults, who just don’t care about language. But language and how it’s used is important, because it reflects the nature, values, and personality of a culture.

I believe this dangerous change began when we started to turn nouns into verbs, beginning  in the 80s with impact. Things used to have an impact on other things, but then things suddenly became impacted, as in “the sluggish economy has impacted government’s willingness to support vital social programs for the poor.” This matters because a noun is a person, place or thing - essentially being - while a verb describes action, which is doing.

I’m a natural intuitive, but I took psychic development classes for five years with a very wise and gifted woman who used to remind us regularly that we were human beings, not human doings. But because people now guide their lives with an abundance of digital devices, communicate in 140-character fragments with a whole new vocabulary of acronyms, and take pride in multi-tasking, we are increasingly becoming human doings rather than human beings. Expedience has become more important than style and the appreciation of good language is quickly disappearing, because people rarely hear or read it.

So we no longer keep a scrap book, we’re scrapbooking; we don’t give someone a gift, we’re gifting; we didn’t buy something at a thrift shop, we thrifted; during the recent Olympics, athletes didn’t win a medal, they medaled. And of course, we no longer laugh, we LOL and we don’t offer an opinion we IMHO. This has become so commonplace among younger people that I was recently told by two Human Resources managers they get résumés filled with such acronyms – along with ugly new words like incentivize (not to mention disincentivizes).

We don't have conversations, we dialogue, and we don't have relationships, we're in relationship. In business, a cohort isn't a chum it's a team, and silos aren't big towers that hold stuff they're departments or divisions. Writers no longer provide copy they write verbiage - as little as possible, of course. Artists don’t paint, draw or take photographs, they create images. Usually on a computer. I have a dear friend who's an artist and used to work in a variety of media (media used to be the plural of medium in art; today it just refers to technology and electronic journalism). Now he works exclusively by computer and brags that he makes art pieces in ten minutes. I’m supposed to hear this as a positive thing. I do not.

You may also have noticed that people have become things: “Tom is the guy I told you about that I went to college with,” as opposed to “who I went to college with.” Strictly speaking, it should be “Tom is the guy I told you about with whom I went to college,” but I guess one has to pick one’s battles (remember when one was something other than a number?).

The meanings of words are also changing - and not for the better. In fashion, there are no longer colors and fabrics but colorations and fabrications, instead; and couture, which is merely the French word for clothing, has lost its "haute" (the phrase haute couture used to mean high fashion, the expensive designer stuff). Now couture all by itself is used to mean haute couture, which must make us sound even more stupid to the French than we already do. In both fashion and food, decadent has become a synonym for sophisticated, and while they might be considered first or second cousins, they're not the same.

In real estate, house and home have become synonymous, which at the very least is insulting to those of us who make our homes in apartments. But whatever the structure may be, even when there are walls and doors (rather than "open concept"), there are no more rooms, there are areas. In general usage, I once heard someone compliment someone else by saying "You're totally superfluous," but I don't know if that's caught on. The one that has and makes me grit my teeth every time I hear it is downfall when what is meant is downside. I get similarly upset when I hear people say infamous, which of course mean famous for something terrible, as in "Charles Manson is infamous," but is now being used to mean very famous. I understand that new words must enter the language as new things enter the world, but I have no patience with the misuse and unnecessary changes of words. 

Given that language is my thing – along with many other things that were a routine part of my youth and even my middle age – this degradation of language hurts my heart and befuddles my brain. So does all this technology that was intended to increase communication but has only decreased it. One used to have a handful of close friends with whom one spent time and shared activities. Now people have hundreds, even thousands of “friends” through social media, people who give you a thumbs up when you put something they like on your wall.

I’ll tell you straight out: I’m 62 years old as of this month and I truly hate the 21^st century. I feel I have no place in it, that I’ve outlived my time, and it’s a combination of feeling deeply lonely and being totally infuriated. I saw an online ad today; it was intended to sell a new way to send photos to people. But to me, it said it all, about language and everything else that's sick and bad and lost in the 21st century: “Lots of sharing. No attachments.”

I Don’t Like Children. Yes, I Said It!

A few days ago, in my post entitled The Tyranny of Healthy Lifestyle Zealots, I clearly detailed my objection to the social disenfranchisement of fat people and smokers (I’m both) by people who are zealously committed to what they consider a healthy lifestyle and therefore blame people like me for the high cost of health care. I corrected this inaccuracy, as well as put forth the idea that: “…in a diverse, free society, people have different needs, wants and behaviors, and everyone can be accommodated if we accept that those who differ from us have as much of a right to be who they are as we have to be who we are.”  I also gave an example, saying in part: “I don’t have children; I don’t even like children. But I don’t begrudge them the health care (or nutrition, education, and protection from abuse and neglect) they require… I believe in the concepts of ‘each according to his needs’ and ‘live and let live’.”

