A few months ago I was engaged in a discussion with a supervisor concerning the utility and material viability of a company-mandated windbreaker (in their terminology a “rain” jacket). A lower-echelon supervisor butted-in and asserted that the jacket was just fine in his opinion, which disturbed me because I had a valid point and he was suggesting that my opinion meant nothing; I figure he must be a Republican. Today, my worthless opinion could not prevent this jacket from hanging by a shred, although I finally have a pocket for a writing instrument—the tear just below the left elbow. In that spirit, I continue where I left off last week.
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It is difficult to avoid the thought that Casey Anthony got away with murder when she was acquitted after only a few hours of deliberation. Yes, she looked small and vulnerable sitting there in the courtroom, just as she was coached to do, but that was at odds with the image of the fun-loving party girl. The fact of the matter is that between June 16 and July 15, 2008, during which Anthony had left the family home with her daughter, she made a mystery of the girl's whereabouts, claiming that she was in the care of a nanny. But in a diary entry dated June 21, Anthony wrote “I have no regrets, just a bit worried. I just want for everything to work out OK. I completely trust my own judgment and know that I made the right decision. I just hope that the end justifies the means. I just want to know what the future will hold for me. I guess I will soon see – This is the happiest that I have been in a very long time. I hope that my happiness will continue to grow– I've made new friends that I really like. I've surrounded myself with good people – I am finally happy. Let's just hope that it doesn't change.” What could she have possibly have been referring to? It couldn’t have been her “job”—she had been fired from the position she had at Universal Studies she told her parents (and police) she still worked at years before. If she was talking about the murder of her daughter as the "right decision" and that she hoped that the "happiness" of being freed of her was "justified by the means," it is shockingly pathological and callous. If we suspect the worst, Anthony had on the very day of her little trip killed her child, practically leaving her in family backyard.
It wasn’t until June 15 that Caylee was reported missing; Anthony at first claimed that the nanny had kidnapped her, but it was just one of many lies. The nanny, though a real person, had never met or Anthony or her child. In August, a meter reader claimed to have found what appeared to be human remains, but investigators were looking further afield based on Anthony’s story; they like could not fathom that the girl could have left so near the family home. They took a second report of what appeared to be human remains more seriously, and finding what was left of Caylee’s skeleton; had they found the remains in August, prosecutor’s might have had more stabstantial forensic evidence. In the meantime, Anthony was finding herself in and out of jail for petty criminal fraud before she was officially charged with murder. The only person who was claiming that Caylee drowned in a pool was Anthony’s lawyers; the only person who could know for certain was Anthony, and she never testified, and that probably more than anything else saved her. Someone so self-involved with her personal happiness didn’t need a “motive.”
Yes, with only circumstantial evidence at best, the prosecution made the mistake of reaching for too much; nevertheless, people are overlooking the fact that the jury also had the option of aggravated manslaughter, which they also saw fit to acquit Anthony of. If, as a few of the jurors claimed, they didn’t believe Anthony was innocent, they would at the very least have agreed to a mistrial to force the prosecution to come up with new evidence; but to let Anthony walk free forever when she is the only person who could possibly know the truth, never to answer for her crime if that is the fact of the matter, is unconscionable. One of the alternates also had the nerve to claim that Anthony was a “good mother.” How would he know that, especially when she had a dead child on her hands that she just threw out into the woods as if she was disposable garbage?
Anthony was convicted of the misdemeanors charge of lying to police; I suppose many of us can be forgiven for wondering what exactly she was trying to hide. As for what the jurors were thinking, I don’t know how they can look themselves in the face, frankly. Another alternate juror claimed that given the evidence—or lack thereof, in his opinion—he was “comfortable” with the verdict. But in this case what does “reasonable doubt” mean? Could these jurors honestly believe that anyone other than Anthony had something to do with the death of this child? Just looking at some of the post-trial photos of Anthony (I mean the ones right after she broke down in tears of relief). There wasn’t this quivering, scared little white girl huddling in her chair, but a gleeful tart. It wasn’t guilt that frighten her during the trial, or even injustice; it was the thought that she might never be able to be free to party like it was 2099. Anthony’s ex-fiancé Jesse Grund, after having described a pathologically dysfunctional Anthony household, observed that “Right now, she has everything she ever wanted. She is going to have money, she is going to have people at her doorstep asking for her, wanting her, and she’s going to have that partying lifestyle that she so craved.’’
