Showing posts with label commentary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label commentary. Show all posts

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Something Worth a Couple of Minutes to Read

Food for Thought:
An article on censorship by Roger Scruton, a writer and philosopher (according to BBC; me, I've never heard of him, but found this article to be of interest)

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34744432

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Sweden In Pop Culture

Despite having seen the incredibly dreary television series Wallender, with Kenneth Branagh, and the movie made from the book The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (plus another television program that I don't remember the name of, but that involved typically violent sexual abuse and now-elderly Nazi sympathizers), I took up the recommendation of a good friend and read The Hypnotist, by Lars Kepler.

Based on these sources, I can confidently report that Sweden is a cold, dark country populated almost exclusively by depressed drug addicts, depressed alcoholics, depressed former drug addicts, depressed unmitigated perverts of every stripe, and depressed police officers with failed or failing marriages. This general population is divided between the honourable poor, who are depressed, and a smaller group of sleazy and thoroughly dishonourable middle-class people, who are probably depressed when not torturing their fellow Swedes with their extreme behaviour. There is, perhaps, a scattering of glitterati who spend much time abroad to avoid being depressed, returning home only to indulge in their many and varied perverse passions.

Being a Texan, I know just how accurate these sorts of generalizations about a place often are.

Monday, September 3, 2012

Progress Has a Seizure

So much for scanning in all my pre-digital pictures....

I bought an HP 3050A, a good deal, I thought, at $80. It faxes, copies, scans and prints, and can do it all wirelessly. This was a good selling point for me, because I have sufficient clutter around my computer already and was glad to be able to install this machine in the less frequented parts of the room.

Installation went with barely a hitch. The only hassle was that I had to disconnect everything from my computer and move it across the room so I could briefly connect it to the new machine, to transfer wireless information. You know, if HP would just use a regular old USB port for that connection, and told me where on my computer the needed info was, I could've just copied it onto a flash drive. But no, I had to install a battery (I normally leave it out, except when I travel), disconnect the primary printer, the speakers, the second monitor, the power cord and all the little gadgets and woo-ha things that are plugged into this computer (all the things that made me glad to be able to install the new machine across the room). Then I was able, after punching in a few bits of information, to scan photos on the new machine* and have them magically appear on this computer ... whence, the photos of Guanajuato posted the other day.

But it wasn't to last. Twenty pictures into the next set — pictures from the PCB Tour, a mid-'80s trip around Europe with some friends that we titled Deadly Poison On The Road — my old Netgear router hiccoughed. I had to re-boot the router. Not a big deal: it happens now and then, and my phone and my computer always just pick up the renewed signal and sign themselves back in.

But not this cheap-o HP machine. I eventually got it re-connected to the internet, but while my computer could find the new printer, the new printer could not locate the computer. Everything checked out fine, but it was always unable to locate the computer. I went to the HP Scan-Doctor, or whatever they call their Help system, and it was no use. I spent all of Saturday and Sunday, off and on, trying to get the new machine to work. By midnight on Sunday, I had decided I had done everything their website could suggest, and had seen then same instructions over and over and over.

Of course, some of those instructions were especially irritating: the ones that tell you to press nonexistent buttons, the ones that instruct you to selection unavailable options from the menus.... But mainly what frustrates me is the idea that these machines should all be a part of this plug-and-play world. I should be able to plug in my new wireless printer, type in a few numbers, and have it spring to life with no more fuss than I go through in trying to sync my MP-3 player.

But no, it isn't that simple; technology has had a seizure, hit a brick wall, run off the road. It is so far from being that simple that today I took the machine back, and I am once again without a scanner, so there will be no more old pics posting.

I know you're all broken up over that, but try to keep hold of yourselves.


* I wouldn't want to give the impression that it worked correctly; each time I hit "scan," the machine would whir and flash its little progress light, then announce "activation lost," and tell me to re-establish a connection. I soon learned to ignore this, and after a pause the scan would take place and the file would appear on my computer. Each one took about 75 seconds, which I thought was a long time. But what do I know?

