British director Ken Russell is one of those filmmakers whose reputation seems to be greater than his actual output, and although he gained some notoriety in the 1970s for several films (such as “The Music Lovers” and “The Devils”) which took too much license with “artistry” for many viewers to accept, to me his work doesn’t interest me as much as those of one his contemporaries, Nicolas Roeg. I have to admit, however, that it is one of his lesser-known films, “Savage Messiah”—currently available from Warner Home Video as an “on-demand” DVD-R—that I find worthy as an amusing diversion for a couple of hours. It allegedly portrays the brief career of radical French sculptor Henri Gaudier, focusing on his eccentricities and bizarre relationship with a Polish governess-turned-novelist Sophie Brzeska. There is a scene in the latter half of the film in which Gaudier encounters a women’s suffragette (played by a young Helen Mirren) who for some unexplained reason he manages to convince to take time out from spouting feminist rhetoric to pose for him wearing nothing but her shoes. She tells Gaudier that she wants to be an “artist.” Why? Because she wants to leave behind something “that was never there before.” Gaudier tells her “The outhouse is in the back.” In that spirit, here are some more leftover thoughts that I never seemed to quite get right in my mind:
The vote on the war powers act in regard to U.S. “involvement” in Libya is pure political grandstanding, with an unhealthy dose of unaldulterated hypocrisy. Consider: George Bush led us into a war in Iraq first based on wishful thinking and “plausible” falsehoods, and secondly upon a country that posed no threat to our “freedoms,” imminent or otherwise. Yet the Senate voted affirmatively on a war resolution, and continued to fund it the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, maybe ultimately trillions of dollars. And yet now some in Congress are bellyaching about a token effort in Libya, particular when there was pressure on the U.S. to do something on behalf of “the people.” Now they stand on “principle” after thousands have already died. Frankly, I’m surprised that the Obama administration isn’t portraying this as some kind of NATO operation, especially when the brunt of the “war” is being conducted by the British and French, the two countries that agitated for intervention into Libya most forcefully to begin with. But as I recall, the Democrats were acting like jelly-spined weaklings before the Bush administration beefcake bull, and the Republicans—well, they’re just do what Republicans are expected to do. Diplomatically, the Libyan operation was the first opportunity, after decades of backing repressive right-wing regimes, to demonstrate that the U.S. supported the “people” substantially rather than rhetorically. But for certain Democrats, this is an opportunity to undermine their own president for no good reason when before they flailed about haplessly before a Republican president. As for Republicans on the Libyan issue, they’ll happily dispense with their “principles” for any cynical partisan reason. If we have been taught anything about this episode, government is only expected to be ”ethical” and “moral” when Democrats are in the White House; when occupied by Republicans, power is its own justification.
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I found this link while I was doing some online research. There are quite a few such polls floating around the web, and most of them seem to be self-prophesizing carnival barking, rather than attempting to gather useful information:
Should Congress Repeal Obama's Health Plan and Other Policies?
Should Obama Be Re-elected?
Vote in This Urgent Poll
“Newsmax.com, one of America's leading online news services, is conducting an urgent national online poll about President Obama, the 2011 Congress and whether it should repeal President Obama's healthcare plan and other policies.”
“We are also asking if he should be re-elected in 2012”
“Newsmax will provide the results of this poll to major media outlets. Newsmax's results also will be shared with popular radio talk-show hosts across America.”
“Newsmax reports have been cited by major media outlets, including CNN, ABC News, Fox News, CBS, MSNBC, and other major networks.”
“Don't miss this opportunity to let your voice be heard! Many media outlets and national leaders are interested in your opinion. Hundreds of media outlets have reported on Newsmax's online polls.”
“Vote today!”
1) Do you support the full repeal of President Obama's healthcare plan Congress passed in 2010?
Yes, repeal it completely
No, don’t repeal it at all
No, repeal just parts of it
2) Should Congress restore $500 billion in Medicare benefits for seniors that the Obama plan cut?
Yes, restore the Medicare benefits
No, don't restore the Medicare benefits
3) Do you support President Obama's desire to give 12 million illegal aliens amnesty and a path to citizenship?
Yes, I support Obama's amnesty plan
No, I oppose it
4) What do you believe Congress' top priority should be in 2011?
Cutting spending
Cutting taxes
Paying down the national debt
Improving the nation's security
5) Do you plan on voting to re-elect President Obama in 2012?
Yes, re-elect
No, for another candidate
Not sure right now
6) Who did you vote for in 2008?
McCain - Palin
Obama - Biden
Other
As I’ve said, there a million polls like this, giving people an either/or choice, or essentially no choice at all. The first question on the health care bill seems innocuous enough; perhaps people do want parts of it repealed. The question is, what parts? If you ask these people what it is they don’t like, they’d probably have a hard time explaining what exactly it is. The second question tries to scare seniors into believing it is Obama who is seeking to gut Social Security, and not the Republicans; now at least we know that there is an underlying stincture of partisan politics meant to reach a pre-conceived conclusion. The third question asks if you support amnesty for 12 million illegal aliens; as an aside, it is interesting to note that almost a quarter of illegal immigrants in this country are from countries outside of Latin America (13 percent from Asia, according to the Pew Foundation), but because it costs so much more to ship them out of the country, the ICE and Border Patrol ignores them, focusing solely on Latinos. Anyways, no one wants a blanket amnesty, but because the question equates the hot-button term “amnesty” and “a path to citizenship” as essentially the same thing, it self-negates the latter term as an approach to address the immigration issue. The fourth, and probably most despicable, question again gives people false choices. Where is the choice for raising taxes on the wealthy (which means nothing more than allowing the Bush era tax cuts to sunset) or closing tax loopholes for corporations that pay little or no taxes on their massive profits? Why are we talking about national security? Where is job creation (which would mean additional spending)? What about maintaining Social Security and Medicare? Question five is essentially pointless, because we still don’t know how the economy will turn and what Republican emerges from the darkness.
Who would use a poll that essentially measures nothing but a guttural response that requires no reflection or thought? Probably Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and others like them who would use the “results” for next week’s right-wing talking point.
