House of Eratosthenes

I have this tendency to be quiet from January to about April, and am pretty much uncertain as to why this is. Anticipating this year will be much the same, I thought I should post a “swan song”. Anno Domini 2005 has been just a little too exciting to let go in silence. If it were a house guest, it would be the guy who makes sandwiches in your kitchen without putting anything away, and leaves dirty socks on your coffee table. Your impulse is to drive him to the airport and carry his luggage, while leaving far more considerate friends and relatives to slink out unnoticed in the dead of night in a taxi. You reserve these most energetic of your kindnesses for those who treat you poorly, although you know you perhaps shouldn’t. You do this because his departure marks a pivotal difference in your day-to-day existence, or at least you hope it will.

So I shall drive 2005 to the airport. I will bid it a proper good-bye.

Two thousand five. Three big stories that tower above all the rest. Has anybody else noticed? They are all the same story.

Global warming is real, and humans are causing some of it. This is subject to far less dispute on December 31, than it was on January 1.

The National Security Agency has been intercepting and analyzing communications from within the United States, to hostile countries. Some of these exchanges involve full-fledged U.S. citizens, which possibly violates the spirit, or the letter, of the Fourth Amendment.

Wikipedia is struggling with a scandal, the result of too much information being too freely offered after being too easily contributed by parties not properly authenticated, and whose motives were not adequately established.

I submit that these three stories make all the others, over the last 365 days, relatively trivial. We abdicate concern for our own existence, and therefore our claim upon that existence, if we pass on a solution to global warming. We futhermore abdicate concern for our Constitution, and therefore the whole point to our existence as a democratic republic, if nothing is done about the NSA scandal. And if the Wikipedia flap is marginalized, then logically we have to marginalize any and all equivalent concerns about information-sharing, thereby diminishing the importance of that information in our daily lives. In all three scenarios, our rights and privileges to be alive and free, are compromised.

So here are my answers to the three.

Duh.

And, duh.

Global warming is, when all’s said and done, a fart. We contribute to it naturally, simply by going about our lives as an industrialized people, although it’s a pleasant idea to think that we could perhaps avoid it. We could stop living, or if a less drastic solution is required, we could stop being industrialized. By the same token, a diner could stop farting if he stopped eating. It works well in theory, anyway. In practice, agricultural people produce “greenhouse gases” and have destructive effects on the ecosystem, whether they intend to or not, just as people keep farting when they starve, or become vegetarians. “Total” remedies would fail to present solutions to the problem, therefore, it is fraud to present “compromise” remedies as potentially beneficial.

Our collective right to be “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects” has been under assault since, at the very least, World War II. President Bush’s defenders are correct in presenting the argument that this apparent abuse, is nothing new. But they are wrong to justify this with what our modern Kerry-esque liberals have come to call “fearmongering,” and when they do so, they legitimize the fearmongering charge — precedent or not. If this issue unearths a situation where the Constitution renders our continued survival unworkable, then we do not deserve to survive as a free country. After all, what would be the point of going the other way? Try this on for size: “We are a good country, because we have a Constitution that guarantees us our basic God-given rights, which our government can never take away, except when that government figures it has to do it in order to guarantee our continued survival, then we lose them for a little while.” Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it? The rights are more important than the “gummint” — rights are made by God, gummint is made by man. That is the point of the whole exercise. So this is not an issue to be waved off with the “give your constitutional rights away, live to whine another day” argument. It ought to be embraced as a national debate we should have had in 1942. And regardless of how that turns out, talk of impeachment is just plain silly. That such talk is motivated by politics, rather than concern for our continued survival as a free nation, should be obvious. President Bush has manifested a problem, he may in fact be the problem — it doesn’t logically follow that his removal would solve it.

Wikipedia is a free, online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. That obviously presents some theoretical problems, and in the last few weeks the problems ceased to be theoretical. Now Wikipedia is fighting to hang on to whatever credibility it has left, and we are left arguing about…what, exactly? That it’s possible to corrupt the pool of knowledge that is Wikipedia? Of course it is. Just as it’s possible to make an oopsie when you’re editing an article in an encyclopedia that is not free. Or even online. What we’ve learned here is that when an item of information possessing questionable veracity tumbles through a community, responsibility is shared by all who touch it — assuming they’ve spent energy to keep it going. The man who promulgates such a tidbit, has ownership of that tidbit, because ownership can be assigned nowhere else. It’s intellectually dishonest to put blood-sweat-and-tears into making sure something is yelled from the hilltops and then, when questions are asked, take the “Bob said so, so that’s bad on Bob” defense.

We have polluted the earth, and given the earth some clean-up work to do. Which, being a living thing, it has managed to do quite well, just as a man with a runny nose manages to eventually recover.

We have allowed our government to weaken our constitutional rights, and given ourselves some catch-up work to do on repairing those rights, just like a cattle farmer who has put off repairing a rotting fence for too long.