Monday, August 20, 2012

Mountains From Molehills

The Football Association, the organization that oversees soccer in England, has a knack for creating big issues out of trivialities. Often, this stems from a misplaced desire to cater, no matter the cost, to every politically correct theory ever advanced by any addle-pated social thinker with a podium; hoping, in this way, to deflect all criticism of what was once a rough game played by tough factory workers, but which they wish to have seem a genteel give-and-take between two groups of sartorially challenged debate teams. The FA is eager to appear the moral guardian of all good things, and its dedication, for example, to stamping out what passes for racism in Britain is second to none. Consider, for example, its decision to charge Rio Ferdinand, of Manchester United, with racism for his participation in this exchange on Twitter:

Unnamed interlocutor: "Looks like Ashley Cole [who plays for Man United's arch-rival Chelsea] is going to be their choc ice. Then again, he's always been a sell-out. Shame on him."

Ferdinand: ""I hear you fella! Choc ice is classic! hahahahahahha!!"


(In racial terms, "Choc ice" is to the English what "Oreo" is to Americans.)

(Even worse, but beside the point here, is that the local police are prosecuting Ferdinand for a criminal violation for that tweet. When did England give up being a free country? And are these pro soccer players so delicate that words like this can be so offensive as to warrant the expenditure of public moneys on the ponderous activity of the police?)

But this week comes another example of the FA's unsurpassed capacity to make something controversial out of something ordinary and unremarkable.

In an exciting match on Saturday between Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur, two teams that are very close competitors, the match officials made what seemed to many to be a wrong call, in favour of Tottenham and detrimental to Newcastle. Alan Pardew, the manager (head coach) of Newcastle, was standing on the sideline, watching, and he was quite naturally agitated by what he saw. He turned and said something to someone behind him, then immediately turned the other way to say something to the linesman (or referee's assistant to the politically correct). The linesman, it turns out, was standing just a couple feet away, looking down the line, and Pardew reached over, shouted "Hey" (or maybe "Oy!" --- he is English, after all) and starts to comment excitedly about the call.

This is no push. This is a tap on the shoulder. An excited tap, yes, but still no more. The linesman was slightly unbalanced by the contact, not because it was violent or even hard, but because he was in an odd position already, leaning well forward to see past someone farther down the sideline.

Well, of course the game had to come to a complete halt while the referee came over and sent Pardew to the stands for this trivial incident, and now the FA has announced misconduct charges over the incident.

Why is it that highly-paid administrators such as the FA has are so completely unable to exercise any sort of reasonable discretion? I understand the perceived need to protect soccer officials from violent attacks by team managers (and everyone else), but I would have thought that these mature individuals would be able to distinguish a tap on the shoulder from a violent shove.

Friday, June 29, 2012

It's Called Art.

From the New Yorker magazine, a concise explanation of why I have no interest in modern art:

In 2004, an installation by the Japanese
artist Noritoshi Hirakawa consisted of a
pretty and prim young woman sitting in
a chair, reading a Philip Pullman novel,
and next to her, on the floor, a little heap
of her excrement, which she renewed each
morning.

page 34, May 7, 2012.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Let's Go To The Mall Redux

OK, I'm more than a little older than the teeny-bopper crowd the recent inane hit, Call Me Maybe, is aimed at, but does anyone else see the similarity between that dopey song and the farcical "hit" by Robin Sparkles created for the story line of the TV program, How I Met Your Mother?
I mean, beyond the fact that both singers are Canadian.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

One Reason for One Republican to Vote for Obama

I first heard of the Dream Act a year or two ago, when our local throwaway weekly rag of an alternative newspaper — that word should probably be in quotes, but that's beside the point — ran a story about students at one of the local universities who were engaged in a hunger strike or some such protest because Congress had done nothing. (Quelle surprise.) I was largely unimpressed with the stories of the particular students, but it did seem to me that there was a certain injustice about deporting people who were brought to this country (illegally) as children and who had grown up here. This bill, a darling of the weepy left and yet another anathema to the growling right, had been oozing its way around Capitol Hill for some time, without getting much traction; hence the protests.

There are certain fundamentals about the situation the bill addresses that I think need being addressed. What makes us Americans? It's not just being born here. The constitution provides that anyone who is born here is a citizen, but the universe of citizens is not quite coterminous with the universe of Americans. People who have been here from an early age, who have gone to our public schools and played on our playgrounds and sat in our movie theaters and walked on our sidewalks all their conscious lives are as American as me or anyone else; even if those schools were substandard, even if those playgrounds were dusty underfunded sorry imitations, even if those movies weren't in English, even if those sidewalks were dusty roadside tracks where sidewalks should have been. It is the long process of growing up in America that makes someone an American, and I think it is only right that those who have done that ought to be able to live here. Maybe not as citizens, but in some capacity.