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Last Sunday the Seattle Times published a “special report” on the case of forensic psycho-analyst Stuart Greenberg, who had committed suicide following an arrest for surreptitiously installing a video camera in the patient/employee bathroom of his home-office, where he conducted his psychology practice, in order to satisfy some bizarre fetish he had. He also had an interesting record of providing apparently false or misleading testimony in mostly child-custody cases, although for some reason the Times chose cases in which women were the “victims,” when the record tells us that it is men who are the usual “prey” to accusations of abuse in custody cases.
While admittedly the Greenberg case was of prurient interest, I find it is odd that the Times chose to fixate on this guy when there are plenty of other activists masquerading as "experts" who do as bad or worse to advance their victim agenda. Not surprisingly, one party or another finds such testimony useful, regardless of its veracity, and sometimes with tragic results. There was a local case some years ago involving a middle-aged man who shot and killed his young, pregnant Filipino wife and her friend right in the middle of a divorce court proceeding. The media, of course, reported this story in the way it typically does, without quite getting the back story: One of the victims had a boyfriend living in the U.S., but his legal status was insufficient to help her immigrate in order to join him. What to do? She advertised herself as a “mail order bride” in order to attract some lonesome American with abysmal courtship abilities to marry her, after which she could legally remain in the country. She had a plan, of course; remain married to the man for a “respectable” amount of time (say, a year), and file for divorce. Once married, she abandoned the pretense of being a wife and rejoined her boyfriend, and subsequently became pregnant with his child. One may imagine the reaction of the husband when told that he had been deliberately cuckolded, and confronted with the demand for a divorce. Why was her friend in that fatal courtroom? She was there to offer testimony to “corroborate” a story of domestic violence, no doubt falsely. What could have been going through this man’s mind, given the totality of this monstrosity of injustice? Or are not men allowed to have feelings of being emotionally pummeled, like women are allowed to? There is no doubt if the roles had been reversed, the woman would have received all the empathy the world had to offer, and instead of being labeled a monster would have been acquitted for temporary insanity in a case of a crime of passion. I realize that this has little to do with the Times story, but I just needed an excuse to put in my two-bit in regard to that incident.
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Although the previous story doesn’t exactly substantiate the point of my next story, it is worth noting since its implications all too often are swept under the rug. Last week while in the University District, I observed a minor confrontation that failed to achieve full-blown status because of the intervention of a man between two combatants. Well, it was actually one combatant—a woman who was preparing to lay a scrawny guy horizontal to the ground. I bring this up because one of the myths of domestic abuse is that men are always portrayed as the aggressors both physically and emotionally. The reality is that some men are congenitally passive or physical cowards, like “Back to the Future’s” George McFly, avoiding conflict at any cost, even self-respect. Some of these men are in relationships with women who take advantage of these “weaknesses” in their character, especially if they are naturally aggressive and like “conversations” to be one-sided. It doesn’t matter if the man is physically stronger; if he lacks physical or emotional aggressiveness, then he seeks to avoid those people who are; it is hard for him to imagine a situation where he can work himself up to such a state that he is even willing to strike someone, for fear that that his opponent will subsequently beat him to pulp if he doesn’t get in that lucky punch first. If it is a spouse who likes to bully, and knows she can do it without fear of imminent reprisal, we enter into the world that domestic violence “researchers,” “experts” and even police loath to take into account, since interrupts myth-making. Domestic abuse does not turn on the presence of physical strength, but the psychological willingness to use physical means.
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I was watching CNN the other day when some reporter was talking about the Caylee Anthony murder case. The reporter suggested that the lawyers of the accused murderer—her mother, Casey Anthony—would use the argument that the girl had “accidentally” drowned, and in a fit of panic or indifference, Anthony took the body into the woods and left it. Why anyone would believe this story after the mountain of lies Anthony and her family had already told is a minor detail, according to this scenario. That Anthony had responded to the “rumor” of a drowning, suggested helpfully by her parents, by dismissing it as untrue is also apparently not a point worth rehashing. At any rate, the CNN reporter seemed to think that the story would “resonate” with Florida jurors because drowning is supposedly the number one killer of children under five in the state; something tells me that this reporter hopes that is the case, because the other scenario (that the girl was rendered unconscious with chloroform and then suffocated with duct tape) is an unfortunate reminder that “motherhood” in humans is not a natural instinct, but a learned one.
CNN, of course, has spent a lot of time on this case, mainly because of the media’s fixation on white female victims, and no more so than Nancy Grace, who is the media equivalent of finger nails scraping across a blackboard. Egotistical and self-righteous, Grace is easy to dislike and distrust because she behaves like an activist for whom concepts like impartial justice, innocent until proven guilty and factual evidence are obscure notions best left to those who prefer reporting the facts. After attempting to implicate one innocent person (an ex-boyfriend, Ricardo Morales), and another (ex-boyfriend Tony Rusciano) and then a nanny (Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez, who did not know Anthony or her daughter) and then her parents, in a sudden fit of “impartiality” decided instead of focusing on the most logical suspect, suggested to viewers that they leave the investigation to the “experts” like law enforcement and “psychics”—this despite the fact that in a six-month period Anthony had been arrested and re-arrested four times for the following crimes: child neglect, obstruction, making false statements, forgery, fraud, theft, theft again, and finally murder. Just in case apologists thought Grace really meant to say “psychiatrists,” no such luck; she was referring to a “psychic” who allegedly “saw” Casey’s murder—with bug spray and chloroform.
Grace claims to have been motivated to become a prosecutor after the murder of her fiancé in 1980. However, she made false claims about the case—that the murderer was a stranger, had a prior criminal record, that the jury was “unclear” about guilt, and numberless delaying appeals of a guilty verdict that took hours to reach, not days—in which to justify the misconduct that she would engage in as a special prosecutor in the Atlanta-Fulton County District Attorney’s office. Although her fiancé was obviously a man, Grace chose for her cases victims of crime who were almost exclusively female, and not surprisingly her underlying misandry would cloud her sense of “justice” on numerous occasions. In her book “Objection,” Grace claims that high-priced lawyers, celebrity defendants, and 24/7 media has hijacked “justice.” No, it is fanatics like Grace who provide the illusion that all victims are white females (when they are they are in fact the least likely to be a victim of crime) who have hijacked “justice.”
