Still Monica-Bashing After All These Years
Okay, raise your hand if you weren't an asshole of one sort or another in your early 20s.
I call the 20s “the fuck years” and “the fuck up years,” and see it as the time you’re supposed to make mistakes. (They’re generally cheapest then.) You're also sure to make a number of them. That's why, if you're smart, you'll avoid doing anything too permanent, especially in your early 20s, as your head's very likely only beginning to wind its way up your ass -- and has a bit of road to go and some visiting to do before you can even start trying to yank it out.
I was reminded of this as I read an especially nasty little piece in The Washington Post by a woman named Libby Copeland. The occasion? Monica Lewinsky's graduation from the London School Of Economics. Copeland just couldn't let Lewinsky have her day. Either that, or she just didn't have an idea for a real story. Copeland wrote:
Lewinsky, 33, is known more for her audacious coquetry than for her intellectual heft, and the notion of her earning a master of science degree in social psychology at the prestigious London university is jarring, akin to finding a rip in the time-space continuum, or discovering that Kim Jong Il is a natural blond.Even more staggering, the same bubbly gal who once described the act of flashing her thong at the president as a "small, subtle, flirtatious gesture" has now written a lofty-sounding thesis. Its title, according to Reuters: "In Search of the Impartial Juror: An Exploration of the Third Person Effect and Pre-Trial Publicity."
Monica! We hardly knew ye!
A revelation on this order suggests Lewinsky belongs to a fascinating subspecies, dumb-but-smart. Dumb-but-smart folks defy our low expectations. They appear dull or ditzy but possess unpredictable pockets of intelligence.
For example, dumb-but-smart: Ashton Kutcher! Majored in biochemical engineering in college. (Huh?) And: Jessica Simpson, who famously didn't know the difference between tuna and chicken, and posited that buffalo wings are made from buffalo. Simpson's mother once told Vanity Fair that her daughter has "this, like, 160 IQ And, you know, that's, like, a genius level."
Like, no way.
No, Lewinsky was no tower of judgment in what happened, but Clinton, who should've been the grownup in the situation, was the real idiot, having sex with a girl whose appearance and demeanor surely screamed "Beverly Hills Bigmouth." Yes, of course she kept the dress as a souvenir. This is what 22-year-old awestruck girls do. If she'd had a cell phone at the time, she probably would have been on it under the desk while blowing the guy. But, her biggest mistake was placing her trust in a seemingly maternal figure, the snake known as Linda Tripp.
Monica's another one I wrote a letter to -- a letter considerably more supportive than the one I wrote to my new pen pal, Jack Abramoff. I sent the letter to Sheila Nevins, the HBO exec in charge of the Monica docu they produced, and asked her to forward it. I'm hoping she did. Here's an excerpt:
25 January 2002To: Monica Lewinsky
Dear Monica,
I read that you had a bit of a hard time at the press conference for your docu. I just wanted to write and offer you a little support. I did some completely dumb things in my twenties -- everybody did. The way I see it, your twenties are supposed to be the time you fuck up. Then you learn, and go on to your thirties, and do your best to live smarter. The only thing that makes you different from the rest of us who fucked up as twenty-somethings is that our mistakes didn’t get splashed across the international press.
I ended the letter by telling her I thought she'd handled herself well in the aftermath; that she seemed resilient, and she should just stand tall and she should be able to have a nice life.
Well...maybe she can, maybe she can't. Maybe, more than 10 years after the Clinton/Lewinsky thing came out, we could unshackle this girl from a dumbass thing she did in her 20s and let her put that degree to use. No, we can't make the memory of what went on go away. But, there's really no reason for mean-spirited pieces like Copeland's.
My message to Copeland: Think about the dumbass things you did in your 20s that you wouldn't want smeared all over the international press, branding you forever, and maybe let the girl be?
Oh, and a final note for any politicians or anybody in power contemplating an affair: Have one with somebody else who's married, or who has a lot to lose if the affair comes out. At the very least. For a primer on that sort of thing, read Judith Brandt's The 50-Mile Rule: Your Guide to Infidelity and Extramarital Etiquette.
Whoopee, We Executed Saddam!
The problem is, as Gary Brecher wrote in a Moscow alt weekly in April of 03, Saddam (who was a murderous motherfucker, yes) isn't the real problem:
The real threat is the hundred million Islamic kids who will never forget what they're seeing on al-Jazeera and Abu Dabai. We've just done Al-Qaeda the biggest favor it could get. Osama bin Laden is relaxing with his big-screen Sony somewhere in Paktia, smiling while he watches the news from Iraq. He was praying to Allah that we'd invade, and we didn't let the big fella down.We had him on the run till last week. We were picking off his people one by one, all over the world. We were winning. Now he wins, no matter what happens. It doesn't matter if we catch him and kill him, because every time another Arab woman shows up on TV holding her dead kid and screaming, we make another bin Laden.
Oops. Remember when we used to be the good guys?
The LA Times' Paul Richter talked to Juan Cole about it:
Juan R. Cole, a Mideast specialist at the University of Michigan, said the nature of the trial would also tend to further divide Iraqis, rather than heal past wounds.Because the charges concerned Saddam's reprisals against members of a revolutionary Shiite party, Dawa — which happens to be the party of the current and last Iraqi prime ministers — the execution would look to many Sunnis as simple score-settling.
"This can be read as the Dawa party and a Kurdish judge taking revenge on Saddam," Cole said. "To the Sunnis it will look like just one more slap in the face.... This is the opposite of national healing and will just deepen the divisions."
Cole said he expected adverse Sunni reaction to the execution, noting that about 20 demonstrators were killed in Sunni-dominated Baqubah after Saddam's verdict was announced.
Even so, he agreed that the verdict's political significance will be limited.
"It won't change anything on the ground," he said.
Great Moments In Bad Hiring
My very smart, very cool editorial assistant got a lead role in an indy film, and has been out for a month. She's been amazing about calling when she has free time, especially when I'm on deadline, which is great, because I didn't exactly score in hiring a sub for her. In my defense, only I had about a day after I got back from France to hire somebody off resumes posted on Craig's List.
So...the girl was a journalism student, and her clips were okay, but I learned (when it was too late) that she apparently studied only journalism in college -- and learned nothing about politics, literature, history, philosophy, science, critical thinking, or really anything but how to put a lede together. (This is akin going to college to become a construction worker, but with letters and punctuation marks instead of steel beams...which isn't to say I lack respect for construction workers, just that this job entails a little more conceptual thinking.) Ugh. It's been hell.
I did give her a list of some books to read to help her for the future, and told her to hop on criticalthinking.org and order pamphlets on logic and reasoning. Unfortunately, it was a little late for that to be helpful for me. Oh, and did I mention she took it upon herself to rejigger Word on my laptop, causing me to be unable to print, and have to call Gregg (who was kind of busy on his own job) for tech support, and spend the better part of a half hour on the phone with him fixing it?
In addition, she did something no assistant has ever done -- she didn't show up on my deadline day! She had "bad sushi" the night before, but didn't think to call to say there might be a problem the next morning. Or, who knows, maybe she just slept in. Like everybody who works for me, she was warned before I hired her, there's no missing Monday or Tuesday if you work for me. None. You're either lying dead somewhere or you're here.
There's more, much more, but it's too painful to go into. I'll just print the postscript from my e-mail back to her (after I had to bug her to invoice me...grrrr!):
P.S. You left a tack on my rug, which I stepped on, but my doctor said the tetanus shot I had on Friday should cover it...unless it gets visibly infected...and I got the blood out of the rug with Pellegrino. Again, attention to detail is always helpful. I'll send you a check. -Amy
Welcome To Your High-Tech Nightmare
A number of my friends sneered at me for sticking with my land line instead of signing up for Vonage. In time, they had to do their sneering in person after they had an increasingly hard time getting through to me on their telephones.
And then there are those like France-dwelling Brad Spurgeon, one of the privileged few to be offered a fiber optic connection to his home. And boy is he ever sorry. Spurgeon writes in the IHT:
It took three months after signing up to have it installed, but only one day for the regrets to begin.In fact, the original offer of two months free was increased to six, but I still dread March, when we have to start paying and we no longer have our cable television or old-fashioned telephone.
Here are the promises and realities of this program:
Telephone: Free, unlimited telephone calls — kill your land line.
The reality: We invested in a pod of Internet compatible telephones, only to find that the fiber optic system haphazardly cuts out without signaling if it is working or not. We may pick up the phone and find we cannot call, or that we can make calls, but without knowing it we cannot receive calls. We often receive a busy signal calling a phone that is not occupied, or we are told the number does not exist, although it does.
Television: High-definition image, all our regular channels on both of our televisions, video-on- demand, and on our computers, a Web-based television access.
The reality: Forget the high-definition television. We did not invest in one because we cannot even depend on watching at low definition. The television signal cuts out constantly and we must reboot the modems and decoders, often for hours on end. Nor can we receive all channels on both televisions, as the service provider permits only one master television a subscription.
Video-on-demand simply does not work. We may buy a film, but not watch it because it cracks up, eating swaths of dialogue, and requires rebooting. After a technician encouraged two more downloads, he finally said that the problem was the server and that it affected all users. The Web-based television has never worked, despite repeated promises.
Internet: High-speed Internet on a network of home computers.
The reality: The fiber optic goes only to a central decoding box that transforms the light signal to an electrical one. From there it is spread throughout the apartment as in any classic home network. Although I was led to expect a power line network, the installers proposed Wi-Fi. It was inadequate, so at my behest they installed unsightly ethernet cables from room to room.
The Internet service itself? While my ADSL connection broke down about three times in nearly a decade, the fiber optic Internet connection is constantly switching off. It often requires rebooting the three boxes — the fiber optic transformer, the modem and the router — and sometimes the computers, too.
As Gregg always says, "Wait 'til it's out of beta." I did still try to download the new (still in beta) version of AOL for Mac to my old laptop (fortunately or unfortunately, it requires OS 10.4, and that old one only goes up to 10.3, so I still have yet to try it). Anybody had any experience with it, or with any other good new stuff?
Eva Burgess Is Getting Glasses!
And she’s picking them up Saturday after 4pm! I know this because she was bellowing into a cell phone about it next to me in a café. Apparently, she’s not only inconsiderate, she doesn’t seeem to mind giving a lot of personal information, starting with her full name, to a total stranger.
She continued, Eva and Ken Hashimoto “have insurance there," she said…”under a flexible spending account.” “We just have to pay by the end of the year,” she said. And then she most helpfully bellowed her phone number -- 347-886-2157 -- perhaps because she’s lonely and wants total strangers to call and ask how her glasses are working out for her.
Hey, Eva, can I have your bank account number and your log-in so I can transfer a few bucks to my account? I’d like to get a pair of noise-canceling headphones in case you sit next to me again.
On a positive note, the little girl with them, probably Eva’s (and maybe Ken’s) daughter, was very quiet and well-behaved.
Hey, Eva, I know it’s kinda cold in NYC, where you’re apparently from (according to the area code you helpfully dispensed), but here in sunny southern California, at the moment you were talking, it was 58 degrees. Next time, you might take your business outside –- as exciting as I found it, on a morning I would normally have relaxed to the classical music while eating my breakfast and thinking my own thoughts, to instead be a part of your eyecare needs.
Is Sticking Your Name On A Wing Of A Museum Charity?
Or merely high-priced narcissism? In The American Prospect, Robert Reich has a few ideas on what should and shouldn't be tax-deductible:
It's your business how you donate your money -- but not entirely. Charitable donations are deductible from income taxes. This year, the U.S. Treasury will be receiving about $40 billion less than it would if the tax code didn't allow charitable deductions. Like all tax deductions, that gap has to be filled by other tax revenues or by spending cuts, or else it just adds to the deficit. (Not incidentally, the government now spends some $40 billion a year on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which is what remains of welfare.)I can see why a contribution to, say, the Salvation Army should be eligible for a charitable tax deduction. It helps the poor. But why, exactly, should a contribution to the Guggenheim Museum or Harvard University? Not long ago, New York City's Lincoln Center had a gala dinner supported by the charitable contributions of the leaders of the hedge fund industry, some of whom will be receiving billion-dollar bonuses in the next few weeks. I may be missing something here, but this doesn't strike me as charity. I mean, poor New Yorkers don't often attend concerts at Lincoln Center.
It turns out, in fact, that only an estimated 10 percent of all charitable deductions this year will be directed at the poor.
So here's a modest holiday proposal: At a time in our nation's history when the number of needy continue to rise, when government doesn't have the money to do what’s necessary, and when America's very rich are richer than ever, we should revise the tax code and limit the charitable deduction to real charities.
Cathy Seipp's Prison Fantasy
Cathy had a hilarious idea (fictionally hilarious, that is) inspired by my letter to Jack Abramoff:
Amy Alkon writes disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff in prison, telling him: "You're why people hate Jews."It's the sort of thing that reminds me of what my mother used to say whenever the name of someone like Roy Cohn came up: "...and I'm ashamed to say he's Jewish." Etc.
Anyway, rather amazingly, Abramoff wrote back (I guess he's got a lot of time on his hands), although I don't think anyone would have blamed him if hadn't. Abramoff to Amy: "I'll be praying for you." Idea for really weird Lifetime movie that just occurred to me: Amy falls in love with Abramoff via their penpal correspondence (as female penpals of prisoners all too often do), marries him in prison, sues for access to his sperm. Etc.
When The Advice Goddess Gets Dumped
Space in papers is getting tight, and editors are throwing stuff overboard in a panic like an ocean liner's crew in a shipwreck. My column is mostly safe, because it's generally popular, but that doesn't seem to matter to the new Pioneer Press editor. My column is being dropped after the first of the coming year by the St. Paul Pioneer Press, while they're keeping a guy named Harlan Cohen because...get this...they want "a male voice," a voice that speaks to men.
For example, from the front page of Harlan's site, "The Letters Of The Week," here's Harlan swinging his big balls around:
Dear Desperate in Boston,This reminds me of when I was 13 years old, attending bar and bat mitzvah parties and standing around The Snowball dance circle. "The Snowball" began with everyone gathered in a circle while the bar mitzvah boy or bat mitzvah girl picked a partner to dance with. After a couple of minutes, the bandleader would say, "Snowball." Then, the couple would kiss, split apart and pick someone new from the outer circle. After a few Snowballs, life on the outside felt like a freak show. At this point, I'd get the urge to go to the bathroom and remove myself from the circle. The point: Until you can get comfortable in your role, what happens in your circle of friends will make you crazy. At 26, only you can define your role so you can stand your ground and stop running. Define your role and stand proud.
As opposed to really chick-centric writing like mine. Here are a few lines from my column:
•Sex isn't special. Monkeys have it, and not because somebody bought them flowers or expensive jewelry.•Ideally, being faithful means more than lacking the opportunity to grope the lady next door.
•What do you say the next time she asks you to pay her rent? The same thing you’d say if you were asked by the bald porno freak at the end of the cul-de-sac.
•A man can get "signals" from a woman across the room with her back to him, confiding to her friend, "By age 8, I knew I was a lesbian," which, of course, is her way of telling the man, "Just for you, big guy, I'm wearing the purple pasties with the propellers."
•(About a woman who said she was too lazy to lose her post-pregnancy weight): When a man buys a sports car, he doesn’t expect it to morph into a cargo van.
•It’s a stage-of-life thing. Guys in their late 40s quit their big job “to spend more time with the family.” Guys in their early 20s quit their big relationship to spend more time with women named Mocha and Destiny who swing around a greased pole.
Just call me Amy "estrogen" Alkon.
Beyond the obvious error in thinking that it takes a penis to attract male readers (especially since I've done quite well in life attracting men with the sugar tits, thank you), I pointed out to the editor that, if you show people quotes from the columns without the names on top, they're sure to think mine was written by a guy.
Hmm, and then there's the fact that I write for Hustler pretty regularly. Just guessing, but I believe they have a large number of male readers.
I also pointed out that a tremendous amoung of research goes into my column. I'm no Dear Abby (another columnist they're keeping). I attend psychology and evolutionary psychology conferences, and read numerous journal articles. My presentation on "How To Build A Better Meme" at the Rutgers ev psych conference a few years ago was well-reviewed in Jerome Barkow's new book, Missing The Revolution: Darwinism For Social Scientists.
Yes, I do my best to make people laugh, but I see an essential part of my job as taking the latest in research that relates to love, dating, sex, and relationships, and translating it and putting it in my column in a way that it makes a difference in the ordinary person's life. For example, I broke news on married women and low sexual desire (see the section on Rosemary Basson).
Furthermore, my approach -- using metaphor and humor so readers can see the contradictions in their thinking (instead of banging readers over the head with do this/do that straight advice) -- is actually the effective approach. I've always known this intuitively, but I spoke to addiction treatment specialist Stanton Peele on the phone last month, and he confirmed it. He told me the most effective way to motivate people to change is to get them to explore the contradictions in their own mind between what they're doing and what they want and care about most. Stanton said:
People think being a psychologist is telling people what to do. It's not how people change and do things. You help them by assisting them, usually somewhat passively, to sort the information out in their own minds, so they can make sense of it on their own.
Anyway, the Pioneer Press ran a note in the features section giving readers an opportunity to complain/ask for me back. Unfortunately, I believe they did this Christmas day, which probably meant few people saw it. If you read me in the Pioneer Press or know people who do, and you or they would miss my column, please have them write to the new features editor, Amy Nelson (anelson@pioneerpress.com).
Please, be polite. Rude letters will not help my cause.
Don't Lie To Me, Asswads
I love when newspapers try to bullshit online readers that they're making them type in demographic info for the readers' own good -- which reminds me of this US Airways e-mail in the same vein:
Several months ago, we introduced a new policy that rewards our customers for keeping their Dividend Miles account active. Effective January 31, 2007, you must earn or redeem miles within a consecutive 18-month period in order to keep your account active. If you don’t have activity by January 31, 2007, you’ll forfeit your miles.
Waste my time, Mr. Publisher, and treat me like I'm stupid? Well, don't be too quick to assume you're getting correct information. In fact, I'll do my best to see you get the worst readout possible for your advertisers, as I did in this Cleveland.com screenshot:
The zip code I typed in isn't mine. I used the zip code for Andover, Massechusetts, the town with the lowest salary per tax return. Oh yeah, and note my age. 104. What are their advertisers going to sell readers like me, directions to a pauper's grave?
How The West Was Won
Or will be. First there was this ridiculous pandering from Tony Blair from Foreign Affairs, January/February 2007, on Brussels Journal:
To me, the most remarkable thing about the Koran is how progressive it is. I write with great humility as a member of another faith. As an outsider, the Koran strikes me as a reforming book, trying to return Judaism and Christianity to their origins, much as reformers attempted to do with the Christian church centuries later. The Koran is inclusive. It extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition. It is practical and far ahead of its time in attitudes toward marriage, women, and governance.Under its guidance, the spread of Islam and its dominance over previously Christian or pagan lands were breathtaking. Over centuries, Islam founded an empire and led the world in discovery, art, and culture. The standard-bearers of tolerance in the early Middle Ages were far more likely to be found in Muslim lands than in Christian ones.
Brussels Journal commenter "American Conservative" doesn't share Blair's delusions:
We have to understand where Tony Blair is coming from.Here's a guy who is a Premier of a supposedly Western free country/society but in reality, it is a country that is prostituting and enslaving itself to its Muslim population and to the Muslim world.