Finally, I don’t know how the media can look at itself without shame; the morbid, sometimes hysterical, fascination with white female victims was bound to run into a speed bump when confronted with a defendant who looked like a “victim” of a frenzied press. We saw a version of this before, when the media all but dispensed with due process by “convicting” O.J. Simpson just days after the murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. The jurors in that trial bent over backwards to provide the due process that the media denied him, and the same likely occurred in the Anthony case. But unlike O.J., there seems to be this expectation that Anthony will profit handsomely from her “story.” No doubt she will only talk about the experience of the past few years rather than about her deceptions, her petty criminal past or even what really happened to Casey.
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I think if you ask most people who are obese, they would say that they would prefer not to be. On the other hand, they’d probably prefer that you not bring-up the subject at all. It often can’t be helped. Some people’s metabolism decides it can’t process all the booze and the junk as efficiently; how many actors and actresses have we seen who looked svelte when they were young, but after forty starting inflating like a balloon?
Still, it is worth pointing out that the level of childhood obesity in this country is unusual, and has always been associated with poor or gluttonous eating habits. An important part of the problem is that many parents have to make tougher choices in their food spending, because of income that has not kept-up with the cost of living since the advent of Reagan’s “trickle down” economics policies—although one must confess that “trickle down” was a more apt description than originally envisioned. Fresh produce prices tend to be on the high side; what value is there when $5-a-pound buys you three oranges, especially when a large bag of chips can be had for half that price? Consumers are frequently given such bad choices, and many are forced to look at their available funds and make the bad choice. It really comes down to economics, and who knows what prices would be if we chased all those illegals away and paid the “natives” the $20-an-hour that I recall one unemployed white person tell a farmer was a “fair” price to get him off his sofa and spend ten hours a day in the hot sun picking vegetables.
The economics of the situation is the only reason to criticize Michelle Obama’s campaign on childhood obesity, since it doesn’t take into account the bad choices that many low-income parents are forced to make. But what is the response of the Right? Instead of recognizing that it is the largely their own Party’s policies that have produced vast income disparities that have effected life styles in even the lowest survival denominator, they make petty personal attacks on the First Lady; even Hillary wasn’t subjected to so much spite from members of her own gender. The fact is that Obama not being able to open her mouth without some sad-sack right-wing commentator and politician making a crude remarks says far more about those individuals than it does about her. Rush Limbaugh fulminated "The problem is, and dare I say this, it doesn't look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary, dietary advice. And then we hear that she's out eating ribs at 1,500 calories a serving with 141 grams of fat per serving." I wonder if Limbaugh takes a similar interest in his own calorie intake. At any rate, I dare say that Michelle Obama looks a lot better than he does, so she must have been doing something right. But oh no, “She is a hypocrite. Leaders are supposed to be leaders. If we are supposed to go out and eat nothing, if we are supposed to eat roots, berries, and tree bark, show us how." The problem here is that Michelle Obama is using her position to highlight what is to most people a generally-understood problem; at least it gives her something to do. But Limbaugh’s comments fall into the category of juvenile mean-spiritedness; his “logic” has no point beyond that. Perhaps Limbaugh is taking this all too personally, since he has always been on the “rotund” side.
Sean Hannity, meanwhile, claimed that he was loath to attack a president’s family—unless, of course, they “asked for it” by putting themselves in the “spotlight.” Hannity confined himself to cracks about how if people allowed Michelle Obama to run their kids’ lives, she’d probably send them to Rev. Wright, who’d introduce them to Bill Ayers. I’m in stitches over that one. Mike Huckabee, on the other hand, expressed some dismay over his colleagues’ acting like rabid dogs merely because a sound comes from her lips.