Grace was pretty much allowed a free hand in prosecuting cases as she saw fit, until her boss decided not to run for re-election, and since her protector was gone, she left the office. And protection she needed, since the Georgia Supreme Court weighed-in on her conduct on at least two occasions. In a drug trafficking case, the court threw out a guilty verdict because in her closing argument, Grace had prejudiced the jury by referring to murder and rape cases that had nothing to do with the defendant. In another case, the court overturned a conviction a businessman on murder and arson charges stemming from the death of his wife, asserting that the "the conduct of the prosecuting attorney (Grace) in this case demonstrated her disregard of the notions of due process and fairness, and was inexcusable." The defendant was eventually released without further charge. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals also weighed-in on Grace, condemning her unethical behavior in prosecuting a defendant in another murder trial, charging that she knowingly used false testimony by a detective.
With this record of prosecutorial misconduct (no doubt not confined to these few instances—and no doubt “justified” by a zeal for “justice”) why did CNN (or Court TV, for that matter) hire her? Obviously because she fit the bill perfectly as an overbearing zealot uninterested in facts who thinks everyone who is merely charged is guilty; Americans are apparently so uninterested in due process that her version of justice is a natural ratings winner. So what has she done since joining CNN, besides being allowed to engage unfettered in her white female victim of the week activism? Besides being all over the map with the Anthony case, she showed her narrow-minded, activist-driven contempt for impartial justice by assuming that the woman in the Duke University rape case was telling the truth: "Why would you go to a cop in a gang rape case, and lie and give misleading information?” Wendy Murphy, her “expert” on the subject, declaimed that "My own statistics speak to this fact" that there is no such thing as a false rape accusation (unless, of course, you want to accuse an anonymous homeless man in order to shame your parents into giving you money to pay your rent, as in a recent local case). It turned out that the woman—a student who worked as a part-time stripper, felt “disrespected” while dancing in a state of undress in front of a bunch of drunken white frat boys, and wanted to get “even.” On the day the case was dismissed and the local prosecutor disbarred, Grace apparently decided she was too sick to show-up for work; it must have been equally tough for Jane “War against Women” Velez-Mitchell to report that story in her place.
Remember talk show personality Jenny Jones and the tragic events that unfolded after she told a young man that he had a “secret admirer,” and embarrassed him on national television when this admirer turned out to be a man? Well, Grace had her own such moment, after hounding a young woman into suicide after an interview about her missing child. CNN displayed about as much ethics as Grace when it actually aired the interview after the woman had killed herself. Grace defended herself by claiming that guilt, and not being portrayed as a cold-blooded killer on national TV, led to the suicide (the child has not been found at this date). Interestingly, Grace claims that guilty people always look for someone else to blame, and yet she repeatedly does the same when confronted with her own misdeeds. In the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case, Grace returned to her usual haunts, employing her “intuition” to determine guilt. She asserted far and wide her conviction that a suspect, Richard Ricci, was guilty of the crime even though there was no evidence to back the assertion; after the real criminals were arrested and charged, Grace refused to admit error, suggesting it was an “honest” mistake, and no one was going to lay a guilt-trip on her.
Despite all of this, one must confess that Grace is one with her times; the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly weighed-in against defendants’ rights, and every time an innocent person is shot dead by police, people just don’t seem to care; he must have done something wrong, right?
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Al Gore recently got himself back in the news (along with Bruce “Where is he now” Babbitt) by accusing Barack Obama of “failing to lead” on the problem of global warming, as if he doesn’t have enough to do with economy, the deficit and foreign conflicts. Obama has made noises on the subject, and forced government regulators to arouse from their slumbers, which was all Bush-era non-rules gave them to do, but with so many other problems and so little money to apply to controlling greenhouse gases, there seems little political benefit to pushing the issue; this shouldn’t be surprising, since most Americans prefer to be left alone, and react to events rather anticipate them (which naturally didn’t apply to the Bush administration, which “anticipated” that Saddam Hussein was insane enough to attack us with his non-existent WMDs). Obama did talk about grand visions, “green energy” and jobs related to it, but except for tax breaks there was no green dream Manhattan Project on the horizon—and there won’t be until industry that controls politicians start clamoring for “action” and a willingness to pay for it. There was also something called “Cap and Trade,” which supposedly gives companies an incentive to reduce pollutants and emissions by issuing “permits” that sets limits on emissions, and companies that remain under the limits can sell their permits to companies who exceed the limits. However, any kind of government intervention into the “freedom” of businesses to do whatever they want is anathema to Republicans, so naturally this went on the wayside.
You really can’t blame Obama so much, since despite all the hand-ringing by liberals, the media has done nothing to illuminate the issue of climate change for the masses, nor has a significant number hit the streets to do the protest thing; the few that have are usually regarded as cranks and fringe fanatics. In the halls of Congress, despite the dire straits the Republicans have left us in, Southerners and Westerners still see fit to vote foolish; when the country needed a change, they re-sent us their do-nothing reactionaries. In 1933, FDR had the benefit of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and an even greater majority in 1935; in the House, the Republican presence was such that they only bothered to show-up to pick-up their paychecks. For whatever grand schemes he may have had, Obama was saddled 41 Republican senators and a half-dozen faux-Democrats who ensured that nothing too dramatic would occur; now, of course, he has even less leverage. As bad as the economy is, it just isn’t bad enough. If it ever does, Americans will be left in a quagmire: should they learn from their mistake and insure that Democratic Party has the power to do what is needed, or should they continue to listen to the call of a rabid minority motivated only by cupidity, narrow-mindedness, paranoia, bigotry and fear.