To my surprise, three friends responded privately, not to my larger message, but to my having said “I don’t like children.” Since they know me, they mostly found it funny, but they were all a little shocked that I had the chutzpah to say this straight out because, they explained, it’s just not done! One person voiced concern that I would turn people off and give them the wrong impression of me, which might impede my efforts to draw a larger audience to this blog.

I was nonplussed. I know most people do like kids (particularly babies) and especially adore their own, but I had no idea that to express the opposite was verboten. I know I’m in the minority here, but I didn’t realize that people who don’t like children and have the gall to say so are even more hated than smokers and fat people combined. Now that I’ve made it public that I’m a fat smoker who doesn’t like children, is it still safe for me to leave my apartment?”

While on the phone with my blog-expansion-concerned friend, she searched the phrase “I don’t like children,” and the first thing that came up was a site called Heartless Bitches International, a humor/satire-but-they’re-not-really-kidding-site by, about and for women who don’t conform to all of the current ideals and ideas modern women espouse (those HBs are more radical). On the site was a “rant” by an unnamed woman entitled The 4 Words of the Pariah, in which she beautifully states my own feelings thusly: “I don’t like children. What that lonely little statement can do to people… So what? If someone doesn’t like children why does it bother you so much? Stop taking everything so personally.” Later in the piece, she voices one of my greatest complaints by saying: “Somewhere along the way this society started worshipping children. Everything must be about the children. Every law passed must protect the children. Every restaurant, every movie theater, every bar, every museum, every art gallery, every area of our lives and cities must be child friendly.”

I’ve finally gotten to the point in my quickly-advancing old age that I accept myself just as I am and I really don’t care what people think of me anymore. That’s why I choose to speak my mind uncensored. However, on behalf of myself and other adults who don’t like children, let me say the following. I don’t hate children. I don’t wish them ill. I believe that society, government, and parents (or whomever a child lives with) should ensure that children are well taken care of. All children should be loved by those who give birth to them or adopt/foster them or otherwise take responsibility for them. And as I said above: “I don’t begrudge them the health care (or nutrition, education, and protection from abuse and neglect) they require.” I think government should pick up the tab for whatever kids’ caretakers can’t afford and it’s clearly in society’s best interest to ensure that we don’t raise generations of damaged and/or ignorant people. Whatever taxes are needed to ensure all of this is money well and importantly spent.

That said, adults who don’t have children – often because they don’t like children – are not obliged to like or interact with them. I don’t like babies; they hold as much appeal for me as sacks of flour. I held one once and all I wanted was its mother to get it off my hands immediately. I don’t enjoy the company of children, especially young children. I find them boring, unsettling when they’re running around and yelling, and disgusting when they’re eating. I resent it that our culture increasingly revolves around children. I believe adults take priority because we’re adults! and we should therefore have child-free spaces. The needs/rights of children should co-exist with those of adults, not supersede them. So if parents don’t want their kids to do or be exposed to certain things, it’s their responsibility to supervise them to ensure that – not my responsibility to live or look or speak or behave in child-friendly ways.

I shouldn’t have the presence of children imposed on me. Children don’t belong everywhere. And I’m sick and tired of politicians speaking incessantly about “The American Family.” Not all Americans have families, or want families, at least not those that include children. There are millions of single and married Americans who don’t want or don’t like children. We’re not monsters. We’re grown-ups with different needs, tastes, and points of view. That’s called freedom. And in a democracy, freedom is a delicate but necessary balance between freedom to and freedom from. I choose to be free of children as much as humanly possible. And in the words of that old song, “ain’t nobody’s business if I do.”

Welcome Back to Black History Month

It’s February in America – which means it’s Black History Month, a tradition that began in 1926 with “Negro History Week,” initiated by the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.  It became Black History Month in 1976 in conjunction with the celebration of the U.S. Bicentennial and the urging of then-President Gerald Ford.  It may surprise you to know that this occasion is also celebrated in the U.K. (starting in 1987) and Canada (as of 1995), because there are a lot of Black people in those countries, too, primarily (originally) from Africa and the West Indies.

