This is the media’s Hurricane Katrina

Posted on June 1, 2010 by 40andover

I believe the Gulf disaster defies analogy.

But we need to pigeon hole this one for the 24 hour news re-cycle. Hmmm. Hurricane Katrina. Yeah, that’s it! Let’s exploit another episode of human suffering for the sake of ratings. That’s why the media asks, “Is this Obama’s Hurricane Katrina?”. Because that was the most recent large scale disaster. We can’t remember back almost 10 years to ask if this is “Obama’s 9/11”.

And it feeds our need, in a situation out of control, for symmetry with past events so we can pretend to understand the event and its ramifications and then go back to watching Britney Spears. The pathology of fear symmetry.

Let’s not make this about President Obama, although it would make it easier if it were. It is about greed and reckless indifference to our earth. It is about a problem of unimaginable scope causing imponderable calamity for all living beings.

We elected President Obama because he is unflappable, at least in public. Now, we are pissed because he doesn’t express constant outrage to satisfy CNN, FOX, and MSNBC and our own fear symmetry pathology.

Everyone, listen up:

Rule 1 of disaster reaction: If the only people with the machinery to solve the problem are the ones who caused the problem, don’t piss them off. If you make it so they can never get out from under the liability, they will take their marbles and go home and then all is lost. Sometimes it feels good to yell at a given moment, but it hurts you in the long run (ever hear the old saw, “don’t cut off your nose to spite your face”?).

Rule 2 of disaster reaction: There is no easy resolution to this problem because no one prepared for this disaster. Not BP and not the United States. Preparation would have required years of research and development by top scientists and hundreds of millions of dollars. So, blame Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. Even throw Carter, Ford and Nixon under that bus while you’re at it.

Rule 3 of disaster reaction: Everyone wastes time pointing figures at others. And take out the mirror. All of us. We are the problem, too. Consume too much? Vote for the Drill, Baby, Drill ticket?

Rule 4 of disaster reaction: DON’T TELL THE PUBLIC THE TRUTH. WE CANNOT HANDLE THE TRUTH (Jack Nicholson was right in “A Few Good Men”). We also expect that everything will get fixed for us, preferably within a day’s trading session at the New York Stock Exchange.

Rule 5 of disaster reaction: The media feeds our ridiculous expectations and our hubris. So, Anderson Cooper, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann, Maureen Dowd, Jack Cafferty, Wolf Blitzer and whoever else: stop with the comparisons and come up with ways to heal our earth, ways to help our fellow Americans, our wildlife, etc. Set up a disaster relief fund.

Reality No. 1 of Disasters: The man in charge — President Obama — wanted this gusher plugged the minute it happened. You think he wants to go down as the president who screwed up this disaster response?

Reality No. 2 of Disasters: Everyone is an armchair quarterback. If you can help, then help. If you can’t, then shut up.

Reality No. 3 of Disasters: If there weren’t a disaster, the media would create one. So, for the 45th President of the United States of America, what will be your Gulf Oil Spill Disaster?

This Blogger’s No. 1 Fear: If it is ever over, we will forget about it in a New York minute.

Rand Paul, the Prophet with the Pitchfork

Posted on May 26, 2010 by 40andover

That crazy Tea-Party-er is good for America. You’re thinking: some crazy person is guest blogging. Nope.

Rand Paul is a false prophet. He is rationalizing our nation’s three-decade long drift into a selfish, ego-centric theocracy. He is giving us a way to rationalize and even celebrate our nation’s screw-your-neighbor-because-it-is-your-G-d-given-right hypocrisy. Yes, if we listen to him, we will surely perish.

He lays bear the essential pathos of the Tea Party movement — the fight for white supremacy and control over diminishing resources. Neo-Nazis and Neo-Klansmen with an apocalyptic rapture.

I am over-reacting, maybe?

He said that the President’s criticizing British Petroleum was un-American. Does being American mean I have to applaud and support corporate greed that despoliates the earth? (Psssst, Randy, BP is headquartered in Switzerland to avoid US taxation).

Then he drew a line in the sand — saying that an individual’s right to be a racist is improperly impinged upon by the Civil Rights Act. (If a black proprietor refused to serve a white man, I don’t believe Mr. Paul would be so sanguine about the protections of the Civil Rights Act.)

No, I am not overreacting.

After thousands of years of human civilization and evolution, it still all boils down to the epic battle between good and evil. On one side of Mr. Paul’s line is our common humanity and sense of decency, justice and fair play. All the things that — we say — define us as Americans. On Rand Paul’s side of that line, there are only Freud’s id, chaos and brutality.

