Chekhov’s Mistess

How, you ask, could I love this lecherous and lying man? Simple. I start with the cynical view that all politicians are either driven over the moral precipice by their ideology, or at their worst, dishonest and power hungry. So, other than getting caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar, this erstwhile POTUS is not much different than, dare I say, a JFK. And, he took everything that the “right wing conspiracy” (her words, not mine) could throw at him and is still smiling. He makes it seem fun. Finally, according to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Bill can recite incredibly long passages from the Sound and the Fury. What could be bad about a Faulkner fan?

Bob Kerrey, the former senator and current member of the 9/11 commission writes a fairly soft op-ed in the Sunday NY Times, “Fighting the Wrong War”. Still, it’s worth reading because he voices some valid points against the Bush Administration: In his criticism, he says “Terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy. The real enemy is a group of radical Islamists who have chosen to wage a war on all infidels.” And that “our military and political tactics in Iraq are creating the conditions for civil war there and giving Al Qaeda a powerful rationale to recruit young people to declare jihad on the United States.” Lastly he says that we should eat our pride and go to the UN for help. Considering John McCain’s declaration this morning on Meet the Press that we need more troops in Iraq, actually building some international support might just be a good idea, Mr. Bush. But I doubt that would happen considering the past actions of our flight suit-wearing president.

p.s. The online version of the article is  slightly different than the version in the newspaper.

I wrote this letter to the editor of Salon.com as a response to an article about the woes of a mid-list author who once was highly paid and now has to work a regular job:

“Teachers I know don’t make enough to live in the neighborhood of their students. (Classical) musicians I know don’t make enough to pay for their instruments. They practice their art in the glory of their poverty and accept the ineluctable lack of importance that our culture puts on these higher callings. Why should it be any different for writers?

Melville comes to mind as one of myriad writers who suffered financially for their art. He lived over a hundred years ago – long before the publishing industry became dominated by “stockholders and profit margins.” No serious reader or writer doesn’t lament the banal state of the publishing industry,  but there are alternatives, such as self-publishing, or small publishers. A realistic view for someone who has had an $150,000 advance (many times the average income in this country) in their past? Perhaps not. But the anonymous author of this story, who one would surmise is fortunate enough to be supported by a spouse, only seems to lament her lack of ability to make a lot of money in this ‘new’ environment. And that, I believe, is missing the point.”

Read the latest book by Lawrence Lessig. It can be downloaded for free at Amazon: Free Culture: How BigMedia Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. (Amazon says it will only be freely available for a limited time. I’m not sure why; it’s not as though their going to run out of files, but that’s the way it is.) It’s a pretty meaty title, so what can I add, except that unless you want to live in a world of 24/7 reality tv, you will pay attention to the dominance of companies like Time Warner, AOL, Netscape, Time, Time Warner Cable, Time Warner Books, HBO, New LineCinema, Turner Broadcasting, Warner Bros. Entertainment…(oops, those are all one company. Ironically, I suppose, they also own MAD magazine).

Here is a link to the NY Times article about it: ”Free Culture:The Intellectual Imperialists.

“The shrinking of the public domain, and the devastation it threatens to the culture, are the subject of a powerfully argued and important analysis by Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School and a leading member of a group of theorists and grass-roots activists, sometimes called the ‘’copyleft,’’who have been crusading against the increasing expansion of copyright protections. Lessig was the chief lawyer in a noble, but ultimately unsuccessful, Supreme Court challenge to the copyright extension act.’’Free Culture’’ is partly a final appeal to the court of public opinion and partly a call to arms.”

One theory about the origin of April Fool’s Day is that it started in France in 1582. Up until then, New Year’s Day was celebrated on April 1, but when Europe adopted the Gregorian Calendar, New Year’s Day was moved to January 1. At the time, news of such things traveled slowly, and it took many years for everyone to get up to speed. People who continued to celebrate New Years on April 1 came to be known as April Fools.

From the Writer’s Almanac at Minnesota Public Radio.

A year ago, my wife and I went to the rally in New York City to voice our opposition to the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. It was a moving experience, both emotionally and physically. Standing together in freezing cold weather, we had all come to collectively shout out that we believed our government was belligerently dragging the world down a bloody side street and this would not happen without our speaking up. The crowd was a broad mixture of New Yorkers and those that came by bus from far away; there were many races, ages and even all the economic social strata were represented, as far as I could tell. To see children with their parents, others who could be grandparents and so many who probably have never experienced such a demonstration of consciousness was what I found so electrifying. It was like being a drummer at the center of a really awesome marching band.

 

Before the march, I spent a lot of time thinking about the war and whether or not I would go and protest. I was only on the fence because I knew that a lot of people there would represent views radically different than mine, and indeed, there were. I decided to go because I felt that collectively, despite the presence of prosumer protestors, anarchists and other disparate groups, we were ultimately sending a unified message that the war was wrong. I also went because I believed that even one death for the wrong purpose was too many, and I could not stand by without saying something.

The experience has stayed with me, and I’m sure the same is true for most that were there. Many too have been vindicated in their own purposes for being among the vocal minority as the Bush administration’s stated purpose for the invasion has failed to materialize. However, I believe that the Bush administration, despite a nasty public relations problem, has been quite successful so far. We must not forget that one of the major purposes of the Iraq invasion was probably (for I can’t read minds, particularly not such narrow ones) to establish a legal precedent for Bush’s “Doctrine of First Strike.” This rather subtle change to international law would allow the U.S. to take military action against another country for merely suspecting that they will take action against us. Many feel that this is completely justified in the age of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” when there is potentially no ability to take defensive measures against an aggressor. That is why it is only important for the Bush administration to justify their actions by saying that they were based upon available intelligence. But I think the doctrine pushes the world into an era when brute force becomes the only bargaining chip, and we are, as a result, no better than tribal warlords, all looking to find better ways to kill one another.