You would think, of course, that women are less apt to engage in unfair, demeaning behavior, especially between “sisters.” That’s just another myth perpetuated by feminists who think that all women have some kind of secret kinship, like perpetual victimhood. The Michelle Obama case proves that prejudice and inanity is not confined to one gender. Take, for example, the woman I referred to as the “First Lady of Hate” last year, Michelle Malkin. Malkin is Filipino, and dating back to the time she was allowed by the Seattle Times management to skip the reporting thing—that would have required her to find out how the world really works—right into the opinion thing, she has been a complete horse’s fundament. I figure the Times thought they needed a “right-wing” voice in the paper, and being a “minority” they thought it would be fascinating to allow someone like that without a jot of credibility to be an object of bemusement. Instead, the Times opened a slimy can of worms, giving Malkin a platform of undeserved “credibility,” unleashing her onto an unsuspecting world. My own personal belief—and I suspect it is the correct one—is that Malkin has self-esteem issues, believing that she is not fully “respected” because she has dark skin. The question is one of blame—bigoted whites or fellow minorities who she is “embarrassed” to be “associated” with. Malkin chose the latter course; in trying to “prove” she is not one of “them,” she out-bigots her new “friends” on the extreme right. Weighing in on Obama’s anti-obesity campaign, she snarls
“Over the past year, the first lady has marshaled a taxpayer-subsidized army of government lawyers, bureaucrats and consultants against the "national security threat" of childhood obesity. She has transformed the East Wing of the White House into Big Nanny's new Central Command headquarters. The biggest threats to Mrs. Obama's 70-point plan for national fitness: parental authority and sound science.” Frankly, I don’t know what can be any more sound than the simple empirical fact that there more and more people walking around with considerably more weight than they should, and contributing to more disease and higher health care costs; it also points out a much greater problem in this country: that low-income people have difficulty in affording the high prices of fresh food, thus defaulting lower-cost but fattier and unhealthier food. If here is a “threat” here, it is Malkin’s preference to keep people in ignorance.
Now, what would life be without Sarah Palin? Probably a lot more tolerable, but since she still thinks she is relevant, we might as well poke holes in her enormous ego. Charging that this was another example of “government control,” Palin also found fault with Obama’s suggestion that breast-feeding might delay or avert the onset of obesity in children:
"No wonder Michelle Obama is telling people to breast feed their babies, because the price of milk is rising so high.” Ha-ha, I’m in stitches over that one, although as I mentioned there is something to be said about the relationship between nutrition and food prices, except that in Palin’s case it was only worthy of a joke—which of course is typical of Republicans. "That better not be the takeaway here," Palin warned reporters—as if the rest of her comments strayed far from the original script. You have to hand it to the Republicans: They all sound alike, save the times they reveal their personalities, which always leave something to be desired.
Who else? I admit that I’ve never heard of Jenny Erikson, who is a right-wing blogger living in Southern California, and after this I probably will forget who she is. She claimed that Obama’s anti-obesity campaign was "incredibly insulting to parents." Yeah, parents, we know you care about the health and wellbeing of your “big and beautiful” kids. "News flash to the government: Changing menus is not going to slenderize America. People who eat 5,000 calories a day and feed their kids three scoops of ice cream nightly are going to keep doing that." This is apparently in reference to Obama’s wish for school districts to lunches that are healthy. Of course we know what the Republicans consider to be “healthy”; at least I remember the Reagan administration listing ketchup as a “vegetable.” Again, this what the Republicans mean when they say this a “great” country: you have the freedom to do any stupid you wish. No one has the right to even suggest you should might alter your behavior in a marginally life-affirming way. Even criminals can act as they wish, because it helps the prison industry-based economy stay viable, and operates as a kind of concentration camp system or gulag to keep the undesirables out of sight so “100 percent” Americans can enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness unfettered by such things a guilty consciences.
Media favorite Michelle Bachmann, of course, never bores with her “Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” impersonations. Now, I have to admit that whoever advised Michelle Obama on the breast pump issue probably should be fired, but it gave Bachmann the opportunity to say that tax breaks for breast pumps are "very consistent with where the hard left is coming from. For them, government is the answer to every problem." Well, no. What is being suggested is that the government is willing to provide incentives it believes are positive goods. I call that leading, not establishing a “nanny state.” That’s Seattle.
So what do feminists think about all of this? Are they defending Michelle Obama from the “sexist” attacks, or are they joining the racist and unjust chorus, if only because they still have hard feelings over Barack Obama fstealing Hillary’s “thunder?” There hasn’t been much talk here, but in France, where in many ways feminists are even more radicalized, such as so-called “philosopher” and author Elisabeth Badinter, who spouts the most far-fetched victimization theories imaginable. She claims that breast-feeding is a monstrous, soul-destroying invention of the Americans. In a New York Times interview in regard to her latest tome on female victimization, this sad case of egotism is considered entirely plausible: “Her most recent battle cry: to defend women from the impossibility of being ‘the perfect mother,’ and even from the pressure to be a mother at all.” What I find more interesting but more to her point is this line from the book not mentioned in the story: Women need to be defended from "despotic, gluttonous babies who devour their mothers.” This woman is in need of medication. The basic hypocrisy of feminists is that they can’t settle on any “philosophy.” First they say they are “superior” to men, and then they say they can’t handle the pressure of being “superior.” First they say that they are “natural” nurturers, and then they say it is unfair to them to put the “pressure” of motherhood on them. All these “pressures” of being superior to men victimize women. You know, life isn’t all that easy for men, either; it doesn’t advance truth one iota to engage in this phony one-sided “oppression.”