Wikipedia’s information has become polluted by irresponsible contributors, which gives work to those people who read this information, and verify it is accurate, since the guarantee has now been compromised.

There never was any guarantee. Not in any of the three cases.

You want a guarantee? You want to stop lying awake at night wondering about things? You want to make absolutely, positively certain that the climate will never change, that the state of our constitutional rights will never change, that no article of information, once contributed to you, will never have to be hastily retracted?

Drop dead.

I mean it. Drop dead. Death will solve the problem.

Life is change. Life is uncertain. Life is messy. Life entails responsibilities. Death does none of these things.

Too often, when one asks for certainty, when one asks for guarantees, what one is really asking for is death. To keep wondering about our greenhouse gas emissions is a raging pain in the ass, just as it’s a pain in the ass to keep debating whether our government is properly guaranteeing our constitutional protections, or to keep wondering whether what we read on the “innernets” is accurate. It’s all a pain in the ass, because a pain in the ass is what we are. Get rid of the ass-pain, and you get rid of us.

Roll us back into the stone age so we don’t generate any more greenhouse gases. Impeach George Bush so we can go back to arguing about American Idol, confident that the new “Camelot” government is doing everything right. Put that new government in charge of Wikipedia, so that we can be spoon-fed “good” information that inconveniences nobody and enlightens nobody, but at least we can believe everything we read.

All three of those would “solve” the problem…except, none of the three really would. Uncertainty would continue to haunt us, like the stench of a skunk haunting a man who just took a quick shower with ordinary bath soap. Uncertainty is LIFE. And life is that skunk-stench. Sometimes…a lot of the time…there’s just no getting away from it.

Some of us call it “responsibility.”

In 2005, we learned repeatedly that those two are inextricably intertwined. In 2006, we will make the right decisions in order to solve these problems. The decisions that accept these responsibilities, and in so doing, make it possible to continue life. Farts and all.

Or…maybe we won’t. Maybe we will choose certainty. Without responsibility. Maybe we’ll choose death.

We shall see.

Have a wonderful New Year. Get drunk now. If, when sleeping it off tomorrow, you do even a tiny bit of serious thinking about this stuff, then you’re part of the solution and not the problem.

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Tolerance Is Not For Everybody
Sunday, December 25th, 2005

Tolerance Is Not For Everybody

“What surprises me is how intolerant some people who preach tolerance can be.” It’s a 24-karat gold quote. The speaker is Pastor Thomas J. Crouse, and the occasion is an uprising from the homosexual activist community in Holland, which has bullied the Sturbridge Host Hotel into pulling the rug out from under Crouse’s annual “Mr. Heterosexual Contest.”

Not everybody is happy with the Straight Man’s contest.

Rob A. Okun, executive director of the Men’s Resource Center for Change in Amherst, had not heard of the event before being told about it yesterday, but said it “misses an opportunity to bring men together in a positive and celebratory way.”

“It’s unfortunate that in the guise of having a fun event … that a darker subtext exists … It is divisive, and at a time when more and more of the world is recognizing the legitimacy of gays and lesbians and transgendered people,” Okun said.

A darker subtext exists. The event misses opportunities. It is an opportunity-missing event. How scary.

Hey, I’ll tell you what’s scary. Scary is, that although the event could in theory be some ceremony with hate-group subtexts, there is no evidence whatsoever that would even suggest that it is one. Insofar as I can determine from what I’ve been able to find out, it simply is a celebration of being straight. And if Mr. Okun hasn’t heard of this before about Dec. 16th, I have to doubt that he knows much more.

Yet it has to be put down. Because it celebrates a certain sexual orientation. If it celebrated a different one, all would be good.

What interests me is, that this disparity is fueled by crude stereotypes about homosexuals. Think about it. Were there an agenda that would be consistent with such a thing, heterosexuals could piss around, they could mope, they could whine about how scared they were of Gay Pride parade, since the event might promulgate subtexts and the straight guys could get beaten up. This is the primer to the powder in the homosexual community’s musket; without the “darker subtexts,” they would have no complaint. The equivalent primer is denied to the heterosexual men, so they can’t protest equivalent pro-gay events — not because they choose not to (which, most of them would choose not to anyway) — but because they are denied equivalent ammunition on account of their sexual orientation. Few things are more amusing than some straight guy who’s afraid of a parade.

Once again, a fairly hostile strain of discrimination hides beneath a thin mask of equality and inclusion. Because of a contest that simply ran afoul of someone’s personal tastes. How tolerant.

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Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself…
Sunday, December 25th, 2005

Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself…

…and so I shan’t.

Successful Democratic Blogger Can’t Afford Blue State

Markos Moulitsas Z�niga the man that runs the most successful political blog in America can’t afford the Blue state of California:

So I’m getting a little frustrated with the Bay Area real estate market, and for the first time in years I’m casting about the rest of the nation to see if there’s anywhere else where I could possibly live.