President Obama has cut through the bull, and announced a change in policy by executive order: people who meet certain criteria will not be subject to deporation. They have to have been here before their 16th birthday; they have to have lived here continuously for at least 5 years; they have to be in school, or graduates of our high schools (or US military veterans with honourable discharges); they must not have a criminal record, and they can't be more than 29 years old.

Now, I will disagree with some of the details. For one thing, I'm not convinced that a person can really fully develop the American identity if they only start at the age of 15. I would have set the bar no later than 12 years of age. And I'm concerned that the requirement that they not have a criminal record could be too inflexibly interpreted. No one should be denied this kind of status just because they were, say, arrested for disturbing the peace at an Occupy protest, or getting in a fight or something. Our society lacks the political discernment it once had, and we now use our criminal courts to deal with everything from fights after school on up. When we no longer brand young men as child-sex offenders because they have indecent pictures of thier girlfriends on their smartphone, I'll be more comfortable with the criminal-record criteria in this executive order. (I would also want to be certain that, just because they get to stay, it doesn't mean their parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins get to stay, too.)

But I applaud Obama for having done something to rectify a fairly clear injustice. I agree with Mr Romney's lackluster, mealymouthed response ("this isn't the way to go about it"), but he knows damn well that the spineless hydra that Congress has become will never act without being forced.  If nothing else, Obama's bold and righteous act will have forced them to do their job in response.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

First Signs of Decay

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker survived his recall election, though his Radical-Republican party lost its majority in the legislature, I understand. He seems to have suddenly gotten some sense knocked into his head, calling a "brat summit" and inviting all the legislators over to eat and drink. Maybe something will come of it.

Meanwhile, I noticed on my brief visit to the state this week that the first effects of his strategy of giving to the rich and taking from the poor are becoming visible: a shocking number of animal carcasses along the highway, many of them obviously there long enough to decay. Maybe he should get his Girondin backers to put some of their billions into the state highway department's budget, so they can go scrape up the dead deer and dogs and raccoons that are rotting on the sides of the freeways.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

The Failure of Education: Another Example

Get yours today!
photo by Oliver Wright
I just had a robo-call from some local organization promoting the adoption of pets.

But what they promoted instead was an adoption event for big pets.

That's the difference between a "mega-pet adoption event" and a "pet-adoption mega-event."




Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Something Important That I Read

Some time back, a New Yorker book reviewer recommended a book called The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, by Tim Wu. Wu is a professor at Columbia University. The book is largely a history of such communications businesses as AT&T and the television networks, but that last chapter deals largely with the Internet and technology businesses. It's a pretty well-written and interesting book, though with rather a few too many editing shortfalls, like his constant use of continuity devices that might be appropriate in a classroom, spread over a semester, but get tedious when crammed together in such numbers in the space of 300 pages.

But this isn't really a book review; this blog post is intended to reiterate a point he makes near the end of his book. I think it's important, and want as many people as possible to consider it, think about it, and, after deciding its merits for themselves, bring their actions into conformity with their own beliefs.

Writing about the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, he says the following, which I quote in full:

Lest these examples be taken amiss, let me speak plainly: These are amazing machines. They make available an incredible variety of content — video, music, technology — with an intuitive interface that is a pleasure to use. But they are also machines whose soul is profoundly different from that of any other personal computer, let alone [Steve] Wozniak's Apple II. For all their glamour, these appliances are a betrayal of the inspiration behind that pathbreaking device, which was fundamentally meant to empower its users, not control them. That proposition may appeal to geeks more than to the average person, but anyone can appreciate the sentiment behind putting enormous power at the discretion of any individual. The owner of an iPod or iPad is in a fundamentally different position: his machine may have far more computational power than a PC of a decade ago, but it is designed for consumption, not creation. Or, as [Popular Science writer Tom] Conlon declared vehemently, "Once we replace the personal computer with a closed-platform device such as the iPad, we replace freedom, choice and the free market with oppression, censorship and monopoly.

(at pp. 292-93).

Think about it.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Words. Words. Words.

MSNBC, one of the self-appointed arbiters of cultural affairs in the 21st Century, has posted an article saying that LAX is the "most social" airport in the world, because more people check Facebook from there than from any other airport.

Remember when "society" actually involved personal interactions with other people? Facebook, and other, similar, social media, are the opposite of "social." 