Tony Blair is proving to his new masters, the Muslims, that he his a loyal slave ready to prostitute himself anytime, anywhere for the sake of Islam.
By the way, the entire West, including America and Canada are becoming slaves and prostitutes to Islam and the Muslims.
Just look around you, check the daily news from around the Western world. Islam has bought the West.
The Muslims are fooling the West. They cry "unfairness," and they whine about their so-called "human rights" and play with and manipulate our laws to their benefit.
The Muslims succeeded with the help of Westerners IDIOTS in invading, dominating, and soon ruling the West.
The West claims to be smart, intelligent. Not so. The Muslims proved that they are smarter. What they couldn't do centuries ago by invading France and the rest of Europe militarily, they are succeeding in doing it these day, peacefully, by:
1- Massive immigration,
2- Breeding like rats,
3- Intimidation and threats of suing, i.e. using our own laws against us.
Thanks to IDIOT Westerners who:
1- Opened their countries' borders wide open to the Muslims,
2- By being coward toward Islam's intimidation,
3- By succumbing to political correctness,
4- By enslaving themselves to the Muslims' oil instead of drilling in their own lands because of so-called "environmentalists," who in my opinion are traitors and should be hanged in a public square.
5- And finally thanks to TRAITORS who are ready to sell themselves and their countries to anybody who pays more. (Amy: huh?)
The West is doomed if it doesn't save itself soon and expel the Muslims out of its land, cut immigration completely, shut the borders, demolish the Mosques and outlaw this devilish cult called "Islam."
If the West will not take the previous measures, then say goodbye to your Western civilization as you know it and get ready to be governed by Islamic Law sooner or later.
The West will get what it deserves.
The problem is, how do we maintain free, democratic societies and still remain physically safe -- and keep our societies from turning into fascist, fundamentalist Muslim states?
What Are You Reading Now?
Me? A Year Of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion, one of the most readable and compelling writers out there, about the death of her husband and the aftermath. Fantastic book.
If Saddam Were Still In Power...
From Crooks & Liars, the "Bushism of the Day," spoken by George W. Bush during the second presidential debate, 10/08/2004, in St. Louis, Missouri:
The truth of that matter is, if you listen carefully, Saddam would still be in power if he were the president of the United States, and the world would be a lot better off.–George W. Bush
The New Caliphate
Salman Rushdie, at a lecture presented by the Center for Inquiry/NY, on why the left's apologists for Islam are so cracked in the head:
...Salman Rushdie defended an uncompromising right of blasphemy and diagnosed the failure of Western liberals to confront Islamic radicalism. He began by describing his recent efforts to defeat the passage of a law in Britain that would have made it illegal to offend the religious sensibilities of fellow citizens, commenting, “Islamaphobia a victimless crime. It must be, in any free society, OK to be as open as you want to be about your dislike of a set of ideas. Otherwise it becomes impossible to think. It becomes impossible to have any kind of interchange of thoughts.”Addressing Western liberals whose animus towards American foreign policy leads them to seek allies among Islamist movements, Rushdie said, “Islamic radicalism is not interested in creating a world of greater social justice. It’s not interested in liberating women. It’s not interested in tolerance for minorities and sexual dissidents. It’s not interested in democracy. It’s not interested in economic redistribution. It’s not interested in any of things that you would call social justice. It’s interested in what the Taliban is interested in. It’s interested in creating a new, religious, fascist rule over the planet; the new caliphate, the talibanization of the earth. For the left to refuse to understand the nature of the people that they are refusing to criticize, is a historical mistake as great as those who were the fellow travelors of Stalinist communist in an earlier age.”
If you think this isn't something to worry about, you're wrong. (Eventually, perhaps, dead wrong.) Check out the Muslim-ladies-only swimming hours creeping across the globe. And not just in Europe. Here's an excerpt from blog item by Daniel Pipes:
July 24, 2006 update: The Cook/Douglass Recreation Center pool at Rutgers University, a taxpayer-funded institution, has instituted Muslim women-only hours for two hours on Sundays. Swimmers pay $5 for each session, half of which goes to support the Noor-Ul-Iman School.Dec. 9, 2006 update: The Thornton Heath Leisure Centre, a municipal facility in Croydon, a distant part of London, not only has women-only hours but also men-only. What makes it truly cutting edge is this: during the segregated hours, all swimmers must wear Muslim-style swimming gear. Yes, by decree of the Croydon Council, for two hours on Sunday afternoon swimming shorts that hide the navel and extend below the knee are de rigeur. And when it's women's hours, they must cover from neck to ankle.
Some members responded furiously. "I turned up and saw a sign saying it was closing early for Muslim afternoon - I couldn't believe it," commented Daniel Foley, 44. "I think it is preposterous that a council should be encouraging this type of segregation over municipal facilities," said Alex Craig, 34. "It seems the issue here is over modesty. Surely if Muslims want to swim then they should just turn up with their modest swimwear at the same time as everyone else. To make a special provision for them is just ridiculous and strikes me as imposing an ‘Us and them' mentality which is wrong." In contrast, the Croydon Mosque thought Muslim-garb swimming sessions a grand idea. Its spokesman said: "Muslims are not allowed to show intimate parts of their body. This is non-negotiable. Muslims have as much right to go swimming as anyone else." And a spokesman for Croydon Council said: "We are not giving preference to any one group but simply taking practical steps to create access to all."
Yeah? You want to swim in a pup tent and keep the rest of the population out of a public pool when you do...building your own fucking pool.
Leave Conquers All
Here's the Advice Goddess column I just posted. The girl's question follows:
Two months ago, I moved out of the apartment I shared with my boyfriend of four years. He’s 24; I’m 22. We were inseparable, so close…until his high school buddies moved to town. He became cold and distant, and told me he wanted to be on his own for a while, but didn’t know if he wanted to break up. I left town to give him space to figure things out. We barely spoke, and when I returned, I bumped into him and his new girlfriend! He said, “It just sorta happened.” I’m sure -- right after I left. I need to know why he lied instead of just admitting there was somebody else. I miss him desperately, and feel lost without him, but I harbor so much bitterness and resentment, I don’t know if I can ever forgive him.--Seeking Closure
And here's my answer:
It’s a stage-of-life thing. Guys in their late 40s quit their big job “to spend more time with the family.” Guys in their early 20s quit their big relationship to spend more time with women named Mocha and Destiny who swing around a greased pole.No, this guy didn’t inform you of his intentions with the emotional maturity and verbal finesse of a thrice-divorced couples therapy junkie: “I’m hearing that you’re not hearing that I’m more into ‘Girls Gone Wild’ than Girls Gone Wifelike.” Men -- particularly men in their early 20s -- tend not to deal well with emotional conflict, especially any that seems guaranteed to lead to uncontrollable weeping. Maybe that’s why, instead of telling you it was over, he only sort of told you -- becoming cold and distant, and suggesting that he merely wanted a little vacation from the relationship, not a permanent escape from Alcatraz. And maybe you didn’t want to know any more than he wanted to tell you, so you ignored the fact that he wasn’t exactly jumping on the couch Tom Cruise-style and shouting, “Four more years! Four more years!”
All that matters now is that it’s over. You don’t need to know why he lied to you. You don’t even know if he lied to you. Chances are, he simply took a look at his friends and realized what he’d become: A 24-year-old guy living the life of a paunchy suburban house-husband -- minus only the mortgage, the bleeding ulcer, and the hearse in the form of a big red minivan. Now, it’s your turn to look at where you’re at: no, not feeling lost without him, but feeling lost without you. Be honest, isn’t fear of having to go it alone where much of this rage is coming from? Maybe now you’ll be forced to do what you should have been doing these past four years -- becoming somebody instead of becoming somebody’s girlfriend.
Your 20s, especially your early 20s, are the time to make a mess of your life -- date the wrong guys, take the wrong jobs, and join and quit the Peace Corps: “Turns out I’m more attached to indoor plumbing than I thought!” Mistakes are cheaper now -- provided they don’t require bail. And sometimes going the wrong way is the only way to find the right way. Besides, if you don’t do dumb things in your 20s, when will you do them? As your kids are going into college? “’Bye, kids, I’m off to hitchhike across Africa to find myself.” “But, Mom…who’s gonna drive me up to move me into my dorm?” “I don’t know, dear, but are you using that backpack?”
Wanna see me in your paper? Write to the editor of your local alt weekly, or the features editor of any daily that doesn't have a lot of ads for churches. Or even if they do, maybe they'll pick me up anyway.
What If The NBA Had Quotas?
Great column by Larry Elder on how unfair it is that Asian Americans seem to be, as Alan Bakke was in a famous case, shoved to the back of the college admissions line. Elder writes:
Imagine the following press release:In a closed-door meeting, the owners voted to limit the number of black players, in order to increase attendance from non-black customers. The NBA now consists of over 80 percent black players, which creates a non-diverse and less enlightening experience for the predominately non-black fan.
Thus, in order to continue basketball’s popularity, the NBA determines player diversity a necessity to maintain the game’s prosperity.
— NBA commissioner David Stern.
Before you could say “Michael Richards,” in swoop the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, as well as the other usual suspect “black leaders.” Marching, screaming, stomping, and howling will precede enough lawsuits to keep the entire American and National Bar Associations fully employed for the next decade.
...A study of the University of Michigan’s 2005 applicants by the Center for Equal Opportunity documented the hit that white and Asian students take because of race-based preferences. In an apparent desire to increase the number of blacks and Hispanics, the school admitted Asian applicants with a median SAT score of 1400 (out of a possible 1600 for the test in use at that time).
This made the Asian median 50 points higher than the median for admitted white students; 140 points higher than Hispanics; and 240 points higher than blacks.
Of Asian students with 1240 on the SAT and a high school GPA of 3.2 in 2005, only 10 percent got into Michigan. But 14 percent of whites with those stats were admitted, as were 88 percent of Hispanics and 92 percent of blacks.
What’s more, the “boost” given to Hispanic and Latino students by racial preferences often backfires. Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and a black attorney, said, “Would college administrators continue to mouth platitudes about affirmative action if their students knew that preferential admissions cause black law students to flunk out at two-and-a-half times the rate of whites? Or that black law students are six times less likely to pass the bar? Or that half of black law students never become lawyers?”
The Best Thing Since "Critical Buffy Studies"
Sucking Balls and Fucking Off: An Introduction to The Bothersome South Park and Philosophy, by Robert Arp. My favorites from the table of contents:
1. Flatulence and Philosophy: A Lot of Hot Air, or the Corruption of Youth?
William W. Young III7. Oh My God! They Killed Kenny… Again: Kenny and Existentialism
Karin Fry11. "Vote or Die, Bitch": The Myth that Every Vote Counts and the Pitfalls of a Two-Party System
John Scott Gray15. Four-Assed Monkeys: Genetics and Gen-Ethics in Small-Town Colorado
Scott Calef16. Raisins, Whores, and Boys: Gender and Sexuality in South Park
Ellen Miller
Another Reason To Like Frank Gehry
My love affair with Frank Gehry's work, like the Chiat/Day binoculars building (built in collaboration with Claes Oldenburg Coosje van Bruggen), was part of what inspired me to move to the Venice/Santa Monica area from New York. And then he built Disney Hall -- a building that, to me, seems the embodiment of the Goethe quote, "Architecture is frozen music."
When I read a low-blow, nasty review of the just-opening Disney Hall, I got mad. I wrote Gehry a fan letter telling him how much I loved his buildings, and how influential they were in my decision to move here, and then speculated on the snipers:
...You probably see your detractors for what they are: pissy, pretentious people who have to knock something to feel good about themselves. What, they’d rather have another big brick box instead of that gloriously unbelievable Disney Hall? Please. Thanks -- your work makes So Cal an exciting place to have eyes.
I just wrote to Gehry because I thought he was being wrongly maligned, not thinking I'd hear back from him. To my surprise, I got a letter from Gehry's assistant, thanking me and telling me he wanted me to have two tickets to a preview concert at Disney Hall. I took my musician and producer friend David Was to what turned out to be a very exciting "working concert" where Esa-Pekka Salonen had the orchestra run through through the music they were playing -- I think, for Disney Hall opening night. They mostly just played, but occasionally, they'd do a bit over, and before they did, he'd turn to us in the audience and explain what they were doing, and why. Pretty thrilling to be there. And amazing acoustics. You could hear the person behind you just thinking of unwrapping a piece of gum (a downside to great acoustics).
Getting back to Gehry, it turns out there's yet another surprising item to his credit. When so many businesses see their employees as living robots to grind as much work out of for as little as they can possibly pay (or as nothing as they can possibly pay), Gehry has a different approach. For example, like me, he finds it wrong to have interns. Here are his words on it, from an Akhil Sharma piece in The Wall Street Journal:
Most architects of Mr. Gehry's stature can staff the lower rungs of their office with volunteers and interns. "I am very proud," he says and sits up at the conference table. "Everybody gets paid. Everybody here is paid. There's no freebie interns. I've never done that. A lot of my colleagues do that, but that offends me so I've never done that." Like only one or two other topics in our conversation, this issue of how he cares for the people who work for him is something that seems to get him excited. "I am very proud," he says, again referring to his employees, "that they always get cost of living index raises and bonuses and more."
If you're interested in Gehry and his work, I recommend a terrific film you can buy or rent, Sketches Of Frank Gehry, by Sidney Pollack, a longtime friend of Gehry's. Here's the review from Amazon:
For creating such mega-structures, Gehry is remarkably self-effacing; as he and an associate fiddle with a model with bent rooflines and walls, Gehry chuckles, "That is so stupid-looking, it's great!" Yet make no mistake, he possesses a singular vision and strong ego, which we view not only through the wide variety of his works, but also from interviews with friends, architecture critics, and clients, including artist Ed Ruscha, Hopper, L.A. talent manager Mike Ovitz, architect Philip Johnson, and others. Pollock's intimate conversational film allows us to feel as though we're sitting right there on the couch with them, or in Gehry's "factory" of associates and assistants; in its backstage look at the process of creativity, the film feels a little like TV's Project Runway, in the very best sense. As the viewer gets to know Gehry, one finds oneself wishing for more biographical details to be fleshed out--what was Gehry's childhood really like, for instance, and how does he feel about having changed his birth name, Goldberg, at the request of his first wife? Still, for a peek into the world of one of America's most prolific artists, the film is a rare opportunity to get up close and personal. Extras include more conversations between Pollock and Gehry and further examinations of his creations. --A.T. Hurley
Also at the Amazon link to the film just above is a free clip of a conversation between Bill Maher and Sidney Pollack about the making of the film.
UPDATE: Surreally beautiful shot of Disney Hall by Tim McGarry here.
Sauced Cause
Oops, put another Advice Goddess column up last week, and I forgot to blog it. This one's about a guy whose girlfriend gets trashed and sleeps in the same bed with her gay best friend. He says:
...I’ve told Renee that if she’s my girlfriend, she can’t get drunk and share a bed with other men, no matter whom. She says I’m putting her “in a box,” and dismisses my feelings (as usual). Am I wrong to believe that, even if there’s no sex, two adults sleeping in the same bed is intimacy Renee should save for me?
My answer:
Let’s not confuse Bukowski with Nora Roberts. Your blotto girlfriend and her equally shellacked buddy sleeping it off on the same bed isn’t “intimacy,” it’s flophouse sweat and dumpster breath times two.Don’t be too quick to take refuge in the sparkly Teflon of Eddie’s homo-hood. With two people blind-drunk in bed, who can be expected to remember (or care) who plays for which team? Cozy turns cuddly, bodies start rubbing together, and the next day your girlfriend’s muttering to herself, “How odd…I dreamt Eddie was in my bed saying, ‘My, my, Brad, what big man-boobs you have!’”
So, is it wrong for Renee to turn her bed into the skid-row Sheraton? Well, apparently, it isn’t wrong for Renee. Or, maybe it’s neither wrong nor right for Renee, and simply part of a drinking problem: Adult swim in a fish tank of gin turns into an adult slumber party -- not so much by choice, but because Eddie managed to grope his way to a mattress with a warm body on it instead of spending the night facedown, drooling into the living room rug.
Not unexpectedly, you find it troubling -- a dealbreaker, even -- that your girlfriend regularly spoons some hairy drunk who marks your side of the bed with his man smell. When you inform her of this, she acts like you’ve just issued an edict forbidding her to leave the house unless she’s wearing one of those pup tents with a peephole. But, are you putting her “in a box”? Of course you are -- the box where a guy’s girlfriend is free to see other men socially, except when she’s half-naked and lying in bed.
In a relationship, there are two people’s feelings to consider. In this one, there are hers and Eddie’s. Where does that leave you? Well, for starters, hitchhiking to get medical attention while they’re back at her place playing Barbie’s Dream House (with wet bar). Excuse me, but a woman you call your girlfriend packs you off to the emergency room solo and you come back for more? Notice anything missing here, such as even the slightest show of concern for you or the relationship? Clearly, your priorities are different. It seems you’re looking for love. For her, “Let’s get drunk and pass out together!” takes precedence. The only question you should be asking now is “Why am I still here?” It’s a big world out there, filled with single women. Perhaps there are better ways to spend your time than hoping your girlfriend and her man in chaps will pop out from under the covers with a more promising sort of excuse, such as, “Actually, we’re right in the middle of an AA meeting!”
The whole thing is here.
Religion Hurts People
I'm reminded of a talk David Carr (formerly Washington City Paper editor, now a media columnist for The New York Times) gave on storytelling at the alternative newsweeklies convention a few years back. He said something like, "Don't write about poverty, write about how Sonya can't afford lunch."
When people talk about being for or against "gay marriage," it's a dry political issue of interest mainly to gays, lesbians, and frightened fundies. But, make it personal, and maybe there's a chance of getting through to a wider swath of the population. For example, this story from last year in The New York Times about what it means to an individual to keep gays from marrying. Damien Cave writes:
The cancer in Laurel Hester's lungs keeps her voice to a whisper, so a noisy public dispute over gay marriage was the last thing she wanted at the end of her life.She said she only sought to leave her longtime partner, Stacie Andree, the pension she earned as an investigator with the Ocean County prosecutor's office so Ms. Andree could keep their house.
"I'm not on a crusade," said Ms. Hester, a 23-year veteran who once headed the county's narcotics division. "My concern is really that I don't have a lot of time left, and Stacie would not be able to afford the mortgage without assistance."
New Jersey law allows municipalities to extend domestic partner benefits to gay and lesbian couples who work in local government. Dozens of New Jersey towns and counties have opted to do so, but Ocean County has not addressed the issue until Ms. Hester's case.
She first made her request to county officials last fall, soon after doctors discovered her cancer. But only last week did Ocean County freeholders respond. And after one board member, John P. Kelly, told The Asbury Park Press that the board had denied Ms. Hester's request because it would violate "the sanctity of marriage," she was reluctantly thrown into the glare of public scrutiny.
[On Wednesday, dozens of police officers from across New Jersey and New York, gay rights advocates, ministers and Representative Frank Pallone stood outside the county's brick offices in Toms River to protest the freeholders' decision.]
At least three state lawmakers - including Bonnie Watson Coleman, the Democratic Party chairwoman - have issued statements denouncing Ocean County, saying it is defying the spirit of New Jersey law.
