I'd been meaning to mention some radio ads that have been running the last few weeks, in which Johnnie Chochran pitches the services of his firm's D.C. offices. I guess I won't be hearing those any more. It's odd to be writing two posts about the recently departed in one day. And I nearly wrote three, but decided to wait until after the Pope shuffles off, as they say.

I don't actually have anything to say about Johnnie Cochran, but I felt I should point out that he's dead.

Today, the country mourns. Tomorrow, it's baseball season!

In the brief hours—day, day and a half, tops—before all memory of Terri Schiavo vanishes from the collective memory of the American public (which resembles so much a goldfish) I thought I'd make a few observations.

Speaking of both Schiavo's parents and her husband, President Bush said he “ appreciate[s] the example of grace and dignity they have displayed at a difficult time.” Which proves that he really doesn't read the newspapers, because of all the many things those three people can be accused of, “grace and dignity” are not on the list.

Tom DeLay said, “This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change. The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today. Today we grieve, we pray, and we hope to God this fate never befalls another... [Congress] will look at an arrogant and out of control judiciary that thumbs its nose at Congress and the President.”

When a reporter asked DeLay to respond to charges that he was simply exploiting an innocent bystander's fatal condition in a cheap and cruel ploy for votes, the Texas Republican responded, “no shit, Sherlock—I'm a congressman!” He then regained his composure, adding, “I never thought I'd see the day when a U.S. judge stopped feeding a living American so that they took 14 days to die.”

Also, in a rare burst of not-being-assholes, Democrats are keeping a low profile.

Meanwhile, the lunatic fringe of the Republican party, represented by Rachel, made the following observations:

• I read the Wolfson report and it turns out her parents are kinda nuts and Michael is not necessarily an evil asshole.
• It also turns out - according to "most medical experts" on CNN and Fox - that dying by dehydration and starvation is actually painless and "peaceful", not traumatic or uncomfortable. Which has fascinating implications doesn't it? For example, what's the big deal about all those starving kids in Africa? Hell they're fine!
• Because we are demonstrably batshit insane, we would collectively freak out if it were announced that from now on, death row inmates were to be killed in a way that caused any pain whatsoever beyond the prick of an IV needle.
• You know, I would not want to live in a vegetative state like Terri has for the last 15 years. Yep, that would suck and if I were given a choice, I would rather be dead.
• But as I have now repeatedly and loudly told my husband (and have written down): for the love of anything that ever was good or decent on this planet, DON'T FREAKIN' STARVE ME TO DEATH. Mmkay? How about a nice big syringe full of morphine and then something to make my heart stop. Thanks, that'd be super. Even if I look like a giant blue-eyed slab of vegetable matter, am drooling, and the scans show that all I have is a brain stem while the rest of my gray matter has evaporated. I'm not afraid of dying, just don't kill me slow.

So, to summarize, the lunatic fringe believes:

• The details of this particular situation are not as clear cut as Schiavo's parents' PR agents would have us believe.
• People should be allowed to die, if that is what they wish.
• Starving people is bad.
• America is demonstrably batshit insane.

The lunatic fringe: Last refuge of common sense.

My post on my USDA internship, below, is nearly two weeks behind reality. In fact, I have nearly finished the internship I was writing about. I also have two nearly complete posts on what has happened recently in the works, including at Bot Mitzvah and several 50 in 05© posts. I urge all my readers—both of you—to pretend that I finish writing in a timely fashion and simply post from an alternate universe that is several weeks behind your own.

In any case, Quilly notes:

The Democrats bellowed with joy at the poll numbers which showed that many Republicans opposed the action by Bush and Congress to intervene in the Schiavo case. They see it as a split in the party. It is not. That Libertarian streak has been in the party for quite sometime. The glue that holds the Republican Party together is the fear of what the hard leftists in the Democrat Party will do if the leadership on the GOP is not supported.

Unfortunately this is exacerbated by the noise of Talk Radio. The dominant stock in trade of the top two hosts, and not unfairly, is pointing out how the Deaniacs will lead this country to Armageddon. There is little real debate on the more substantive issues.

While, obviously, I think Quilly's “hard leftists” are less scary—slightly—than their counterparts on the lunatic fringe of the conservative movement, he is correct in that fear of “the liberals” is the strength of the Republican party. It will be difficult for Democrats to counter those fears of a Deaniac-spanwed Apocalypse—some real, most imagined—by presenting the positive alternative of a fiscally liberal, culturally libertarian America. And while the nut-ball conservatives are equally as dangerous as the freak-show liberals, the GOP is simply superior to the Democratic party in fear-mongering.

Both these things could change, the first as charismatic and non-insane leaders emerge in the Democratic party—insert obligatory kissing of Barak Obama's ass here—the second as the Democrats aquire their own highly capable, morally bankrupt, fear-mongering sleaze-bag politicos, like the apocalyptic Dr. Dean, whose skill I admire more and whose ethics I regard less highly with each move he makes. He was a wise choice for a party chair, although he would be more at home, I think, in Tammany Hall.

