A Global Shame

The kidnapping of 300 schoolgirls in Nigeria happened three weeks ago. I’m glad the world is outraged now, but it took three weeks for American news media to pay any attention to this story. Fox News was busy obsessing about Obamacare and Benghazi, as usual; CNN was focused on every dim ping in the ocean in their can’t-let-this-story-go endless focus on the downed Malaysian jet; and MSNBC was still staring at the George Washington Bridge Over Political Waters, not to mention the political horse races of 2014 and 2016. I don’t know what broadcast network news was doing because I don’t watch them. But even the usually ahead-of-the-game PBS NewsHour let us down. In print…even the New York Times was asleep at the wheel.

Three hundred schoolgirls were kidnapped in Nigeria because a bunch of Islamist terrorist wackjobs don’t want girls to go to school – especially Western-style schools. They would rather sell them for $12.00 each, sending them off into the global child sex trafficking trade, or to individual men who want child brides, or someone, anyone, who wants free, hard labor. Only social media – primarily Facebook and Twitter – stopped sharing recipes and selfies long enough to sound an alarm loud enough for the news media and the public to hear. Good for them. Shame on us.

What happened to these 300 girls – yes, about 50 got away but more have been taken since – is a disgusting outrage. But it is part of a larger global shame that has been going on for years and has been shockingly under-reported, never mind addressed. Every year, a million children, mostly girls, literally from infancy to tweens, are trafficked worldwide, around 300,000 in the U.S. alone, primarily for the unimaginable misery of sex slavery, a lesser number for grueling manual labor. And these are just the stats on kids. The numbers for adult women are even more horrific, and men get roped into this travesty as well.

Throughout human history, human life has been regarded as pretty cheap in many quarters. But now we’re in the 21^st century, the bold progressive future, and it’s just as bad if not in some ways worse. Boko Haram may be a new name to us on the roster of terrorists who commit the unspeakable, but they’ve been around for years and our government, and the Nigerian government, and the governments of the world, have known about them – them and others, who pretend to act in the name of religion or culture or tradition or unashamedly in the name of greed run amok. Women, as always, are favorite targets, hardly regarded as human and certainly unentitled to autonomy or dignity. They’re fair game for brutality, especially sexual brutality, because men who are crazy are usually particularly crazy when it comes to women and sex.

And, not for nothing, another thing happened while world news ignored those Nigerian schoolgirls snatched from their beds. The wealthy, dapper, Sultan of Brunei decided that what his little oil-soaked country needed was the mania of Sharia Law, which has a special bug up its Islamist ass for women, gays, and anything resembling the rights of free speech or thought. Stone them! Mame them! It’s what Allah would want! Really?

Three hundred schoolgirls were kidnapped in Nigeria for the crime of being female and getting an education. Now, with international intervention, some of them may be rescued. But much damage will already have been done. The rest, the majority, will be forever lost in the anonymous swamp of child trafficking. Are we, the world, going to confront this issue now? I’m not optimistic. Just heartsick. And really, really pissed.

The Surreality of Now

April has always been a melancholy month for me, but this year the craziness of the present has overcome the wistfulness of the past, because some of the social and political events going on have left me laughing and crying at the same time.

Let’s start with a little item out of Pakistan. A nine-month old baby was officially charged with attempted murder, because he, along with his father and grandfather, were part of “…a mob protesting against gas cuts and price increases [that] stoned police and gas company workers trying to collect overdue bills…” according to an NBC News affiliate. As pictured above, the baby cried while being finger-printed; later tried to play with reporters’ microphones while the media interviewed his father; and is now in hiding in an undisclosed location. My favorite line was that this incident “…has thrown a spotlight on Pakistan's dysfunctional criminal justice system.” Yeah. And these people have the bomb…