How ironic,a guy who supports a party that promotes Fannie Mae,Freddie Mac,land-use restrictions,zoning,open space laws,and unions is unable to buy a house in the very Blue area of Northern California.All this from a guy who’s got a law degree.What is it about Blue America that hates people that aren’t rich??? Attention Markos Moulitsas Z�niga :did it ever occur to many in Blue state America that Houston(that doesn’t have zoning) is a lot more affordable than let’s say Berkeley,California.Also,Houston residents don’t have a state income tax that they are paying.It appears Kos can’t afford the very values he promotes,which is regulation of markets which leads to artificially high real estate prices.

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Commercial Disguised as Advice
Saturday, December 24th, 2005

Commercial Disguised as Advice

I just love this article. It’s an unintentionally hilarious guide for guys who are concerned about giving the right gift to their special lady and don’t want to sleep in the doghouse. The part that really tickles my funny bone? The date. Saturday, December 24. Hey, thanks a lot!

Women see a gift from their partner as an indication not just to the extent of a partner’s thoughtfulness, but how much that partner cares about them.

They judge that by how much effort their guy has put into finding out their personal details, needs and preferences. They’ll then immediately work out from all this where the relationship is at present and where it’s going.

Betcha didn’t know all that was wrapped up in that small package, did you? It’s enough to send attached males to the drinks cupboard first thing tomorrow.

Drinks cupboard? More like divorce court. Really, why would a guy with a brain put up with this nonsense? It’s like catching the mother of your children, herding said children into the bedroom, closing the door, and telling them “Remember, whoever doesn’t find their very own XBOX 360 under the tree, freshly wrapped with their OWN NAME on a tag, knows that daddy doesn’t love them.” Really, it’s exactly the same thing. The only difference is that such a greedy gift-whore is brainwashing herself, instead of the kids. But other than that it’s exactly the same thing.

All women are not like this. Really, if I was a woman I’d be so angry I’d want to organize some kind of protest march to the Toronto Sun with pitchforks and torches. What the hell is the matter with these people that they think all women hate sleazy lingerie and they all want the latest cellphone and/or Blackberry. Ah, the name of the writer of the article is Valerie Gibson. Valerie is a woman’s name. I wonder if she’s got the latest cellphone and/or Blackberry. Does she know how to use it? Does she think all women would know how to use theirs?

Not all the women I’ve known, I’ll tell you that. Most of the women I’ve dated would develop a migraine before the wrapping was completely peeled off the gadget. Oh, NO! It’s a gadget!

What in the world is the point of this advice, coming out as it does on Christmas Eve Day? Ah, in the last couple paragraphs the truth is revealed:

GIFTS THAT WOMEN LOVE: Spa certificates, books, DVDs and CDs, the latest cellphone, BlackBerry, laptop, cruise tickets and good jewelry — especially good jewelry.

In trouble? Next time go to GiftsForYourWife.com, an online business that helps busy men find gifts for the important lady in their life.

Appearances being any indication, it is an online business that helps busy men dig themselves out of a hole, AFTER Christmas, by buying some kind of make-up gift to express how incredibly sorry they are for having bought the wrong gift on the Real Christmas. Overnight, if possible, of course. Sure, that’s speculation, but what other benefit could you possibly get out of something you find out about on December 24?

And yet if it didn’t work out that way, it probably wouldn’t be worth writing up.

I can’t imagine what it would be like being married to a woman with the big brass balls to receive a Christmas gift, dislike it, and be so vocal about it that her honey would be coerced into buying some kind of make-up gift so he could possibly get sex again. Actually, with hypnosis to unearth long-buried memories, I can, but that’s another story. How many guys are in marriages and relationships like this? There are real women out there, who are deserving of our attention, fellas.

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Speech Disguised as a Question
Saturday, December 24th, 2005

Speech Disguised as a Question

Helen Thomas is asking questions. Helen Thomas is asking questions. Helen Thomas is asking questions. She’s not giving a speech. Keep saying it to yourself, maybe it will become true.

Q The President has publicly acknowledged that we went to war under false information, mistaken information. Why does he insist on staying there if we were there falsely, and continue to kill Iraqis?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, maybe you missed some of his recent speeches and his remarks, but the President said it was the right decision to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime from power –

Q And a right decision to move in and to tell the people, the American people, that it was all a mistake, and stay there?

MR. McCLELLAN: I don’t think he said that. He said that Saddam Hussein was a destabilizing force in a dangerous region of the world –

Q That isn’t true. We had a choke-hold on him.

MR. McCLELLAN: It is true. He was a threat. And the threat has been removed.

Q We had sanctions, we had satellites, we were bombing.