What will not, unfortunately, change, is America's reflexive revulsion at the sight of “real debate on substantive issues.” We haven't had anything even appraoching that since the birth of the man who truly ushered in the Apocalypse, at least when it comes to American politics, William Randolph Hearst.

By the way, all of my Utah-based readers should mark out March 31st—tommorrow—to attend this:

A Little Less Conversation...
University of Utah Modern Dance Senior Concert One
March 31, April 1, 2; 7:30 PM
Hayes-Christensen Theatre
Marriott Center for Dance
Tickets available through ArtTix
$7 students, seniors, U of U faculty; $10 general

Number Ten:
Breakfast of Champions

Kurt Vonnegut's novel begins:

This is a tale of of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.

One of them was a science-fiction writer named Kilgore Trout. He was a nobody at the tim—

11:16 a.m., March 21st. This post has been interupted by my first genuine bomb threat. I mean of course the first time I've been in a building where there's been a bomb threat, not the first time that I have called in a bomb threat. In any case, there is a flashing window on my screen marked “EMERGENCY” and informing us to stay out of the basement of another USDA office building on the other side of the Potomac.

Did I mention I work for the USDA now?

I began an internship here last tuesday. Sometimes I stand by the window and look out at the view from this office at the very edge of Virginia. I am on the tenth floor and can see the Potomac, the Watergate, the monument, and the Capitol Dome. It is now nearly noon, and I have just broken and fixed the electric typewriter; also, the computer has just given us the all-clear. No more bomb threat.

My duties so far have consisted mainly of filing documents, for example a memoranda of understanding between the Department of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Department of Labor, Educational Training Administration, signed before I was born and expired before my younger sister was born. It is not exactly deeply inspirational work, but the people here seem to like me.

There was a monday morning staff meeting today. The director the office and and a couple of staffers had been out last week, at various meetings in various states in hotel rooms that varied by pay grade. Mostly I listened to a discussion about where our office, which handles several senior, youth, and volunteer programs, will go. It's currently in the Forest Service, but may soon be re-delegated to some other division of the USDA. From the files I've been going through, I know that this particular Job Corps office, which operates some centers for the main Job Corps office in the Labor Department, has been in at least four or five divisions of two different cabinet departments in the last twenty years. It's all perfectly boring.

A little discussion of the president's budget. The phrase “the president's budget” is always said in a slightly lower tone than the rest of the sentence, not exactly a curse word, but not a phrase anyone enjoys saying. In Job Corps case, the operating budget for our existing centers is staying the same, but the current five-year plan to add centers and expand the program has been, depending on who you ask, either frozen, slowed, left alone, or, as my boss put it, “cut by forty thousand dollars—I'm sorry, I mean forty million dollars.” What's actually going on will remain a mystery until we finally get congress to pass a budget and get out of town this fall.

This is all very aggrivating to everyone on the office. We are after all Job Corps partisans, in the “as Federal employees, we can't lobby for our program, but...” sort of a manner. For example, one of the staffers helped Senator Coleman of Minnesota move forward with his efforts to get one of our old centers designated as a historic site last week.

(The Forest Service has a half-dozen offices in my building. While the doors require a pass card, most have signs, are near the elevator, and have someone at the desk to let people in. There is one office, though, that is hidden in a back corner, behind another office, where you can't see it, and has no one on call to let you in. It is, of course, the Forest Service's Freedom of Information Act Office.)

I like our office manager. She's a black woman in her mid-twenties, and she's attending graduate school part-time, geting certified as a Financial Manager; she works here 30 hours a week; she is raising a daughter. Last week she went to her daughters school with Smokey the Bear.

It is now my lunch break. Remember, only you can prevent forest fires.

I swore to myself I wouldn't write about Schiavo again. Then I wrote most of a post. Then I trashed it. It's hard to say your not going to write about such a major political event—especially when you're writing a blog with pretentions of political relevancy.

Fortunately, there's someone out there who does it better than I. He's also someone who can finally replace Juan Cole on my blogroll. Finally!

Many Republicans delight in the current battle for the soul of the Democratic Party, a battle I engage in with vigor here. It's a big difference between R's and D's. We Democrats have no qualms calling out our friends when they are making mistakes. It ain't pretty, but it is necessary. A political party should have a broad base of people with differing views who coalesce around a set of principles. The disagreements that inevitably result, on major issues, need to be fleshed out.

It's Democracy Guy! He's a democrat who's been banned by Atrios, Daily Kos, and MyDD! He's the only other blogger Quilly calls an “Impressive Lefty!” He's on my blogroll!

(Which is that thing below that great picture of me in the Library of Congress.)

---

Okay, I promised I wouldn't write about Schiavo. So I won't. But other people have.