Though Ms. Hester, 49, says she has no interest in marriage herself, her case has nonetheless come to be seen as a powerful weapon in the war over gay unions.
"There is a bigger context here," said Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, a New Jersey gay rights group. "This only helps the cause of gay marriage because people are seeing that half-steps like civil unions are not providing people with real protection."
While my thinking is basically in line with the quote on a magnet Lena gave me -- "Let gays marry. Why shouldn't they be as miserable as the rest of us?" -- ultimately, I think there should be a system like the PACS in France to protect gays and straights who don't wish to get married but are in longterm partnerships. This "system" would be a way for them to grant rights to their partners -- rights to stay in an apartment, rights of inheiritance, right to the person's pension, parental rights to a child the two people are raising together, etc.
Two longterm partnered straight friends of mine have drawn up a legal agreement granting each other these and other rights, when legally possible. But, often the rights married people can have are simply unavailable to homosexuals because having them would require gay marriage -- which, of course, the fundanutters are so desperate to prevent.
The Frida Kahlo Problem
Just got an interesting book in the mail, a slim hardcover called Get To Work: A Manifesto For Women Of The World, by Linda R. Hirshman, which looks like a manifesto on realism for women. Haven't read the whole thing yet, but I liked this bit on how Frida Kahlo "is no role model." Hirshman writes (on pages 46 and 47):
I call this the Frida Kahlo problem. Everybody loves Frida Kahlo. Half Jewish, half Mexican, tragically injured when young, sexually linked to men and women, abused by a famous genius husband. Oh, and a brilliantly talented painter. If I was a feminazi, the first thing I’d ban would be books about Frida Kahlo. Because Frida Kahlo’s life is not a model for women’s lives. And if you’re not Frida Kahlo and you major in art, you’re going to wind up answering the phones at some gallery in Chelsea, hoping a rich male collector comes to rescue you.So the first rule is to use your education with an eye to career goals. If feminists really wanted to help you, each year NOW would produce a survey of the most common job opportunities for people with college degrees, along with the average lifetime earnings from each job category and the characteristics such jobs require. The point here is to help you see that yes, you can study art history, but only with the realistic understanding that one day soon you will need to use your arts education to support yourself and your family. The survey would ask young women to select what they are best suited for and give guidance on the appropriate course of study. Like the rule about accepting no dates for Saturday after Wednesday night, the survey would set realistic courses for you, helping would-be curators who are not artistic geniuses avoid career frustration and avoid solving their job problems with marriage.
"Plaintiff Contends She Is A Cyborg"
Via Overlawyered, this classic (from 1993) has to be one of the funniest lawsuits ever filed. Here's the background:
Plaintiff Teri Smith Tyler, appearing pro se, filed a complaint in December 1992 alleging a bizarre conspiracy involving the defendants to enslave and oppress certain segments of our society. Plaintiff contends she is a cyborg, and that she received most of the information which forms the basis for her complaint, through "proteus", which I read to be some silent, telepathic form of communication. See complaint, at 1, and Affidavit accompanying November 1993 Order to Show Cause. She asserts that the defendants are involved in the "Iron Mountain Plan", which provides for the reinstitutionalization of slavery and "bloodsports" (which she identifies as death-hunting1 and witch-hunting), and the oppression of political dissidents, herself included. Plaintiff's complaint alleges a number of personal indignities visited upon her by defendants: "strafing of my dormitory room by planes and helicopters, the electronic bugging of my student rooms and apartments, deliberate noise harassment, blasting of loud rock music with lyrics designed for witch-hunts (music about social pariahs) . . . students following me around to prevent me from studying, whispering campaigns and social ostrification . . ." Complaint, at 1-2. Plaintiff also makes the following allegations against the defendants. Former President Jimmy Carter was the secret head of the Ku Klux Klan; Bill Clinton is the biological son of Jimmy Carter; President Clinton and Ross Perot have made fortunes in the death-hunting industry, and are responsible for the murder of at least 10 million black women in concentration camps, their bodies sold for meat and their skin turned into leather products. The defendants are also responsible for breeding farms, which turn out 2,000 black girls a year, who are then sold for recreational murder or as human pets. Additionally, the defendants utilize weather control and earthquake technology to threaten other countries that object to the Iron Mountain plan.Plaintiff asks the Court to grant her the following relief:
1. $ 5.6 billion in compensatory and punitive damages;2. A physical accounting of all black women born since 1940, including their present whereabouts, and for those who have died, an investigation into how they died;
3. The purchase of land in Africa for the emigration of abused black women;
4. The bringing to justice of those responsible for the American holocaust;
5. An investigation into the foster care system, and a physical accounting of all black children placed into foster care;
6. An end to slavery in the United States;
7. The end of the cyborg program run by NASA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, American Cyanimid and IBM;
8. An end to the organ-donor program.
While plaintiff was trying to effect proper service of the summons and complaint on the defendants, she made a number of appeals to the Court for interim relief in the form of Orders to Show Cause. On January 20, 1993, she asked the Court to enjoin the inauguration of President Clinton. The Court denied her request as moot. In August, 1993, she moved to enjoin the installation of Louis Freeh as Director of the FBI on the ground that Clinton appointed Freeh only so Freeh could cover up evidence of Clinton's wrongdoing. That motion was denied, as it lacked a sufficient evidentiary basis.
Presently before the Court is an Order to Show Cause why the Court should not enjoin the trial in the World Trade Center bombing case, now proceeding in this Court before Judge Duffy. Plaintiff alleges that President Clinton ordered the bombing of the World Trade Center in order to justify war with Iraq. In support of her application, plaintiff describes certain "proteus" communications she had with other individuals. Plaintiff alleges that the United States invaded Panama and arrested General Noriega because Noriega objected to United States soldiers raiding Indian tribes in Central America for child sex slaves to torture in American cocaine based thrill-killing rackets. Plaintiff contends she wrote to Noriega asking him to join in her lawsuit, but that United States soldiers holding Noriega beat him when he asked for his mail.
Plaintiff asserts that in 1988, Rajiv Ghandi spoke to her through "proteus" and informed her that he was being held prisoner and sexually abused by a man whom he had caught stealing from the funds generated by the Bhopal disaster settlement. According to plaintiff, Yasser Arafat tried to confirm Ghandi's tale of abuse on behalf of the plaintiff, to no avail.
Plaintiff additionally contends that Gulf War against Iraq was undertaken so that America could restock its sexual slavery camps, which had been depleted. According to plaintiff, 40,000 Iraqi soldiers captured by the United States, selected for their physical attractiveness, have been brought to this country where they were "being beaten, forced to run gauntlets and homosexually gang-raped by American soldiers." Plaintiff claims to have confronted Secretary of Defense Cheney with evidence of this allegation. Cheney, through "proteus", purportedly told the plaintiff, "Well, we were so sick and tired of killing black girls. We just had to put some variety back into our death-hunting industry. And they (Persians) are incredibly beautiful. The beauty of the face heightens the pleasure of the kill. I know of no higher pleasure than the gang-rape of exceedingly beautiful people."
Additionally, plaintiff alleges that the Serbian government, the "Nazi Bund", the Bank of Commerce and Credit International ("BCCI") are also involved in the conspiracy.
Attached to plaintiff's papers, and apparently offered to support her claim, are a number of exhibits. Most prominent among the exhibits is a book by Robert Ellis Smith entitled Privacy: How to Protect What's Left of It (1979), and a four page illustrated pamphlet advertising pornographic movies starring young men. Plaintiff has circled a number of photos of naked men who appear to be of Mediterranean or Latin American descent, which I interpret as her evidence that Iraqi and Central American men are enslaved in pornographic "rackets".
Plaintiff appears to have effected service on few of the named defendants. Although IBM and BCCI each made an appearance (and successfully moved to have the claims against them dismissed), plaintiff never filed proof of service against either defendant pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(g). Service was eventually made against the Federal Defendants, but it may have been effected more than 120 days after filing. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(j).
IBM's motion to dismiss the complaint against it was granted by Order dated September 29, 1993. That same order dismissed the claims against BCCI, to the extent they could be asserted against the Superintendent who was supervising the dissolution of BCCI. Currently pending before the Court is a motion to dismiss by the remaining defendants, and the Order to Show Cause to enjoin the World Trade Center bombing trial.
Whatever Your Primitive Religion, Women Are Shit
Don't think it's just the Muslim fundamentalists in the middle east that treat women like second or third-class citizens (for example, by not letting them drive and preventing them from having the rights men do). A woman on a Jerusalem bus gets beaten by a "modesty patrol," writes Daphna Berman in the Israeli paper Haaretz:
Miriam Shear says she was traveling to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City early on November 24 when a group of ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) men attacked her for refusing to move to the back of the Egged No. 2 bus. She is now in touch with several legal advocacy and women's organizations, and at the same time, waiting for the police to apprehend her attackers.In her first interview since the incident, Shear says that on the bus three weeks ago, she was slapped, kicked, punched and pushed by a group of men who demanded that she sit in the back of the bus with the other women. The bus driver, in response to a media inquiry, denied that violence was used against her, but Shear's account has been substantiated by an unrelated eyewitness on the bus who confirmed that she sustained an unprovoked "severe beating."
Shear, an American-Israeli woman who currently lives in Canada, says that on a recent five-week vacation to Israel, she rode the bus daily to the Old City to pray at sunrise. Though not defined by Egged as a sex-segregated "mehadrin" bus, women usually sit in the back, while men sit in the front, as a matter of custom.
"Every two or three days, someone would tell me to sit in the back, sometimes politely and sometimes not," she recalled this week in a telephone interview. "I was always polite and said 'No. This is not a synagogue. I am not going to sit in the back.'"
But Shear, a 50-year-old religious woman, says that on the morning of the 24th, a man got onto the bus and demanded her seat - even though there were a number of other seats available in the front of the bus.
"I said, I'm not moving and he said, 'I'm not asking you, I'm telling you.' Then he spat in my face and at that point, I was in high adrenaline mode and called him a son-of-a-bitch, which I am not proud of. Then I spat back. At that point, he pushed me down and people on the bus were screaming that I was crazy. Four men surrounded me and slapped my face, punched me in the chest, pulled at my clothes, beat me, kicked me. My snood [hair covering] came off. I was fighting back and kicked one of the men in his privates. I will never forget the look on his face."
Shear says that when she bent down in the aisle to retrieve her hair covering, "one of the men kicked me in the face. Thank God he missed my eye. I got up and punched him. I said, 'I want my hair covering back' but he wouldn't give it to me, so I took his black hat and threw it in the aisle."
I believe the segregation is due to the Jewish religious fanatic notion that women are "unclean" because they might have their periods. Yet another backward religious tradition like not eating pork -- a prohibition which may have caused Jews to have a greater tendency to get Crohn's disease.
Sue Shapiro-A-Thon
My NYC friend, Sue Shapiro, (originally from the Detroit suburbs, like me), is largely or partially responsible for the careers of an incredible number of writers of magazine and newspaper articles and books.
I believe she still holds a regular Tuesday night writers' workshop at her apartment, free of charge, where writers and aspiring writers come to have Sue and writers like her friend Gerry Jonas critique their work. (Bio: Gerald Jonas was a regular reviewer of science fiction for the New York Times, the author of six nonfiction books and a screenwriter of nationally televised documentaries. He worked at The New Yorker from 1963-1993).
After one of my friends -- an events planner -- attended Sue's Tuesday night workshops, he started publishing pieces in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and national magazines. A typical story.
Nobody's better than Sue on the topic of how to sell stuff -- books or articles -- and she's coming to Los Angeles January 10-13 on a book tour for her new book, Secrets Of A Fix-Up Fanatic, and a few Media Bistro seminars. The first one sounds particularly good. David Ulin is the editor of the LA Times' book section. Martin Smith is an editor at the magazine. And Betsy and B.J. are very smart literary agents:
Wednesday 1/10 from 7-9 pm Mediabistro FROM JOURNALIST TO BOOK AUTHOR PANEL w/L.A.Times editors David Ulin & Martin J. Smith & literary agents Betsy Amster & B.J. Robbins Cine Space 6356 Hollywood Blvd. $20 ticketsThursday 1/11 at 7 pm BORDERS BOOKS READING
1415 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica.
Free & open to the public.Saturday 1/13 HOW TO SELL YOUR FIRST BOOK SEMINAR
from 2 to 8 pm w/agent Besty Amster in West Hollywood
$100 ($75 for members) register on Mediabistro.com
I haven't read Secrets yet, but I loved Lighting Up: How I Stopped Smoking, Drinking, And Everything Else I Love In Life But Sex, and Five Men Who Broke My Heart (one of whom is a rather famous evolutionary psychologist I know...who turned bright red, this summer at Penn, when I told him we had a friend in common, and who).
Sue's site is here.
Amy Alkon, Wine Snob
These are a few photos from our trip to wine country; or, more specifically, Clautiere country.
Former Angelenos Claudine and Terry aren't your typical vintners.
They throw drag queen parties, and have a wine-tasting room filled with wigs and hats...
Yet, when we were going to dinner, they explained earlier was better: "We're farmers." My kind of farmers. Here are some photos of the entrance to their winery.
The car is a customized 1951 Chevy (or, in Gregg's words, "Call it a Classic Custom 1951 Chevy with a million coats of a canary yellow lacquer"). I think he forgot "pearlized." It's that, too.
The mosaics are by Claudine.
P.S. The wine's really good, too. My favorite was the Cabernet. A bit more about the actual stuff they sell here:
Clautiere has been generating quite a buzz lately—and not just the one from their all-Estate, mostly Rhone varietal wines. The winery won a gold medal at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition for their 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon. You may have also seen them recently on the NBC show “In Wine Country.”Their wines include rich and wonderful Syrahs, Rhone Blends, Viognier and Cabernet. Prices are reasonable, from $24 - $34 a bottle...
Next time you're in Paso Robles, drop by and try the wine and a wig, too!
Clautiere Vineyard, 1340 Penman Springs Road, Paso Robles; 805-237-3789; www.clautiere.com.
Photos by Gregg Sutter
Jack Writes Back!
What else does a guy have to do in prison? Here's my letter back from Jack Abramoff, typed at the bottom of my letter to him. (I guess they're a little short on typing paper in the stir.)
Still unaccountable after all these crimes! (Um, Jack, FYI, what I'm filled with is a strong sense of justice, and an ensuing loathing for people who behave as you did.)
While I'm a post-Jewish atheist, practicing Jew Jeff Jacoby has a similar take on the Jewish angle:
By his own admission, Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff is a crook. But that isn't the worst that can be said about him.He defrauded his clients of millions of dollars, bribed public officials, cheated on his tax returns, and deceived lenders to qualify for a loan. But that isn't the worst that can be said about him, either.
He made himself at home in and contributed to the swamp of corruption that fills Washington with its stench. His e-mails to cronies, with messages like "Can you smell money?!?!?!" and "I'd love us to get our mitts on that moolah!!", oozed greed and boorishness. Behind their backs, he crudely mocked those who hired him, calling them "morons," "monkeys," "troglodytes," and "the stupidest idiots in the land." He played fast and loose with what were supposed to be charitable funds. But not even that is the worst that can be said about him.
The worst is that Abramoff is a Jew. Not only a Jew, but an Orthodox Jew — someone who claims to be committed to strictly observing Jewish law and faithfully adhering to the Torah's ethical standards. But instead of upholding those ethical standards Abramoff trampled on them, and a "religious" Jew who behaves so corruptly disgraces not only himself but all religious Jews. He brings his faith into contempt. He is guilty of what Jewish tradition calls, with disgust, chillul HaShem — a desecration of G-d's name.
For me — also an observant Jew — that is the worst thing of all.
And for a little balance, here's an unrepentant scumbag from the other side, Clinton administration national security advisor Sandy Berger. Berger stole classified documents from the National Archives, stashed them under a construction trailer, and cut them into tiny pieces. When this first came to light, he called it "an honest mistake."
They should stick him in a cell with Abramoff and give the two of them a lot of time to parse the meaning of that.
Impeach Pie, Anyone?
Remember how the House impeached Clinton for lying about his penis? And how Kenneth Starr spent over $40 million investigating it? Wowee. And, of course, nobody over there at National Review would even consider impeaching Bush for lying to get us in to a war (Shades of the Gulf of Tonkin, anyone?) -- because they're not really conservatives, but die-hard polemicists. From an editorial in the IHT:
Nearly two and a half years ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee reported on the nation's spy agencies' prewar failure to figure out that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and promised to deliver a report on whether Bush and his team pressured the agencies to cherry-pick or hype evidence — or lied outright to Americans.Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the Republican head of the intelligence panel, dragged out the second phase of the report, with the aim of killing it. We hope Rockefeller finishes the job.
That will require heavy lifting on the most important section, comparing the statements of administration officials to what they knew about the intelligence. Roberts insisted that it cover every public statement by any administration official or member of Congress dating back to 1991. What President Bill Clinton or Senator Hillary Clinton said about Iraq is irrelevant. What matters is what was said by Bush and Cheney — who ordered the invasion of Iraq — and by their aides. We hope Rockefeller's committee will sift through the hundreds of statements collected so far and focus on the ones that matter.
Unhappily, this is not an exhaustive list and there will be big fights over many of these issues. But it is not too late to take action. The midterm elections prove that despite all the posturing and fearmongering, the American public has not been blinded or deafened to what this country stands for and the need for truth.
Spoiled Brat Can Dish It Out
But, apparently can't take it. I wrote to an acquaintance who posts at Huff Po, and discovered that bloggers there approve their own comments. So, it looks like movie director David O. Russell deleted my comment defending councilman Bill Rosendahl and criticizing for what a big spoiled brat he was being with his post.
I'm upstate and we're leaving to come back down soon, so I don't think I can reconstruct my comment now, but here's my original post about this, and here's another comment I sent this morning to be deleted by David O. Russell:
It seems posters here approve their own comments. I wrote to another HuffPo blogger who's a friend, who told me that.So, David, you cut my comment (and how many others?) simply because you didn't agree with it? Or because I didn't kiss your semi-famous ass? That's pretty disgusting.
It's all free speech all the time over at my site -- http://www.advicegoddess.com -- even when somebody posts the rudest stuff criticizing me. It's a freedom I value in our society -- and I replicate it on my own site. I'll try to reconstruct what I wrote on my own blog -- unfortunately, I didn't know you were such a big baby, or I would've saved what I posted.
Wondering why Russell has only six comments on his post? Probably because a lot of people said stuff like I did about what a spoiled baby he was, and about his using Huff Po as a platform to rail against some (probably junior) aide to Rosendahl, instead of simply getting somebody on the phone who knew about the project.
For the record, Rosendahl is one of the good guys -- trying very hard to alleviate traffic problems in Los Angeles. For example, the Venice Paper link I posted in my original comment to David O. Russell:
Councilman Bill Rosendahl announced an all-encompassing traffic plan today, designed to alleviate Westside gridlock in both the short and long term. Rosendahl’s initiative lays the ground work to turn light rail on Lincoln Boulevard into a reality within 10-15 years. The route would run from LAX to Santa Monica.
Why is Rosendahl's name on some project that's snarling traffic in Brentwood? Chances are, he's trying to improve things. Oh, are the likes of David O. Russell and a handful of other rich Hollyweasels inconvenienced for six months? Boo frigging hoo.