MR. McCLELLAN: Let’s talk about why it’s so important, what we’re working to accomplish in Iraq –

Q I want to know why we’re still there killing people, when we went in by mistake.

MR. McCLELLAN: We are liberating people and freeing people to live in a democracy. And why we’re still there –

Q Do you think we’re spreading democracy when you spy and put out disinformation and do all the things that — secret prisons, and torture?

MR. McCLELLAN: I reject your characterizations wholly. I reject your characterizations wholly. The United States is helping to advance freedom in a dangerous region of the world.

Q — recognize this kind of –

MR. McCLELLAN: For too long we thought we had stability by ignoring freedom in the Middle East. Well, we showed — we saw on September 11th –

Q — 30,000 plus?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, Helen, we can have a debate, or you can let me respond to your questions. I think this is an important subject for the American people to talk about. By advancing freedom and democracy in the Middle East we’re helping to protect our own security. It’s a dangerous region –

Q By killing people in their own country?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I reject that. We’re liberating and freeing people and we’re targeting the enemy. We’re killing the terrorists and we’re going after the Saddam loyalists.

Q The President said 30,000, more or less.

MR. McCLELLAN: And you know who is responsible for most of that? It’s the terrorists and the Saddam loyalists who want to turn back to the past.

Q We didn’t kill anybody there?

MR. McCLELLAN: Our military goes out of the way to minimize civilian casualties. They target the enemy –

Q You admit they kill?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we’ve got a lot of technology that we can use to target the enemy without going after — without collateral damage of civilians. And that’s what our military does.

Q Are you kidding?

MR. McCLELLAN: Oh, I’m going to stand up for our military. Our military goes out of the way to protect civilians. In fact –

Q Fallujah, we didn’t kill any civilians?

MR. McCLELLAN: We freed some 25 million people in Iraq that were living under a brutal regime.

There are millions of people in our country who think Helen Thomas belongs in that press box, doing exactly what she’s doing.

Now read back over that exchange again. Sure, there are things that Helen Thomas said, which are concluded by the question-mark. Can’t everyone agree that, in context, this is nothing more than a ceremonial inkblot? She’s not there to acquire information. She has an opinion. Perhaps she formed it herself. Perhaps she’s communicating it on behalf of someone else. Perhaps she formed it independently, and she was chosen because someone else liked the opinion. Whatever. She’s got an opinion, and her job is to promulgate it by talking over people.

Is anyone really willing to stand up, give their name, and assert “that isn’t true, we had a choke-hold on Saddam Hussein” is a fact and not an opinion?

What does this say about her supporters?

What does it say about them, that they think the job of a reporter is to form an opinion and then beat it into people?

What does it say about their own opinion, that they’re so ready and willing to let Helen Thomas come along and displace it with her own because they think that’s her job?

What does it say about the quality of their judgment?

Why are those people allowed to cast votes that count every bit as much as mine? Yeah, yeah, American values, whatever. That’s rhetoric. These are people who don’t think for themselves. I want to know how it is they can vote, and how in the world we can survive it. But most of all, I want to know how we’re supposed to understand what our government is doing, when a reporter who’s supposed to be asking probing questions of the leaders who run that government — the one most consistently applauded for doing so — isn’t doing it. She’s just being a hostile little bitch.

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No War On Christmas, Huh?
Friday, December 23rd, 2005

No War On Christmas, Huh?

John Gibson of Fox News has written a book observing that there is a War on Christmas going on. I don’t have the book and I have not read the book, so I don’t have any opinion on whether or not he has kept his comments factual between the covers. But it strikes me as interesting that his premise has become controversial. Yesterday, I observed with no small amount of amusement, as both sides duked it out on Gibson’s show, Rob Boston from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and Gary McCaleb from the Alliance Defense Fund. Crooks and Liars has a video segment of this incident, and NewsHounds has transcripts.

My own opinion? As is usual in life, the most extreme positions seem to be the ones disproven first. To say, verbatim or paraphrased, that “nobody is trying to get rid of Christmas” is exposed as ridiculous before hardly any research has been done, since it ascribes an individual attribute to an aggregate entity. In other words, the first time I find someone, one person, trying to get rid of Christmas, that statement is popped like a balloon.

To say there is a “war” also strikes me as an exaggeration. One left-leaning guy on a bulletin board made the point that when a commercial enterprise sells Christmas cards and it offers several products that say “Happy Holidays,” it is simply engaging in something that makes good economic sense. Why spend an equivalent amount of design and manufacturing money on a card that says “Merry Christmas,” thus artificially reducing the market for that product to the Christian consumers? It’s bad business.

It’s a fair argument.