Good versus Evil. Yes, it is that simple.

Justice, Souder and me

Posted on May 18, 2010 by 40andover

http://m.yahoo.com/w/ynews/article/topstories/10?url=http%3A%2F%2Fxml.news.yahoo.com%2Fus%2Fnews%2Frss%2Frichstoryrss.html%3Fu%3D%2Fap%2Fus_congress_souder&.ts=1274229436&.tsrc=yahoo&.intl=us&.lang=en

Representative Souder, a G-d fearing family values man, joins the Rogue’s Gallery of the sanctimonious hoisted on their own petards. I am not gleeful. I don’t relish another’s embarrassments and defeats — even those people who would deny me my civil rights.

Each one of these holier-than-thou sinners begs for forgiveness and feels entitled to redemption because aliens must have inhabited his body in order for him to behave so. Do we as a society enable the hypocrisy by forgiveness and opportunities for redemption? What if we required that each one of these-who-have-fallen-THUD!-from-Grace accept that he is not the interpreter of G-d’s wills, G-d’s ways and G-d’s Bible? [That is a way lot of “G-d”s for a religious conscientious objector like me.]

If pride goeth before the fall, then humility will come after it but only if we demand it of those whom we forgive. Humility and a quest for understanding of our common humanity. And maybe we will achieve peace and justice for all.

Some questions actually tell us so much about ourselves

Posted on May 12, 2010 by 40andover

Poor Solicitor General Elena Kagan. Just because she is single, unattractive, overweight and intellectual, she must be a lesbian.

Laura Ingraham is single and, to some, intellectual. So, she isn’t unattractive or overweight. Is she . . . .?

So, former Secretary of State Condi Rice is single and intellectual. She is not unattractive or overweight either. Is she. . . ?

Ok, I get it. If Elena Kagan were hot — or at least not unattractive and overweight, it wouldn’t be an issue.

If she were a man, like Justice Souter, no one would raise the issue. How do I know? Because no one did (loudly, anyway).

Has anyone looked at all of the unattractive and overweight women who are married and heterosexual? Has anyone looked at all the gorgeous heterosexual women who are single? And all the gorgeous lesbians who are “married”?

Maybe she is; maybe she isn’t. But if unattractive and overweight were the markers, there would be only five heterosexuals in middle America.

Who will be the first politician to own up to this attitude? And this “litmus test” only pertains to women. Overweight and unattractive men? Just look at the Congress.

GOP senators don’t have gaydar. How do I know? They didn’t figure out about Family Research Council George Rekers, who hired a gay male escort to carry his bags on a trip to Europe. Or that televangelist. Or the Senator who sits wide in aiport bathrooms.

Democrats assume that the Republicans will raise the issue, so they — including the White House — are “getting out ahead of it”. In some publications, the Democrats are being criticized for not getting out ahead of it sooner.

So, even among the enlightened of our generation — including those in the White House — it is still a “smear” to say that someone is gay. And being gay is deviant but fixable, or so says the Family Research Council. Maybe it should rethink its view in light of the scandal rocking its founder.

We will allow gays to serve in the military so long as they hide under a rock. Think of the patriotism of these men and women. They are willing to shed their blood and give their lives to a country that won’t allow them to live, fight and die in dignity.

Aint that America.

Out at Work

Posted on April 8, 2010 by 40andover

I “out”ed myself today at work — not as a lesbian [remember, I am here, I am queer and I am over it] but as a blogger.

While I didn’t give away the site, apparently some of my coined phrases, like “schlepic” — in the passages I cut and pasted for a colleague — can lead straight to this blog. So, the secret is out. I will never be on the Supreme Court as a result of my writings. That’s okay. First, I am not qualified. Second, I am one of the few New Yorkers who doesn’t look so good in basic black. Phew, intellectual and sartorial disasters averted. Our nation is safe again.

Although, come to think of it, I would dispense justice, tempered with mercy. As in, “would you like extra fries with your LAST meal?” I fear that most people would be horrified if every opinion from the bench started with, “Schmuuuuuck, what were you thinking when you . . . ?” I would imprison people who tortured the words of laws or statutes beyond all recognition to fit their desired ends as violations of the Geneva Convention. You know, the Geneva Convention, the so-called “quaint” doctrine discredited by Dick Cheney and his highly educated legal “scholars”. Just using fancy words doesn’t make an idea good; it just makes it high-fallutin’ bullsh@t. But I digress. See, I would get on a roll and mayhem would ensue in my court room. Maybe I should get the Presidential Medal of Honor for having the patriotism not to seek a judgeship.