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Does Anyone Else Smell Fish?

I haven't really been following this child-sex scandal out of Pennsylvania, the one involving a former coach who reportedly had sex with one or eight or forty underage (way underage) boys, sometimes actually in the Penn State University's football facilities. I know, just from not living under a rock, that the American media gets really excited, throbbing and pulsating with ratings lust, every time someone does something of a sexual nature that can be reported on ad nauseam. So I try to take it all with a chunk of salt.

Penn State University; photo by G. Chriss
I have to wonder, though, about this one: according to the reports I've read, in 2002, an assistant in the football program told head coach Joe Paterno directly that "he saw Sandusky raping a 10-year-old boy in a locker room shower."

That statement strikes me as incredible. I think if I were Joe Paterno, who, as I understand it, is a decent, upstanding guy with at least an ordinary sense of right and wrong, I would have found the allegation hard to believe. (I'm assuming, obviously, that he had no personal knowledge of any unusual sexual inclinations of the ex-coach.) Saying a man is "raping" a boy in the locker room is shocking, but in the real world, such as we have it these days, I would (1) suspect the guy making the report is exaggerating, maybe because he, like so many others in our modern world, thinks overreaction is always the appropriate reaction; (2) consider that the guy making the report might have some ax to grind where this ex-coach is concerned; and (3) find out what my obligation was in dealing with this report that I am reluctant to believe. As I understand it, Paterno's obligation was to report the matter to the University higher-ups, which, again as I understand it, is what he did.

My only point here, besides a general contempt for the salivating of the media when its nostrils catch the whiff of musk, is that "raping" a boy is such a shocking thing that I'm amazed so many people kept quiet about it. I'm a skeptic. I suspect there is much, much less to this whole story than the media wants there to be.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Occupy Wall Street

The ongoing protests against the insidious culture of greed, and the lack of accountability that comes from the separation, in recent decades, of risk from reward, have a laudable objective. And it is refreshing to see a sizable number of people taking part in political action that is not orchestrated from behind the scenes by nefarious angry activists, like the Tea Party is. (I say that, even though the objectives of the Tea Party are, to some extent, also laudable.)

But the Occupy movement — if that's not too grand a term for it — lacks focus. Its participants don't to agree on what they wish to accomplish. 

Of the many greed-related ills our society suffers from, I doubt that any is as ultimately damning as the growing disparity of wealth in this country. Money is power, and the concentration of money in relatively few hands is threatening to undermine some of the beliefs needed for a large democracy to continue. It has already shown its power in the very strength of the Tea Party, and in the reactionary anti-union legislation in the Midwest and California, and in the intransigence of some Republican members of Congress, who forget that "politics is the art of the possible," and in the dangerous recent holdings of the Supreme Court in political cases.

But the disparity of wealth is unlike other serious problems, in that it has a relatively easy fix.

Under present law, compensation paid to all but a few executives of a business is deductible from taxable income as a cost of doing business. Thus, Mega Corp. can pay its Vice President in charge of Sucking Up a million bucks in salary, and deduct that million bucks from the profit the corporation has to pay tax on. It can also deduct the $35,000 it pays its janitors, but the tax savings from that are paltry.

All the government has to do is limit the amount of compensation deductible as a business expense. I would recommend using a multiple of median income to determine how much can be deductible, say two and a half times the national median. Under that formula, Mega Corp is still free to pay its VP-Suckup that million bucks; but the rest of us don't have to forego the taxes on that exorbitant salary. (And yes, VP-Suckup still has to pay taxes on the income. Unfair? Nope. Just a cost of doing business.)

Limiting the deductibility of high salaries would, over time, lessen the disparity between the high and low ends. If a business finds it worthwhile to pay people more than the deductible amount, they can do so, but they'll just have to factor in the tax considerations in a slightly different way.

Similarly, the favourable tax treatment of interest and dividend income should be capped. There are still a number of older people who depend on these sorts of income for their survival, but beyond a certain point, their survival does not require further subsidies from the general population in the form of lower tax rates. I see no reason why interest and dividend income beyond, say, that same two-and-a-half times median income, should not be taxed at regular rates. 

Friday, September 30, 2011

Getting Old. Such a Pain.

I can never remember any more what the word eleemosynary means. I used to know that word. I even used to use that word, back when I was in college.