In recent years, some Black Americans have taken to calling it African-American History Month.  This irritates me, because I have never liked the term, since most Black Americans know very little about the 54 countries on the planet’s second-largest and second-most-populous continent.  In addition, many Africans feel no sense of connection to American Blacks or even consider them to be Black, due to more than 200 years of interracial hanky-panky (both lovingly consensual and viciously imposed).

Other Black Americans have started to resist, even outright object to, Black History Month, because they see in what is meant to be a positive acknowledgment of long-ignored history, an unpleasant continuation of the separation of Blacks and Whites in the full picture of American history.  I myself fall into this category – sort of.  For one thing, so many people, events and milestone accomplishments are routinely left out of the telling of Black history – during this designated month and in general education.

 For another, if the widespread disrespect shown to America’s first Black President by both houses of Congress – indeed, the idea that he is not a legitimate President – is anything to go by, a new, more sophisticated racism is still very much with us and Black History Month does absolutely nothing to diminish that.  (I’m sure there are people who dislike Barack Obama because of what they perceive as his bad policies and ideas and nothing more.  But the ballyhoo about his birthplace, his college records and his religion demonstrates that there are a great many legislators and citizens who simply can’t abide the idea of a Black man in the White House.)

Last but not least, nearly 40 years of Black History Month has done very little to educate American Blacks about the fulsomeness of their own heritage – and virtually nothing to demonstrate to White Americans that Black history is an integral part of American history overall.  The young generations of Americans, Black and White, may be more accepting of each other than their elders – but they are still greatly uninformed about their country’s history, period.

So, what is the “appropriate” way to handle Black History Month: ignore it; celebrate it joyously no matter who does or doesn’t participate; or use it as an opportunity to expand the boundaries of American history at every level of education?  I don’t know what the answer is.  All I know is that we’re still a long way from having a complete and unified understanding of who and what we were and what we are as a nation, and that is a very dangerous and unhealthy state of affairs.

Good News…Bad News

I was, of course, delighted and relieved that President Obama was re-elected and the Democrats maintain the majority in the Senate.  I’m wary but hopeful that Republicans, at least some, recognize the major changes in American demographics and attitudes and understand that if their party is to remain viable, they have no choice but to reject the far-right-as-you-can-go fringe and move more to a workable center in order to actually help run the country – which they can now do, since they failed to achieve their primary objective: making Barack Obama a one-term president.  I was also very pleased that both marriage equality and the decriminalization of marijuana made strides in a few states.  All of this is good news.

But, now that the nation has managed to suffer through this seemingly-endless campaign, there is a considerable amount of bad news to contemplate and correct  – and some of it isn’t “news,” just situations, some fairly recent and others that have been with us for quite a long time.

Let’s begin with the length and cost of this election: two years and $4.2 billion.  The rest of the Democratic World (yes, Virginia, there are over 170 democratic countries) manage to hold elections in just six months to a year.  Why can’t we?  They also manage to not spend billions of dollars or euros or whatever currency they use, and the funds raised aren’t largely comprised of “dark money” (unidentified individual and corporate donors) in massive Super Pacs.  These two situations alone hugely undermine the truth/reality of our democracy, let alone its ability to function.  The fact that more than half the country didn’t vote at all is directly tied to these two factors.

The lack of voting can also be attributed to political cynicism and fatigue on the part of the citizenry; the inability of the two parties to agree on facts – which are different from opinions and perceived solutions to problems big and small; the willingness of both parties to fight dirty and outright lie; the hugely disparate methods of voting, from registration to voting to counting the votes; the outrageously blatant voter suppression that went on during this election cycle; the distinction of “important, battleground states” that make many people in and outside those states feel that their votes are meaningless; and, most of all, the existence of the long-outmoded Electoral College.  These issues pose a valid question: given these factors, why should anyone feel obliged to take an active interest in politics, let alone leave the comfort of home to go out and vote?

Last but most assuredly not least is the media – from daily television news coverage to the “debates” to coverage of the results on Election Day.  Let me take these issues in reverse order.

When I was a kid and then a young voter, there was such a thing as “No electioneering near the polls.”  You couldn’t even enter a voting station wearing a political button.  Then, the three major broadcast TV networks (which was all we had) didn’t begin coverage of the results until the West Coast had largely closed its polls.  These practices were designed to not influence voters on Election Day itself and they were sacrosanct.