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As some people may or may not be aware of, the Huffington Post is now an AOL property. You remember AOL. All those ubiquitous software CDs that if you were foolish enough to put in your computer’s optical drive, you’d be regretting it ever more. What was that? You thought this was only a “trial” subscription? You say you canceled your subscription three months ago and you are still being billed? Oh, you say you never subscribed in the first place? Of course, this was how AOL reached a subscriber peak of 27 million, but has since fallen to less than 4 million once those”free” CDs disappeared from magazine racks and mailboxes. If the Post acquisition will help raise its subscriber numbers or even its profile is unknown, but it certainly was a windfall for its founder, Arianna Huffington—whose maiden name is Stassinopoulos, but decided to keep her ex-husband’s; if she called the website The Stassinopoulous Post, it probably wouldn’t attract very much attention, since you can’t pronounce it. Huffington cashed-in for about a $100 million and a cushy job as a consultant, or something. Although she occasionally contributes a brief article, the Post is really nothing more than an inflated version of Google’s Blogspot, where swell-heads and superstars-in-their-own-mind can post for free and actually pretend to be credible purveyors of fact and fiction—and most of which is not even original, but simply re-posts from other publications or websites. Perhaps not surprisingly, Huffington has come into some heat from unpaid contributors (although they may have been paid at their site of origin) who find it offensive that she should be basically making a killing off the work of thousands. I mean, the Post is nothing without its contributors, and the only thing Huffington is providing is her name and notoriety.
Huffington is also nothing if not a brazen opportunist willing to make a buck by any means necessary; yes, she has opinions, but as they say, opinions are like pieholes—everyone has one. Today, Huffington pretends to be a “progressive,” but yesterday she was an unrepentant right-winger. In the 1990s, she campaigned for her Republican husband’s bid for Congress; Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wrote that “Anybody who expects her to continue as a reliable voice of the left is a poor student of Huffington’s history. I first came across Huffington in 1995, when she was working at (Newt) Gingrich's Progress and Freedom Foundation, preaching social consciousness to fellow conservatives. She railed against "big government" and pronounced: ‘We do our part and God meets us halfway. That's why I'm a conservative.’ That version of Huffington called for strict immigration restrictions (and she also opposed abortion rights). She favored Bill Clinton's resignation and floated the rumor that a former ambassador had been buried in Arlington because Clinton had slept with his wife.”
After her divorce (her husband admitted to being bi-sexual), she decided she didn’t want to be a conservative anymore, because the fast lane to power and ego-enhancement via that route had been curtailed. Of course, all it required was a simple change in attitude, and attitudes can change, again (author/dandy Tom Wolfe claimed that he became a conservative merely because everyone at Yale was supposedly a “liberal”). The fact is that if the Huffington Post was a “bastion” of “progressive” politics, it is because of the large number of contributors who claim to be; today, most of its content about such things as cooking, spreading salacious rumors in the entertainment and divorce fields—anything to increase the “hit” rate. Huffington herself has in recent times declared that she is dismissive of labels like “left” and “right”—claiming that the label of “liberal” causes people not to take her seriously, which isn’t hard anyways given her sometimes incomprehensible manner of speaking.
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Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna plans on running for governor for the Republican Party. I suppose it helps that he looks like one of those harmless bespectacled nerds, so one is easily deceived. McKenna is probably best known outside the state for acting against the (we suppose?) wishes of the Democratic governor and added this supposedly blue state to the anti-healthcare reform law; Christine Gregoire has made only tiny bleats about this blatant act of (we suppose?) insubordination. His “priorities” also apparently include supporting efforts to defund education in the state. The state Supreme Court is ready to rule on McKenna flunky Bill Clark’s argument that the state has no obligation to fully-fund education for all students in the state, blatantly suggesting that the state "There cannot be a constitutional requirement that all children succeed. Otherwise, we jump to the default position that ample funding is not being provided. That's unworkable." What does this mean? It justifies the right’s position that additional funding for impoverished schools in poor neighborhoods (because of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision brought by right-wing representatives of a white female parent in Seattle, only white kids are allowed to have school “choice”) will not improve education, so why bother? This justifies continuing to lower education funding to the point where most of the money goes to teacher salaries and building maintenance, if that.
McKenna has, however, jumped on the “human trafficking” bandwagon as a means of proving that he really does “care,” although it also fits in nicely with his law and order shtick. Last week he presented his “national initiative” to “combat” human trafficking, which he claimed was his personal mission to “protect the vulnerable” against “modern day slavery”—the “selling of another person’s body through the use of force, fear or coercion.” It is interesting to note that he isn’t the only Republican in the state to latch onto this issue in lieu of problems afflicting the impoverished, homeless and hungry in this country. Ex-congressperson and right-wing extremist Linda Smith has also been big on the human trafficking, although her angle is more along the lines of converting the lost to Christianity. According to the Hillary Clinton’s State Department, 12.3 million adults and children are in “forced labor, bonded labor and forced prostitution.” McKenna is quick to insert that this is “not just an international problem, but a local one.” Good thing it is, because McKenna doesn’t have time or tax-payer money to go globetrotting. According to a Seattle Weekly story a couple years ago written by Nina Shapiro, finding these local slaves is not always easy:
“Leigh Winchell, head of the regional office of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, sits in his high-up downtown Seattle office overlooking Puget Sound. ICE, as it is known, is charged with conducting trafficking investigations domestically. Winchell recently popped up in newspaper coverage of a June prostitution bust in Bellevue. Two of the alleged prostitutes were illegal immigrants from China. Winchell told the Seattle Times reporter writing about the case: ‘Human trafficking in the sex trade is alive and vibrant, particularly in the Northwest.’ Yet the Bellevue police, who helped conduct the raid, say they do not believe the women were being held against their will. When I ask Winchell about that, he tells me that he did not intend to suggest that this was a trafficking case. ‘Any comments I made in regard to the Bellevue case were more global in nature.’"
I’m not certain what he means there. Maybe it is that since you can’t prove that women who engage in prostitution in this country do not have the freedom to make a different career choice, that is not the case in places like Thailand, where the sex trade is part of the tourist “attraction”—much like Las Vegas; proselytizers can mind their own business, and are told so by the supposed “victims.” So there is a problem of indeterminate numbers (estimates range from a few hundred thousand to 200 million); this really is not a question of how many “slaves” there are, but who should be counted. Feminists, not surprisingly, have made common cause with the hell-and-damnation element to simply count the number of people working in the sex trade:
“In some respects, the evangelical worldview is similar to that of certain strains of feminism, which also see the world as full of evil—perpetrated by men on women, with sex a primary means of exploitation and abuse. Hence, Equality Now, a New York organization that works on international women's rights and has Gloria Steinem on its advisory board, is enthusiastically working with religious groups on trafficking. The famous feminist University of Michigan law professor Catherine MacKinnon, also affiliated with Equality Now and whose fervent anti-pornography views have put her in alignment with the Christian right before, is deeply involved with the cause (I mentioned this before, but I once attended a guest lecture by McKinnon, which was suggested to me by a female professor who I hoped only found her views “thought-provoking”—she surely couldn’t have believed she was serious. Aside from me, the only male in the auditorium was a reporter from the local newspaper; McKinnon was clearly uncomfortable with his presence. Forced to tone down her rhetoric lest it make into the local paper before she left town, at this gathering she only made such “moderate” assertions as 15 percent of all college women are raped. This claim, made by a radical university women’s association, has long been discredited; however, within the safety of her radical network, McKinnon has expanded this claim to include all heterosexual sex is “rape,” and that lesbianism is an explicitly anti-male “choice”—which, of course, fits in right nicely with conservative religious views)."