There have been several recent articles about the growing increase in sexual desire and activity among the aging and elderly – which has resulted in an increase in STDs, but also hope for folks in their 60s (like me) and 70s and 80s, too. But my favorite story on this phenomenon came from a CBS News affiliate about a nursing home in West Babylon, NY, that was being sued by the son of one of the residents after a male stripper performed there. “A 16-member resident committee had requested the September 2012 performance and the nursing home paid the $250 fee,” explained an attorney for the home. This is a picture of one of the old ladies stuffing money into the stripper’s briefs:

I could show you a photo of the U.S. Supreme Court, but why bother? You know what that 5-to-4-Right-leaning-crowd looks like. What I can’t show you is what’s been going on in their heads lately. Their most recent decision on money in politics, McCutcheon Et Al vs. Federal Election Commission, on top of the previous Citizens United decision, as well as their gouging out a core portion of the 49-year-old Voting Rights Act, breaks my heart and blows my mind.

How can these people (the five Conservatives) truly believe that allowing more money into the already overpriced and corrupted political process is a good idea – or harmless at worst? After the blatant and still ongoing efforts in many states to make it harder to vote for young and old people and people of color, how can they think that any portion of the Voting Rights Act has become obsolete? I know that none of the justices is stupid. So what am I, or any American, to think: that they’re uninformed, or racist, or mean, or on the take? If the top court of the land is fucked up, where do we go from here?

I’ll tell you where: from Democracy to Oligarchy. If for some reason you don’t know what that is, it’s a form of government in which all power rests in the hands of a small group or class…like, say, the very, very rich and their friends: the very rich and the plain old rich. And the first order of business of an Oligarchy is to suppress the will (and possibly existence) of the vast majority that isn’t them. The second task is to make sure that the different members of that majority see each other as the enemy, the problem, rather than join forces against the tiny minority with all the money and power. The third task is to make day-to-day survival so difficult for the vast majority that they focus the rest of their time just trying to put food on the table. It also helps to do things like gut social programs as deeply as possible, keep basic education mediocre and higher education unaffordable, and turn your own religious beliefs into laws, so that people are more concerned with being sinners than citizens (that only partially works).

And whatever you do, make it harder for people to laugh – because as all survivors know, laughter makes fighting the good fight easier.

What Is It With Conservatives and Sex?

This past week’s sexually-related political news has left me, as usual, with my mouth agape and my head spinning.  I am increasingly astonished, appalled and frightened by the sexual Puritanism that increasingly spans the American political landscape.  The Conservative desire to “take their country back,” presumably back to 1952, refuses to acknowledge that 60 years and a sexual revolution have passed.  That’s the fact, Jack, like it or not.

I’m referring specifically to the (thankfully thwarted) politically-motivated decision by the breast cancer charity, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, to withdraw their longstanding support of Planned Parenthood.  They bought into the lie that Planned Parenthood is “the nation’s largest abortion mill.”

Komen didn’t want to jeopardize their mainstream support from abortion opponents who feel about breast cancer the same way they feel about children with cleft lips in poor countries and battered kittens everywhere.  Truth is, only 3% of Planned Parenthood’s activity is performing abortions; the rest is devoted to all other women’s health needs, especially breast health and making contraception readily available.  Their core clientele is poor and working class women.

The other assaults du week on women’s health, freedom and day-to-day survival came, of course, from the Greek Chorus of Republican Presidential contenders, including Mitt Romney’s dismissal of the very poor (predominantly women and children), Newt Gingrich’s assertion that America “has always been a bible-based country,” and Rick Santorum’s assorted invectives against abortion (which he claimed is linked to breast cancer; not true), homosexuality, and contraception, because the last enables sinful activity, also known as sex, by unmarried and married “fornicators.”

The scientific ignorance, prudery, social obliviousness, and presumption that personal sexual activity is of legitimate governmental concern, is frightening – as well as an unconstitutional infringement on personal liberty.  But the media feed into it as if it were nothing more than a Hollywood “scandal” to have a giggle over, and the public…well, the largely-politically-disengaged public either doesn’t know or care that there is a dangerous social movement in our midst.