UPDATE: Somebody in the know just suggested to me that it's actually (probably) Huff Po editors who are worried about offending Arianna's famous friends who deleted it:
here's how i think it works:for "celebs" asked to post, they send their piece in
and it's posted for them. the celeb never actually
writes it on the huffington post, or is "backstage" to
see comments. The comments are approved by an editor.
Because editors are fearful of upsetting arianna's
friends, or dissuade future celebs from agreeing to
participate - they will not put up critical comments
(I dont have proof of that - its just from a year or
so of observation). but i think most problems with
posting/not posting comments is also just because no
one is there to approve them.
i'm sure russell wasn't there to read them.
Russell was dumb for going off all Me! Me! Me! about a traffic problem. Let him feel the results.
"Do You Hate Muslims?"
Robert Spencer is the founder of Jihad Watch, and author of the book, The Truth About Muhammad: Founder Of The World's Most Intolerant Religion. I read this Q&A with him on his site, and realized he also speaks for me:
Q: Do you hate Muslims?
Robert Spencer: Of course not. Islam is not a monolith, and never have I said or written anything that characterizes all Muslims as terrorist or given to violence. I am only calling attention to the roots and goals of jihad violence. Any Muslim who renounces violent jihad and dhimmitude is welcome to join in our anti-jihadist efforts. Any hate in my books comes from Muslim sources I quote, not from me. Cries of "hatred" and "bigotry" are effectively used by American Muslim advocacy groups to try to stifle the debate about the terrorist threat. But there is no substance to them.It is not an act of hatred against Muslims to point out the depredations of jihad ideology. It is a peculiar species of displacement and projection to accuse someone who exposes the hatred of one group of hatred himself: I believe in the equality of rights and dignity of all people, and that is why I oppose the global jihad. And I think that those who make the charge know better in any case: they use the charge as a tool to frighten the credulous and politically correct away from the truth.
Am I "anti-Muslim"? Some time ago here at Jihad Watch I had an exchange with an English convert to Islam. I said: "I would like nothing better than a flowering, a renaissance, in the Muslim world, including full equality of rights for women and non-Muslims in Islamic societies: freedom of conscience, equality in laws regarding legal testimony, equal employment opportunities, etc." Is all that "anti-Muslim"? My correspondent thought so. He responded: "So, you would like to see us ditch much of our religion and, thereby, become non-Muslims."
In other words, he saw a call for equality of rights for women and non-Muslims in Islamic societies, including freedom of conscience, equality in laws regarding legal testimony, and equal employment opportunities, as a challenge to his religion. To the extent that they are, these facts have to be confronted by both Muslims and non-Muslims. But I make no apologies: it is not "anti-Muslim" to wish freedom of conscience and equality of rights on the Islamic world -- quite the contrary.
Q: Do you think all Muslims are terrorists?
RS: See above.Q: Are you trying to incite anti-Muslim hatred?
RS: Certainly not. I am trying to point out the depth and extent of the hatred that is directed against the United States, because I believe that the efforts to downplay its depth and extent leave us less equipped to defend ourselves. As I said above, the focus here is on jihad; any Muslim who renounces the ideologies of jihad and dhimmitude is most welcome to join forces with us. Anyone who targets innocent Muslims in the USA is not only evil, but is playing into the hands of the jihadists who are trying to fan the flames of anti-American hatred. Also, one of the reasons why the war on terror is so important is that those who would destroy Western civilization do not believe in the principles of due process and justice that are central elements of the American system.
Spanking The Overgrown Spoiled Brat
Spanking The Monkey/I Heart Huckabees director David O. Russell just published a Huff Po hissyfit on traffic in Brentwood. Apparently, there's some traffic backup in richville, and (gasp! horrors!), it's going to last six months:
This is exactly the type of 'quality of life' issue that the Clinton administration focused on to great effect, ways that government can make people's day to day lives better --precisely the kinds of things most politicians (and Brentwood liberals) find too small or boring to get into.
Why is there a traffic delay? We never find out. And, it seems, neither does he:
...when I call my councilman, Bill Rosendahl, whose NAME is on the sign at the site of the badly organized, pocket-lining, six-month long, one lane of traffic construction project. And of course I got some little aide who didn't know shit and this is the project and blah blah blah. And THIS makes me reflect the sentiments of others I've met who say, 'They're all bad (politicians), fuck them all, and the system is corrupt and grotesque and, above all, STUPID and BADLY MANAGED.'Who do I call now? Laurie David? Al Gore? Ari Emanuel, my agent? No. Why? Because there is NOTHING GLAMOROUS about a pork barrel, traffic-causing, stupid local problem. After all, this is Hollywood, and people only work on the 'issues' that are as sexy as a movie star.
(My response to his brat-itude to come -- see below.)
By the way, there seems to be quite a comments delay at Huff Po. I posted a comment just after midnight, and I thought the system ate it, as it still wasn't up at 12:18, but two earlier comments (from 10:20 and 11:34) flew up at that time. Apparently, they aren't a free speech area like my site.
Anyway, I mention this because I wrote a somewhat substantive response in the comments below Russell's entry -- including a defense of Bill Rosendahl, and a bitchslapping for the bratty director -- but I neglected to save a copy, as I only decided afterward to turn his bitchyfit into a blog item. At 1:53 am, as I'm writing this, I'm still waiting for my comment to post. I'll add it to the blog item after I wake up tomorrow -- unless the Huff Posties delete it entirely.
And sorry, I'm a Clinton fan, but did the Clinton administration really do anything about traffic in Brentwood except maybe snarl it while visiting various Hollyweasels?
I Don't Think Explosive Diarrhea Will Blow Up A Plane
Moron plops her month-old granddaughter in a plastic bin and sends her through the X-ray machine at LAX.
We're Wosing
George Bush says we're not winning in Iraq, but we're not losing, either.
Crotch Rot
Is the failure to wear panties by Britney, Lindsey, and Paris a matter of feminist honor? Andi Zeisler writes:
If you’re Camille Paglia, it is. The normally starlet-loving Paglia was contacted recently by US Weekly for her thoughts on the matter, and, well, she’s pissed. When asked to comment on how celebrity crotch shots are “affecting feminism,” she replied: “These girls are lowering themselves to the level of backstreet floozies. It angers me because I fought a bitter fight to get feminism back on track and be pro-sex at the same time. This is degrading the entire pro-sex wing of feminism.”First of all: Floozies? Who says that? But more important, it’s so typical of Paglia to make this all about her. I love how she’s so indignant that her fight to get feminism “back on track” — which she presumably feels she accomplished via, among other things, her victim-blaming approach to rape and her numerous assertions that innovation, creativity, and sexual potency are the precious realms of men — has been nullified by a couple of questionably deployed vulvas. And “degrading the entire pro-sex wing of feminism”? It’s not like, in addition to flashing millions, Britney and co. delivered a speech on the limits of sexual self-determination, mocked Toys in Babeland, and stole Paglia’s Hitachi Magic Wand.
Sometimes a crotch is just a crotch, Camille.
No Time Like Now To Start Honoring The Real Female Achievers
The Italians did it, with this Maria Montessori 1000 lire note, from back in the day before the euro. Here's a bit on Montessori from Wikipedia:
Maria Montessori (August 31, 1870 – May 6, 1952) was an Italian educator, scientist, physician, philosopher, feminist, and humanitarian, and the first early childhood educator to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.She was born in Chiaravalle (Ancona), Italy to Alessandro Montessori and Renilde Stoppani. Maria was the first female to graduate from the University of Rome Medical School. She was a member of the University's Psychiatric Clinic and became intrigued with trying to educate the "mentally retarded" and the "uneducable" in Rome. She opened her first school, in a housing project in Rome, on January 6, 1907.
...What followed worldwide has been called the "discovery of the child" and the realisation that: "...mankind can hope for a solution to its problems, among which the most urgent are those of peace and unity, only by turning its attention and energies to the discovery of the child and to the development of the great potentialities of the human personality in the course of its formation.”
The efficacy of Montessori teaching methods has most recently been demonstrated by the results of a study published in the US journal, Science [29 September 2006] http://www.montessori-science.org which indicates that Montessori children have improved behavioural and academic skills in Montessori children compared with a control group from the mainstream system. The authors concluded that, "when strictly implemented, Montessori education fosters social and academic skills that are equal or superior to those fostered by a pool of other types of schools."
The Montessori Method of education that she derived from this experience has subsequently been applied successfully to children and is quite popular in many parts of the world. Despite much criticism of her method in the early 1930s-1940s, her method of education has been applied and has undergone a revival. It can now be found on six continents and throughout the United States.
Hmmm, sounds pretty impressive.
Now, as you may have heard, the U.S. Mint is putting out a series of coins commemorating a group of American women -- first ladies. The AP's Martin Crutsinger writes:
...Starting next year, Martha Washington, Abigail Adams and all the rest will begin appearing on a new series of gold coins.It will be the first time in history that the U.S. Mint has produced a series featuring women.
While a new presidential series will be $1 circulating coins, the wives will be on half-ounce gold coins with each likely to sell for more than $300.
Both coins were authorized by Congress in 2005 with lawmakers modeling the $1 coin series after the Mint's extremely popular 50-state quarters.
The hope is that changing the images on the presidential coins every three months will spur greater interest and help the maligned dollar coin finally achieve acceptance with Americans. The Susan B. Anthony dollar, introduced in 1979, and the Sacagewea, introduced in 2000, have both been flops.
Um, perhaps because coins are heavy and inconvienient compared to folding money; not because people think Sacagawea and Susan B. Anthony really suck?
Now, some first ladies -- Crutsinger points to Dolly Madison, who rescued the portrait of GW from the White House -- did do a thing or two. Eleanor Roosevelt did a thing or two, and then some.
But, please, must we honor ladies who typically kept the country happiest when they sat around smiling and saying nothing controversial? And why honor women, in particular, at all? Personally, I find the idea insulting. Honor people who deserve honoring, and leave the labia out of the equation.
The reality: Throughout history, men have largely been the achievers of the human race, and for various reasons; for example, the fact that women were prone to get knocked up and incapacitated before Carl Djerassi invented The Pill.
And now, after all these centuries, when women finally have a chance to show what they're made of -- do we really need to commemorate other women for marrying well?
How About Mandating Dumbshit Insurance?
Got brains?
I'm all for autonomy -- providing I don't have to pay for the results of anyone's but my own. If you're a risk-taker -- riding a motorcyle, and without a helmet -- not a problem...providing you pay for insurance that covers the cost of scraping you, as human huevos rancheros, from the pavement, and piecing you back together again. If you choose not to pay for medical cleanup...well, how about we just leave you there on the asphalt for the coyotes?
Seriously.
It's one thing if you're driving along, as a friend of mine was, and you swerve to avoid an opposum (quick advice: your life is worth more; flatten the opposum) and end up rolling your car. Calling for help in this case would be reasonable use of 911 and rescue personnel. It's another thing entirely if you plan some life-threatening, we've-got-hair-on-our-balls adventure and get stuck on Mt. Hood. You want to be rescued? Pay up front for insurance to cover the cost, or agree that we'll just leave you there with the icicles.
Unfortunately, at the moment, guess who's picking up the cost...for the Forest Service, the Oregon National Guard, the local police and rescue, etc.? Well, they don't send me the bills, but I'm guessing it probably isn't the three hotshots who thought they'd test their luck against Mother Nature:
Two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and a C-130 cargo plane from Nevada were to continue searching round the clock in 12-hour shifts, he said. The C-130 has infrared imaging equipment that can sense body heat.Capt. Mike Braibish of the Oregon National Guard told reporters that air searchers had seen a piece of equipment that they hoped to investigate more closely on Sunday, but could not say if it was part of the climbing expedition.
The U.S. Forest Service closed Mount Hood above the Timberline Trial and the Pacific Crest Trail to everyone except search-and-rescue teams, and all but rescue aircraft are banned in a three-mile radius of the mountain.
Dwight Hall, whose son Brian Hall is among the missing climbers, told reporters that family members were on "a roller coaster of emotions."
"Keep in mind is that today is only the second day of conditions favorable for a full-scale search-and-rescue effort," he said, adding the time had been well spent even when weather conditions were difficult.
"It's all been progress," he said. "At times it's been frustrating. The dedication of the people out there tackling this effort in these conditions is unparalleled."
A tearful Hall added that the families were confident in the abilities of the lost climbers.
I don't know about you, but when I feel "confident" about somebody's ability to handle a situation, my next step isn't calling out Black Hawk helicopters and the National Guard.
As I'm writing this blog item, one of the climbers has been found dead. It's unfortunate, but, again, nobody marched the guy up there at gunpoint. He and his friends all chose to take the risk. All I'm saying is, with the risk should come the cost. In the words of a Spanish proverb: "Take what you need, but pay for it."
Moulding Young Minds
Imagine if your kid's science teacher taught that the moon was made of Silly Putty, or if your kid's history teacher taught that America was founded by Scooby Doo and Shaggy.
Tiny Kelley writes in the New York Times of a teacher history teacher, David Paszkiewicz, spreading similarly outrageous fantasy statements as if they're fact:
Shortly after school began in September, the teacher told his sixth-period students at Kearny High School that evolution and the Big Bang were not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark, and that only Christians had a place in heaven, according to audio recordings made by a student whose family is now considering a lawsuit claiming Mr. Paszkiewicz broke the church-state boundary.“If you reject his gift of salvation, then you know where you belong,” Mr. Paszkiewicz was recorded saying of Jesus. “He did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sins on his own body, suffered your pains for you, and he’s saying, ‘Please, accept me, believe.’ If you reject that, you belong in hell.”
The student, Matthew LaClair, said that he felt uncomfortable with Mr. Paszkiewicz’s statements in the first week, and taped eight classes starting Sept. 13 out of fear that officials would not believe the teacher had made the comments.
...In this tale of the teacher who preached in class and the pupil he offended, students and the larger community have mostly lined up with Mr. Paszkiewicz, not with Matthew, who has received a death threat handled by the police, as well as critical comments from classmates.
Greice Coelho, who took Mr. Paszkiewicz’s class and is a member of his youth group, said in a letter to The Observer, the local weekly newspaper, that Matthew was “ignoring the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gives every citizen the freedom of religion.” Some anonymous posters on the town’s electronic bulletin board, Kearnyontheweb.com, called for Matthew’s suspension.
Yeah? Just because you believe in Santa Claus doesn't mean there's an ounce of proof Santa Claus exists, or, in turn, that Santa should be taught in history class; i.e., "when Santa and George Washington crossed the Delaware..."
Raised On Lies And Hate
Ever wonder why so many Muslims hate Jews so virulently? The state of Israel has only been around since 1948. It turns out many Muslim children are taught the most vile things about Jews. Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes in the LA Times of the civics course she, as an immigrant (from Somalia), had to take in 1994 to attend a university in Holland. She learned about the horror of the Holocaust, but when she told her half-sister about it...
What she said was as awful as the information in my book.With great conviction, my half-sister cried: "It's a lie! Jews have a way of blinding people. They were not killed, gassed or massacred. But I pray to Allah that one day all the Jews in the world will be destroyed."
She was not saying anything new. As a child growing up in Saudi Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us practically on a daily basis that Jews are evil, the sworn enemies of Muslims, and that their only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never informed about the Holocaust.
Later, as a teenager in Kenya, when Saudi and other Persian Gulf philanthropy reached us, I remember that the building of mosques and donations to hospitals and the poor went hand in hand with the cursing of Jews. Jews were said to be responsible for the deaths of babies and for epidemics such as AIDS, and they were believed to be the cause of wars. They were greedy and would do absolutely anything to kill us Muslims. If we ever wanted to know peace and stability, and if we didn't want to be wiped out, we would have to destroy the Jews. For those of us who were not in a position to take up arms against them, it was enough for us to cup our hands, raise our eyes heavenward and pray to Allah to destroy them.
Western leaders today who say they are shocked by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's conference this week denying the Holocaust need to wake up to that reality. For the majority of Muslims in the world, the Holocaust is not a major historical event that they deny. We simply do not know it ever happened because we were never informed of it.
The total number of Jews in the world today is estimated to be about 15 million, certainly no more than 20 million. On the other hand, the world's Muslim population is estimated to be between 1.2 billion and 1.5 billion. And not only is this population rapidly growing, it is also very young.
What's striking about Ahmadinejad's conference is the (silent) acquiescence of mainstream Muslims. I cannot help but wonder: Why is there no counter-conference in Riyadh, Cairo, Lahore, Khartoum or Jakarta condemning Ahmadinejad? Why are the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference silent on this?
Why, indeed? She tries to answer her own question:
Could the answer be as simple as it is horrifying: For generations, the leaders of these so-called Muslim countries have been spoon-feeding their populations a constant diet of propaganda similar to the one that generations of Germans (and other Europeans) were fed — that Jews are vermin and should be dealt with as such? In Europe, the logical conclusion was the Holocaust. If Ahmadinejad has his way, he shall not want for compliant Muslims ready to act on his wish.
Oh, and if you're not Jewish, don't get too complacent. If you're not Muslim, you're still an "infidel." In other words, after they kill all the Jews, you're next. Happy beheadings!
Taliban Singles Online
I am winking at you!
John McCain Is A Big Ole Slut
Let's just say he's as ideologically pandering as the rest of them -- but does a terrific job of hiding it. Frank Rich details McCain's position on civil unions, as told to George Stephanopoulos:
IT’S not the least of John McCain’s political talents that he comes across as a paragon of straight talk even when he isn’t talking straight. So it was a surprise to see him reduced to near-stammering on ABC’s “This Week” two Sundays after the election. The subject that brought him low was the elephant in the elephants’ room, or perhaps we should say in their closet: homosexuality.Senator McCain is no bigot, and his only goal was to change the subject as quickly as possible. He kept repeating two safe talking points for dear life: he opposes same-sex marriage (as does every major presidential aspirant in both parties) and he is opposed to discrimination. But because he had endorsed a broadly written Arizona ballot initiative that could have been used to discriminate against unmarried domestic partners, George Stephanopoulos wouldn’t let him off the hook.
“Are you against civil unions for gay couples?” he asked the senator, who replied, “No, I’m not.” When Mr. Stephanopoulos reiterated the question seconds later — “So you’re for civil unions?” — Mr. McCain answered, “No.” In other words, he was not against civil unions before he was against them.
My New Shoes
Gregg says: "It's like somebody Photoshopped a pair of tennis shoes."
And no, these boots are not made for walking, but hell, neither is L.A. Get yours here, in hot pink, grape, kelly green, or classic Converse cream and white.
P.S. The photo of these shoes was taken with a present for you, the brand new Canon SD900 Titanium Digital Elph Gregg got me so I wouldn't take such blurry photographs!
Reefer Mad-As-Hell-Ness
I'm not a pothead, as for me, smoking pot has the same effect as having somebody club me over the head with a frying pan, but I have a number of extremely successful friends who smoke pot daily -- putting themselves at some risk. As I'm firmly against our laws against drugs, prostitution, and organ sales (ie, it's your mind, take it where you want to, and it's your body, sell it if you want to), I asked a question over at Reason:
Can somebody who's a lawyer or legal scholar please explain how it could possibly be constitutional to ban drug use?
"The Real Bill" replied:
Amy,I'm no legal scholar, but from what I've read, it's not constitutional, but that's not a deterent to Congress and the majority of the American people. We are no longer a republic; we are a democracy (mob rule).