On the other hand, I can’t help but notice the point of dispute in the video segment linked above, is whether kids have been prohibited from bringing red and green things to school, or from wearing red and green clothes. This is the logical point upon which the shouting and yelling pivots (I think, anyway; it’s really, really hard to tell). It’s a meaningless distinction. And it is a batshit-crazy rule to lay down, either way. Red forks, green plates. Red socks, green sweaters. What the hell is the problem?

And so to the extent this arouses my interest, which isn’t terribly high, it all boils down to that. “Christmas,” in the purest, strictest sense, commemorates an event that has meaning to a limited set of religions; in that sense, only in the strictest sense, it “excludes” other religions — but it “offends” no one, save for someone with serious emotional problems. And I mean that. I can go around town all day and all night, wearing red and green, yelling “Merry Christmas,” with a big green tree painted on one side of my car and the Baby Jesus painted on the other. Very few people will be offended, and it’s fair to say the people who would be, are the source of any cultural problems taking place.

Think about it. It’s like telling someone “have a nice day” and they’re upset because you shouldn’t be deciding for them what kind of day to have.

Now, there are some out there who aren’t simply arguing that John Gibson is overstating the issue — they’re arguing, further, that there is no cultural resistance taking place against Christmas at all. That, my friends, is a load of crap.

As evidence, I would cite (among many other things) this story out of Lickdale, PA about a substitute teacher recycling that ridiculous old urban legend to children in kindergarten that — get a load of this — there’s no such thing as Santa Claus, and somehow it’s the kids’ parents who are responsible for delivering the presents.

“The poem [The Night Before Christmas] has great literary value, but it goes against my conscience to teach something which I know to be false to children, who are impressionable,” said [substitute teacher Theresa] Farrisi, 43, of Myerstown. “It�s a story. I taught it as a story. There�s no real person called Santa Claus living at the North Pole.”

Farrisi doesn�t believe in Santa Claus, and she doesn�t think anyone else should, either. She made her feelings clear to the classroom full of 6- and 7-year-olds, some of whom went home crying.
:
On Monday night, Jamey [Schaeffer, 6 years old] started to recite Moore�s famous poem while sitting on a couch next to a freshly cut tree, trimmed in tinsel and topped with a golden star: “‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house. No creatures stirred.”

She paused, looked up, and said that�s when the teacher interjected, just a few lines before the verse that announces the arrival of “a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.”

“The teacher stopped reading and told us no one comes down the chimney,” Jamey said, curling into a ball on the couch, bracing her chin on her knees, her voice shrinking away like melting ice cream. “She said our parents buy the presents, not Santa.”

Nobody’s declaring a war on Christmas, huh?

It’s about making the holiday “more inclusive,” huh?

I try not to be prejudiced about such things, but I must say one of the sides in this argument has completely lost me. When teachers sieze control of a child’s personal belief system, and make decisions about that child’s regard for cherished family traditions, that supercede parents wishes and the creative processes of the child — what does this have to do with respecting diverse belief systems? Looks like disrespect, to me.

And it also looks to me as if something is going on. Maybe not a “war”…but certainly a campaign, of sorts. I’m definitely at the point where when someone says “there’s nothing to it,” to me they’re expressing a statement about their own comprehension of the state of affairs, as opposed to reality. They’re just professing their own ignorance.

Update: John Gibson has posted a few comments regarding the big dust-up on the Fox News web site. The nugget within consists of two short paragraphs:

That guy Rob Boston made me furious for calling me a liar about what I said in my book, and then admitting he hadn’t read it.

He also said I said things I haven’t said, and condemned me for it.

Like I said before, it is unusually difficult to tell what’s going on. But to the best I can determine, his description, “said I said things I haven’t said, and condemned me for it” is accurate. If someone else wants to watch the video, and then call me out that I’m wrong, I’m willing to listen to the argument and then do the teapot dance if I’m convinced I’m wrong.

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Dangerous Warming Unlikely
Thursday, December 22nd, 2005

Dangerous Warming Unlikely

The link is the point in this post, which is why the title of the post is the title of the article.

It’s an interesting argument. Greenhouse gases, or GHG, have risen significantly in the last hundred years, it is probably due to human activity, and it is probably HARMLESS.

Is that possible?

Well, you can certainly say the same thing about asphalt on the ground — once you discard car accidents and stuff like that.

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Not There Yet
Thursday, December 22nd, 2005

Not There Yet

We’re heading into Christmas, 2005 — not the season, but Christmas itself. If you have packages to send to relatives and you want those packages to get there by Christmas, you have got to send them today. It’s Christmas. Merry Christmas.

And the state of the news-sphere is…the Bush administration may have broken the law. We’re not quite sure yet. Stay tuned.

I have two memories that are relevant to this, one recent, one distant. The recent one has to do with this summer, when the Karl Rove, Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson, outing a covert op, or not, blah blah blah whatchamacallit scandal was…well, I’m still not sure what it was doing. It wasn’t getting started, because it already started. It wasn’t reaching a peak, because it’s peaked since then. Let’s call it a “resurfacing.” Back in that hot season, as well as now in this cold one, the Bush administration may have broken the law…we weren’t quite sure yet…stay tuned.