If McKinnon and Steinem had their way, human trafficking would be seen in the narrow prism of the sex trade, but a Weekly story that followed Shapiro’s a few months later tried to redress the imbalance, only not very successfully. The story concerned an Algerian teenager who had immigrated illegally to the U.S., going to school in Seattle, living with her aunt and uncle who ran a coffee shop. The basis for calling this case one of “human trafficking” and slavery comes from the notion that she was not paid for working at the coffee shop, and that she was occasionally “grounded” for not obeying the rules for her upkeep, such as partying all night with people she hardly knew. Since the coffee shop was a family business, and that perhaps in Algeria family members are expected to “help-out” for their room and board, perhaps there was a “cultural” disconnect between mores in there and in this country. It also stands to reason that since the aunt and uncle were responsible for the girl’s safety, they felt they had to put a clamp on her; how does this amount to “slavery?” I actually wrote to the author of this story, and she couldn’t provide answers to my queries that made any sense whatever.
It may be true that prostitutes, “do not truly do so of their own free will but have been driven by economic desperation and abusive circumstances,” returning to the Shapiro story. “But does that make them, literally, slaves? What about sweatshop workers? Poorly paid janitors? They're not as demeaned as prostitutes, but surely they'd prefer to be doing something else, too. One gets the impression that we are dealing with a new, shocking crime. It seems an odd label for prostitution, the oldest (profession) in the book.” Concerning the assumed victims, one researcher is quoted "Nobody's bothered to ask them how they got there and if they're exploited.” Out of 1,000 people identified by “activists” as victims of human trafficking and slavery in Mali and Cambodia, "only four could be classified as having been deceived, exploited, or not paid at all for their labor." Although some women had turned to prostitution to receive and then pay back loans (“debt bondage”), only six of 100 Vietnamese prostitutes working in Cambodia "reported having been 'tricked' into sex work or betrayed by an intermediary."
Coincidentally, the Seattle Weekly published another cover story on the topic this week, concerning the campaign by actress Demi Moore and her under-age actor husband Ashton Kutcher to “illuminate” the issue of underage prostitution. Moore is basically a has-been in Hollywood, so in order for her to feel “relevant” and workout her angst against sexist and ageist male studio executives and producers at the same time, she’s latched onto this hot-button issue, with her husband dutifully tagging along. Moore had no idea of the extent of the problem, but somehow she dug-up a 2001 University of Pennsylvania “study” that claimed that 100,000 to 300,000 underage girls were picked-up by police every year for prostitution. The study has been criticized for poor and/or non-existent examination of actual facts, but there is no accounting for the public taste for ever more salacious fantasy; A former Hillary Clinton staffer and his wife are managing the “campaign,” and they admit that facts don’t matter—only making the issue at hand as big a problem as they can make it matters. After the Moore/Kutchner campaign began, various major news media suddenly “discovered” the study as well, making all sorts of inflammatory and attention-grabbing claims like the usually dour C-Span’s “Children in our country enslaved sexually” and typically fact-challenged CNN’s “There’s between 100,000 and 300,000 child sex slaves in the United States.”
The reality is that any study with such a wide gap in its “estimate” simply can’t be trusted. The authors of the “study” these figures come from admit that they make some rather broad and wild assumptions, such as American girls in San Diego going on a weekend trip to Tijuana not to booze or do drugs, but to prostitute themselves and load themselves with cash. The authors of the study admitted that they included youths who might be “at risk” of child prostitution—meaning runaways. But the authors of the Weekly story pointed out that FBI statistics show that 77 percent of runaways are gone for no more than a week, and only 7 percent for longer than a month. An informal survey of police records in 37 major cities found barely over 8,000 arrests for underage prostitution in a ten year period—800 a year, not 100,000 let alone 300,000. One of the authors of the “study” eventually admitted that there probably was no more than a few hundred underage “sex slaves” operating in the U.S. That there shouldn’t be any is a given; that some people are using grossly-inflated numbers to frighten the public in order to inflate their egos and work-out personal “issues” is neither ethical or moral. It just makes people for whom facts do mean something more cynical about such claims.
Meanwhile, undaunted by facts or the possibility that human trafficking is not quite the scope he envisions, a Seattle Times story reports that McKenna nevertheless “wants to prosecute traffickers and buyers, and mobilizing communities to provide support to victims…Human trafficking is the only crime I can think of where the victim is more likely to be prosecuted than the perpetrator.” McKenna is obviously referring to prostitutes here, even if most of them operate independently; if (former UW basketball player) Venoy Overton isn’t available to “pimp,” then who is the “perpetrator?” A functionary from the Department of Homeland Security claims that “human trafficking was a fast-growing area of criminal endeavor, and victims may be hidden from public view and from those who might want to rescue them. They are typically afraid of police because they're involved in prostitution and have been told they are criminals themselves and will be punished if they are caught.” Huh? First, if they are hidden from view, that means that numbers can be inflated to suit a political objective; it doesn’t mean it is true. Secondly, is prostitution a crime or not? Is it only a crime if a “pimp” is involved? If prostitutes are not criminals, then why should they be afraid of being arrested? I told you that whenever gender activism takes hold, logic goes straight out the window.