In this day and age, however, we have 24/7 news channels: three majors (Left, Right and Center) and a few minors.  Their Election Day coverage began at the crack of dawn on Tuesday, which amounts to electronic electioneering near the polls.  This isn’t good; this isn’t right.  We also have legitimate news sources as well as blogs and social media on the (relatively) new-fangled Internet, which operates on its own 24/7 spectrum in the space-time continuum and is governed and controlled by nothing and nobody.  Sounds great in theory, but a lot of Internet power is in the hands of irresponsible, disreputable and self-serving persons and groups.  What can be done about this?  Lastly, we have polls and pundits.  Polls and pundits are nothing new, but we now have a monumental number of them, some of them credible, others not.  Combined, they contribute to the divisiveness and dullness of political information, not to mention a serious blurring of factual news and both informed and uninformed opinion.

As a result of all this, we have daily news coverage that can frequently rot the brain the way sugar causes cavities.  News outlets spend more time on gaffes,  scandals, taking things out of context, and on the political horserace than they do on major issues.  Right now, before President Obama has even been re-inaugurated, much of the media are speculating about the horse races of 2014 and 2016.  This does not help politics or elections seem meaningful; it’s like sport for news/political junkies.  I totally ignore major/minor league athletics because they bore and annoy me.  With this kind of political coverage, why should many citizens feel differently about politics?  Then there are the debates the media moderate and broadcast.  These might be helpful if they truly covered all the important issues of the day.  But they don’t.  They’re rigid, limited and vary in format in a way that does nothing to help bring issues to the fore.  Is this any way to run a railroad?

If indeed America is to remain a democracy and if we’re going to continue to have elections big and small that actually mean something, then we must (no ifs, ands or buts) reform election law from financing to process.  And if we’re going to continue to have 24-hour news cycles (and that’s not likely to change) on TV and online, modern journalism must honestly re-assess its strengths and weaknesses and how they use their time.  Currently, public television (which those who apparently don’t watch it seem to think consists largely of children’s programming; so not true!) and C-SPAN are the only outlets I’m aware of that routinely produce and air a diversity of documentaries and panel discussions on major political issues, both fiscal and social, on a regular, ongoing basis.

So, while I’m glad my guy won, I’m definitely not a happy camper about the dysfunction of political contests and the media that cover them.  Once we manage to not fall off the fiscal cliff that is currently of serious concern, I hope our leaders and our media will make the time to examine and clean up their acts.

Singularly Aggravating

Something’s been on my mind – for years, actually – that I finally want to rant – er, comment – about.

Both Republicans and Democrats are constantly talking about The American Family.  The Family is brought up whether the context is positive or negative.  Regardless of how one’s political views define Family, that’s the “unit” that seems to be of greatest political and social concern.

But please note: not everyone is part of a Family, no matter how you define it.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a full 42% of adult Americans are single, including those who are divorced.  Now, I’m sure a fair percentage of these single people are single parents with children (= family), singles straight or gay who are co-habitating (also = family) and single adults still (or again) living with their parents, which also = family.

However, a considerable number in that 42% are just plain single – living alone or in institutions, which in no way = family.  Many are women, elderly or both.  But the point is, we, too, are Americans, with a combination of special needs and, to a considerably lesser extent, particular advantages.  The problem is that as a group, we’re not really recognized; we just plain don’t count.

I am a completely single person.  I have no parents, extended family, children, or significant other.  I’ll be 60 in less than two months and live alone.  If I were hospitalized and didn’t have a legally-designated health care proxy, there are circumstances (the most dire) in which none of my friends would be allowed to visit let alone advocate for me, because those privileges are reserved for Family Only.  If I were institutionalized – a nursing home, a prison, whatever – I would be treated (mistreated) differently than residents with Family.

If I had home health care, regardless of the behavior/treatment of my aide, there would be little monitoring or other supervision.  If I were under the supposedly protective auspices of a city-run Adult Protective Services agency, which often takes advantage of their clients and have been frequently sued for this, I’d be screwed by them – especially if I didn’t have the capacity to speak up for myself.  If I dropped dead in my apartment, no one would know about it until the smell disturbed the neighbors.  In all the circumstances noted here, single = nobody’s looking out for you and you are extremely, particularly, singularly vulnerable.

As a single, competent person, it’s my responsibility to put in place as many legally protective measures as I can; I’m in the process of doing just that.  I’ve seen several single, older people fall off the grid and literally disappear.  It’s a very real thing, a very frequent thing.  Single people – whatever their age, health status, and even (often especially) financial status, are the most vulnerable – particularly the very rich and very poor.

And, if government speech is anything to go by, single people are not on our representatives’ or leaders’ radar.  That’s not a good or fair or even cost-effective state of affairs.  I encourage you to remember this the next time you hear one of these people talk about The American Family.  And while you’re at it, keep your single friends in mind.  It’s lonely, wearying and worrying to be single in a nation so solely focused on The Family.