Come to think of it, with regard to that whole Rove/Plame thing, it’s five months later. Can anyone guarantee me the Bush administration broke the law? Or that it didn’t? That Valerie Plame was a covert op? That she wasn’t? So I guess that’s another law…which President Bush’s crew may have broken…we’re not quite sure yet…stay tuned.

See the pattern?

Yeah, it has to do with the wheels of justice turning slowly. Okay, I’ll buy that as a possible explanation, but that’s where my distant memory comes in.

I was sixteen, and the Equal Rights Amendment was reaching its expiration date. The Amendment failed to be ratified by the required thirty-eight states, and this touched off a debate about where women were headed in our society. Nobody with a reputation worth protecting, actually placed said reputation on the words “they’ll be headed back to the typing pools faster than you can say ‘ugly silver dollar’ if we don’t do something quick,” but a lot of people with a lot of clout tried like the dickens to make people think that. The torch-and-pitchfork waving reached a fevered pitch until the 1984 elections, when the feminists decided they had become so powerful, anything was possible. They decided they could put a radical-feminist New York limousine liberal on Walter Mondale’s ticket as his running-mate, and send her out to screech away about “This Administration has…”, repeatedly, into the most powerful microphones network money could buy, in a dreadful mother-in-law sick-chicken tone-of-voice that any married man has come to dread. She could do this all year long, the feminists decided, and in the end Mondale would be victorious — the time had come, after all. If you have the power to do something, you’d better do it, so they did.

The rest is history. Really history. Geraldine Ferraro got Mondale’s ass kicked so thoroughly, they made history.

What does that have to do with crimes the White House may or may not have done?

Just this. A sixteen-to-eighteen-year-old doesn’t know a whole lot about life, but I notice I had some questions then that I still have as a thirty-nine-year-old man. In this blitz of newspaper articles and magazine articles and television commercials I saw between 1982 and 1984, I noticed this common theme, sometimes pronounced verbatim, sometimes adhered to only loosely, but always there: “We’ve come a long way, but we’re not there yet.” Nobody dared to question how far the feminists had come since the mid-sixties, and yet, nobody dared to question how much still had to be done — nevermind that no one seemed to have the balls to list exactly what that was.

A sixteen-year-old is abnormally inclined to call bullshit on this, because when you’re sixteen, something that started sixteen years ago seems pretty ancient. But the problems I had back then, have not deteriorated with the passage of time; to the contrary, time has only crystalized my issues. What is this “we’ve come a long way but we’re not there yet” over sixteen years? What the hell are you trying to do? Paint the white lines on I-5 from San Diego to Birch Bay, by hand?

You got a problem, you fix it.

Again, I understand the opposition more than I’m letting on. They were trying to change a culture, and yes, that does take time. So there is truth in that little slogan, but there is also a lot of bullshit.

And there is bullshit in saying “The White House may have broken the law, we don’t know, stay tuned.”

It’s bullshit because in both cases, problems are solved by our media. Pressure is not brought on the public figures who have the power to solve the problems, unless the media says it should be. And once the media says that pressure should be brought to bear, nobody can oppose them. In short, the media has all the power.

And the media makes the money off the existence of the problems.

Since I cast my very first vote in this lifetime against sick-chicken mother-in-law screeching Geraldine, twenty-one more Novembers have bid me goodbye. Women have…and it’s really not hard to find someone willing to say so…come a long way, and *sigh* they’re not there yet.

We are supposed to be such a break-neck, go-go-go, strung-out-on-Starbucks society. The light turns green, your foot doesn’t have time to press down on the gas before the guy behind you is honking. This is the one time of year we all feel regret over not spending more time seeing the people we love, instead of running stupid errands that don’t matter and doing stupid work that doesn’t matter. But in a week or two we’re all going right back to the ol’ routine, and we all know it. It’s the way we are.

Okay, if we’re consistent about that…and you’re slapping the women at work in the ass, and you know it’s wrong, then stop. If you somehow have the authority to decide, on-the-spot, what everybody in a company is making per year, and you pay the women thirty percent less, and you know that’s wrong, then stop.

If the White House did something illegal, then issue some more indictments. If not, drop it. If you can’t prove they did something illegal, but you think you can prove it with some more research, then go research. Otherwise, shut up.

What is up with the arguing and wrangling, month after month?

What is up with this fighting “for equal rights,” for four decades?

Logically, it doesn’t hold up. We all know it doesn’t. Nobody solves their problems at home this way. You don’t like the way the furniture is arranged, you just rearrange it, and by tomorrow it’s a done deal.