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I was listening to a story on local radio station, probably the National Public Radio affiliate, last week concerning something called the “Homework Club.” This club was located in a school the Highline school district (if I heard rightly), with a large number of students from low-income homes. Initially I found it to be a positive story, about a half-dozen kids who needed extra assistance, and a couple of teachers who instead of sitting in an empty class room until their day was over assisted these kids if they wanted. There was talk about the lack of transportation for kids who would miss their bus and have to walk a long way through bad neighborhoods. Very sad. But sadness turned to gladness when it was discovered that the school was getting extra money: $21,000 of spare cash, $500 extra per English as a Second Language students. So what was this money used for? Screw the 42 students who were having a difficult time learning because of the language barrier—let’s buy a bus and some other goodies for these half-dozen “special” kids. My empathy went right down the toilet. Frankly, I think the school district should investigate this matter.
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I was watching Kevin Costner’s “The Postman” the other day, one of those “message” movies he made after the success of “Dances With Wolves.” I’m a sucker for message movies if they are politically to the left, and I didn’t think it was as bad as critics said it was when it first came out in 1997—although it likely would have better if its story line had more in common with the source novel beyond its title. The scene was set in 2013, and by then the civilization had virtually disappeared do to nuclear war and the collapse of society. Now, some people might say that in the year 2011, and despite what survivalists, neo-Nazi militia types and Tea Party people might suggest, we are far from that vision of the future. I suppose that 16 years sounds like a long time, but it really isn’t; sometimes it seems like only yesterday, especially when you dwell on those wasted years.
Writers and filmmakers obviously have great imaginations, and so do readers and viewers. They want to believe that the future holds many exciting marvels and vistas, kids especially. When I was growing up, books on space travel imagined floating cities entirely self-sustaining, colonies on the moon by the 1990s. I mean, how much farther was Mars from the Moon? A spinning giant donut with gardens to feed a population the size of a small town? Surely for Americans, the greatest people on Earth, who built the Saturn moon rocket, could go the next small step? Right?
Wrong. While I have to admit that electronic devices have come a long way since I was kid, and kids should consider themselves “fortunate” that they live in such an interactive world, that doesn’t mean that they have the tools to become smarter human beings, just that they have “smart” devices to do their work for them. But that’s it. Sure, there’s computer generated imaging that can send you to pretend places, but we are no closer to placing a floating city (or village, for that matter) in space, and no person has reached the Moon since 1972. Given the high cost of such missions, it is difficult to see them ever realized again, unless someone discovers a more efficient propulsion mechanism, which remains the most daunting obstacle to any manned space flight beyond the Moon.
When George Orwell wrote “1984,” he already had the example of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany to provide him with inspiration, but in 2011, while some aspects of his vision of a totalitarian state that continually monitors the activities of its citizens, detain “thought criminals” and controls what passes for truth in order to maintain its authority still has some validity (such as in China), it has become fiction rather than fact. In 1997, World War III will be narrowly averted by some guy named Snake, who rescues the president from the crooks in Manhattan, which became one giant prison camp. Funny thing, I missed it. “2001: A Space Odyssey” would be better titled “Oddity” given the unlikelihood of its vision of future space travel. According to “Blade Runner,” in 2009 there were flying cars; 28 years into the future does seem like a long time, but technology has obviously moved at a relative snail’s pace, if it has moved at all. This year, according to “Aeon Flux,” the entire planet is wiped-out by virus; if that were true, Charlize Theron need not embarrass herself making another awful superhero movie. In “2012,” the world will end in an unexplained cataclysm; some people say that the Mayan calendar’s supposed “end time” actually refers to great celebration. In 2022, New York City will have a population of 40 million, and people were eating something called “soylent green.” With a population like that, somebody thought it was natural that a few thousand people wouldn’t be missed being sent into the sausage grinder. Some movies, knowing that how far-fetched their visions of the future were, took fewer liberties with their guesses of future events. “Logan’s Run,” a kind of biosphere where in order to maintain a certain population, the beautiful white people were killed-off when they reached the age of thirty. This future world was set sometime in the 23rd century, so by then the filmmakers would be dead long before they could be proved ridiculous. Humans in one form or another have inhabited the planet for several millions years; by the looks of Java Man, they probably reached the level of today’s great apes around 500,000 BC. But “Planet of the Apes” predicts the apes will reach human evolution that was current in 2,500 BC by the year 3978 AD; a lot of luck with that.
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The Rod Blagojevich re-trial, of which I was not the only person who regarded the whole thing as a farce, ended in conviction on most counts. The easiest decision, the jurors said, was on the issue of whether he ‘sold” Barack Obama’s vacated senate seat. The problem here is that politics is nothing if not horse-trading (although Republicans these days seem intent on stubborn stupidity which they call “principle”). We live in a very strange world; a congressman is forced to resign because he sent some snaps of his bare chest to a couple of women. Yet we had a president who secretly approved of selling weapons to a rogue regime that referred to the U.S. as the “Great Satan.” We had a president who committed adultery—in the White House offices—and he’s come out of it practically unscathed. We have congressmen and senators who support legislation that benefits certain donors (they call it “pro-business”), and then work for them as lobbyists or serve on their boards. We saw a man who served on the board of a company, went on hiatus went he became vice president, saw to it that his company received no-bid contracts eventually worth billions, pocketed tens of millions in “deferred” payments, and hardly anyone said anything; the guy should be in jail now, instead of occasionally growling and sneering on Fox and CNN (wasn’t he also the guy who “accidentally” shot a hunting companion?). And in the overall scheme of things, people are living in a dream world if they think that politics is in theory so pure of morality and ethics. You support this, I’ll vote for that. Politicians receive donations from interest groups if they support laws or do not enforce regulations. Of course, we are told that a governor is supposed to make appointments based on competence, but we know this isn’t true. So why didn’t Blago get away with what is common practice? Because he was unpopular in the media, and was untrusted by his own party, and gentility wasn’t in his vocabulary.
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There has been recent news reports that the police will start cracking down harder on hand held cell phone use. Most people will probably still try to get away with it if they can, but if they feel discomfited by it, they can always blame Sarah Potts, who smashed her brand-new Ford explorer into a stalled vehicle in 2002, unleashing a wall of flame that crossed two lanes; four people inside died a horrific death. Although police initially said that Potts—the wife of a Bothell police officer, was not driving recklessly because she was “going with the flow” of traffic at approximately 60 mph, a state patrol investigation found witnesses who said she was weaving in and out of traffic, suggesting that she was driving at least 80 mph. Worse, she was clearly distracted talking on her cell phone; although she disputed this, phone records showed that she was using her phone at the time of the accident. The state patrol recommended prosecution for vehicular homicide, which of course was ignored.