It seems unimportant, but it's frustrating not being able to remember things I used to know.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Taking Down the Big Tent

I've been thinking for a long time — I mean, a long time — that this country needs a real third party in its political system. A Moderate Party, a Centrist Party. A group of politically involved people who believe in their heart of hearts that truth and reason can go hand in hand, that if it's necessary to frighten the public, or lie to them, to gain support for a policy, then that policy probably isn't a good policy. That there is no monopoly on wisdom in any group. A party that will take good ideas from both extremities, re-work them with principled pragmatism, and produce real governance. Which might be a nice change, after sixty years of alternating excesses from both existing parties.

I've often wondered how one goes about starting a political party. I still don't know, but today it occurred to me that it's really not necessary to start a new one. We already have such a party: the Republican Party.

Oh, I know, you people who watch Fox News and MSNBC are scoffing and snorting, but you must understand that what I mean is the real Republican Party. Not these loud, angry Tea Party types, who are so pissed off at having been ignored (with good reason) that they are become the political equivalent of suicide bombers. It's a shame that they tend to label themselves Republicans, but that has its roots in history; in the history of the real Republican Party. The party of Lincoln and Eisenhower. The party that stands for fiscal conservatism — not spending money we don't have, not borrowing more than we can afford to pay back; the party that stands for limited government — not "small government": this country is way too big and powerful for a small government. The party that stands for fairness in the marketplace and in the courts — not for "free market" policy, which is unfair to small players, including consumers, and which is too lax in dealing with those who would wrap themselves in the flag of the free market to cheat others; not for "tort reform" or "industry liability," because those mantras conceal the evil of denying justice to one side or the other. The party that stands for traditional values but still tolerates, without adopting, other values, in things that should be a matter of personal choice, not public policy.

So I wonder: what would happen if those of us who are Republicans in the traditional sense were to tell the Tea Partiers and the Neo-Cons that they are no longer welcome? The rump Republican Party would be a minority in congress, as it has so often in the last 80 years, but it would be the Centrist Party, between the slathering left-wing Demagogic ... pardon me, Democratic Party, and the angry, chanting Radical Right. It would hold the balance of power in a Congress where there is no majority party, and would cast its votes where reason and wisdom take it, and it would use that balance of power to mitigate the excesses of the Left, just as it would the excesses of the Right when they become the more powerful bloc in Washington. (It'll take a while, but it'll happen.) And I predict that many who now are members of the Democratic Party would defect to the Real Republican Party, and we'd end up with a legislative branch divided roughly in thirds. Later on, when the anger of the far right subsides, as it will, many of its loudest supporters will see the error of their ways, and return to the Moderate fold. Praise be.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

The sleazy British tabloid, News of the World, has published its last libel.

After years of lowering standards for reportage around the world, this maven of irresponsibility has lost its century-long race for circulation numbers in the most cynical fashion possible: by going out of business with a bad public apology, not for what it did, but for what it got caught doing. In its final publication, it pats itself on the back and speaks of its pride at 168 years of wallowing in muck. The spin is all about the good things the paper did, but I see no mention of what it was intended to do. It was intended to increase the fortunes of its owners and managers, regardless of the cost to public decency, private lives, and journalistic standards.  

To its friable apology, I say, "Good riddance" to the newspaper that earned the nickname, "News of the Screws." The only sad thing about its demise, besides its own unredeemed attitude toward its behaviour, is the certainty that other sleazy papers will take its place, and will hire all the villains of the piece. I hope instead they are all, individually, subjected to the same kind of intrusive, perverted treatment that they so routinely subjected others to. 

It's bad enough that they slithered around the ankles of Britain's royals and celebrities. To some extent, those people have to expect a certain amount of abusive treatment. But to hack the phones of crime victims, and their families, and the families of soldiers killed in combat .... That is low, even for the serpent in the crib. It reflects a moral gangrene that should infect not just the immediate actors who performed illegal acts — only two so far, but counting — but also those within the organization who allowed, ignored, or acquiesced in those acts. Right up to the very top of the compost heap. They should be pariahs who never live down the shame of what they have done.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Why Would Obama Say Such a Thing?