Having said this, I was not at the anti-war march yesterday. This is mostly due to personal circumstances, but also because I believe that now that we are in Iraq, as wrong and costly in terms of human life that may be, it would be far worse for the region if we were to pull out. Foreign policy can’t always be made on strictly moral grounds. Unfortunately, I believe that completely withdrawing our forces now would leave an Afghanistan type country that could easily fall apart and that somehow we need to try and unite to make Iraq a peaceful and prosperous country. I acknowledge of course that that is far far easier said than done. Even though we have performed heart surgery on a cancer patient, we can’t just sit and let him die to make up for our original mistake.

Most that know me well, know that I love cheese – and living in New York City where we have great cheesemongers, such as Murray’s Cheese, I’m spoiled (no pun intended), at least as dairy spoiled  as one can be living in the homogenized world of pasteurization here in the United States with our silly silly rules. So, I was happy to finally find out what kind of cheese I would be if I were a cheese, and it turns out I’m a brie! That’s funny since I never eat Brie, but perhaps that’s logical too.

Cheese Test: What type of cheese are you?

I’ve returned to posting after a long winter of not writing very much, due mostly to my beautifully overwhelming new baby. My goal is to get away from Bush-whacking on this page, which is far too easy and common, and write about some of the other issues that the name of this blog implies. However, I have one issue that’s been in the press and on my mind, because it’s in the press, that I have to mention, and naturally, Mr. Bush is at the center of it.  I am confused about the issue of gay marriage; not confused about the issue, but confused about why it’s an issue, and why it’s such an important issue that we would need a constitutional amendment to save our society from it. Yeah, sure, there are politics behind it and all that, but why?

For an answer, I went to my trusty Economist Magazine, whose inimitably logical editors tend to be centrist (at their most neutral) and free-market libertarian (at their most political), and, importantly for me, they lay out arguments so that anyone can understand them. The Economist supports gay marriage and makes the case for it in the opinion pages of their February, 26 issue. They rightly accuse George Bush of being “in favor of unequal rights…“and “big government intrusiveness…” and claim that his call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is “difficult, drastic and draconian…” The Economists case for gay marriage rests, in short, on the simple idea of equality; “Why should one set of loving, consenting adults be denied a right in which, if exercised, will do no damage to anyone else?

They also point out my personal favorite flaw in Bush’s argument: This “fundamental institution” that he wants to preserve already has a greater failure rate than a New York City restaurant (my analogy, probably not technically correct, but you get the point). They go on to address the separation of church and state and the beneficence of marriage over civil unions.

I Agree with all of this and I won’t go through their entire argument, particularly since the article is available online at the link above, but I do want to point out what I see as one flaw (perhaps of omission): They counter the argument that marriage is about children by saying that it “often is, but not always, and permitting gay marriage would not alter that.” This seems to me to ignore the fact that gay couples, just as anyone else, have the right to adopt children, or even have children through fertility treatment or other means. I would think that, in light of this ability, the symbolic commitment that marriage represents would only strengthen families, and that is what this is supposed to be about. As a new parent, I can whole-heartedly attest to the benefit of having two people to raise a child, but there is no good reason why those two people have to be male and female.

Thanks Economist, but I still don’t understand why this is an issue. Why do we not understand that civil rights are for people, not necessarily one group, and that each group should not have to fight for what a bunch of straight, but narrow-minded, white guys have always enjoyed.

What is everyone so afraid of?

I’ve been busy with a project lately with no time left for posts, but I could not help myself this morning when I saw that our President is telling the country that those 34 dead people in Iraq are signs of progress.

 “The more progress we make on the ground, the more free the Iraqis become, the more electricity is available, the more jobs are available,the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate these killers become…”

I just don’t get the connection. I can hear the killers now, (translated in my mind from Arabic): “Damn those Americans, If theysend one more Iraqi child to school, we will shell a hotel!”

Okay, so I’m not much of a political humorist, but time is short and this happy face the administration is putting on grows more absurd by the day. Colin Powell put on his best poker face on Meet the Press last weekend to dismiss all the deaths and glorify our progress – he’s probably the most disappointing to me, because I thought he had more integrity than that. He seems to be displaying more loyalty to the administration than to the country.

Bob Graham dropped his presidential run today in news that will surely be buried in the California recall vote. It’s too bad. I didn’t think he could win (and ultimately neither did he), but he raised the level of integrity of the crowd of candidates.

Here are a few things I like about Graham and why he might make a good VP candidate:

He has experience as a governor of a large state (Florida).

His experience on the Senate Intelligence Committee will be extremely valuable now that the Bush Administration has set our country on such a dangerous course in foreign policy.

He is the only one of the POTUS wannabe field to vote against invading Iraq (among those that are in congress). I think that took guts – a rare thing among politicians.

Lastly, the Concord Coalition, a non-partisan fiscal watchdog put Graham on the honor role in their 2003 Fiscal Responsibility Scorecard.

If it weren’t for those damned diaries he keeps!

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