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I came across a curious story about how Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley claimed to have been put in a “chokehold” by Justice David Prosser after a bitter dispute concerning the imminent ruling on the validity of a lower court voiding Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial anti-union law got out of hand. Prosser apparently stormed into Bradley’s office, where he found Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson (the person he was presumably looking for) whose dissent on the majority right’s ruling included some statements that Prosser seems to have taken offense to:
“At first glance, the order appears to provide some support for broad conclusions reached on fundamental and complex issues of law. But on even casual reading, the explanations are clearly disingenuous, based on disinformation. Justice Prosser's concurrence is longer than the order. The concurrence consists mostly of a statement of happenings. It is long on rhetoric and long on story-telling that appears to have a partisan slant. Like the order, the concurrence reaches unsupported conclusions. In hastily reaching judgment, Justice Patience D. Roggensack, Justice Annette K. Ziegler, and Justice Michael J. Gableman author an order, joined by Justice David T. Prosser, lacking a reasoned, transparent analysis and incorporating numerous errors of law and fact.”
Although none of the justices chose to speak for the record, we may conjecture that an unpleasant argument ensued, during which Bradley “asked” Prosser to leave. Instead, Prosser allegedly applied a chokehold on Bradley, which tends to suggest (if true) that Bradley tried to get her point across from rather close proximity. At any rate, the bad blood between ideological sides are such that one local commentator referred to them as “gangs.” While Prosser—a former Republican speaker of the state Assembly, and thus with obvious partisan leanings—has been accused of being bad tempered and using foul or threatening language against his ideological opposition, Abrahamson has been accused of abusing her administrative authority; the local commentator suggested she does this deliberately to agitate opponents like Prosser.
Regardless of the truth of the matter, we haven’t seen this kind of “action” since the Kansas-Nebraska debates in Congress during the 1850s. Is this the kind of “healthy” debate this country needs to solve its problems? Not at all. I, of course, place the majority of the blame on those on the right for refusing to even countenance “compromising” their so-called “principles” regardless of all the evidence that it serves only destructive purposes for the vast majority of the people.
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Although the exact numbers are fluid, it is estimated that ten percent of Egypt’s population is Christian, mainly of the Coptic Orthodox sect. Some people old enough to remember him might be surprised to learn that actor Omar Sharif was born Michel Shalhoub of parents in the Greek Catholic religion. He later converted to Islam, partly because it was the religion of his second wife, an actress in Egypt, and perhaps because he also knew that there was prejudice against Christians in the country. It should not then be surprising that today with the relaxing of police authority in Egypt since the ouster of Mubarak, long-standing religious animosities have been unleashed, although you won’t hear much about it on CNN. Attacks on Christian churches and mob violence against individuals has become an almost daily occurrence. While justice officials in the caretaker government have promised to take a firm hand against those fomenting religious violence, in fact little is being done, with Muslim police mainly looking on as churches are being burned and people killed. This past New Year’s eve, a suicide bomber killed 20 Christian worshipers inside a church.
Many of the attacks seem to be “justified” by Muslims who claim that Christian women who allegedly converted to Islam were being held against their will inside the churches being attacked. The reality is that Islamic fundamentalist terrorist gangs of the Salafi sect—who recently held a prayer vigil in remembrance of Osama bin Laden—has as part of their agenda the desire to rid Egypt of Christians, and appears to be behind most of the violence. Although the military claims that they have made some arrests, many Christians accuse them of doing little to stop the fire-bombing of churches, merely watching Muslim mobs tossing the bombs over their heads onto churches.