Incredibly, I heard on the radio this morning an interview, conducted by a seemingly intelligent reporter for National Public Radio, of a seemingly intelligent political analyst, concerning the recent events to do with the Middle East. Under discussion was the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington, where he met with President Obama (before the latter's departure for a visit to his ancestral home in Moneygall, Ireland; yes, we forget that his heritage is as much European as it is African), addressed a pro-Israel lobbying group, and spoke to a joint session of congress. The dust-up of particular interest to the radio pundits was because President Obama, speaking last week in anticipation of Netanyahu's visit, and with an eye toward the current climate of rebellion and reform in many parts of North Africa and the Middle East, said, near the end of his speech:

For over two years, my administration has worked with the parties and the international community to end this conflict, building on decades of work by previous administrations. Yet expectations have gone unmet. Israeli settlement activity continues. Palestinians have walked away from talks. The world looks at a conflict that has grinded on and on and on, and sees nothing but stalemate. Indeed, there are those who argue that with all the change and uncertainty in the region, it is simply not possible to move forward now. 
White House photo
by Lawrence Jackson
I disagree. At a time when the people of the Middle East and North Africa are casting off the burdens of the past, the drive for a lasting peace that ends the conflict and resolves all claims is more urgent than ever. That's certainly true for the two parties involved. 
For the Palestinians, efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won't create an independent state. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist.
As for Israel, our friendship is rooted deeply in a shared history and shared values. Our commitment to Israel's security is unshakeable. And we will stand against attempts to single it out for criticism in international forums. But precisely because of our friendship, it's important that we tell the truth: The status quo is unsustainable, and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace. 
The fact is, a growing number of Palestinians live west of the Jordan River. Technology will make it harder for Israel to defend itself. A region undergoing profound change will lead to populism in which millions of people -– not just one or two leaders -- must believe peace is possible. The international community is tired of an endless process that never produces an outcome. The dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation. 
Now, ultimately, it is up to the Israelis and Palestinians to take action. No peace can be imposed upon them -- not by the United States; not by anybody else. But endless delay won't make the problem go away. What America and the international community can do is to state frankly what everyone knows -- a lasting peace will involve two states for two peoples: Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people, each state enjoying self-determination, mutual recognition, and peace. 
So while the core issues of the conflict must be negotiated, the basis of those negotiations is clear: a viable Palestine, a secure Israel. The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their full potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.
Israeli Prime Minister
Benyamin Netanyahu
(State Department photo)
The reference to the 1967 borders as a starting point for negotiation lit up Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has decided to start referring to them as The Indefensible 1967 Borders, a tactic that panders to unthinking people everywhere.

The question the reporter asked, for which the political analyst had no ready answer was, Given the political situation in this country, why would President Obama make a controversial reference to the 1967 borders as a basis for an agreed peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbours? He gets nothing out of it. They seemed unable to fathom any reason for this statement.

I think I know the answer, and I think it was a wise and judicious thing for Obama to do. (I often think I'm alone among Republicans in thinking Obama wise and judicious, especially in comparison to the reactionary-pandering, fatuous, simpering, spineless, gutless wonders my own party keeps vomiting up for the entertainment of Fox "News" interviewers.) 

Israel has, rightly, long enjoyed great and essentially unwavering support from the United States. We have been that nation's champion since its founding in 1948; we have backed it, even when its positions have been questionable, in every one of its conflicts with its neighbours. Each presidential administration since Truman's has understood that Israel, unlike its neighbours, is under existential threat: intractable elements throughout the region, from Islamabad to Fez, from Damascus to Sa'na, want the State of Israel wiped off the face of the earth. With that kind of threat facing it, Israel is entitled to greater deference in our dealings with it and its neighbours. 

But Israel, in the last decade or so, has begun to lose the moral high ground it held in American thought since 1948. Ultra-conservative forces within Israel have begun to assert themselves with greater success, forcing what they call a "Greater Israel" on the world. The ongoing Jewish settlement of lands in the West Bank, outside the 1967 borders, is a part of that push for an enlarged Jewish state. But each new settlement, each additional hectare of land taken from the Palestinians by Israeli settlers, is a new affront to the prospect for eventual peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Israel knows this, but its weak governments have been unable to find the backbone needed to prevent further encroachments on the West Bank. American governments have repeatedly warned Israel that this nation will not support this eating away of the land that will, in some fashion, someday be an Arab state of Palestine; the Israelis, though, apologise, maybe pause, and continue to build. 

Obama's statement that the 1967 border is a starting point for negotiations has long been acknowledged by all responsible parties. For my own part, I agree with that, and I would go further and say that wars have consequences, and the Palestinians much accept that the wars fought and lost in 1948 and 1956 and 1967 and 1973 mean that Israel's annexation of Jerusalem must be accepted as fact. They won it, and it is theirs. 