I understand fiscal conservatism.  I don’t agree with it or think it’s in the nation’s best interest – but it isn’t insane, it’s just a particular belief about how to manage taxpayer funds.  It’s up to taxpayers (citizens!) to tell government through votes, petitions and other recourse, what they do and don’t want their money spent on, and we don’t vote or speak out anywhere near enough.

What I don’t understand is social conservatism, which is deeply rooted in Fundamental Christianity and focuses on the sanctity of The Family and the Evils of Sin (also known as human sexuality).  They believe that the only appropriate sexuality is heterosexuality between monogamous, legally married couples for the sole purpose of reproduction.  All and any other sexual activity on the part of consenting adults is sinful.

If these ideas were simply the moral foundation upon which some people choose to live their lives, there would be no problem.  I’ve often said that the best pro-choice slogan I’ve ever heard is: “If you don’t believe in abortion, don’t have one.”

The problem – and it’s a very big and important problem – is that social conservatives, the same people who say government should stay out of people’s personal lives – want to legislate their definition of morality and outlaw everyone else’s.  And anyone who opposes them is either a fascist or a socialist, but in either case, a degenerate sinner.  Give me a fucking break.  Literally.

Attention liberals, libertarians and all free-thinkers: have sex freakily and frequently.  It’s not just your right – it’s your civic responsibility!

Summer Blues

I’ve been neglecting ya’ll; sorry ‘bout that.  I’ve been a little busy, a little unwell, writing other stuff (I don’t limit myself to political rants), and feeling very disheartened and disturbed about our social, governmental and overall future.

The debt-ceiling debacle really knocked the wind out of me, and Bachman winning the Iowa Straw Poll as well as Perry entering the presidential race finished me off.  Except I reserved a little energy for knocking TV news over the head with a lead pipe.  Now if I could just get my hands on a pipe…

You know, I don’t sit around here in the Tower just being grumpy because I think I’m smarter than everybody else and I have the solutions to the mega-problems (and they are problems, not “challenges”) we’re confronted with here at home and around the world.  That said, there is something each day that renders me speechless because of its stupidity.

Yesterday, it was an article in the Times about new scientific research that “proves” men can truly be bisexual (it’s been assumed for some time that women can be bisexual, because our sexuality is more “fluid,” no puns intended, I’m sure).  I just sat back and sighed.  I had no idea there was a question about this, let alone that someone doubtless got a major grant to confirm it.

Among the stupidities that most distress me are (1) the frequent obtuseness of those who practice science and their insistence on applying a hard-wired “testing” process while ignoring all “anecdotal evidence,” by which they’re saying that human experience doesn’t “prove” anything.

And (2) the ridiculously rigid way that science – and people in general – regard human sexuality.  It has been my experience and observation that all sexuality is “fluid.”  Yes, we’re born with a basic sexual proclivity: essentially straight or essentially gay.  But that doesn’t mean that people don’t experiment, or go through stages, or even, much to their surprise, occasionally (or once) find themselves strongly and genuinely attracted to someone outside their basic sexual comfort zone.

I don’t imagine that this latest study takes into consideration that bisexuality isn’t always a clean, even, 50/50 split – in fact it rarely is.  And since they’re not considering anecdotal evidence, I assume they’re also not taking into account the influence of religion, family expectations, social disapproval, professional consequences, etc.  Apparently, this study was based solely on arousal, and as men (and women, but men more so) themselves know, they can become aroused watching herrings mate if their need for sex is particularly great at that moment.

I guess the rigidity and stupidity bother me so much because they reveal such a lack of imagination and sense of wonder.  It also bothers me because the same rigid scientific approach has always been taken in regard to psychic phenomenon and spooky/occult stuff in general.  Scientists – whom I genuinely respect and value – are the ultimate five-senses crowd; if they can’t see, feel, hear, taste or touch it, they doubt its existence, whatever “it” is.  You would think that the discovery of germs, the atom, and other micro- and nano-scopic…stuff would lead them to be open-minded about everything, but too often the reverse is true.