But these publicly-visible issues, which are either illegitimate as issues, or if they are legitimate should be fixed overnight, drag on for years. We all take it as a given that there must be some reason why it takes so long, which we don’t understand. But no one steps out of the mists to explain for us why this is. Why do we put up with it?

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Hammer of…Hey! Let’s Go Play Outside!
Wednesday, December 21st, 2005

Hammer of…Hey! Let’s Go Play Outside!

Although I have no way of being completely sure of it, I’m taking it as a given that I am guilty for the crime with which I’ve been charged, which is to bore to tears one Stephen VanDyke and his friend “skio.”

A little background: There is this blog out there called “Capitol Hill Blue.” The publisher of this blog, one Doug Thompson, who is so journalistically objective and cool-headed he would like our current president to “Burn in hell,” somehow got ahold of some scuttlebutt that President Bush called the Constitution “just a GD piece of paper.”

At the time this “Piece of Paper” entry appeared in the Capitol Hill Blue blog, a Google search revealed something embarrassing: Nobody else had a word to say about it. Capitol Hill Blue was being played, or else, the Washington Post was missing out on a developing story that would put Watergate to shame! Actually, I shouldn’t say “Nobody” had a word to say about it. One other blog did: The Hammer of Truth, edited by VanDyke, which takes its name from an introductory passage in William Safire’s 25th book, Scandalmonger.

A presidential hopeful has taken a beautiful, vulnerable woman as his mistress, though both are married to others. His rival for the presidency of the United States has even more sensational secrets to guard about his own past. An ambitious journalist unearths the stories of the private lives of both, and he hefts in his hand what he calls “the hammer of truth.”

As elegant of a merger as Hammer of Truth has struck between its name, and its mission, this citation of Capitol Hill Blue impressed me then, and still does so today, as a betrayal of that mission. After all, if you wield in your hands what you call “the hammer of truth,” isn’t that hammer a weighty and potent thing because it is…you know, true? I notice Safire’s novel takes place some 200 years ago, and perhaps it’s a recent development that when you go swinging around a “hammer of scuttlebutt” or “hammer of hearsay,” you won’t get very far. I don’t know. I wasn’t alive in 1797. But I’m inclined to take the three words “hammer of truth” on their literal meaning: The “ambitious journalist” has a “hammer” because he knows the facts are on his side.

And what happens next, admittedly, is based solely on my own opinion. I think it is extravagant in the extreme to place any weight, whatsoever, on what Doug Thompson wrote. “Hammer of Truth” having done this (or so it appeared to me), I took them to task, explaining my reasons for doing so and for doubting the Thompson piece.

And the fun began.

VanDyke had some harsh words for me when I inferred from the content of his article, that he thought the facts were on his side. Obviously, it was not his intention that I, and other readers, should have presumed this, and I was chastened for my lack of intelligence in thinking this was the case. Furthermore, there was a reserve of further criticism for me because my post was — to summarize — long.

So, I did what I figured was the only sensible thing.

I wrote a follow-up that was twice as long. In my follow-up, I defined my original description of his reporting, “bullshit,” in as precise a manner as I possibly could. Essentially, what “bullshit” is, and it does seem to fit what he wrote very well, is a sense of apathy about the state of affairs. If the relevance of this is questioned, my response is simply that verity is important. Some things are irrefutable but nonetheless false; some things are unprovable but actually true. Is the original Thompson piece true? Nobody knows, although he has had problems with his sources in the past.

None of this matters to the bright fellow VanDyke, who has left me and my sluggish, unintelligent, boring mindset in the dust. See, while he’s gotten two “digs” in to me about how boring my writing is, I’m still concerned with matters of verity. And I note that, at this late date, two opportunities to address the question now behind him, VanDyke has left this entirely unaddressed. What is known? What is unknown?

After all, boring as it may be at times, this is central to whether our constitutional protections are in danger, whether President Bush is posing that danger, whether his enemies are, whether Doug Thompson is doing his job, whether the Washington Post is doing theirs. But this matters not one whit to the VanDyke camp. They’re still concerned about pithiness and cleverness. “Skio,” bragging about his impressive credentials as a student in high school, makes a point of defining “bullshit” as something having to do with the length of whatever’s being read. Great job, Skio. After you get out of high school, you’ll have a dandy time going through life simply ignoring everything that’s over, say, five hundred words. Don’t read any fine print, just sign stuff! That’s what the older folks told me when I was in high school.

Clearly, our future is in good hands.

I keed, I keed…but you know, there’s a kernel of truth in that. I’m afraid my generation is ready to pass into the ether; we who place more importance on true things spoken in a thousand words, than on feeble things of questionable veracity that can be expressed in a sentence or two. All hail the Jon Stewart generation.

Who cares if something is true? Just make sure, before the commercial’s over, you’re done saying it. I gotta pee.