Palestinians must accept, too, that they were offered their own state at the same time the Israelis were, in 1948, but they chose to make war instead. They lost, and they must accept the consequences of their decision, or their fathers' decision. The refugees who fled the nascent State of Israel in 1948, and their children born in refugee camps throughout the region, and in neighbouring states, many of whom have never set foot in Israel, must accept that they have no right to return to ancestral homes in Israel. Whether they have any right to return at all must depend upon their willingness to accept the status within the Israeli political structure that is offered to them — a status that, because they are not Jews and Israel is by definition a Jewish state, is likely to be what we would consider second-class citizenship for some time into the future. (Westerners who find that likelihood opprobrious should look to the status of non-believers in Islamic nations throughout Africa and Asia, or to the status of Catholics in the British colonies that became the United States, and accept that our notions of inclusive democracy are not universally shared. We may well be morally superior, but we are not the ones who make the decisions or live with the results.)

By reminding the Israelis that the 1967 borders are the starting point, and that their continuing incursions into the West Bank have never had our support, Obama is, wisely and judiciously, warning the Israelis that American backing has its limits, and that they have continually tested those limits for decades. Incursions, like wars, have consequences.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Terri Hendrix's Comment, and Response

Some months ago, I went to, and reviewed, a concert by Terri Hendrix at the Carver Center in San Antonio. As I said in the review, I wasn't there as an avid fan of her music, I'm just married to one. But I enjoyed the show for the most part, and the thrust of my review was that, while Ms Hendrix is no Paul Simon, she has succeeded at two art forms, songwriting and performing. About the worst thing I said was that I wished she wouldn't give away the ending of the upcoming song while she and her band tuned their instruments. 

Some weeks later, I received a comment from Ms Hendrix. (It came, for no-doubt-technological reasons I don't understand, on a review of a taco house on my other blog.) This is what she wrote:
Dear "Other Curmudgeon," I discovered what you wrote about my show at the Carver by accident. I've done music for over twenty years. I've performed and recorded long enough to know how I sound, and to know that when I talk my speaking voice sounds shaky from time to time. The is due to both a neurological condition and the medication I take to control my seizures. I was diagnosed with epilepsy in 1989. I took intensive vocal training to be able to continue to sing. This is why the "wobble" is there when I speak — but not when I sing. Flaws aside, what saddens me, is that people like you, the ... ahem, "Curmudgeon" are out there taking the seat of someone who should have been there in your place. The show was sold out. You took the seat of someone that does not thrive on seeking someone or something to put down. Had you done your research, you would know that I only play listening rooms. I'm most known for how at ease I am on stage. And I am at ease. I'm myself — naked in song. For the record, I have not played Gruene Hall as a "real" gig since 2003. It's a bar. I make my living playing university arts centers and performance arts centers all over the world. Most are all slightly bigger than the Little Carver. Your blog was not meant to be cruel. Nor did I find it as such. It was honest. But you are uneducated in my music and what I do and who I am, nor did you bother to research me or even sign YOUR REAL NAME to it before you posted. And that's just plain rotten. Please attempt to find less to pick at and a little more to pick up. With Respect, Terri Hendrix
My first thought, on reading this, was that Ms Hendrix had mis-read my review, and had responded in anger, without reflection. Having no way to contact her (her comment had no reply-to address, nor did I find one on her web site), I posted a notice on this blog asking her if she would read it again and confirm her understanding of it. 

Enough time has now passed in silence for me to think that she has either not stumbled across my second post, or has chosen not to respond. A part of me thinks that maybe I should remain silent as well, and not publish her comment. But three things prompt me to publish it, and respond to it. First is the simple view that to hide uncomplimentary commentary is a form of deceit; my self-respect demands that I acknowledge it. Second was her suggestion that only proper students of her work are entitled to attend one of her concerts. And third was the suggestion that there is something unscrupulous, or deceitful, or, in her words, "just plain rotten" about my guarding my anonymity in this blog.

Regarding the first part of her comment, she refers, probably ironically, to her tremulous speaking voice as a "flaw"; I thought it was a charming, even endearing attribute, because I thought it showed that she was extremely nervous about performing but had overcome that. Turns out it's just a neurological condition, and a side-effect of treatment medications. Overcoming serious illness is certainly a good thing, something to be pleased with; just ask anyone who's had any kind of serious illness and lived. But to my mind, overcoming the paralyzing fear that I imagined she must have suffered would have been a much greater personal achievement, with all the romance and glory of a protagonist who faces, and overmasters, fear. Well, it turns out I gave Ms Hendrix too much credit.