There’s Somethin’ Happenin’ Here – And What It Is Is Exactly Clear!

Today marked the two month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement.  Since it began, OWS events have sprung up in cities and towns across America – 1,000 locations in all.  OWS has struck a chord among an increasing number, and an increasing diversity, of Americans in the “99%.”  And how was this anniversary celebrated?  With police…shall we say, “over-zealousness.”

It would appear that mayors from coast-to-coast have been on conference calls together (so says the grapevine) trying to figure out how to “handle” OWS – and have concluded that a paramilitary use of their police forces is the way to go.  Sharp, progressive, creative thinking, eh?

OWS – despite its lack of a “specific” agenda, blah blah blah – has been remarkably disciplined in its commitment to non-violence, all the more remarkable because, unlike during the Civil Rights movement of the ‘60s, they have not been formally trained in non-violent tactics.  Nonetheless, the original group in New York has been dispossessed from Zuccotti Park, their personal belongings confiscated, and their persons subjected to outright violence by heavily armed and shielded police.  (I guess it was too cold for fire hoses and all the dogs were busy elsewhere trying to sniff out marijuana.)

Has the OWS been messy?  Yes.  Have they inconvenienced and interfered with the normal comings and goings of others?  Yes.  Have there been legitimate concerns about public health and safety?  Yes.  Have municipal governments done anything to positively, non-violently and economically address these issues (allowing port-o-potties, for example)?  No.  And what has been the result?  Greater determination plus increased and more focused action by OWS.  Today was a National Day of Action for OWS; from sea to shining sea they left their campsites and marched, and occupied other locations, like banks and subways. 

The far-right has declared that OWS is dead, but they’ve already demonstrated considerable confusion about what constitutes life and death.  Indeed, OWS is very much alive, growing, maturing, and attracting increasing participation and media attention.  More than 30,000 people (including a lot of organized labor) marched in Manhattan tonight and nearly 300 were willingly arrested.  I know it’s been a while since we’ve seen one, so we may not immediately recognize it – but this is the beginning of a New American Revolution.

Something else happened yesterday that is also revolutionary.  Six representatives from a group of 200 very rich people known as The Patriotic Millionaires met with tax phobic troublemaker, Grover Norquist, begging him to release Republicans from their “no new taxes ever” pledge and finally increase taxes on those earning $1 million (or more) annually – acknowledging the disparity between their contributions and those of the 99%.  Norquist dismissed them as “Democratic Party hacks.”  They suggested that Norquist move to Somalia.   

The photo above is the iconic picture that has come to define the infamous Kent State Massacre, an Anti Vietnam War protest held at Kent State University in Ohio in May, 1970.  During that event, National Guardsmen responding to the “uprising” killed 4 students and wounded 9 more – and America was up in arms.

“Kent State” inspired Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s song Ohio, and, Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth, which was actually written in 1967 in response to the LAPD’s assault on  hippies, over time has also become associated with Kent State.  Currently, the song’s lyrics* have been used as a denotation for OWS.  The message is simple: don’t respond to legitimate protest with military force; don’t dismiss earnest Americans as socialists/communists; don’t accuse sincere political activists of being dirty, drug-sodden, sex-crazed loonies; don’t demonize Americans demanding reasonable economic, political and social change.  In short, don’t allow Fox News to shape your views about what’s happening.

* There’s somethin’ happenin’ here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down…

…Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down…

What Constitutes Personhood?

This past August, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney got a lot of heat for his assertion that “corporations are people, too” while speaking at an Iowa State Fair.  The audience did not appreciate this millionaire’s personification of corporations; I didn't either.

Now, the idea of what constitutes personhood is coming from another familiar quarter.  Some segments of the anti-choice movement – which has been trying to reverse the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in 1973 –  is trying to redefine personhood in their effort to re-criminalize abortion.

As reported in the New York Times on October 25^th:  “A constitutional amendment facing voters in Mississippi on Nov. 8, and similar initiatives brewing in half a dozen other states including Florida and Ohio, would declare a fertilized human egg to be a legal person, effectively branding abortion and some forms of birth control as murder. With this far-reaching anti-abortion strategy, the proponents of what they call personhood amendments hope to reshape the national debate.”

What makes this effort even more horrific than it seems at first glance is its attack on contraception, definitely including IUDs and morning-after pills, but potentially capable of affecting all forms of female birth control (nobody’s saying a word about condoms), as well as stem cell research – and we thought that battle had been fought and won!