I was listening to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now “debate” a member of the Israeli consulate concerning the 400-ship flotilla that is attempting to set sail for Gaza. I like peace just as much as the next person, but it has to be a two-way street, which is something that people on the extreme-left like Goodman simply do not seem to understand; the Israeli functionary repeatedly asked Goodman if she considered Hamas a terrorist organization or not, which she answered by asking a question that the Israeli had already answered before. She continuously refused to acknowledge the crimes of Hamas, which seriously undercut her credibility. The stated goal of Hamas is not a two-state solution, but a single-state solution devoid of Jews. This is the kind of fanaticism that Christians face in Egypt—and make no mistake, the Christian heritage in Egypt predates the Muslim by at least 5 centuries. The anti-Christian (and anti-Israeli) attitude of many on the extreme-left is based on a false notion that the Muslims they choose to support, like Hamas, are the solution, not the obstacle, to peace.
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Jared Loughner, the perpetrator of the Tucson massacre earlier this year, has been judged mentally incompetent for the time being to stand trial. The judge in the case based this on Loughner’s spitting on some people during a court hearing, and on the assertion by two psychiatrists that he did not seem to have an understanding of legal procedures, and distrusted his lawyers. Loughner may not be “competent,” but that is not the same as being insane; after all, that didn’t stop Charles Manson from being tried. Loughner was certainly sane enough to ask that he not be forced to take anti-psychotic drugs, and his attitude and behavior simply reflects his extreme anti-government, anti-authority and anti-whatever political stance. What I fear is that we will never be allowed to hear the extent of his twisted philosophy and who were his “mentors,” which would may embarrass many on the extreme right like Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh—sending them scurrying in search of ever more bizarre and hypocritical rationalizations.
One thing we do know is that Loughner did have an “interest” in the “literature” of the American Renaissance. Who are interested parties in that organization’s activities, besides a smorgasbord of anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-immigrant fanatics? Patrons of the neo-Nazi Stormfront website, for one; I checked-out a forum in which members gleefully relayed the latest racist and anti-government speechifying at its last conference. Regardless if one believes Loughner is “deranged” or not, it is worth hearing what he has to say, even if it does disrupt court proceedings, if only to prove the effect that right-wing rhetoric with more than a touch of violence has on its listeners. And let’s not forget that we were denied the whole truth in the Timothy McVeigh case, something which I discussed in detail in an early post, but suffice to say that he had more help—in fact much more—than we were led to believe.
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The genocide in Rwanda, which took the lives of 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu sympathizers in a mere 100 days in 1994 before Tutsi rebels gained control of the country, was one of those events which turn commonly-held myths upside down. One of those myths was upended recently when a crimes against humanity tribunal recently found Pauline Nyiramasuhuko guilty of genocide. It was a known fact that Hutu women took part in the genocide (mainly by hacking victims with machetes), but outsiders in the main chose to generalize the crime as male-only affair. The trial itself, like so many such trials, took extraordinarily long to advance to a conclusion (when often the defendant dies in prison before trial is over), in this case 10 years. The “surprising” thing about this case was the fact that Nyiramasuhuko was the family affairs and women's development minister; there is no accounting for the dark places that inhabit some people’s souls. The defendant apparently ordered and assisted in the killing-off of minority Tutsis “as fast as possible” in her home district where she acted with “depravity and sadism”; besides overseeing and participating in the transportation and extermination of victims, she ordered Tutsi women and girls raped.
After being sentenced to life imprisonment, a BBC reporter observed that Nyiramasuhuko showed no emotion, continuing to deny all charges. Although it is the only high profile case in which a woman was charged, Rwandan courts have convicted a number of women on genocide charges, and in 2001, two nuns were convicted of participating in genocide in a Belgium court. One nun was charged with turning away thousands of Tutsis looking for sanctuary, instead contacting Hutu soldiers for “assistance,” and who subsequently killed 5,000 of them. The second nun was charged with providing Hutu soldiers with gasoline, knowing that they were going to use it to burn 700 people to death who were hiding in a building on the grounds of her convent.
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I wonder how many people scratched their heads when they heard that one of the Kennedy clan, Maria Shriver—daughter of Eunice Kennedy—was marrying steroid-enhanced body-builder/bad actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. I mean guy was a comedy routine every time he opened his mouth. He also was a supporter of Ronald Reagan, who even by the mid-1980s the damage his reactionary policies were causing was apparent. I could only think that this was a “celebrity” marriage; it was hard to imagine that anyone could take seriously any political aspirations Schwarzenegger might have the audacity to entertain; even Clint Eastwood limited himself to being mayor of Sarah Palin-sized town. How could someone who was part of the liberal establishment tolerate being around such a person for 25 years, let alone one day? When he actually did become governor of California—aided by no small degree by the presence of Shriver, who not only forgave him his groping sins, but gave voters the impression that some of that Kennedy mystique must have rubbed-off on him—it was clear that any idea that Schwarzenegger was a “different” kind of Republican was wishful thinking. Outside a few proclamations on emissions standards, he towed the anti-tax, deep-cut line the Grover Norquist lobby. The result was that California was worse-off than it was in 2003. In 2008, Shriver openly broke with her husband politically by endorsing Barack Obama in the California primary, and later for president.