Anyway, today was a regular day without many gross things to report. Other than the fact that the Virginia governor forgot that slavery was part of Virginia history. That’s like a Texan forgetting the Alamo, for G-d’s sake. But the governor’s omission did hit an impressive trifecta: gross, idiotic and inflammatory.

And then there is the mining company that put profits ahead of lives and now 25, possibly 29, miners are dead. I think Lady MacBeth found that blood stains your hands forever. That crazy Bill Shakespeare. Our very own Elizabethan Nostradamus.

Starvation in the Sudan is at a humanitarian crisis level. (There are so many centers of humanitarian crisis, wouldn’t it be easier for the UN to list where there ISN’T a humanitarian crisis?) We really should think about how lucky the majority of us are in this nation (and remember and help the less fortunate). But, tea party-ers are crying over taxes, which most of them don’t pay anyway. Children starving in the Sudan. Spoiled Americans are protesting a functioning government that protects their liberties and provides a safety net from starvation. Let’s put these two concepts on the scales and balance them. Ok, why are the tea party-ers still talking?

Associate Justice 40andoverblog of the United State of America. It has a nice ring to it.

Doctor, heal thyself

Posted on April 6, 2010 by 40andover

The urologist who put up a sign saying, “if you voted for Obama, go somewhere else,” got his information from the Internet and . . . wait for it . . . it was misinformation. We did not “misunderestimate” him (my favorite moment of the otherwise bleak Bush years). He was flat-out wrong.

The Internet is an amazing tool. It also must be viewed in its context. Opinions — informed, ill-informed and maliciously disinformative — are out there. It is up to each person to glean the facts, evaluate the sources and come to one’s own conclusion. Just because I can write an opinion that you might read doesn’t mean that I am right, that I have all of the facts or that, quite frankly, I am interested in the truth.

Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, but that doesn’t mean that each opinion deserves equal weight. I spoke to a tea party goer about a year ago that heard on an unnamed “news” station (ok, FOX) that the health care bill would give social security benefits to illegal aliens. Ok, let’s set aside the fact that we are not talking about E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial, or Martians, and that they are humans deserving at least the catch-all phrase of “illegal immigrants”. I asked this woman if she ever dealt with the government. She asked me to get to my point. I responded that even if President Obama were seeking to give away the money in the Treasury (which he can’t because there is a 3 trillion dollar deficit), that the government needs a social security number to take any action with respect to a person’s benefits. So if someone doesn’t have a SSN (let’s assume that an illegal immigrant hasn’t stolen one because why impugn someone who is seeking a better life here, while there are native born executives of Enron and Madoff enterprises who have committed heinous crimes and haven’t yet had their days of reckoning), then it is impossible to give that person social security benefits. The commentator was either mistaken or intentionally misleading.

Ok, let’s be honest. MSNBC is slanted the other way and sometimes uses inductive reasoning — basing a hypothesis on one fact — and gets the whole analysis wrong. For me, sometimes, it is analogous to watching a show about law or maybe a doctor watching ER or Grey’s Anatomy. It strains credulity and sometimes is farcical.

However, when I realized that I paid more in 2009 taxes than most, non-celebrity, tea party-ers pay in two decades, I realized that I put my money where my mouth is. I believe in universal health care, medicare and a safety net for those like my grandparents who slept at night knowing that, if they lost their jobs in sweatshops, their children would not starve. As a child of those children — the embodiment of the American dream — I pay my taxes for those like my grandparents and my parents, and not for the ungrateful masses who are the tea-party-ers. Why? Because this is America, the greatest nation on Earth. But if you don’t want to buy in, that’s ok. But there are consequences. How about we mess with your medicare? Would you be partying then? I hope you get along with your neighbors because if I join your group, there won’t be money to pave the roads outside your homes. But because of my belief in America, and my indebtedness to my forebears, you get to be parasites sucking on the dream of America. To tell you the truth, I cannot wait to heave the yolk of your entitlement of my already heavy burden.

How about that? Let the generous, gentler and kinder America (thank you, Bush I) reclaim what is America. I live America — I work hard, I pay my taxes, I pray that the government is good, right and just, I do not believe in torture and I give charity to those who need help to jump start their lives. Yes, what Jesus would do. And I am a Jewish, lesbian, Ivy League educated, Northeastern elitist. And I embody the promise and opportunity of America more than most of the greedy, uncharitable, talking heads that pollute our airwaves.