Then "Kwix" responded:
Amy, Drug use is not, and hopefully cannot be banned. However, drug posession (which preceeds use) is banned via a very crappy Supreme Court decision in 1942 (Wickard v. Filburn) that determined that congress could control any and all items on the basis that they may contribute to interstate commerce and therby fall under the commerce clause of the Constitution even if the item never enters the trade stream (eg, pot grown for personal use).This one ruling, and subsequent upholdings of it, are what legally allow congress to develop and maintain the Schedule of Drugs and make laws regarding possesion and distribution without having to amend the constitution as was necessary for alcohol prohibition.
The Wikipedia link he posted didn't have much information, so I searched on, finding a pretty interesting article by David N. Mayer, "Reefer Madness Meets Wicker v. Filburn," about what seems another poorly decided court case:
In the medical-marijuana case Gonzales v. Raich, the Supreme Court ruled six to three that federal laws criminalizing drug possession applied even to persons using homegrown marijuana, or cannabis, for medicinal purposes under sanction of state law. Although the case may seem to involve issues of personal liberty, it really involved a question about federal power—the scope of Congress’s power under the Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The six-justice majority decided, in effect, that Congress’s powers under this clause were almost limitless.The two women using the medicinal marijuana, Diane Monson and Angel Raich, are California residents who suffer from a variety of serious medical conditions: Monson, forty-eight, suffers from severe back pain caused by a degenerative disease of her spine; Raich, thirty-nine, is subject to severe, debilitating pain from an inoperable brain tumor and more than a dozen other ailments. Both were treated by licensed, board-certified doctors who have concluded, after prescribing a host of conventional medicines to treat their symptoms, that marijuana is the only drug available that provides effective pain relief—in other words, that the active ingredient in cannabis provides relief that no ordinary drug can provide. Both women have been using marijuana for several years as a medication, pursuant to their doctors’ recommendation, and both rely heavily on cannabis in order to function on a daily basis. Indeed, Raich’s physician believes that forgoing cannabis treatments certainly would cause Raich excruciating pain and could well prove fatal to her.
Sadly, Mayer writes, the majority of the Supremes voted to leave Wickard intact. Only three justices dissented -- Rehnquist, O’Connor, and Clarence Thomas:
As (Randy) Barnett observes, Thomas’s dissent shows that he is the only principled originalist justice on the Court today. And, as his separate opinions in Lopez and Morrison also showed, he is the only justice on the Court who truly understands the importance of interpreting the Commerce Clause—or any other particular provision of the Constitution, such as the Necessary and Proper Clause—in the context of the Constitution as a whole. Citing Barnett’s own law-review articles discussing the original meaning of the Commerce Clause, Thomas observed that at the time of the Constitution’s adoption the term commerce was consistently used to mean trade or exchange—“not all economic or gainful activity that has some attenuated connection to trade or exchange.” Even if we ignore the original understanding, Thomas added, we ought to follow the text of the Constitution, which authorizes Congress to regulate “commerce.” Monson’s and Raich’s conduct “does not qualify under any definition of that term.” Moreover, in response to Scalia’s reliance on the Necessary and Proper Clause, Thomas explained that banning such intrastate drug activity was neither “necessary” nor “proper”: it was not sufficiently linked to the illicit interstate drug market, and a ban encroaches on the traditional police powers of the states. “The Necessary and Proper Clause is not a warrant to Congress to enact any law that bears some conceivable connection to the exercise of an enumerated power,” Thomas noted. “If the Federal Government can regulate growing a half-dozen cannabis plants for personal consumption,…then Congress’ Article I powers—as expanded by the Necessary and Proper Clause—have no meaningful limits.”As Thomas concluded: “Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything—and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers….[L]ocal cultivation and consumption of marijuana is not ‘Commerce among the several States.’ U.S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 3. By holding that Congress may regulate activity that is neither interstate nor commerce under the Interstate Commerce Clause, the Court abandons any attempt to enforce the Constitution’s limits on federal power.”
The federal “war on drugs” is based on an irrational fear of narcotic drugs, a hysteria that includes even so relatively harmless a drug as marijuana—a hysteria aptly caricatured in the classic cult film Reefer Madness. Of the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court, four “liberal” justices would allow Congress to criminalize the use and possession of marijuana under all circumstances (even when homegrown for purely medicinal purposes) because they would cede to Congress unlimited powers over Americans’ lives under the rubric of the Commerce Clause. Two other “conservative” justices join the “liberals” in embracing this view of Congress’s plenary powers either because they’re enthralled by Reefer Madness hysteria or because they’re willing to shift the rationale for plenary powers from the Commerce Clause to the Necessary and Proper Clause. Three “conservative” justices aren’t willing to go so far because they recognize that the Constitution imposes limits on Congress’s powers—among them, the principle of federalism. Of those three, only one justice, Thomas, fully understands that it’s not just simply federalism that’s threatened by the Court’s decision: it’s the Constitution itself, for if one of its provisions—whether the Commerce Clause or the Interstate Commerce Clause—is interpreted as broadly as the majority justices do, the rest of its text becomes mere “dead letter.”
Welcome To The "Pentacostalgon"
Formerly the Pentagon, but now a farm for young, warpable minds for Christian religious fanatics on the faith-based make.
A former air force officer is mad as hell that evangelical Christians are, apparently, proseletizing in the military -- against military regulations, the Establishment Clause of the FIrst Amendment, and more. His name's Mikey Weinstein, and here's some of what he has to say in an interview on Salon:
Forty percent of active-duty military personnel consider themselves evangelical Christians. Is your position popular in the military?We have 702 U.S. military installations scattered in 132 countries around the world, and I get calls 24/7 from the soldiers, Marines and airmen. Unlike cops, they don't have a union, they have my foundation, that's it. They're being tormented. And 96 percent of those who come flooding in, on fire with torment, are Christians, three-fourths of whom would be traditional Protestants: Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians. The other one-fourth are Roman Catholics. These are Christians being preyed upon by evangelical Christians -- pray and prey -- and being told that you're not Christian enough, therefore you're going to burn in a hell of fire.
Many [evangelical Christians] tell me, "Mikey, OK, Anne Frank, Dr. Seuss, Jack Benny, Gandhi, they're all burning eternally in the fires of hell." And here's the distinction they just don't fucking get, these cocksuckers do not get this: I would give my last drop of blood and my last breath, and I would commend my three children in the Air Force -- one of whom's going to be heading to Iraq in a few months -- to give their last drop of blood and their last breath to support the rights of these people to believe that Anne Frank is burning eternally in hell … If they want to believe that their version of Jesus has her burning eternally in hell, I'd give my life for that. But I will not do that if my government tells me who are the children of the greater God and who are the children of the lesser God or no God at all. And that's what these monsters are doing.
Is there pressure on the non-evangelicals in the military to convert or keep quiet because some of their superiors have these views and are talking about these views?
Oh, absolutely. Like I said, in the military, many of your constitutional rights are gone, because it's necessary. Look, let's make sure your readers understand something, OK, put it in perspective: The U.S. military, which I consider a noble and honorable institution, is technologically the most lethal organization ever created by Homo sapiens. When you have the leadership believing that to be a good soldier, good Marine, good airman or sailor you have to be not just a Christian but the right type of Christian, we're no better than al-Qaida. And it's hideous, beyond belief. My kids were called "fucking Jews" and accused of total complicity, they and their people, in the execution of Jesus Christ, by superiors up and down the chain of command at the Air Force Academy.
But like I've said before, most of the people who've come to me are Christians. That's been the big sea change here. Look, Sinclair Lewis said it best, in [the 1930s]. He came back from Germany, he was observing it for a number of months ... and he [said] that he had now seen fascism up close and personal, and he knew that when it came to America it would be wrapped in the American flag, carrying a cross. And you know what? He's right.
It's one thing to be pushing evangelical Christianity on prisoners in a penitentiary and to be pushing intelligent design in public schools. That's bad enough, but that's not our fight. My foundation focuses, with laserlike precision, on the Marine Corps, Army, Navy and Air Force, because if we lose them, we lose everything.
Your youngest son is at the Air Force Academy, which has been the focus of a lot of the allegations about evangelical proselytizing. With you being so out-front on this, has he been the target of any reprisals?
No. I think that they realize if they touch a hair on his head, I will open up the skies and bring down a hammer and tongs like they've never seen before. There have been some snide remarks, but in the main it's steady cruising.
...But I can tell you that I get -- I don't think I'm in double digits, but it started at about 10 o'clock last night; after the press conference in the morning, I've had nine death threats since about 10 o'clock last night. I usually get about two or three a week. They're very grotesque, everything from wanting to gas all the Jews in America and send the corpses back to Israel to threatening to blow me up, threatening my house will be blown up, raping my wife, blowing up my house. We've had our tires slashed, we've had feces and beer bottles thrown at the house, we've had dead animals placed on the front door of the house.
I was in Topeka, on a book tour, and the local Episcopal priest came out to support me and five hours later his church was burned down. And the local synagogue in Topeka, where I was to speak that night, was desecrated with spray paint saying, "Fuck you, Jews" and "KKK," all that stuff.
So if this is a nice, Christian response, my response is take a number, pack a picnic lunch and stand in line, because we're not going to stop, we're not going to ever stop, we're going to lay down a withering field of fire and leave sucking chest wounds on these people that are trying to destroy our Constitution. This is not a Christian-Jewish issue, and it's also not a political spectrum, left or right issue, it's a Constitutional right and wrong issue. These officers, and what's happening in that video, simply by appearing in a video that is blatantly and vociferously sectarian, by simply doing three things in that video, they should be court-martialed. That would be circulating blood, reflecting light and breathing. That's all they had to do and that alone would have been enough. You're not Jewish, are you?
I am, actually.
You understand the word "dayenu"? (Amy: Dayenu means "It would have been enough.") Well, it's dayenu -- the dayenu factor is simply by letting the light reflect off you, circulating blood and breathing in that video. Everything else beyond that is extra. Dayenu's my favorite song at Passover, that's why I use it.
My response is I've given the new secretary of defense 20 days to answer the Freedom of Information Act request, which the law gives him, and at the end we intend to get as much information as we can, fashion it into a dagger and then stab at the heart of this unconstitutional, wretched, vile, darkness at the Pentagon. This unconstitutional darkness, we will stab at it with our dagger until we kill it.
Ever seen Valdez Is Coming? Great movie, starring Burt Lancaster, from the book by Elmore Leonard. Let's just say this guy's the real-life remake of Valdez, just going to war with words and legalities instead of a calvary gun. And it's good he's on the side of what this country was founded as, instead of what the neo-primitives would like to turn it into.
Voting For The Man Or The Myth?
John McCain's awfully popular, but why? A few weeks ago, LA Times' assistant editorial page editor Matt Welch yanked off all the mythology and looked underneath. Here's what he found:
Sifting through McCain's four bestselling books and nearly three decades of work on Capitol Hill, a distinct approach toward governance begins to emerge. And it's one that the electorate ought to be particularly worried about right now. McCain, it turns out, wants to restore your faith in the U.S. government by any means necessary, even if that requires thousands of more military deaths, national service for civilians and federal micromanaging of innumerable private transactions. He'll kick down the doors of boardroom and bedroom, mixing Democrats' nanny-state regulations with the GOP's red-meat paternalism in a dangerous brew of government activism. And he's trying to accomplish this, in part, for reasons of self-realization.The first clue to McCain's philosophy lies in two seemingly irrelevant items of gossip: His father was a drunk, and his second wife battled addiction to pain pills. Neither would be worth mentioning except for the fact that McCain's books and speeches are shot through with the language and sentiment of 12-step recovery, especially Steps 1 (admitting the problem) and 2 (investing faith in a "Power greater than ourselves").
Like many alcoholics who haven't quite made it to Step 6 (becoming "entirely ready" to have these defects removed), McCain is disarmingly talented at admitting his narcissistic flaws. In his 2002 book "Worth the Fighting For," the senator is constantly confessing his problems of "selfishness," "immaturity," "ambition" and especially "temper," though he also makes clear that his outbreaks of anger can be justifiable and even laudable when channeled into "a cause greater than self-interest."
"A rebel without a cause is just a punk," he explains. "Whatever you're called — rebel, unorthodox, nonconformist, radical — it's all self-indulgence without a good cause to give your life meaning."
What is this higher power that ennobles McCain's crankiness? Just as it is for many soldiers, it's the belief that Americans "were meant to transform history" and that sublimating the individual in the service of that "common national cause" is the wellspring of honor and purpose. (But unlike most soldiers, McCain has been in a position to prod and even compel civilians to join his cause.)
Read the whole piece at the link above. Some very compelling points not to go for McCain. Right now, it's a little premature, I know, but my favorite candidate is Rocky Anderson. Perhaps after he gets a Welch job, I'll feel differently.
Dilbert Does Deganya
Sorry, Deganya's a bit obscure, but it's one of few readily available Israeli place names that starts with D. Scott Adams asks a good question:
This got me thinking again about my own opinions on the Palestinian problem. People like to say it’s unsolvable because it’s so “complicated.” But to me it really boils down to one question: If Israel did everything that was asked of it (short eliminating itself), would its enemies stop trying to annihilate it?
The Best Argument For Being Cremated?
Still-surviving relatives with exceptionally bad taste.
Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France.
Immigrant Muslims As Rapists -- Rape Epidemic In Scandanavian Countries
Here's an excerpt from Free Republic:
Alarmed at last week’s police statistics, which revealed that in 68% of all rapes committed this year the perpetrator was from an ethnic minority, leading Muslim organisations have now formed an alliance to fight the ever-growing problem of young second and third-generation immigrants involved in rape cases against young Danish girls.As Robert Spencer has demonstrated, rape can indeed be linked to Islamic teachings of Jihad, and even to the example of Muhammad himself, his Sunna. Above all, it is connected to Islamic notions of the role of women in society, and their behaviour in the public sphere. An Islamic Mufti in Copenhagen sparked a political outcry after publicly declaring that women who refuse to wear headscarves are “asking for rape.” Apparently, he isn’t the only Muslim in Europe to think this way:
The German journalist Udo Ulfkotte told in a recent interview that in Holland, you can now see examples of young, unveiled Moroccan women with a so-called “smiley”. It means that the girl gets one side of her face cut up from mouth to ear, serving as a warning to other Muslim girls who should refuse to wear the veil. In the Muslim suburb of Courneuve, France, 77 per cent of the veiled women carry veils reportedly because of fear of being harassed or molested by Islamic moral patrols.
Hijab, the Islamic veil, is thus not “just a piece of cloth”. It serves as a demarcation line between proper, submissive Muslim women and whores, un-Islamic women who deserve no respect and are asking for rape. The veil should more properly be viewed as the uniform of a Totalitarian movement, and a signal to attack those outside the movement. Judged in the light of the Mufti who said that women who don’t wear it are asking for rape, how on earth can the veil be said to be about “choice”? The freedom to choose not to be raped if you dress in a normal fashion in your own country? Is that what freedom is about in Europe in 2005?
Even though Sweden, unlike Denmark, has almost no public debate about immigration, frustration is very much present underneath the surface. 75 % of Swedes think that many people in their country “dislike” Muslims, more than in any other European nation surveyed. Even in Holland, which recently witnessed violent clashes with Muslims after the murder of Islam-critic Theo van Gogh, the rate is lower than in Sweden. But you’re not supposed to talk about such issues in Sweden. That would be “racist."
Swedish laws prohibiting “hate speech” against racial minorities have been vigorously enforced. There have, for example, been a number of gang-rapes of Swedish women by Muslim immigrants. But Swedes must be careful what they say about them. On May 25, neo-Nazi Bjorn Bjorkqvist was convicted and sentenced to two months in prison for writing, “I don’t think I am alone in feeling sick when reading about how Swedish girls are raped by immigrant hordes.”
...And the problem is not just limited to Sweden. It exists in Norway, too:
Rape charges in the capital are spiraling upwards, 40 percent higher from 1999 to 2000 and up 13 percent so far this year. Police Inspector Gunnar Larsen of Oslo’s Vice, Robbery and Violent crime division says the statistics are surprising—the rising number of rape cases and the link to ethnic background are both clear trends. But Larsen does not want to speculate on the reasons behind the worrying developments. While 65 percent of those charged with rape are classed as coming from a non-western background, this segment makes up only 14.3 percent of Oslo’s population. Norwegian women were the victims in 80 percent of the cases, with 20 percent being women of foreign background.
Wake up, Europe. The wolf isn't at the door, it's in the next room. With the Muslim immigrant (the primitive-thinking fundamentalist) birth rates skyrocketing vis a vis those of democratic, free-thinking people in Europe, is it too late to do anything about it -- to stop drastic changes in free societies until they become repressive Muslim republics? Yes, sadly, it probably is. Enjoy old Europe as long as you can.
Apart-huh?
Here's Kinsley on Jimmy Carter's dimwittedly titled new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Kinsley writes on Slate:
It's not clear what he means by using the loaded word apartheid, since the book makes no attempt to explain it, but the only reasonable interpretation is that Carter is comparing Israel to the former white racist government of South Africa. That is a foolish and unfair comparison, unworthy of the man who won—and deserved—the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing Israel and Egypt together in the Camp David Accords, and who has lent such luster to the imaginary office of former president.I mean, what's the parallel? Apartheid had a philosophical component and a practical one, both quite bizarre. Philosophically, it was committed to the notion of racial superiority. No doubt many Israelis have racist attitudes toward Arabs, but the official philosophy of the government is quite the opposite, and sincere efforts are made to, for example, instill humanitarian and egalitarian attitudes in children. That is not true, of course, in Arab countries, where hatred of Jews is a standard part of the curriculum.
The practical component of apartheid involved the creation of phony nations called "Bantustans." Black South Africans would be stripped of their citizenship and assigned to far-away Bantustans, where often they had never before set foot. The goal was a racially pure white South Africa, though the contradiction with the need for black labor was never resolved. Here might be a parallel with Israel, which needs the labor of the Arabs it is currently trying to keep out.
But in other ways, the implied comparison is backward. To start, no one has yet thought to accuse Israel of creating a phony country in finally acquiescing to the creation of a Palestinian state. Palestine is no Bantustan. Or if it is, it is the creation of Arabs, not Jews. Furthermore, Israel has always had Arab citizens. They are Arabs who were living in what became Israel prior to 1948 and who didn't leave. They are a bit on display, like black conservatives at a Republican convention. Israel is fortunate that, for whatever reason, most of their compatriots fled. No doubt they suffer discrimination. Nevertheless, they are citizens with the right to vote and so on. There used to be Jews living in Arab nations, but they also fled in 1948 and subsequent years—in numbers roughly equivalent to the Arabs who fled Israel. Now there are virtually no Jews in Arab countries—even in a moderate Arab country like Jordan. How many Jews do you think there will be in the new state of Palestine, when its flag flies over a sovereign nation?
And the most tragic difference: Apartheid ended peacefully. This is largely thanks to Nelson Mandela, who turned out to be miraculously forgiving. If Israel is white South Africa and the Palestinians are supposed to be the blacks, where is their Mandela?