Schwarzenegger and Shriver and now divorcing, ostensibly because of his cheating ways, at least in one instance leading to an illegitimate child. But perhaps it is surprising that this marriage lasted as long as did, given their presumed ideological differences. Maybe it made conversation at the dinner table more interesting, but it is easy to imagine angry rows at starkly different worldviews, especially with how illogically simplistic right-wing ideology can be. It will be interesting to see if Shriver chooses to reveal what it was like for her to be the spouse of someone who was presumably her political opposite.
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Recently the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart, brought by those representing 1.6 million female employees for pay and advancement discrimination. Frankly, I think the court’s right-wing was unfortunately correct, and not just because of the absurdity that all those women should be a chief; it was incredibly pompous and stupid for the people representing the plaintiffs to claim that all of these women were being discriminated against. As Scalia stated quite correctly stated, an examination of employee records revealed no pattern that individual women were being discriminated merely because of the fact of their gender, thus it was wrong to make generalizations regarding the whole. Discrimination no doubt occurs, but since local managers must follow the company’s non-discrimination policy, and are allowed hiring and promotion at their discretion, discrimination suits must be limited to what can reasonably be proved. And it need not be limited to discrimination against women, but against minorities, or males generally if a woman is a local manager with such discretion (I’ve already talked about a job site I worked for a day at where non-white women were discriminated against).
The Walmart plaintiffs provided no evidence that there was a systematic policy of discrimination against women—as opposed to practices based on subjective criteria, such as the perception that an employee was spending more time talking than working. Unlike the Texaco racial discrimination case, there was no “smoking gun,” where executives were surreptitiously recorded disparaging blacks and discussing a plan in which to hide a long-time policy of discriminatory practices against black employees by destroying documents. Since only 1,400 black employees were plaintiffs, there was a greater likelihood of a settlement before the case went to what was then already a right-leaning Supreme Court. Because the Walmart plaintiffs claimed that all women were discriminated against, it worked against its credibility, and in fact weakened their case rather than strengthened it. What makes this case truly unfortunate is the fact that in selfishly reaching for far more than was justified, the plaintiffs hurt people who really are discriminated against in this country, mainly racial minorities of both genders. Although a black woman was one of the media-ready faces presented to the public, black women arguably face fewer challenges in the work place than black males (especially the white collar work place).
I have to admit that I found intriguing the testimony of a sociologist, William Bielby, who claimed to have collected “scientific evidence about gender bias, stereotypes and the structure and dynamics of gender inequality in organizations.” But only because the evidence wasn’t precisely “scientific” of sociological generalizations. In the past twenty years, I’ve worked at numerous places of employment, and I’ve never seen this “evidence,” myself. At many places, I observed women promoted to supervisory positions not because they were better qualified, but because the company had to find something for them to do because they couldn’t do the heavy work. In many lines of work, such as the service industries, women—and especially white women—are shown considerable partiality because they are deemed more “attractive” magnets for customers.