In case you’re wondering (as I did for the longest time) why anti-choice proponents object to contraception, the very thing that prevents unwanted pregnancies, is this: as much as they object to abortion, they are equally opposed to what they define as “fornication,” meaning, any sex outside of marriage by both sexes whatever their age, and, engaging in recreational sex, even within marriage, rather than having sex solely for procreation.  In short, they don’t just want to make abortion a crime, they want to make sex a crime.  Welcome to the 21^st century, where once again Puritans rule! 

Interestingly, as the Times also notes: “The drive for personhood amendments has split the anti-abortion forces nationally.  Some groups call it an inspired moral leap, while traditional leaders of the fight, including National Right to Life and the Roman Catholic bishops, have refused to promote it, charging that the tactic is reckless and could backfire, leading to a Supreme Court defeat that would undermine progress in carving away at Roe v. Wade.”

The two things I find most appalling about these initiatives is (1) they are based on religious definitions of morality/sexually-appropriate behavior, which is completely unacceptable in a secular society, and (2) they are trying to extend the definition of personhood to include a spec of microscopic goo, which is what a fertilized egg is.  In short, this is totally crazy.

However, maybe we as a society would not be poised at this ludicrous juncture if pro-choice advocates had, from Day One, been willing to face the secular moral and legal aspects of our position.  In this regard, I am again motivated to quote the always-interesting Camille Paglia, who wrote on Salon.com during the 2008 campaign:

“Let’s take the issue of abortion rights, of which I am a firm supporter.  As an atheist and libertarian, I believe that government must stay completely out of the sphere of personal choice.  Every individual has an absolute right to control his or her body…  But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand.  My argument…has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature’s fascism… 

“…Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder…  …I [also] support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children).  I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty…

“…Not until the Democratic Party stringently reexamines its own implicit assumptions and rhetorical formulas will it be able to deal effectively with the enduring and now escalating challenge from the pro-life right wing. Because pro-choice Democrats have been arguing from cold expedience, they have thus far been unable to make an effective ethical case for the right to abortion.”

Fair enough.  So, I will now attempt to make an effective ethical case for the right to abortion:

When a woman becomes pregnant, whatever the circumstances, the fetus within her is in the process of developing into a human being.  But at least until the 7^th month of pregnancy, that fetus is unable to survive outside the woman’s body and fully develop on its own.  Therefore, while it is understood that a fetus is a living human being in development, it does not have legal, independent personhood status until birth.  The unborn do not have a “right to life” that supersedes the rights of a born, autonomous woman.

While a fetus is within a woman’s body and is not capable of surviving outside of it, the fetus is an integral part of that woman’s body.  As such, the woman has the right to do with her body what she sees fit, including the removal, the killing, of the fetus, thereby preventing its full gestation and birth.

While this may be distressing to some people, their distress does not alter a woman’s right to control her own body, including whether or not she becomes pregnant, and if so, whether or not she chooses to bring the pregnancy to term. 

The justification for killing the fetus is the same as society’s justification for killing in self-defense, in defense of one’s family and home, in the course of war, in the course of law enforcement when necessary, and as a form of judicial punishment for heinous crime.  Society recognizes that killing, however repugnant, is sometimes necessary, and a secular society recognizes a woman’s right to abortion as one of those necessities, because giving birth to a child that one does not want or is unable to care for is patently irresponsible and cruel.

Those who object to abortion on religious or other personal moral grounds should not have them, and the law should not attempt to coerce them into doing so.  Similarly, those with moral objections to abortion – much as those who object to participation in war – have no moral or legal right to prevent another person’s abortion.

A Noble Occupation

I’ve been paying close attention to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement since Week 2 and I have to say, as a counter-balancing relief from the babble of the current herd of Republican hopefuls, OWS is refreshing and encouraging.

What has surprised me is the number of people – mostly on the Right, but the Left and Center, too – who keep trying to dismiss (or smear) this socio-political phenomenon, because they haven’t stated clear goals, or provided a manifesto or list of demands.  It’s like listening to someone blurt guttural screams for HELP! and standing aside, asking, “Yes, I understand you want assistance, but can you please clarify exactly what it is you want help for; and if you don’t mind, could you put your request in writing so that it can be studied by the proper committees?”

Talk about you-don’t-get-it!