Another stupidity that raises my blood pressure is people who reject the reality of major climate change – manmade or otherwise.  There were three significant earthquakes yesterday: in Virginia, Colorado and San Francisco, not to mention that Japan has again been hit, repeatedly, since the big one in March.  In addition, a killer storm named Irene is heading our way, we’re winding down one of the hottest summers we’ve ever had nationally, and the famine that is ravaging Somalia is the worst in 60 years.  How is it possible that these erratic and damaging weather and “natural” disasters are unrelated to a global population of nearly seven billion, and a totally unprecedented use of fossil fuels?  How was this morphed into a Left Wing Conspiracy?

Which brings me back to politics.  I’ve decided that in the best interest of my gastric health and emotional sanity, I’m not paying too much attention to the Republican race until the GOP candidate is selected at their convention next summer.  I’m also not going to listen too closely to anything the President has to say, but will instead keep a close eye on what he does.  Anything more will turn my summer blues into an autumnal nervous breakdown.

Weiner Weary

The smart, delightful Maureen Dowd wrote an interesting column about the fallen-from-grace Rep. Anthony Weiner today, “Your Tweetin’ Heart,” in the New York Times. She’s clearly put out with and put off by the cyber-licentious Congressman, and I’m not saying I plan to start a fan club for him, but (as Dowd points out about many contemporary women), I really can’t get worked up about this.

Whatever Weiner or any man does sexually (or pseudo-sexually) is his own business and that of his partner, if he has one. A man’s sex life should not be an issue in regard to his role, and performance, as a political leader. Of course, many folks claim to be upset because he lied – to the press and public – and Americans like to pretend they’re all incensed about lying, as if they never do it themselves. Yes, of course he was stupid to lie, but that’s what people do, especially public people, particularly when it’s about (gasp! horror!) S-E-X!!!

To me, the issue isn’t what Weiner did sexually, or even that he lied about it. To me, the issues (there are two of them) are that this country is immature and Puritan when it comes to sex, and (we claim) that public behavior – especially if it’s political – can’t be separated from private behavior. I disagree.

There have been sexual/political scandals since the beginning of political time; people are titillated by what their public figures do in the bedroom (or the back of a car, or a bathroom, or in the netherworld of something called cyberspace). I’m probably in the minority in not caring in the least. I also don’t judge the “health” or “goodness” (or lack of it) about what people do sexually.

My attitude is: whatever two (or more) adults do that is consensual, non-violent, and does not deliberately spread disease, is their business. If they want to slather each other in peanut butter and swing from a chandelier, who cares? It’s time that we as a nation grew up about sex, rediscovered the notion of privacy, and protested loud and clear when the media and other politicians try to bring down a politician because of his sexual behavior. It’s bullshit.

One can be a “kinky” liberal or conservative or some political stance in between or otherwise. That doesn’t mean you can’t be politically rational or serious or genuinely effective. If we (as a nation) are going to condemn every political man – or woman (God forbid!) – for what they do sexually, we’re going to end up with (a) nobody, (b) a handful of happily monogamous people or (c) a bunch of celibate wackos who worry me more than the ones who dress up like Little Bo Peep.

The other thing I want to say here is that I think women who have a man in their lives – husband, boyfriend, whatever – shouldn’t get so uptight if he’s into porn or sexting or even cyber-sexing. It’s time we accepted that men apparently have different sexual needs and drives than we do (this distinction is, of course, a generalization and surely there are exceptions to any rule).

Men – or so male comedians keep telling us – need a greater variety, creativity and frequency of sexual outlet than do women. I would not be happy about my man (if I had one) gallivanting in the real world outside of our relationship; I’d feel betrayed and, quite honestly, threatened. But, if it made him feel better to watch porn or sext to a stripper or whatever make-believe crap gets him off, so what? It leaves me time to watch movies he doesn’t like, read a book or take a nap.

I think America needs to take a nap, then wake up and say: “We’ve got serious stuff to deal with. Enough about Weiner’s wiener and let’s get down to business!”