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When I was in the Army, I spent nine months in Fort Lewis, WA before being shipped out to Germany again; my re-enlistment contract said it was supposed to be one year at least, but when I complained, they just laughed at me. However, while I was here I did have time to appreciate the environment of Puget Sound, if not necessarily the locals. I wanted to return to live here someday, but it had to wait until my enlistment was up, college and a brief stay in Sacramento. I found a cheap apartment a few blocks from the California state capitol building, which I thought was pretty neat; I never fooled myself into thinking that I’d ever find a job in my field of study, especially without connections, and so in order to survive I signed up with a temp agency through I which I found regular work at a shop putting together plastic conveyor belts. One day I decided I also needed to go back to school because being a student was a more impressive occupation than doing such labor—except that I still needed an income, so I couldn’t quit my job. I eventually enrolled in what was then called California State University at Sacramento (now Sacramento State). For ninth months, this was how my day went: I’d wake-up at 6 AM in order to prepare for my first class at 8 AM. My last class ended a 1:30 PM. I would then catch a light rail train and a connecting bus near the location of my place of employment, and eventually arrive by 3:00 PM. I worked until 11:30, by which time buses had ceased running, and I had 45 minutes to catch the last light rail train out. Because there was no way I could make it time if I walked, I donned a sweat suit and jogged the distance, after which I had maybe five minutes to spare. When I got off the train it was 12:45 AM, it took me another 45 minutes to walk to my apartment; I eventually went to sleep at 2 AM. I suppose it would have been helpful to have a car, but I couldn’t squeeze the cost between an apartment and tuition without starving to death first. It didn’t take long for this routine to become completely exhausting. I had to take a GMAT test, but when I was scheduled for a Saturday morning session, and I begged the administrators to reschedule me the afternoon block so that I could get some rest first. My request was denied. I had only a few hours of sleep before I had to take the test, and I was additionally discomfited by stomach cramps, and I simply couldn’t concentrate. Right then I decided that there was no point to this, because the school didn’t even have a master’s program in journalism, and besides, I already knew how to write anyways. I certainly didn’t require an “advanced” education to form an opinion about the world I lived in. So I sold most of my CD and Laser Disk collection, and took a bus to Seattle, which had been my intention to begin with. Having only $600 when I arrived, I perused a newspaper to find the cheapest accommodations available; put on my one suit in my duffle bag, which I stashed in a locker at the Greyhound station, and marched to and fro until I stumbled upon the apartment building, which was obviously one of those subsidized low-income establishments. The manager, who was just a kid, was sufficiently impressed by my attire, and the “fact” that I was a UW student, that he gave me a room right there on the spot without credit check. After making the required payments, I had $20 left; I lived on raw hotdogs and water for two weeks before I found a job, and lived on hotdogs and water for another two weeks until I received my first paycheck, most of which I had to use to pay for the next month’s rent. I had enough money to buy a pot, so until my next check I lived on hotdogs that were cooked, and water.
But that is just the background of the little tale I want to tell. One day I was jogging to the train station when a large four-by-four pick-up truck stopped in front of me. As I passed along the sidewalk, a man inside called out to asking me if I needed a ride. I said sure, I can use a ride. I’m going to train station, thanks. This man, wearing glasses and a beard, looked like an academic or an accountant; I figured he was just being a good Samaritan. We had only traveled a block when the man asked me a question. I won’t tell you what the question was, but I kept my composure, said uh, no thanks, I have to go to class in the morning so I can’t miss this train, and I kind of let myself out at the next red light. I couldn’t believe it; life was already tough enough without some guy going to make me miss the last train by asking something crazy like that. Did he really think that because I was outside jogging in a sweat suit at near midnight didn’t mean he and I had the same “idea”? Looking back on it now, I can say that my calm, matter-of-fact attitude probably kept the encounter from degenerating into something quite unpleasant. One thing I never did afterward was accept offers of a ride from people, even from those I knew. My philosophy in life is actually quite simple: I don’t care what you do, just don’t bother me with it.
I was compelled to relate this story after listening to NPR last week concerning the New York legislature passing a gay marriage law. A reporter bemoaned Barack Obama’s waffling on the issue, only going so far that the passing of such laws should be a state issue. Considering the fact that the right would pummel him mercilessly if he did come out explicitly in favor of gay marriage, I think no one on the pro side should be particularly unhappy with him, especially when they’ve done nothing to support him even when he has come out in favor of progressive policies. The progressives like to talk, but when it comes to action, they just sit back and wait for something to happen. Or if they do something, it has nothing to do with what’s going on in this country, like the Americans in that flotilla to the Gaza strip. Another fact is that while a CBS poll claims that support for gay marriage has risen, at 42 percent it is still significantly under a majority. In New York, the latest polls show that the support of gay marriage is not as strong as previously claimed; when asked what their personal belief was, a majority still said they believed it should be between a man and woman. What this means is what people say and what they do—like vote—are often two different things. Obama has been constantly accused of being a “socialist”—something that when combined with his being a racial minority is a source of constant hysteria from the right that tends to spill over into then “independent” mind. The best thing for the activists to do is to get their lazy fundaments to the polls in 2012, unlike what they did in 2010, and get the Democrats back in control of both houses and re-elect Obama; he may be no socialist, but all things considered, he’d prefer to do the “left” thing when he has nothing to lose.
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