Remember the 1976 film Network (written by Paddy Chayefsky, directed by Sidney Lumet) starring the late, great Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and William Holden?  It’s set in the 1970s, when the three major networks still ruled television, and tells the story of a grand old broadcast newsman left over from the salad days of grand old broadcast newsmen, a la Edward R. Murrow.  One day, Howard Beale (played by Finch) comes to the studio to do his nightly newscast and instead he gives a sermon of desperation that is eerily pertinent to our times, even though it’s 36 years later.  The following is taken directly from the script:

            “I don’t have to tell you things are bad.  Everybody knows things are bad.  It’s a depression.  Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job, the dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter, punks are running wild in the streets, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.  We know the air’s unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit and watch our tee-vees while some local newscaster tells us today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.  We all know things are bad.  Worse than bad.  They’re crazy.  It’s like everything’s going crazy.  So we don’t go out any more.  We sit in the house, and slowly the world we live in gets smaller, and all we ask is please, at least leave us alone in our own living rooms.  Let me have my toaster and my tee-vee and my hair-dryer and my steel-belted radials, and I won’t say anything, just leave us alone.

            “Well, I’m not going to leave you alone.  I want you to get mad – I don’t want you to riot.  I don’t want you to protest.  I don’t want you to write your Congressmen.  Because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write.  I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the defense budget and the Russians and crime in the street.  All I know is first you got to get mad.  You’ve got to say:  “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more.  I’m a human being, goddammit.  My life has value.”  So I want you to get up now.  I want you to get out of your chairs and go to the window.  Right now.  I want you to go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell.  I want you to yell: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more!”  Things have got to change.  But you can’t change them unless you’re mad.  You have to get mad!”

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what the OWS is about.  Beale’s rage against the machine and call-to-expression is one of the greatest in modern cinema, and I wanted to reprint it for those of you who have never seen the film (or haven’t seen it in a long time).  OWS is about everyday people being mad as hell with the economic and political system, with being ripped off, pissed on, treated like children, and being completely excluded from the bounty of the 1%.  What’s the mystery?

Network remains pertinent, timely, throughout.  At first, the network powers-that-be are furious.  But when they discover that millions of people from coast to coast are in fact yelling out their windows, they realize that Beale has hit a nerve – and they can capitalize on it!  They take Beale off the nightly news and give him a show of his own.  They call him “The Mad Prophet of the Airwaves.”  And the old man comes out each week, gives a powerful rant, then swoons into a dead faint as the audience cheers.  Reality TV 36 years before its time!

But in art as in life, one day Beale goes too far.  Voicing the rage of the common man (which can always be ignored…) is one thing – but challenging the machinations of BIG big business is quite another.  Here’s what Beale says that gets him into trouble:

            “All right, listen to me!  Listen carefully!  This is your goddam life I’m talking about today!  In this country, when one company takes over another company, they simply buy up a controlling share of the stock.  But first they have to file notice with the government.  That’s how C.C. and A. – the Communications Corporation of America – bought up the company that owns this network.  And now somebody’s buying up C.C. and A! Some company named Western World Funding Corporation is buying up C.C. and A!  They filed their notice this morning!  Well, just who the hell is Western World Funding Corporation?  It’s a consortium of banks and insurance companies who are not buying C.C. and A. for themselves but as agents for somebody else!  Well, who’s this somebody else?   They won’t tell you!  They won’t tell you, they won’t tell the Senate, they won’t tell the SEC, the FCC, the Justice Department, they wont tell anybody!  They say it’s none of our business!  The hell it ain’t!”

This is the daily business reality that affects all of us.  This is the chicanery that OWS is mad about.  What’s the mystery?

Beale can’t be allowed to go on telling that kind of truth.  So Arthur Jensen himself (beautifully played by Ned Beatty), the corporate honcho of C.C. and A., takes Beale into an imposing conference room and reads him the corporate riot act.  Doesn’t this, too, sound very much like the global economic present – the era that OWS is mad about?  Just substitute China for Russia and the corporations of today for those of yesteryear and it’s enough to make you shiver.

Jensen says:

            “You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it, is that clear?!...You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples.  There are no nations!  There are no peoples!  There are no Russians!  There are no Arabs!  There are no third worlds!  There is no West!  There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and… interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars! petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars!, Reich marks, rubles, rin, pounds and shekels!  It is the international system of currency that determines the totality of life on this planet!

            “That is the natural order of things today!  That is the atomic, subatomic and galactic structure of things today!  And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and you will atone!  Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?