Bring it on.

The Health Care Debate

Posted on March 27, 2010 by 40andover

Let’s just hold this space for my rant, once I get it under control. Setting aside what you believe, there are people in the country who have behaved so abominably in the tactics they used and the violence they unleashed. And they are maybe worse than unpatriotic, because what they did undermines our system of government and our society. I believe that these people are traitors to our nation and its government because they want to win at all costs, without thought to the preservation of the union. In contra-distinction, those opposed to government action under the Bush-Cheney years did not physically and verbally attack lawmakers who put us in debt for generations, have rifle scopes put on where lawmakers live, and say things like, “you’re a dead man!”

Sen. McCain wants to repeal some of the very things that were part of his platform, until he changed with the direction of the wind. Some maverick.

Many of our representatives have breached their oaths of office. And in the process, they have stoked class warfare and racial distrust and enabled fringe groups to deny the legitimacy of Barack Obama as president of the United States.

But, still, I haven’t gotten my thoughts together yet, so stay tuned.

Diversity

Posted on March 4, 2010 by 40andover

I was at a company meeting and people were excited to have me on the various client teams because “we need diversity”. I realized they were talking about being a woman and I said, helpfully, that I satisfy two boxes. “Which other one?” “Gay,” I responded. Then I was asked if I wanted to join the GLBT affinity group. “No,” I said, “I am very comfortable being gay, and my only interest is satisfying client diversity requirements to get more business. But if you have a working mothers’ affinity group, that’d be great.”

So, I’m here, I’m queer, they are used to it, but they don’t get it.

Gay Marriage

Posted on February 13, 2010 by 40andover

Someone very dear to me mentioned that something was glaringly missing on my blog — my views of gay marriage and my response to all the current strides and defeats. My response was that I couldn’t be funny or amusing about something that core to me. But, I guess I need to vent. So here goes.

I have had the many privileges of being raised white and upper middle class in this country. Even in my lifetime being Jewish was only an issue at “elite” social levels (and I didn’t like those people anyway).

But I am gay and I have less civil rights than others because of it. If I didn’t live in New York City, being gay could be dangerous. We are well-educated, well-to-do and resourceful so we have created a legal web of “equivalents” so that the inability to marry does not affect our day-to-day lives. Still, it does make me feel like a stranger in my own land.

Those against gay marriage hide behind the sanctity of the institution of marriage and the social fabric arguments.

First, if marriage were so sacred, the self-proclaimed family values politicians wouldn’t be crashing and burning in adultery and gay sex scandals every month or so. Frankly, heterosexuals are destroying the sanctity of marriage. Gays in long-term committed relationships would probably lower the divorce rates.

But all this obscures a central truth: Marriage is not a religious law. Civil law decides the rights of married people in the course of the marriage and its dissolution by divorce or death. Therefore, all married people have civil unions. Some of these are “consecrated” in religious ritual and clergy have the power to officiate pursuant to civil law. Sometimes, a couple gets married in a judge’s chambers. Sometimes, you read about a non-clergy, non-civil servant getting authorization to marry a couple.

Why is this important? Because clergy are not necessary to create a “marriage” under civil law. So, let’s fix the nomenclature and call everything a civil union — whether it is a heterosexual or gay couple. Let religions call their rituals “marriage”.

The social fabric argument really riles me: my life with my partner and our son is destroying the social fabric of our country. We pay more in taxes in any year than the average American family earns in a lifetime, we give to charity, we support universal health care, we help the elderly and the needy and we host all family holidays — civil and religious. Nevertheless, the fact of our lives is why Bubba and Jolene — who live in a rented trailer in some trailer park in Mississippi, who don’t have health care, whose children work at WalMart, run a meth lab or fight on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan — can’t get ahead. It isn’t because we have a broken public education system, non-existent health care, faltering manufacturing industries and young men and women who come back from (at least one unnecessary) war broken inside and out. Clearly, Bubba and Jolene and their children won’t have a future if the states recognize our lives as a family.

Ok, I vented.

Racism in America

Posted on January 13, 2010 by 40andover

Harry Reid is an ass for saying what he said but, unfortunately, I can’t imagine that he is alone in thinking this way.

And we should talk about it.

President Obama is a transformative figure in so many ways but right now, most minority candidates don’t have a credible chance at national elective office. Not even a wise Latina.