Guys, if you can pay attention long enough, I have to congratulate you for coming up with this great way of ensuring the rights guaranteed by our Constitution (4,426 words, plus amendments) stay fully protected. I’m sure Thomas Jefferson would approve. Can you just imagine the birth of a republic that is sustained and nurtured this way? “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to sever the ties…aw, fuck this shit, I’m hungry and horny.”

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Reciprocating Your Kind Prayers
Wednesday, December 21st, 2005

Reciprocating Your Kind Prayers

Merry Christmas. There, I said it. Now, just for a little bit of yuletide fun, see if you can identify from whence the following text came:

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.

Who said it? Where? In what document? What was the context? Hint: It is the closing paragraph of a letter. A very famous letter.

Let’s make it a multiple-choice test:

a) Abigail Adams said it in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, attempting to heal the rift between him and her famous husband; the occasion was the death of Jefferson’s daughter, during which the two former presidents began a correspondence after a prolonged period of alienation that spanned several years.

b) Ted Nugent said it in a letter to Gloria Steinem in 1988, just to cheese her off on the contemplation that there’s a God and that He is a man.

c) George Washington said it in a letter to King George III of Great Britain, in a very delicate and diplomatic thesis that purported to explain exactly why the colonists were declaring their independence from their mother nation.

d) For the same purpose as c), Ben Franklin said it in a letter to the Pope.

e) In the eleventh century, William the Conqueror said it when urging Pope Gregory VII to give his blessing to the upcoming conquest of England.

f) “Publius,” who could have been John Jay, James Madison or Alexander Hamilton, used it in the closing remarks of the very last Federalist Paper.

g) It was written as closure to the Constitution, in rough draft by James Madison, and proposed at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, but never used.

h) The Director of the Patent Office used it in a letter to President Theodore Roosevelt, when he asked that the Office be closed in 1903, seeing as how everything worth inventing had already been invented.

i) The Publisher of the New York Times used it in a letter to Virginia explaining that there is, after all, a Santa Claus.

j) An unnamed scribe in the court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella used it in a letter to Christopher Columbus, in a final written authorization for the mission that would result in the discovery of America.

k) It is the final line to the Emancipation Proclamation delivered in 1863 by President Lincoln.

l) The Pope used it in a letter addressed to Henry VIII of England, officially denying his majesty’s request for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon.

m) It was uttered in 1216 by Kublai Kahn in his stately pleasure dome in Xanadu. He did decree it.

n) Thomas Jefferson said it when he erected the “wall of separation” between church and state.

o) It is a line from “Charge of the Light Brigade” by Robert Louis Stevenson.

p) It is a letter to Congress from President John Adams, and the occasion is the passage of the Alien and Sedition Act of 1797.

q) Ludwig von Beethoven used it in a letter to his nephew, explaining why he tore off the title page dedicating his Third Symphony, “Eroica,” to Napoleon Bonaparte.

r) It is the final line to the dedication page of “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” by Herman Melville.

s) Jerry Falwell’s attorney used it when addressing the Supreme Court during his dispute with Larry Flynt.

t) It was used by Falwell, but in the letter to his supporters identifying the Teletubby Tinky Winky as a homosexual activist.

u) James Dobson used it during a Christmas address on his radio program.

v) Robert Dole used it to open the first Senate session in 1995 after being elected Majority Leader.

w) Hillary Clinton used it in order to fool the electorate into thinking she’s religious, to prepare for her upcoming 2008 presidential bid.

x) It is in an official proclamation from Pope Gregory in 1582, codifying the switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar.

y) It is in the last line of the lengthy inaugural address delivered

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One LastSaturday, December 31st, 2005

Tolerance Is Not For EverybodySunday, December 25th, 2005

Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself…Sunday, December 25th, 2005

Commercial Disguised as AdviceSaturday, December 24th, 2005

Speech Disguised as a QuestionSaturday, December 24th, 2005

No War On Christmas, Huh?Friday, December 23rd, 2005

Dangerous Warming UnlikelyThursday, December 22nd, 2005

Not There YetThursday, December 22nd, 2005

Hammer of…Hey! Let’s Go Play Outside!Wednesday, December 21st, 2005

Reciprocating Your Kind PrayersWednesday, December 21st, 2005

One Last
Saturday, December 31st, 2005

Tolerance Is Not For Everybody
Sunday, December 25th, 2005

Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself…
Sunday, December 25th, 2005

Commercial Disguised as Advice
Saturday, December 24th, 2005

Speech Disguised as a Question
Saturday, December 24th, 2005

No War On Christmas, Huh?
Friday, December 23rd, 2005

Dangerous Warming Unlikely
Thursday, December 22nd, 2005

Not There Yet
Thursday, December 22nd, 2005

Hammer of…Hey! Let’s Go Play Outside!
Wednesday, December 21st, 2005

Reciprocating Your Kind Prayers
Wednesday, December 21st, 2005