            “You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen, and howl about America and democracy.  There is no America.  There is no democracy.  There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon.  Those are the nations of the world today.  What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state – Karl Marx?  They pull out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories and minimax solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do.  We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale.  The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business.  The world is a business, Mr. Beale!  It has been since man crawled out of the slime…”

This post has gone on long enough I think.  I hope you’ve enjoyed these golden snippets of Network and suffice it to say that you should think twice about the invectives being hurled at the OWS: they’re radicals, they’re killers, they’re anti-Semites, they’re a bunch of dirty hippies taking up space.

No.  They’re you and me and everyone in the country, who, for one (or more) countless reasons is mad as hell and won’t take it any more.  I hope New York has a mild winter.

What’s in a Word?

Since the passage of gay marriage in New York State last week, I’ve been talking to friends about their reactions. Gay and straight, some people are delighted, others seem disinterested, particularly straight people who think it’s fine but it really doesn’t have anything to do with them (and are therefore not thinking of the rights issues and political implications of the matter that affect us all).

One straight woman said she’s very happy and proud of New York and cited, along with the fairness of the law, the many ways that the state/cities can benefit financially. I agree. This will be a boon to wedding-related retail goods, services and tourism (honey-moons!), which is a great side benefit of something that needed to happen for completely other reasons.

Another friend said the greatest importance is that gay couples will now have all the legal rights and privileges (and shared problems) that married straight couples have, from health care coverage, to hospital visiting and living will decisions to greater child adoption and custody rights, etc., et al. These and other practical key issues will continue to be highlighted as the fight for marriage equality continues.

The two responses that interested me the most – and which have been a large part of the marriage equality debate since it began – were the liberal woman and conservative man who both said they were fine with gay couples having the rights of marriage, but they don’t like that it is called marriage. They feel “the union of a man and a woman is the definition of marriage” argument is inviolable, he on religious grounds, she on the grounds of tradition and proper English usage. And apparently the state of Rhode Island agrees, because yesterday it legalized “civil unions” for “same-sex couples,” not gay marriage.

Although I’m an Interfaith minister, I have no religious issue with the use of the word marriage, and as a prescriptive language maven (which I wrote about extensively a few posts back), it doesn’t bother me either; published definitions of marriage of course describe it as a union between a man and a woman, because until very recently (and hardly entirely even now), gay people were not considered normal, healthy, equal persons and their relationships were not considered legal, even valid, in most places.

Using the word marriage – and the word gay – is vitally important. From a civil/human rights standpoint, as well as a legal definition, the word marriage is what makes the committed relationships of gay people equally legitimate as the committed relationships of straight people. It sends important messages: love is love, commitment is commitment, and families take many forms, no matter what combination of two persons the marriage is comprised of.

Emotionally, being two wives or two husbands is very different from referring to each other as “spouse” or “[life]-partner.” Those words have none of the romance of husband, wife (or marriage), and they fail to convey genuine intimacy and betrothed alliance between two people. Not using the word marriage makes the relationship seem lesser-than [straight marriages]. If you’re a straight, married (or even divorced) person, think about how it first felt to call someone husband or wife, to describe yourself as married. Wasn’t there a special sense of warmth, connection, and status, that came with that? Isn’t there still at least a semblance of that, even if you’ve been married for a long time?

I believe the root of the objection to the word “marriage” for gay couples is largely religious, rather than linguistic. While I believe in the importance of the stability and consistency of language in the main, I also appreciate that great social change, such as civil rights and feminism, have brought new words into the lexicon and altered others, and when that happens for such major reasons, I think language is improved, rather than degraded.

But more than religion or language, I think the idea of “gay marriage” is very new, very uncomfortable, very alien to lots of straight people – who have never met a gay person (to their knowledge). Many of them equate gay with the most outlandish participants they see in gay pride parades. Some still don’t believe people are born gay; and they certainly don’t believe that gay relationships are equal to straight ones. To them, gay marriage is an oxymoron and a cheapening of their “real” marriages. I know my two friends who dislike the use of the word marriage don’t fall into this category of less sophisticated people, but I think many do, only it’s become politically incorrect to express such ideas (which is why political correctness is such a pain in the ass and should be the antithesis of progressive thought – but that’s another post…).

The continuing fight for gay marriage is essential. But so is giving all Americans a chance to knowingly interact with gay people so they can see that gays are not freaks to be scorned or feared. And the only way that’s going to happen is if more and more people come out of the closet – to family, friends, people on the job, folks in church, the other guys on the bowling team, the other gals in the quilting and book clubs – just plain everybody everywhere. And invite these straight people to your gay weddings. Every little bit helps.