Unintelligent Obfuscation
Note that, unlike science, "Intelligent" Design is NOT a search for truth. Science correspondent James Randerson writes in the Guardian:
It is true that complex things in nature look as if they have been designed. Darwin knew this. But the sublime truth about his theory is that it explains how complex things can come about without design. And natural selection works just as well for molecular machines as it does for eyes, flippers and wings. ID, by comparison, explains nothing. It is an intellectual dead end marked: "The designer did it." Why bother trying to understand the natural world when there is the cosy God-explanation in all-too-easy reach?And, unlike Darwinism, the pseudo-science of ID can never be disproved. Show the creationists how the bacterial tail evolved and they will shift their argument to another complex structure which supposedly shows the hand of the creator. There is no evidence that could in principle disprove ID, so by definition it is not science.
ID was itself designed as a Trojan horse for creationism, with its origins in the Discovery Institute, a thinktank in Seattle (italics, Amy's) whose stated aim is "to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God".
Even a conservative judge in Dover, Pennsylvania, saw through the sham last year when he heard a case brought by parents who objected to ID being taught in their school. "Intelligent design is a religious view, a mere re-labelling of creationism, and not a scientific theory," he wrote in his judgment.
Let's be honest: despite its scientific-sounding frills and baubles, ID is pure religion. It is a reincarnation of an old idea that Darwin dispensed with and it has no place in a science class.
By the way, I met that judge, John E. Jones, at the evolutionary psych conference at Penn this past summer. He's a conservative Republican who shocked other Republicans when he didn't vote along (anti-science, pro-primitivism) party lines. Jones instead decided the question on Constitutional and scientific grounds, decrying "Intelligent" Design as "breathtaking inanity" that fails as science. My hero.
A Man Can Lose Everything
If a woman files a false accusation of rape against a man, and a jury believes it, he's pretty much screwed for life. It's my belief women should pay for filing false allegations by serving the time the man would've had the charge stuck...plus pay cash restitution to the man for the fear and suffering he went through in being falsely accused and/or defending against the false allegation.
And, yes, the female false-accuser can run on a hamster wheel in prison to make electricity or make license plates until they pay him back. I'm a firm believer in forcing criminals to pay substantive restitution to their victims. Speaking of which, I have to get on my car thief's back to pay me the court-ordered restitution he's fallen behind on, surprise, surprise.
But back to the made-up rape charges, here are two unrelated cases where women were arrested for falsely accusing men of rape, from Ft. Myers' WBBH-TV:
In the first case, Stephanie Ebbert, 20, called the sheriff’s office saying a cab driver took her to a field and then forced her to have sex with him.Detectives met with the cab driver who said the sex was consensual. He told authorities that Ebbert made up the story because he wouldn’t pay her for the encounter.
When deputies confronted Ebbert she said she no longer wanted to press charges. She was then arrested for filing a false report.
Around 9 a.m. Carey Studybaker, 27, called deputies saying she went to a home in Pine Manor to buy some pills. When she went inside she says a man forced her to smoke crack and then raped her.
Studybaker’s story changed several times while detectives interviewed her. Eventually, authorities determined it was all a lie so she was arrested for filing a false report.
Both women made up their lies to keep from getting "in trouble" with their boyfriends -- apparently, thinking nothing of what they could be doing to the men they accused.
Self-Help Worth Helping Yourself To
For Pajamas Media, I compiled my list of the nine best self-help books. Here they are:
A Guide To Rational Living by Albert Ellis, Ph.D., Robert A. Harper, Ph.D.
Reading this book about the methods of Albert Ellis, the father of cognitive behavioral therapy, could save you the tens of thousands you would’ve spent on some shrink’s couch.
The Six Pillars Of Self-Esteem, by Nathaniel Branden
This book should be required reading for every girl in America, since, if I had to name the top cause of miserable relationships, it would be women with low self-esteem.
The Truth About Addiction and Recovery, by Stanton Peele and Archie Brodsky
No, addiction is not a disease, but a choice – for short-term vs. long-term orientation. If Stanton Peele were as famous as Doctor Phil, there’d be far fewer addicts in this country.
The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work, by John Gottman
The best, data-based book on how to avoid getting divorced. Deep-friendship is key, contempt is THE relationship killer.
She Comes First, by Ian Kerner
He Comes Next, by Ian Kerner
A few words about a job called blow.
Freedom From The Known, by Krishnamurti
From birth to death, and in relationships, he blows away all the pap people believe without thinking too much about.
Open Marriage, by George O’Neill and Nena O’Neill
Not about having sex with the neighbors, but about having a fulfilling, synergistic relationship between two high functioning people.
The Road Less Traveled, by M. Scott Peck
Skip the second half – just read the first half on love and relationships. Yeah, it’s “pop psychology.” It’s also wise and good, and a very easy read.
Page Six Has Been Around For Over A Million Years
In one form or another. Some of the seminars and poster presentations I really enjoy at the ev psych conferences I attend are on gossip. Robin Dunbar, author of Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, is a primary researcher in the area. Here, from The New York Times, nature writer Richard Conniff blogs about Dunbar's work:
University of Liverpool anthropologist Robin Dunbar has argued that gossip is the main reason, after eating, that we open our mouths in the first place. In a study among the presumably intellectual denizens of a university dining hall (a “refectory,” rather), he found that the conversationalists paid scant attention to ideas. Instead, they spent 70 percent of the time talking about one another. No other topic took up more than 10 percent of the conversation, and most, including “all the topics you might consider to be of great moment in our intellectual lives, namely politics, religion, ethics, culture and work” rated only 2 or 3 percent.Dunbar suggests that it was roughly the same around Pleistocene campfires — and even among our simian ancestors — because understanding social relationships has always been essential for survival. Though they are constitutionally unable to shriek, “Oh, my god, tell me more,” even monkeys and apes practice a kind of gossip. They do it by eavesdropping. They pay acute attention to the behavior of the animals around them, and they use this social knowledge to win friends and influence fellow primates. They also spend much of their time together grooming, and paying attention to who grooms whom — a way of bonding that can be crucial when it comes to sharing food or seeking help in a fight.
For humans, the trouble with grooming as a form of bonding was that it took up too much time, especially as we evolved to live in much larger social groups. Dunbar argues that we developed large brains, and the unique power of speech, as a more efficient way of managing social intelligence. “In a nutshell,” he writes in his book, “Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language,” “I am suggesting that language evolved to allow us to gossip.”
If Dunbar is right, then gossiping, like grooming, ought to make us feel good. And circumstantial evidence suggests that it does. Hence the addiction among teenagers to Instant Messenger, and the need people of all ages feel to need to chitchat with friends, family or fellow workers by cellphone even while driving alone in the car or walking through a crowd of strangers on a city street.
Despite gossip’s bad reputation, studies suggest that it’s actually negative only about 5 percent of the time. (Even our Christmas party gossip about adultery mostly focused on how the wife and kids were handling it.) Far more often, it’s just idle chatter: “Did you see that blouse she wore yesterday?” or “He’s got a nice way with words … .” The content of such gossip may matter less than the message of social inclusion. At least in the workplace, studies suggest that gossip is also accurate 75 to 95 percent of the time. There are practical reasons why both things should be true: When you spread malicious gossip, your listeners unconsciously attribute the same negative traits or behaviors to you, a boomerang effect researchers call “spontaneous trait transference.” Likewise, researchers say spreading false information on the company grapevine is relatively uncommon because it inevitably discredits the source.
America The Humorless
What we can see or experience in this country is being regulated by the four little old ladies who tell the newspaper they're canceling their subscription or 400 churchgoers who've been told to join a campaign of complaint. Fearful newspaper editors and TV station managers fearful of a massive fine from the FCC (and with huge amounts of money at stake, who can blame them?) pull content, or pull punches, even before the compaints come in, in what they're willing to allow.
Often, the thinking behind this is "What about the chilllldren?!" My thinking: Parent your own damn brats; don't expect the government to do it, and certainly don't parent me, too, by controlling what I can and cannot see. If you don't like the newspaper content, don't buy the newspaper. And if certain TV channels show stuff that disturbs you; well, change the channel, or throw away your TV.
But, think about something for a moment: What's the big deal about showing a little skin?
At the moment the silliest furor is over Tempe, Arizona waitresses dressed as naughty nurses...who are, naturally, getting the real nurses' panties in a wad...all the way to the Arizona attorney general's office. From an AP story:
The Heart Attack Grill — a theme restaurant whose specialties include the Quadruple Bypass Burger and Flatliner Fries, cooked in pure lard — is making health-care professionals’ blood pressure rise, and not because of the menu.It is because of the waitresses’ naughty nurse uniforms.
The waitresses wear skimpy, cleavage-baring outfits, high heels and thigh-high stockings — a male fantasy that some nursing organizations say is an insult to the profession.
Several nurses have complained to the Arizona attorney general’s office, and a national nursing group has repeatedly asked Heart Attack Grill owner Jon Basso to stop using the outfits.
“Nurses are the most sexually fantasized-about profession,” said Sandy Summers, executive director of the Center for Nursing Advocacy, based in Baltimore. “We’re asking people, if they’re going to have these fantasies, please don’t make it so public. Move these sexual fantasies to other professions.”
Basso shrugs off Summers’ complaints, and refers to her and her supporters as prudes, cranks and lunatics.
“If anything, I think it glorifies nurses to be thought of as a physically attractive and desirable individual,” Basso said. “There’s a Faye Dunaway, Florence Nightingale hipness to it. Nobody wants to think of themselves as some old battle ax who changes bedpans for a living.”
The most serious complaint Basso has faced was made to the Arizona attorney general’s office by the state Board of Nursing. In September, the attorney general’s office wrote Basso a letter informing him that he is illegally using the word “nurse” at his restaurant and on his Web site. Citing Arizona Statute A.R.S. 32-1636, the attorney general said only someone who has a valid nursing license can use the title “nurse.”
Basso refused to remove “nurse” from his Web site but inserted an asterisk next to every nurse reference and included the following disclaimer:
“The use of the word ‘nurse’ above is only intended as a parody. None of the women pictured on our Web site actually have any medical training, nor do they attempt to provide any real medical services. It should be made clear that the Heart Attack Grill and its employees do NOT offer any therapeutic treatments (aside from laughter) whatsoever.”
Oh. Please. Hellooo, Overlawyered! If the guy was going to be forced into putting in a disclaimer, I wish he'd at least started it, "Hey, humorless asswits..."
And, the Arizona attorney general, for his part in this -- for doing anything more than laughing at the angry nurses -- should be tied up in the center of some mall, and Fluffernuttered and feathered, then left there to be laughed at by anyone passing by who isn't humorously dead yet.
While we're at it, let's contrast the silly uproar in America (again, from women) over a woman showing some skin in a legal publication...
...with the ad that I spotted in the Italian daily newspaper, Corriere Della Serra:
As far as I can see, in the wake of this newsprint show of titty, Italy is not burning, and its residents are not rioting in the streets and holding orgies. If anything, the parts of Europe where nudity is shown seem sexually healthier. In fact, they even have fewer abortions in the really "loose" European countries -- the ones where they don't kid themselves, based on senseless religious doctrine, that lecturing kids in "abstinence only" makes an iota of sense. From the 2005 Guttmacher Report:
...The U.S. abortion rate remains among the highest of all industrialized nations—more than twice as high, for example, as the Netherlands (nine per 1,000 women of reproductive age). There, unlike here, government and social institutions support comprehensive sex education and health care services aimed at helping people, including young people, avoid unintended pregnancy and disease; contraceptive use is widely encouraged and contraceptives are easily available; and national health insurance helps ensure that people have access to timely and affordable care. In short, the abortion rate in the Netherlands—and in other western and northern European countries—is low because unintended pregnancy rates are extremely low due to widespread and effective contraceptive use.
Oh, and P.S. if nudity in Italian culture is as accepted as this ad in the biz section makes it seem, I'd imagine the Italians have the same problem we do getting "young people" to read the newspaper.
Here in America, on the other hand, you have Elmore Leonard being told by The New York Times (in the editing process on his serial, "Comfort To The Enemy," which ran in the Magazine), that he can't say "get laid" in the paper. And Dan Neil, the LA Times' auto columnist, being told he's not allowed to say "Do me!" And my editor at Creators Syndicate has to put a "language advisory" on my column (to notify the daily paper editors who aren't too gutless to run it) whenever I use a word like "butt."
Pretty pathetic, humorless, puritanical country we're having here, huh?
From Here To Attorneys’ Fees
A girl suspects she married too young, and doesn't know quite what to do about it. I just posted another Advice Goddess column. Here's the question:
I’m 23 and married just over a year. Six months ago, before my husband and I moved so I could start law school, I slept with an older attorney, a co-worker. I was wracked with guilt and confessed to my husband. Now, he’s constantly depressed, angry, and insecure, and I’ve happily buried myself in my studies, trying to forget that another outburst awaits at home. I regret what I did, but I don’t need to be constantly reminded. I can’t help feeling I married too young. I still love my husband although I don’t feel “in love” with him, but I stubbornly refuse to admit failure, and hold out hope things will work out. I’m overextended with studying, and keep waking up with a sinking feeling that something needs to be done. But what?--Silently Stewing
And here's what I said in response:
You take the relaxed approach to marital reconciliation -- simply holding out hope things will work out. You might apply this strategy elsewhere in your life; say, to home remodeling projects. Yes, forget drills, saws, and socket wrenches. Hire psychic construction workers, ply them with beer and Chex Party Mix, and have them spend the day holding out hope your kitchen cabinets will grow new doors.Your marital problems probably started with an equally relaxed approach to thinking -- a failure to use your head as more than a staging area for your hair. In this, you’re not alone. A lot of people, especially those in their 20s, make life-shifting decisions without really thinking them through. Take that pledge, “Till death do us part,” as in, “I’ll never, ever have sex with anyone but this man.” Can you seriously promise that or be counted on to make any decisions of lasting consequence at 22 -- in lifetime terms, essentially 22 minutes after you’ve recovered from being blind-drunk at prom?
Your approach to cheating seems just as "yeah, whatever." What was the idea here, you’d have sex with this hotshot attorney, hop out of bed, and blithely be on your way? Oops, what’s that thing following you home? Look, it’s a little black blob of guilt! You tucked it away in your purse. But, like Paris Hilton’s Chihuahua Tinkerbell, which she dumped on her mother after it got Tinker-huge, your guilt soon outgrew your handbag. Next thing you knew, you were giving a piggyback ride to a black blob the size of a Barcalounger. “Yoohoo…Honey…” After all, what’s a husband for besides hauling your oversized baggage around?
Now, there’s a creative take on justice: You do the crime, somebody else does the time. (Your future clients should be so lucky.) Meanwhile, you can’t quite get what, exactly, the big deal is. You said you were sorry; how come your husband’s still lying there on the front walk like Humpty Dumpty? Um, just a guess, but it might have something to do with all the effort you’re investing in rebuilding his trust and the marriage you exploded; or, as you put it, “stubbornly refus(ing) to admit failure” (while stubbornly avoiding doing anything else).
Ask yourself what’s really tragic, a marriage that ends or a marriage that goes on too long? Maybe the best you can do is turn this into a learning experience, and resolve to take a leap second/look first approach to life. This isn’t always foolproof, but even if it doesn’t stop you from, say, marrying too young, maybe you could get unmarried in a kinder, gentler way -- maybe by informing your husband it isn’t working, and parting friends. And, wow, maybe that’s what love is -- getting out of what love was supposed to be without mashing the other person’s ego into gruel.
Naturally, I got a bunch of letters and emails from people criticizing me for not telling the girl marriage is forever, and "a sacrament," and she should stick it out. I just love when people (surely due to unthinking religious indoctrination) value tenure over quality of life.
This One's A Peeper
Le MontBrillant hotel, just outside the Geneva train station, on our way to the Italian Alps. More photos and stories of that part of our trip very soon.
Jesus Really Does Save
Piles of money -- by evangelizing on the taxpayer dime. After coming back Saturday night from Paris and Courmayeur, Italy (pictures and details soon), I woke up in the wee hours to the article in The New York Times about convicts getting much nicer digs if they suck up to the evangelical Christians running a religious program. Diana B. Henriques and Andrew Lehren write in The New York Times:
Life was different in Unit E at the state prison outside Newton, Iowa.The toilets and sinks — white porcelain ones, like at home — were in a separate bathroom with partitions for privacy. In many Iowa prisons, metal toilet-and-sink combinations squat beside the bunks, to be used without privacy, a few feet from cellmates.
The cells in Unit E had real wooden doors and doorknobs, with locks. More books and computers were available, and inmates were kept busy with classes, chores, music practice and discussions. There were occasional movies and events with live bands and real-world food, like pizza or sandwiches from Subway. Best of all, there were opportunities to see loved ones in an environment quieter and more intimate than the typical visiting rooms.
But the only way an inmate could qualify for this kinder mutation of prison life was to enter an intensely religious rehabilitation program and satisfy the evangelical Christians running it that he was making acceptable spiritual progress. The program — which grew from a project started in 1997 at a Texas prison with the support of George W. Bush, who was governor at the time — says on its Web site that it seeks “to ‘cure’ prisoners by identifying sin as the root of their problems” and showing inmates “how God can heal them permanently, if they turn from their sinful past.”
One Roman Catholic inmate, Michael A. Bauer, left the program after a year, mostly because he felt the program staff and volunteers were hostile toward his faith.
“My No. 1 reason for leaving the program was that I personally felt spiritually crushed,” he testified at a court hearing last year. “I just didn’t feel good about where I was and what was going on.”
For Robert W. Pratt, chief judge of the federal courts in the Southern District of Iowa, this all added up to an unconstitutional use of taxpayer money for religious indoctrination, as he ruled in June in a lawsuit challenging the arrangement.
The Iowa prison program is not unique. Since 2000, courts have cited more than a dozen programs for having unconstitutionally used taxpayer money to pay for religious activities or evangelism aimed at prisoners, recovering addicts, job seekers, teenagers and children.
Nevertheless, the programs are proliferating. For example, the Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest prison management company, with 65 facilities and 71,000 inmates under its control, is substantially expanding its religion-based curriculum and now has 22 institutions offering residential programs similar to the one in Iowa. And the federal Bureau of Prisons, which runs at least five multifaith programs at its facilities, is preparing to seek bids for a single-faith prison program as well.
Government agencies have been repeatedly cited by judges and government auditors for not doing enough to guard against taxpayer-financed evangelism. But some constitutional lawyers say new federal rules may bar the government from imposing any special requirements for how faith-based programs are audited.
And, typically, the only penalty imposed when constitutional violations are detected is the cancellation of future financing — with no requirement that money improperly used for religious purposes be repaid.
But in a move that some constitutional lawyers found surprising, Judge Pratt ordered the prison ministry in the Iowa case to repay more than $1.5 million in government money, saying the constitutional violations were serious and clearly foreseeable.
Yay, Judge Pratt!
Sorry, but as long as we still have separation of church and state in this country (and I'm optimistic, with Bush's popularity sounding like it's measured in degrees Celcius), we have no business funding anything but the teaching of secular ethics in prison.
Blend Already
Tony Blair wakes up to the idiocy of multiculturalism. From a story in the Daily Telegraph by Philip Johnston:
Tony Blair formally declared Britain's multiculturalist experiment over today as he told immigrants they had "a duty" to integrate with the mainstream of society. In a speech that overturned more than three decades of Labour support for the idea, he set out a series of requirements that were now expected from ethnic minority groups if they wished to call themselves British.These included "equality of respect" - especially better treatment of women by Muslim men - allegiance to the rule of law and a command of English. If outsiders wishing to settle in Britain were not prepared to conform to the virtues of tolerance then they should stay away.