A former writer for the Seattle Weekly, Eric Scigliano, wrote sometime after the episode was “resolved” that despite Potts essentially getting away with murder, there was no favoritism being showed to law enforcement or their wives, because of the outcomes of two other cases involving a fireman and a police officer who were legally DUI and ended-up killing people. I had to beg to differ with his interpretation; in the case of Eric Thomas, a Bellevue police officer, was convicted of vehicular homicide and sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison, while George Moorehead, a firefighter also convicted of a similar crime, yet received only a year's community service. There was something amiss here; what could account for this clear favoritism and double standard? It seems that Moorehead, the firefighter, was white, and his victims were two Vietnamese girls who were walking on a Bellevue sidewalk. Thomas was black, and the person whose car he struck (who was also driving drunk) was white. Thomas manfully confessed his crime and stated he deserved punishment. At Moorehead’s sentencing the courtroom was packed with his family and supporters, and there was so much sobbing and regretfulness permeating the atmosphere that it was impossible for the relatives of the Vietnamese victims to get in a word edgewise. I'm certain that when it was all over that they felt their daughters were the guilty party for getting in the way of Moorehead’s car.
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Despite the Justice Department threats that doomed the relatively tepid state medical marijuana law—which essentially made state employees regulators of legal marijuana instead of the police—several local figures of note (the European tourist guy Rick Steves and former U.S. attorney John McKay among them) are backing a law in the state not just in providing protection for medical marijuana users, but to make it legal for everyone. There are currently two competing pro-legalize initiatives making the rounds, New Approach Washington and Sensible Washington, both of which say essentially the same thing—legalize, regulate and tax marijuana—although the latter (which seems aimed at decriminalizing pot completely) is running out of time to get the required signatures. The New Approach initiative, because of its pedigree, may have a better shot of at least getting on a ballot; it calls for 21 to be the legal age to smoke marijuana either for medicinal uses, or not. A major difference is that like hard liquor currently is, it would be sold through state-licensed marijuana-only outlets; the Liquor Control Board would oversee its production and distribution. Individuals would be limited on one ounce of dried bud, and only licensed producers can grow it, so it somewhat limited in scope and still gives police room to harass users. Nevertheless, it would seem to be the easier pill to follow for those in the federal government still operating under the illusion that the “war against drugs” has been anything but a failure that has cost tens of thousands of lives to no purpose.
As an aside, I wonder who this initiative is really supposed to benefit. We frequently hear of police hassling or arresting people in minority neighborhoods, while other users go suspiciously unnoticed. I was walking past an underpass that the Interurban Trail in Kent passes through; there were these white kids, who looked and talked like your typical privileged class, smoking weed. They even offered me a bud, which I scoffed at; the stuff never did anything for me, probably because I didn’t inhale properly.
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Because of my extremely modest means, I like to think of myself as a “smart” shopper, meaning purchasing the most bang for the buck. I might prefer the more expensive product, but if it is food, sweetener can always improve my outlook. Now, some businesses do their best to fool the customer into purchasing what they think is a good deal, but is not necessarily so. Fast food restaurants are particularly sneaky about this. Take for example McDonald’s. They currently advertise three options for Chicken McNuggets:
20 for $4.99
4 for $1.29
10 for $4.58
At first glance, it would seem obvious that the 20-piece is the better buy than the 10-piece. If it was a choice between one or the other as separate items, even a caveman could figure it out. However, the catch is that the 10-piece can come separately or as part of a Meal Deal. If you wanted a drink and fries with your 20-piece, you would pay more those additions than you would for the same drink and fries for the meal. As for the 4-piece option, would pay $3.87 for 12-pieces, making it technically a better deal than the 10-piece, although you would still encounter the same problem as just mentioned; on the other hand, you would be paying the equivalent of $6.45 for 20 pieces, so it is not the best value for the buck. We can assume that the 20-piece still reflects a bottom-line healthy profit for McDonald’s, so the other options expand on the concept. Overall you are left with options that require some thought if you are on a tight budget; two 4-pieces for $2.58 is better than 10 for $4.58, but only if you also order small fires and drink as well; ordering the larger sizes will exceed the 10-piece meal price, and you will actually be getting less bang for the buck. The 20-piece only makes sense from a budget standpoint if you don’t intend on making additions to your order, or you just want more McNuggets and cost isn’t an issue.
Alright, that’s our math class for the day.
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I watched a YouTube recently of a pigeon which laid her eggs on someone’s balcony. She hadn’t constructed what could be called a nest—just a half-dozen randomly placed twigs. Worse, the two eggs were placed not on the nest, but off to the side—and she was not sitting on them at all, just kind of looking at them as if it was the “natural” thing to do. When the individual approached with a camcorder, the bird simply got up and casually walked away. Since the eggs were not being incubated properly, they would soon rot. Although street pigeon’ nests are an eyesore, their general construction does resemble in a rudimentary way a typical bird’s nest. Some viewer comments were as follows:
“That is one bad nest... I think this bird is retarded...”
“Look at that nest. This pigeon fails as a mother.”
“This fool fell asleep during Nest Making 101”
“I've watched plenty of wild birds lay eggs and YES, keep them in the NEST! This pigeon obviously missed the memo. And if I ever walk up to a nest (birds around here make them rather low and usually on light fixtures even though they have plenty of trees to choose from) the mom stays in the nest unless I actually try touching her.”
“No male pigeon helps with nest to build for her and built it on her own before the eggs....she might be afraid of sitting and smash the eggs out of the nest!”
Apart from calling the bird retarded, it was hard what to make of this. Nest building, like flying, is an instinct in birds; research has shown that birds raised outside the influence of adult birds will act “normally” once they reach an internal and physical maturation date. “Smart” birds like crows and ravens may imitate certain behaviors if it is useful, or adapt to supernormal stimuli; it is not "learned." Blaming the male bird for failing to provide a suitable home may be usefully politically, but the fact is that in most species, the female constructs most or all of the nest; the female American Robin, for example, expends considerable effort to insure that the nest conforms with the contours of her body, in order to protect the eggs from the elements. Not all birds build nests, and a few species of penguin build “nests” of pebbles, so the observation that the pigeon was afraid of crushing the eggs does not answer the question. What we may be seeing is some behavioral cross-wiring, as in domestic chickens, where most hens do not go “broody” after laying their eggs; most street pigeons, though a strain of Rock Pigeon, are feral descendants of domestic birds.