As for the comments about her chosen venues, I stand by what I said: the setting for the concert I attended seemed stifled and overly formal for a show such as hers; why she would implicitly denigrate a venue like Gruene Hall, I don't know.

In the next part of her comment, she criticizes me for daring to buy a ticket to her show, when it could have gone to some more deserving acolyte. How dare she suggest such a thing. I find that comment arrogant in the extreme, and as anyone who knows me will attest, I know arrogance. I hope it is just her misplaced anger talking. Her performances are open to the public, and no one has a greater right to attend than me or anyone else. If she wishes to restrict her audiences to people who can pass her muster for being deserving, she ought to require some kind of test, instead of taking money from any undeserving gift-giver who would dare to intrude on her worship service. (That's my anger talking.) And she compounds this by suggesting that, in order to attend her shows, I must first do some kind of research about her and her music.  I gave my reason for attending at the beginning of my review: I went because someone I care about likes her music, and I hoped to be lucky enough to be entertained myself. I don't think I'm under any obligation to delve into her musical history or philosophy, and if Ms Hendrix really thinks I am, then she's just way too full of herself.

Finally, she says that because I don't hold my identity out publicly, there's something rotten about me. I sense a small irony in this, coming as it does from someone who herself hides from the public when off stage. I can easily imagine good reasons for her to keep her contact information private. She, apparently, hasn't imagined mine, but assumes I guard my identity in this forum for nefarious reasons.

Well: I know my reasons, and that they are sufficient. I feel no need to justify my choice in this matter to her, or anyone else. Yes, I know that a lot of sleazy people do mean things under the easy cover of anonymity afforded by the internet. But there are also lots of other reasons for keeping one's identity private, not the least being the same reason she keeps her address and phone number hidden. It's not just stage performers who would deter cranks and crackpots. She has no right to impugn my integrity on the strength of her ignorant assumption. 


And notice that I say "private," not "secret." Who I am is known to many people, people whose views I respect and whose good opinion I covet. I rely on them, as well as my own sense of right and wrong, to keep me honest in my comments on my blogs. 

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Intentional Ignorance, Political Fuel

Remember how, years and years ago after a shooting in Arizona, everybody in the media was talking about toning down the rhetoric? What, was that really just last January? My mistake.

Here's an example of how media, both liberal (as in this example) and conservative (watch any broadcast of the Daily Show Starring Jon Stewart for an example from the Fox News Follies) use language to ramp up the tone of rhetoric, even when they know, intellectually, that what they're saying isn't true:

In the March 30-April 5 issue of the San Antonio Current, one of those weekly throwaway "alternative" newspapers, is a report about divisions in the local Democratic Party organization, caused by bigoted comments by its local chairman, who managed to alienate with a sentence or two just about anyone who isn't a heterosexual Hispanic. A group called Stonewall Democrats (after the 1969 riots in Greenwich Village that followed one too many police raids on a gay bar, and gave birth to the Gay Pride movement) endorsed several candidates for local office. One of the candidates who met with the group, the Current reports, "said that if she were endorsed by Stonewall she would not carry that endorsement on her website or campaign literature. 'Many in our area would look at that as something that would be divisive,' Ivy Taylor told the group."

Then the Current sinks into intentional ignorance. "Interesting to note," it continues, "that 'divisive' was the same word she later used to describe [the party chairman]'s comparisons of Stonewall to the Nazi Party, in effect placing Stonewall's potential endorsement on parity with Nazi comparisons."

The writer of "The QueQue," the column where this appears, is not an ignoramus. He or she (there's no byline) regularly delivers intelligent insight into matters of local political interest. But even this intelligent, capable writer is willing to stoop to this kind of disingenuousness in order to score a petty point. 

Ms Taylor is right both times: an endorsement by Stonewall would be divisive in her conservative district. And Lord knows that the party chairman's comments were divisive, in spades. But the fact that both are true, and  the fact that she accurately used the same word to describe both, doesn't mean she's "in effect placing Stonewall's potential endorsement on parity with Nazi comparisons." 

The Current ought to be ashamed, but I bet it's not.