He added: "Conform to it; or don't come here. We don't want the hate-mongers, whatever their race, religion or creed.
"If you come here lawfully, we welcome you. If you are permitted to stay here permanently, you become an equal member of our community and become one of us.
"The right to be different. The duty to integrate. That is what being British means."
Why Israel Isn't The Bad Guy
No, Israel isn't always in the right, but the Israelis' basic desire is not to run the Arabs into the sea, a la the famous quote from Nasser, but to have peace. Lorna Fitzsimons writes for the Guardian about why she backs Israel:
Since its birth 58 years ago, Israel has always been prepared to compromise for peace. From Begin's agreement with Sadat in 1979 to the Arafat-Barak talks at Camp David in 2000, Israeli leaders have been prepared to challenge their own people in pursuit of peace. Last summer Israel withdrew from Gaza, angry settlers and all. Yet the terror from the Gaza Strip has continued - more than 1,000 rockets have been fired into southern Israel in the past year. Since 2000, nine fatalities have been caused by Qassam missiles.Some media have reported the panic these missiles have caused but they downplay the impact because of the small scale of fatalities compared with those on the Palestinian side. My husband, a British soldier, is currently serving a tour of duty in Iraq. His unit has come under mortar fire nearly every night for the past six months. Not many service personnel have been killed by these missiles but every soldier fears that the next one might have his or her name on it. Do you think that a child, a parent or a grandmother in one of the towns bordering Gaza thinks there have been "only" nine fatalities? Can you imagine what that does to a civilian population?
We need to think carefully about the consequences of questioning the defensive reactions of a nation-state that is constantly bombarded by an enemy calling for its destruction, especially after it has withdrawn from Lebanon and Gaza. Would we as British citizens accept a single rocket on a British town, let alone hundreds?
The commentators' objection is that the response is "disproportionate". But how does a nation-state defend itself against a terrorist organisation or organisations that are part of, and deliberately hide behind, ordinary citizens? Of course the Israeli military and all military forces must act ethically. But if the number of civilian casualties continues to be the main issue, there is no incentive for the terrorists to stop using the civilian population as a shield.
We live in dangerous times when, in parts of the left especially, you can't be a friend to Islam or to Muslims unless you are anti-Israel. That is exactly what al-Qaida wants us to think. Events in Rochdale at the last election represent a microcosm of what we are sleepwalking into globally. The Islamists and the left argued that, because I supported Israel and its right to exist, all my work for my Muslim constituents was a lie. They suggested I was an opportunistic, neocon Zionist, aiming to dupe them.
Israel's willingness to compromise for peace has never been enough, because Israel alone cannot gain peace. The Palestinians and others in the region also have to want peace. Israel needs a serious interlocutor so that peace can stand a chance. So my question to the left is this: why not concentrate your attention there, rather than on the one player in the region who has always been serious about peace?
P.S. I'm still on the technological equivalent of a hammer and chisel, in the shadow of Mt. Blanc (in Courmayeur, Italy, at the Noir in Festival, where Elmore Leonard got the Raymond Chandler award last night). Will post details and photos in a few days, when I'm back home in my high-tech cave.
The Devil Wears Pravda
That's what Gregg calls the Meryl Streep movie. His review of it: "The entire movie is 'Meryl Streep is coming, let's hide!'"
We did see a terrific film last night, here at the Noir in Festival in Courmayeur, Italy, after they presented Elmore ("Dutch") Leonard with the Raymond Chandler award...Lonely Hearts, directed by Todd Robinson. With Travolta (who was very good) and Gandolfini (whom, bizarrely, I once had drinks with at Les Deux Magots in Paris, along with Peter Weller, Grandpa from The Sopranos, and two bimbos). The film also starred Jared Leto as the con man. Terrific job by Leto. But, the real star of the picture was Salma Hayek, as the blackest black widow you've ever seen. Good story, good dialogue. (Even Elmore thought so.)
What I loved about the presentation of Elmore's award was how they celebrated him for his "invisibility" as a narrator -- how he disappears and lets his characters tell the story through dialogue. I'm reminded of a line of his I almost quoted in a column; the photographer Joe LaBrava (in Elmore's book "LaBrava") knocking down the thug Richie Nobles, straddling him, and sticking Nobles' own gun in Nobles' mouth: "Suck on it. It'll calm you down."
Classic Dutch.
Dead Again?
You know all those legions of people supposedly killing themselves at Christmas time? Well, it seems they're mostly still alive and kicking. It turns out the holiday-suicide link is a myth, perpetuated by newspapers. Excuse me for not linking to a few of the stories, but I'm with Gregg at the Courmayeur "Noir In Festival," in the Italian alps (I know, boohoo), where Elmore Leonard is getting the Raymond Chandler Award...and I'm lucky just to have a keyboard, let alone figure out where the fucking apostrophe is. I just wrote an email to somebody without a single contraction, sounding like I spoke Chinese as my first language, I'm sure.
Anyway, this press release about an interesting study by researcher Dan Romer, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Adolescent Risk Communication Institute, came at an opportune time, so it'll be tomorrow's blog item...unless I can find a single Wifi access point in town where I can get on the net on my own little iBook...and get off the technological hammer and chisel that is the Italian dialup access point, the weird keyboard, and the aging PC.
Here's an excerpt from the press release about Romer's study:
Despite no basis in fact, newspapers continue to report on the increased risk of suicide around the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year holidays. An analysis of newspaper reporting over the past seven years released today by the Annenberg Public Policy Center shows that this story represents about half of all holiday-relevant suicide reporting.Stories linking suicides and the holidays during the 2005-2006 end-of-year season represented about 57 percent of the articles written, a statistically insignificant change from the 2004-2005 holiday period. The rest of the stories debunked the myth.
As noted in previous studies, the rate of suicide in the U.S. is lowest in December, and peaks in the spring and fall. Data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics show that this pattern has not changed through 2003, the most recent year for which national data are available.
The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania has been tracking holiday suicide reporting since 2000 when it released its first press alert on newspaper coverage of the myth.
The percentage of stories debunking the holiday-suicide myth has more than doubled since the Center began its survey. In the 1999-2000 holiday period, only about 23 percent of the stories that made a link between the holidays and suicide debunked the myth. In the 2004-05 holiday period, about 43 percent of the stories noted that the association is untrue. Nevertheless, the rate of reporting the myth has not changed since the first jump in accurate reporting during the 2000-01 holiday period.
“We are heartened to see the press debunking the myth,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. “But there is still a lot of coverage that keeps the story alive.”
The new results for last year include an unusually high number of stories that merely noted that a suicide had occurred during a holiday (a coincidental association). This was mainly attributable to the heavy reporting of the suicide death of James Dungy, son of Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy, around Thanksgiving. The unusually high number of stories about the link in the 1999-2000 period was attributable in part to the coming change in the millennium, which spurred considerable speculation about its effects on suicide.
Perpetuating the myth not only misinforms readers, but it also misses an opportunity to educate the public about the most likely source of suicide risk, mental illness, according to Dan Romer, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Adolescent Risk Communication Institute, and lead researcher for this study. Persons suffering from major depression and other treatable mental conditions are at increased risk of suicide and getting help from an appropriate health professional can reduce symptoms and prevent suicide. The press can help those suffering from these conditions to seek help before it’s too late.
The Morons Protecting Us
From a piece by Lisa Myers, Jim Popkin, and the NBC News Investigative Unit, a transcript from the court case brought by Bassem Youssef, the FBI's highest-ranking Arab-American agent, who alleges he's been blocked from advancement in the Bureau:
He's fluent in Arabic, ran the FBI's offices in Saudi Arabia and is a terrorism expert. In fact, Youssef's undercover work helping to infiltrate the terror organization of the so-called "blind sheik," Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, earned him the intelligence community's most-prestigious award, the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal.But now, for the first time, Youssef is speaking out against the agency he loves.
"I don't believe that the FBI's doing everything it can to combat terrorism," the 18-year FBI veteran tells NBC News.
He's not kidding. Check out what these highly-placed nimrods have to say for themselves:
Dale Watson, now retired, was the FBI's top counterterrorism official before and after 9/11.In a deposition taken on Dec. 8, 2004, Youssef’s lawyer Stephen Kohn asked Watson: “Do you know who Osama bin Laden's spiritual leader was?"
Watson: Can't recall.
Lawyer: And do you know the differences in the religion between Shiite and Sunni Muslims?
Watson: Not technically, no.
John Lewis was until recently the FBI’s deputy assistant director of counterterrorism. During his deposition on May 17, 2005, he was asked if he knew the difference between Shiites and Sunnis.
Lewis: You know, generally. Not very well.
Lawyer: Was there any relationship between the first World Trade Center bombing and the 9/11 attacks?
Lewis: I'm aware of no immediate relationship other than all emanates out of the Middle East, al-Qaida linkage, I believe. Not something I've studied recently that I'm conversant with.
Yeah? Well, I'm not "conversant" with professional hockey, either...which is why I don't earn a living doing radio and TV commentary on the games: "The man in the red shirt just used his...thingie to steal the whatchamacallit away from the man in the green shirt, but then another man in a green shirt stole it back and cracked the first guy on the head with his...thingie."
Too bad the terrorism thingie has a little more consequence. Well, then again, it is good to know that our government's focusing on what really matters -- abstinence only education programs that have been shown not to work.
Take Your Jesus To Work Day
It's becoming a daily thing for some -- except that the boss now brings Jesus in for the workers.
I can't believe how increasingly religious (or, rather, increasingly servile to the already religious) America is becoming -- just as Europe is continuing along in the opposite direction.
Here's an article in The New York Times by Neela Banerjee about chaplains on the payroll. Banerjee writes:
At the Tyson poultry plant here, Fred L. Mason Jr. hangs live chickens by their feet before they move down a belt toward slaughter. A few months ago, Mr. Mason told his boss that he had a drug problem.People urged him to see the plant’s chaplain, but he was skeptical. “What could he do? Offer me prayer?” Mr. Mason said. “I was getting that at church. I was getting that from family, when all the while I was going out of my mind.”
Nonetheless, Mr. Mason, 35 and a cocaine user for 20 years, went to the small office of the Rev. Ken Willis, the plant’s chaplain. Over the next few months, Mr. Willis helped him enroll in a drug rehabilitation program, find a counselor and Narcotics Anonymous meetings to attend.
Mr. Mason said he has not used drugs since Aug. 21, and he credits the chaplaincy program. “It’s saved my life,” he said.
From car parts makers to fast food chains to financial service companies, corporations across the country are bringing chaplains into the workplace. At most companies, the chaplaincy resembles the military model, which calls for chaplains to serve the religiously diverse community before them, not to evangelize.
“Someone who has never thought about this might assume they pray with people, but the majority of the job is listening to people, helping them with very human problems, not one big intensive religious discussion,” said David Miller, executive director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture and the author of the book “God at Work.”
The spread of corporate chaplaincy programs, especially out of the Bible Belt to the North, is part of a growing trend among businesses to embrace religion rather than reject it, Mr. Miller said. Executives now look for ways to build a company that adheres to certain Christian values. Some businesses offer Muslim employees a place and the time to pray during work.
How sweet. Commensurately, do they give atheists time off to sit around thinking rationally?
Oh, and FYI, using religion as a Band-Aid for a drug problem doesn't mean you've solved your drug problem -- what's at the root of it -- it just means you've put a big Jesus Band-Aid over it.
Thanks, Melissa W.
Disco Inferno On Boulevard Haussman
Yes, Mr. Pot is doing a little dance on a chair, as are his fly girl pots behind him.
The Christmas windows are up at the department store, Printemps. I preferred theirs -- dancing pots, pans, and tea kettles -- to the motorized stuffed animals over at Galeries Lafayette, just down the block. More on Boulevard Haussmann here.
Oh, and a word for the American (or other non-European Union) shopper in Paris: If you go to one of these stores, ask where the "Welcome Desk" is -- or "Le bureau pour la carte escompte pour les touristes...mais pas Detaxe" if you're asking a particularly dense security guard. This card is NOT Detaxe (a refund you get at the airport on the V.A.T. -- the Value Added Tax -- if you spend enough in one store). This is a card for 10 percent off that you can get on many or most items in the department store with your passport. You'll have to have your passport with you to get it and to use it.
There's a great word in French -- "insipide," which means "bland," which tends to describe certain American fashion choices. For example, Americans tend to wear teeny-weenie earrings and boring (as opposed to bright, statement-making) makeup colors...but not the French. You'll find really bold reds and hot pinks here (like Estee Lauder's Beautiful Pink -- hot, hot pink -- discontinued in the States, but still going strong here. I get mine 10 percent off at Galeries Lafayette -- which, at the moment, works out to only 20 more than the French are paying, what with the euro comparing just slightly favorably to the American 50-cent piece.)
Okay, heterosexual men may resume reading now.
Higher Taxes Courtesy Of The Party Of Lower Taxes
As I've been saying, if you're looking fiscally at who's the last conservative in office, well, Bill Clinton has George Bush beat by far. Via aldaily, by C. Bradley Thompson, this piece:
Here are some hard facts. Government spending has increased faster under George Bush and his Republican Congress than it did under Bill Clinton, and more people work for the federal government today than at any time since the end of the Cold War. During Bush’s first term, total government spending skyrocketed from $1.86 trillion to $2.48 trillion, an increase of 33 percent (almost $23,000 per household, the highest level since World War II). The federal budget grew by $616.4 billion during Bush’s first term in office. If post 9/11 defense spending is taken off the table, domestic spending has ballooned by 23 percent since Bush took office. When Bill Clinton left office in 2000, federal spending equaled 18.5 percent of the gross domestic product, but by the end of the first Bush administration, government outlays had increased to 20.3 percent of the GDP. The annualized growth rate of non-defense and non-homeland-security outlays has more than doubled from 2.1 percent under Clinton to 4.8 percent under Bush.Increased spending inevitably means increased taxes. Thus, despite President Bush’s much vaunted tax cuts, Americans actually pay more in taxes today than they did during Bill Clinton’s last year in office. The 2006 annual report from Americans for Tax Reform, titled “Cost of Government Day,” sums up rather nicely the intrusive role played by Republican government in the lives of ordinary Americans. The report says that Americans had to work 86.5 days just to pay their federal taxes, as compared to 78.5 days in 2000 under Bill Clinton. In other words, the average American has worked 10.2 percent more for the federal government under George Bush than under Bill Clinton. When state and local taxes (controlled in the majority of places by Republicans) are added to federal taxes, Americans worked for the government eight hours a day, five days a week, from January 1 until July 12, meaning they worked full-time for the government for more than half the year. As Tom Feeney, a congressional Republican put it: “I remember growing up and reading in some school textbooks that if more than half your paycheck went to the government, then you were living in a socialist society.” Just so, Mr. Feeney.
Remember "limited government"? Me neither. These guys have a contract with Halliburton, the church, and a bunch of oil companies. At the moment, thanks to their notion that they can do no wrong with their base as long as they're against gay marriage and abortion, they're not doing so well in Iraq. Oh yeah, and then there are the soldiers who occasionally appear on the news, dead or maimed, as non-victims of the non-civil war we've unleashed in Iraq. Oh, them. But, the public has yet to catch on about the limited government thing, which has turned into a rather unlimited government thing, lucky Republicans (or as I like to call them, "the biggest big Democrats since FDR").
A friend of mine who's in her sixties thinks Social Security won't tank until 20046, meaning I'll get some for a few years. (P.S. I think you have to be crazy to think you'll live on it in your senescence.)
Does Anybody Believe The White House Doublespeak Anymore?
Is George Bush completely unhinged from reality or just determined to talk like everything's A-O.K.? Frank Rich compares Bush to Nixon -- the Nixon in Woodward and Bernstein's "The Final Days," talking to paintings on the White House walls while Watergate demolished his presidency -- in Bush's misuse of language as a Band-Aid:
The most startling example was his insistence that Al Qaeda is primarily responsible for Iraq's spiraling violence. Only a week before Bush said this, the American military spokesman on the scene, Major General William Caldwell, called Al Qaeda "extremely disorganized" in Iraq, adding that "I would question at this point how effective they are at all at the state level." Military intelligence estimates that Al Qaeda makes up only 2 percent to 3 percent of the enemy forces in Iraq, according to Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News. The bottom line: The United States has a commander in chief who can't even identify 97 percent to 98 percent of the combatants in a war that has gone on longer than America's involvement in World War II.But that's not the half of it. Bush relentlessly refers to Iraq's "unity government" though it is not unified and can only nominally govern. (In Henry Kissinger's accurate recent formulation, Iraq is not even a nation "in the historic sense.") After that pseudo-government's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, brushed him off in Amman, the president nonetheless declared him "the right guy for Iraq" the morning after. This came only a day after The New York Times's revelation of a secret memo by Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, judging Maliki either "ignorant of what is going on" in his own country or disingenuous or insufficiently capable of running a government. Not that it matters what Hadley writes when his boss is impervious to facts.
In truth the president is so out of it he wasn't even meeting with the right guy. No one doubts that the most powerful political leader in Iraq is the anti-American, pro-Hezbollah cleric Moktada al- Sadr, without whom Maliki would be on the scrap heap next to his short-lived predecessors, Ayad Allawi and Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Sadr's militia is far more powerful than the official Iraqi army that America has been helping to "stand up" at hideous cost all these years. If America is not going to take him out, as John McCain proposed this month, we might as well deal with him directly rather than with Maliki, his puppet. But Bush shows few signs of recognizing Sadr's existence.
In his classic study, "The Great War and Modern Memory," Paul Fussell wrote of how World War I shattered and remade literature, for only a new language of irony could convey the trauma and waste. Under the auspices of Bush, the Iraq war is having a comparable, if different, linguistic impact: The more he loses his hold on reality, the more language is severed from its meaning altogether.
When the president persists in talking about staying until "the mission is complete" even though there is no definable military mission, let alone one that can be completed, he is indulging in pure absurdity. The same goes for his talk of "victory," another concept robbed of any definition when the prime minister America is trying to prop up is allied with Sadr, a man who wants Americans dead and has many scalps to prove it. The newest hollowed- out Bush word to mask the endgame in Iraq is "phase," as if the increasing violence were as transitional as the growing pains of a surly teenager. "Phase" is meant to drown out all the unsettling debate about two words the president doesn't want to hear, "civil war."
When news organizations, politicians and bloggers had their own civil war about the proper usage of that designation last week, it was highly instructive - but about America, not Iraq. The intensity of the squabble showed the corrosive effect Bush's subversion of language has had on America's larger culture. Iraq arguably passed beyond civil war months ago into what might more accurately be termed ethnic cleansing or chaos. That we were fighting over "civil war" at this late date was a reminder that wittingly or not, we have all taken to following Bush's lead in retreating from English as we once knew it.
Okay, right-wingers...how many of you are still behind George Wrong-War Bush these days? How could any real conservative -- not the phony religious right kind -- have been behind him from the start? Remember "no nation building"?
If you've been a reader of this blog for a while, you know I was never a "dove" about going after Bin Laden. I lived blocks from the World Trade Center just a few years before 9/11, and, like a true conservative (not a phony George Bush "conservative"), I was always for going in and flattening Afghanistan -- at least the part where Bin Laden and his merry band of of murderers were found.