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Guess who says he is changing his name to Metta World Peace? Why, Ron Artest, the guy who close-lined J.J. Barea in the NBA playoffs and got himself suspended for a game, and congratulated Andrew Bynum after he was ejected for launching himself like a missile beneath Barea as he was going up for a shot. Artest recently received the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award by the NBA award, supposedly given for "outstanding service and dedication to the community." It’s one thing to give some of your millions to worthy causes; it’s quite another to provide a bad example for kids in your personal dealings with others. Money, however, can buy a lot of goodwill and “forgiveness.” Back in the old days, they called it the selling of indulgences, where a wealthy person could purchase God’s forgiveness for his or her sins. Artest will, of course, go down in NBA lore as the man who was suspended for a record 86 games after a brawl with Detroit Pistons’ fans. Like the Barea suspension, the incident was instigated by Artest’s seeming inability to restrain his violent impulses when there was no call for it; with the game in the final minute and all but over when he applied a hard foul to the Piston’s Ben Wallace just any lessons on “peace,” maybe he should control his urges to take a “piece” out of people.
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Speaking of names, I came across a story from “The People’s News” concerning a young girl who was suing to get her name changed. It seems that her single mother, for want of anything more creative, named her little girl Clitoria. A judge in Detroit had recently ruled in favor of a class action suit on behalf of a number of girls whose mothers refused to abide by the girls’ wishes and change their names to something more sensible, observing that “such outlandish names seldom take into account the societal effects on the child.” Among the names the judge ruled against was one written in Incan hieroglyphics. “She said it would make me stand out,” said the girl who previously owned this appellation, which caused some confusion in court since it can only be reproduced by invention, since the Incans had no written language. “It’s really just stupid.” The ruling was also likely to allow “little Clitoria Jackson” to get a new name. The belief that black girls require increasingly incomprehensible names is not likely to end soon, however. “It’s so hard to keep coming up with something unique,” said Uneeqqi Jenkins, 22, a black mother of seven who survives on public assistance. Her children are named Daryl, Q’Antity, Uhlleejsha, Cray-Ig, Fellisittee, Tay’Sh’awn and Day’Shawndra.” Teachers lauded the ruling; "Oh my God, the first day of school you'd be standing there sweating, looking at the list of names wondering 'How do I pronounce Q'J'Q'Sha.'? " said one teacher who refused to be named for fear of parental retaliation. “Is this even English?"
This was obviously a satirical piece, though with a serious point. I added and subtracted some things from the original story, but I couldn’t have made-up those names if you paid me to.
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The company I work for has taken a lot of flack, mostly unfair, from employees from other airlines, including the one we service. We are constantly reminded that we are interlopers, scabs and somehow inferior. I recall someone who was training with one of these companies telling me that disdainful commentary in regard to us was common practice. I say that these people should mind their own store. Let’s take, for example, one of the larger airlines which I will identify as “Acme Airlines.” The results of the American Customer Satisfaction Index found Acme Airlines dead last in its consumer poll for the second year in a row. The unions representing Acme employees also consider the airline a poor employer, nursing grievances about wage, benefit and job cuts. But that begs the question: Is poor employee attitudes and poor service related?
A website call “Glassdoor” seems to suggest that this is the case, observing that “Mediocrity is the goal for (Acme).” This seems evident by the fact that customer complaint phone lines were so tied-up that in 2009, Acme discontinued its customer complaint line; complaints can still be sent by email, meaning that the company can more easily dismiss them.
For people who feel their complaints are ignored, there is a website called untied.com in order for them to let-off steam. Here is a sampling of the commentary:
“Acme has absolutely the worst call center/customer service in the industry! Total incompetence!!”
“Customer Service is the worst at Acme Airlines and we will never fly them again. We will recommend to everyone to stay away from the unfriendly skies at Acme…Of all the disturbing events I’ve witnessed at airports in recent years, I must admit that Acme’s abuse of its passengers, both on and off the ground, has put me over the edge. I was conned into flying Acme on two separate occasions - both overseas trips (to Germany in 2004 and to England in 2007). I insisted during the planning of the 2007 trip that I refused to fly United, and was overjoyed at the prospect of flying with Lufthansa only to discover after the fact that Lufthansa had partnered with Acme…Needless to say, I was royally ticked because I knew that the experience would be an exercise in terror.”
“I will NEVER fly with Acme Airlines again. It is a total joke. They are not interested in doing the right thing. Their so called "customer service" department is a fraud. People do not speak proficient English and hang up on you when you do not buy their ridiculous offers. "Customer Service Supervisor" is also a joke.”
“Never have I been treated more rudely at an airport. Ms. XYZ was brusque, unhelpful, and unprofessional.”
“I can honestly say that I will never fly Acme Airlines. I hope Jane Doe yelling at a customer was worth the company losing business.”
“I was better off driving in a car. My experience with Acme was a complete nightmare. I have never been so stressed out during travel, and I refuse to fly Acme so long as I can avoid it.”
“If we do not hear back from AA to resolve then my parents plans to seek counsel and file motions against AA employees for the disruption they caused on our family vacation.”
“That incompetent gate agent caused me a lot of un-necessary stress and despair. She also did nothing about the $60 luggage charge. If I performed like that at my job, I would be fired instantly.”
“The people that work and run our airline are dumber than a box of rocks. You treat all your customers like terrorist for your stupidity and lack of security. The top management of Acme Airlines have to be the dumbest people on Earth. As long as Acme Airlines has been in business Acme just gets better at making passengers luggage disappear. Most people get arrested for stealing. Acme Airlines thinks that is part of the experience of flying with them. I think every employee of your airline should (be) drug tested every time the airline screws up. You are doing a great job of being the worst airline. Keep up the great work your airline will be out of business before you know it.”
Moral to this story: If you want to criticize, just make certain that you are not the one setting the “standard.”
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