But what of the mess in Iraq? And what will we do -- what will we ever do -- to fix it, now that we've broken it?
Oh, democracy in the Middle East? Except for Israel, unlikely-to-impossible at the moment...if ever. And if we had a Condoleeza Rice who understood that -- as opposed to an expert on the ended Cold War, who seemed to have no notion of the perma-hatred between sects in the region -- and other advisors who had more on their minds than what, payouts for their friends at giant corporations (was that what it was?), maybe we wouldn't be there.
And sorry, Crid, but I still can't understand why we went into Iraq. I still really wish somebody would explain it to me.
Private Jet For Jesus?
What is a writer but "a schmuck with an Underwood"? That was Hollywood boss Jack Warner's legendary quote. And these days, apparently, you can count "The Almighty" among the under-powerful as well. It seems the "All Powerful One," as some of the gullible, uh, faithful, like to call god, is really just some big invisible nobody in the sky, going nowhere, without a...drumroll...without a private jet!
Here's what they say over at Benny Hinn Ministries (enterprising fellow, that Benny Hinn):
We are entering a season of increasingly powerful evangelism and a time of the most widespread, massive global harvest in the history of Christianity. As a result, we as a ministry made a decision recently to purchase an airplane—a significant, needed ministry tool to fulfill the vision God has given us to go to the nations of the world, declaring the Gospel to lost humanity.Because we must be faithful stewards of the Lord, we retained one of America’s most respected aviation consulting firms to recommend a plane with sufficient range to go to the places God has called us to minister. It had to be the most cost-efficient, safe, and long-range plane we could possibly get.
At recent partners conferences I have talked about the cost to secure this
state-of-the-art jet aircraft, the tool we must have for declaring the Gospel to the nations in this last hour, and the miracle the Lord has provided—Dove One, an aircraft that became available just as the door of opportunity began to close on aircrafts the ministry had previously been utilizing.And at these partners conferences, I was able to raise the first portion of the down payment, which was another miracle the Lord has provided us.
As a result, we have recently taken delivery on our Gulfstream G4SP plane, which we call Dove One. I have enclosed a beautiful photo-filled brochure to explain more about this incredible ministry tool that will increase the scope of our abilities to preach the Gospel around the globe. Now we must pay the remainder of the down payment, and I am asking the Lord Jesus to speak to 6,000 of my precious partners to sow a seed of $1,000 in the next ninety days. And I am praying, even as I write this letter, that you will be one of them!
P.T. Barnum quote come to mind for anyone?
And, sorry, but if memory serves me right, didn't Jesus transport himself on dirty toes in an early pair of Birkenstocks?
Accept No Substitute
My own petit chien (little doggie), Lucy, is home with the neighbors, back in California. This one, in the apartment we're renting, is cute, and it does bark and poop less, but still...
photo by Gregg Sutter
Like Intellectual Toxic Waste, Religion Seeps Into Medicine
No place is free of irrational thought-pushing. Richard P. Sloan, director of the behavioral medical program at Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and author of Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance Of Religion And Medicine, writes in the LA Times that an effort is now afoot to make religion part of the practice of medicine:
Of course, religion is not utterly irrelevant to patients. If it were, hospitals would not have chaplains and chapels. But before organized medicine decides that religion has any value in physical healing, several things ought to be considered. First, the scientific evidence supposedly linking religious practices with better health is shockingly weak — so bad, in fact, that if we were discussing drugs, the Food and Drug Administration would have to find them unsafe and ineffective. Most research studies that claim to show how religious involvement is associated with better health fail to rule out other factors that might account for the relationship.We all agree, for instance, that there is a real connection between lung cancer and carrying a cigarette lighter in your pocket, but no one thinks that the lighter causes cancer. The lighter is a marker of another factor — smoking — that has been scientifically proved to cause the cancer.
In precisely the same way, religious practices are likely to be markers of some other factor — for example, social support from family, friends or the community or, perhaps, the absence of behavioral risk factors — that may lower the risk of disease.
Studies that show, for example, the health benefits of attending worship services or reading the Bible often make this mistake. A study of residents of Washington County, Md. — the largest study ever to demonstrate that church attendance was associated with reduced mortality — made precisely this error; it failed to recognize that attendance itself was a marker for good health.
i.e., do people not drink and smoke because they're religious, or are people who don't drink and smoke more likely to be religious?
Sloan continues:
The effort to link health and religion has other problems as well. For one thing, doctors already have so little time in their interactions with patients that they routinely fail to follow established guidelines for preventive care and for treatment of chronic disease. If, in the future, physicians spend their limited time with patients engaging in spiritual inquiries, they will have even less time to address depression, smoking cessation, weight control or diabetes self-care — factors that are demonstrably related to disease and an increased risk of mortality.
Personally, I'd like my medical care to be rooted only in science. The more irrationality that seeps in on the part of the doctor, the more nervous I am about the ability of that doctor to think rationally. And I'm already afraid enough already -- and I think more people should be -- that many doctors haven't read a study or journal article since they got out of med school.
Oh yeah, and about that famous Columbia University study about women who supposedly did better in in vitro fertilization through the power of prayer? A fraud. Lila Guterman writes for The Chronicle Of Higher Education that Bruce L. Flamm, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California at Irvine, said the paper had "'bewildering' methodological flaws":
Instead of merely having a group of people pray for the women attempting to get pregnant, the study had one group doing that, a second group praying to help the first group, and a third group praying that "God's will or desire be fulfilled for the prayer participants" in the first two groups."I couldn't believe it had been accepted [for publication] based on that fact alone," said Dr. Flamm.
He said he had written several letters to the editor of the journal detailing his views but received no response. The paper retained its published status until Dr. Flamm wrote an article, which appeared in Skeptic magazine late last month (Amy corrects: quite some time ago), that revealed the paper's connection to the fraud case.
Here's more on the story from The Observer, in a piece by Paul Harris:
The research listed three authors of the study: Daniel Wirth and two Columbia fertility specialists, Dr Kwang Cha and Dr Rogerio Lobo. Kwang Cha has since left Columbia and now helps to run fertility clinics in Los Angeles and Korea. Lobo is still at Columbia. Neither returned phone calls and emails requesting an interview. Wirth's lawyer, William Arbuckle, also failed to return The Observer's calls.On 18 May, Wirth pleaded guilty to multi-million-dollar fraud charges against US cable telecommunications company Adelphia Communications. While working for Adelphia, Horvath had steered $2.1 million of contracts to Wirth. The pair now face up to five years in jail and up to $250,000 in fines.
FBI papers filed during the case also show that Wirth has used a series of false identities over the years. In the mid-1980s, Wirth used the name of John Wayne Truelove to obtain a passport and rent apartments in California. The real Truelove was a New York child who had died as an infant in 1959.
He also used the name of Rudy Wirth, who died in 1998, to establish an address in New York and claim social security benefits. It is not clear whether Wirth and Rudy Wirth were related.
It has emerged that Wirth has no medical qualifications. He graduated with a law degree and then took a master's in parapsychology at John F. Kennedy University in California, where he met Horvath.
Wirth and Horvath have co-authored numerous pieces of research claiming to prove paranormal activities. Many of them are linked to a body called Healing Sciences Research International, which Wirth heads. However, the institute appears to be only a mail box with no telephone number.
Horvath also has a long criminal history and has used many fake identities, including Joseph Hessler, a child who died in Connecticut in 1957. It was as Hessler that he was jailed for fraud in 1990. But it was as John Truelove - using the same false identity as Wirth - that he was arrested in 2002 for burning down his own bungalow in order to claim the insurance. Horvath has also pleaded guilty to practising medicine without a licence after posing as a doctor in California.
Sceptical scientists liken the two to a pair of conmen, similar to the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the film Catch Me If You Can. 'They seemed to think they were cleverer than everyone else. It was maybe the love of the game that spurred them on,' said Professor Dale Beyerstein of the University of British Columbia, who has been investigating the pair's research for several years.
Of course, religion itself is based mainly on fraudulent thinking -- the notion, based in zero evidence, that there is a god, and that god handed down the often contradictory document called The Bible (or The Koran, The New Testament, etc.)
If, as Daniel Dennett suggests, religion were viewed as irreverently and unsentimentally as, say, animal husbandry (as it should be), people would have to admit it's based on a fraud. Only because science is held to an actual standard of proof was fraud eventually discovered in the praying-for-babies case.
Sign Here, Sexy
Funny film about sexual consent forms, which, by the way, if I were a pro athelete, or maybe just any old man, I'd have every woman sign before sex.
Another Example Of How Technology Divides People
Incredible and incredibly fun blogger party last night in Paris hosted by Richard Nahem and his boyfriend, Vincent.
Here's Richard, connecting wirelessly to the Internet (the man needs no computer).
I believe that's the famous Petite Anglaise, whose firing for blogging later turned into a book deal, and the artist, Matthew Rose, in the background.
Here we have two LA redheads, Laurie Pike, fashion editor of LA Magazine, and the blogger behind one of my favorite blogs, The Paris Blog, and yours truly, in orange:
P.S. Laurie highly recommends this show.
Here I am, displaying my photographic non-prowess...
...with my friend Little Shiva, who came from North Carolina, via Belgium, for the party. To my right is the very funny author and travel columnist, Elliott Hester, who's become an extremely popular blogger in the short time he's been subbing for The Dull Lady Of The Errors, Susan Spano, at the LA Times' Paris Postcards blog. Unfortunately, the very charming Polly Vous Francais got cut out of the picture by my big arm.
Here's a better pic of Little Shiva and me, and a better shot of Polly's head; this time, showing off her glossy brown hair.
Here's rock n' roll photographer Sue Rynski and her husband Franck.
Note the "Destroy All Monsters" sweater on Sue. She just published a fabulous book (published by the Japanese, so it's extra-fabulous) of her Destroy All Monsters photos.
Here Franck looks for bugs in my ear while Susie Hollands listens to his entymological wisdom:
And finally, Richard and Vincent's child, which was probably designed by Vincent, who's an art director and an artist.
Photos by Gregg Sutter.
UPDATE: Here's more on the party, posted by Richard Nahem, aka "The Pearl Mesta of Paris." (His boyfriend, Vincent, and I called him that.)
What's Gone Wrong With The GOP?
via Andrew Sullivan, Chester Finn on NRO Online:
What’s gone wrong with the GOP? Let me start by quoting a friend who is both gay and conservative (yes, I know several such): “I’m for low taxes, strong defense and limited government. Why doesn’t the Republican party want me?”There’s a two-part answer to that question and neither half is good news. The first is that today’s GOP doesn’t really want gays — and it yearns to supervise everybody else’s bedroom and reproductive behavior as well as (implicitly, at least) their relationship to God. The second is that Republicans are no longer really in favor of limited government. Besides having their own version of a nanny state, they want to spend and spend, start program after program, ladle out the pork, make deals with influence peddlers, and spin the revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street. Yes, they still pretend to favor low taxes but that’s an illusion; they pay for limitless government via huge deficits that will mean high taxes for my granddaughter.
Three other domestic problems — and then a word about foreign policy.
First, while claiming to favor state and local control of social programs, the Republicans have accepted if not advocated astonishing amounts of micro-management from Washington, even when they were in charge. Consider the No Child Left Behind Act, where the White House and congressional leaders wound up getting it exactly backward: instead of national education standards, tests, and sunlight combined with state/local/school/parent autonomy regarding how (and when and even whether) to attain those standards, they decreed that states would set their own standards (and pick their own tests) while Washington dictates timelines, interventions, remedies, and procedures, even the selection of reading programs. And all of this offset by very little school choice. Perhaps this was the price of bipartisan legislation in 2001, but it’s not where the GOP should be five years later.
Second, the immigration-policy schism is catastrophic. Besides smacking of nativism, it repels legal immigrants who might vote Republican — a swelling population. It’s also bad for the economy, bad for law enforcement and bad for millions of kids who live here — and will grow up here — but through absolutely no fault of their own aren’t (or their parents aren’t) legal. Let the Democrats be split by anti-immigrant trade unions and job-wary blacks. Let the GOP say “Welcome. Play by the rules — before and after you come — and we’ll find a way to make you legal.”
Third, some of the party’s environmental positions are embarrassing, above all its denial of the global-warming problem and all that it portends. How can the U.S. deal energetically with such enormous warmers as China and India if it doesn’t first acknowledge that the icecaps are melting and human activity is at least partly responsible?
Foreign policy isn’t my forte, but I don’t think the U.S., strong and rich as it is, can go it alone internationally. We’re obviously having no luck with Iran and North Korea. China is kicking our butt. Darfur is a crime against humanity. NATO is probably obsolete. The U.N. is basically useless. Somebody smarter than I am needs to rethink all this for a globalizing, post-Cold War planet that buzzes with terrorists.
And that’s the key point. When it comes to thinking and rethinking, the GOP seems to be on autopilot, like England’s Tories, once known (Pat Moynihan taught me) as “the stupid party.” For most of the past 30 years, Republicans were America’s smart party, the party of ideas. Conservatism was intellectually respectable, abounding in imaginative people offering fresh approaches. But where will tomorrow’s ideas come from? When the Democrats ran out of ideas and tilted toward their own extremists, some wise folks started the Democratic Leadership Council, a charter member of which was Bill Clinton, the most successful (despite his character flaws) Democratic politician of my adult life. Where is its Republican equivalent? Who will lead it? Shouldn’t we be addressing those questions before the 2008 primaries begin?
You should be, but I imagine you'll still be too busy trying to cancel abortion rights and prohibiting gays from getting hitched.
Desperately Seeking Susan Sontag
(This one's for Lena!) Sontag sleeps with Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Marguerite Duras, among others, at the Cimetière de Montparnasse.
Her son had to get permission from the mayor of Paris for her to be buried there. We went looking for her grave -- also no easy task.
On our way to Sontag, we popped by the grave of Philippe Noiret, who just died. Here's his spot...no stone yet, but plenty of flowers, including an arrangment with the note, "Philippe, The Theater of The Madeleine Writes You A Love Letter."
We were at the cemetery with our friends Emily and Pierre. Emily is American, living in Paris, and was a New Yorker before. She remarked on a difference between Paris and New York -- that many events in New York are private, and happen behind closed doors. But, in Paris, there's more access for the public.
Here are a few more graves we saw on our way...a family murdered at Auschwitz:
A famous aviatrice:
Simone and Jean-Paul:
And finally, we found it:
A little closer:
Oh, and P.S., for those who are of the mind that the French are not friendly, and merely growl at strangers or ignore them while driving them from the airport, people always talk to me. An old man started walking with me, asking me if I was looking for a plot. I told him I had a few years yet. He told me he'd had three heart attacks, so, he joked, he could be taking up residence there any day now. Best of all, he spoke slowly, as a lot of old people do, so I understood every word.
Sam Harris Decimates Dennis Prager
But the blowhard, Prager, clinging to the irrationality of religion like a rat on driftwood, refuses to notice. Here's just one excerpt below. But read the whole thing, starting here:
I raised the teapot argument because you accused me (and all atheists) of being certain that God does not exist, inviting our readers to appreciate just how absurd and intellectually dishonest such certainty is. Russell’s argument reveals why an atheist need never pretend to such certainty (as I don’t). The burden is upon those who believe in Yahweh, Zeus, or celestial teapots to provide evidence in support of their doctrines. Russell’s argument does indeed apply to you. And it will apply to your children’s children if we don’t get our heads straight as a civilization.You wrote: “In the West, people and societies who reject the God of Judeo-Christian religions are more likely to become morally confused and foolish than believing Jews and Christians are.”
As you are well aware, the United States is unique among wealthy democracies in its level of religious adherence. It is also uniquely beleaguered by high rates of homicide, abortion, teen-pregnancy, STD infection, and infant mortality. Southern and Midwestern states, characterized by the highest levels of religious literalism, are especially plagued by the above miseries, while the comparatively secular states of the Northeast conform to European norms. Clearly, strong religious commitment does little to guarantee moral behavior or societal health.
But there is a far more important point for you and our readers to understand. Even if your claim about the link between faith and morality were true, it would offer no support whatsoever for your religious beliefs. Even if atheism led straight to moral chaos, this would not suggest that the doctrine of Judaism is true. Islam might be true in that case. Or all religions might function like placebos. As descriptions of the universe, they could be utterly false but extraordinarily useful. Contrary to your opinion, however, the evidence suggests that they are both false and dangerous.
I suspect, Dennis, that you and I agree about many questions of morality. I trust we both feel that slavery was an abomination, despite the fact that no matter how you squint your eyes the Bible tells us that it is okay to keep slaves. (Who decides what is good in the Good Book? Answer: We do. Our moral intuitions are still primary. It makes absolutely no sense, therefore, to think that we get our basic sense of right and wrong out of scripture). We surely agree that political correctness has undermined the intellectual and moral integrity of much of our discourse, both within our universities and elsewhere.
But the linkage you have drawn between immorality and atheism is spurious. And, needless to say, the taboo that got Lawrence Summers fired is the same taboo that would keep an atheist professor from criticizing the lunatic religious convictions of his students. What we need, across the board, is intellectual honesty—not more dogmatism.
Harris offers a substitute for believing in The Imaginary Friend, which he jokingly calls "The new religion of Scientismo":
Here is its creed: Be kind to others; do not lie, steal, or murder; and oblige your children to master mathematics and science to the best of their abilities or 17 demons will torture you with hot tongs for eternity after death. If I could spread this faith to billions, I have little doubt that we would live in a better world than we do at present. Would this suggest that the 17 demons of Scientismo exist? Useful delusions are not the same thing as true beliefs.
And Harris winds it all up with this:
With regard to your wager about the religiosity of murderers and rapists—it depends, of course, on what you mean by “religiously active.” If you are suggesting that these violent offenders rarely believe in your biblical God, I will happily take this bet. The rate of belief among murders and rapists in the U.S. must surely exceed the rate of nonbelief. I would even be willing to handicap it: We can leave aside the thousands of ordained child-rapists in the Catholic Church (or weren’t they “religiously active” by your lights?).I should also point out that you sealed your last missive with a fallacy. You wrote:
“You are right that this moral clarity and courage among the predominantly religious does not prove the existence of the biblical God. Nothing can prove God’s existence. But it sure is a powerful argument. If society cannot survive without x, there is a good chance x exists.”
No, Dennis, this moral clarity is not a “powerful argument,” or even an argument at all; please keep your x’s straight. If humanity can’t survive without a belief in God, this would only mean that a belief in God exists. It wouldn’t, even remotely, suggest that God exists.
A further irony, of course, is that the civilizational threat that worries us both—Islamic fascism—is purely the product of religious faith, held for precisely the reasons (or pseudo-reasons) you defend. If Muslims didn’t think of themselves as “Muslims”, Jews as “Jews”, and Christians and “Christians”, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Let me assure you that “sophisticated” Muslims resort to the same rationalizations that Francis Collins does to prop up their belief in mighty Allah. Indeed, your “awesome beauty of nature” is one of the chief rationales for faith found in the Koran. How many more people will have to die because of this Iron Age response to the beauty of nature?
Atheists Are Funnier
An atheist tries to convert the Mormons to rationality.
About the funniest Internet video I've ever seen. Watch it all the way through to the last door slam.