• Peter on wanting to die, and the necessity of a living will.
• Quilly on erring on the side of life, and the necessity of a living will.
• Christiana on dirty legislative tricks, legislative overreach, and legislative deciet. (Could you guess she's a law student?)
• Democracy Guy uncovers Bush's alter ego as Colonel Potter. (I'll admit it. I only blogrolled him because he like M*A*S*H.)

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And finally, a story that's good news from Iraq—if you're Chuck Heston, anyway.

As the gunmen emerged from their cars, Dhia and his young relatives shouldered their Kalashnikov rifles and opened fire, the police and witnesses said. In the fierce gun battle that followed, three of the insurgents were killed, and the rest fled just after the police arrived. Two of Dhia's nephews and a bystander were wounded, the police said.

It's not that I have any sypmathy for the Iraqi insurgents. They got precisely what they deserved. I'm merely observing that, when President Bush said we were going to bring Iraq the virtues of America, I didn't realize he meant south-central L.A., circa 1993.

I said, “Triple espresso.”

The guy said, “Wow. You must be Italian.”

I said, “No, I just haven't slept in 48 hours.”

The guy said, “How on earth did you manage that?”

I said, “Triple espresso.”

Rereading my last post on Terri Schiavo, I'm amazed at how much some of my ingrained predjudices floated through to the surface. Of course, everyone's getting emotional—hell, even Quilly's quoting scripture. And Rachel's latest post complains at such length about the suffering of starvation, you'd think she'd rather we just shoot the woman and get it over with quickly. (Update: She would, for good reason.) And every time I think I couldn't possibly like the purportedly-un-brain-damaged people involved in this thing any less, there's something like this:

David Gibbs III, the parents' attorney, said that forcing Schiavo to starve would be “a mortal sin” under her Roman Catholic beliefs.

Great. So now we are to assume that a person's personal wishes are simply a mirror of the particular dogma of their church. See, a woman can choose between Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam—but if she picks Islam, she must wear a headscarf; if she picks Catholicism, she must have at least seven kids; and if she chooses Judaism, she shall be required by law to own an apartment on the lower east side and hold dinner parties for four to six highly articulate guests.

Look: Even the most optimistic assessment of Schiavo's faculties is one which, having worked with people in precisely that state in West Virginia, I'm not sure I'd want to live with. But the point is, we do not know her wishes. We just don't know.

Neither side seems particularly appealing. The husband's problems are obvious. The parents and family have been so obviously coached by the same PR flacks that “advised” the Smarts and everyone else, I wouldn't trust them if they told me the sky was blue.

Whatever else, the media is, at best, grotesquely over-simplifying a deeply complex situation. Because they're stupid. And increasingly vulture-like. And, as Jon Stewart so succinctly put it, “hurting America.” Frankly, it sucked to see Rachel abandon the usual target of her considerable wrath at the very moment when America's “journalists” most needed a lambasting.

For example, Ashley Smith, the “hero” of the Brian Nichols incident a few weeks ago, has completely dropped off the radar. In addition to hurting her bargaining position in the book and movie deal, this illustrates how pathetically shallow and short-lived coverage lasts in this country. Rachel did a wonderful job zapping Smith a while ago, and now Lee Siegel, television critic at one of the last bastions of real journalism in the country, The New Republic, has a more level-headed assessment.

Prostitution is legalized in two places in America: in Nevada and on the airwaves. One of the biggest whorehouses is CNN ... [who] thrust before the cameras evangelical pastors, ministers, and even a rabbi claiming that Smith's use of Christian sentiments to save her life was proof of God's grace and divine intervention ... and the psychological advice of a man [Viktor Frankl] who based his theories of how to cope with ordinary neurosis on what he believed was the state of mind necessary to survive a Nazi concentration camp.

[A] fantasy tale told by a woman who had a record of petty crime, and drug addiction, and burglary, and whose husband's murder by drug-dealer friends—he was trying to break free from them, we were told—was turned into an act of heroism. Well, maybe, and maybe not. No one except [CNN's Larry] King bothered to ask why Smith did not have custody of her only child, and when King posed the question to the good Reverend Page, he refused to answer it, although he had been perfectly accommodating when it came to telling Americans Smith's innermost thoughts and feelings.

Yes, that's right. America's media is in such bad shape that calling CNN a “whorehouse” is the level-headed assessment.

Water cooler talk today centers on Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who's extraordinarily prolonged death has become a national sensation. For those of you reading this in the year 2371, Schiavo is a woman who ten years ago suffered some sort of brain damage that left her in what our primitive medicine refers to as a “vegetative state”—that is, our doctors cannot restore her consciousness, but they can keep her body alive through a an artificial feeding tube.

The debate centers on this question: should the tube be disconnected? Some say this would kill her, others say it would allow her to die. That minor semantic difference hides a subtle and serious moral dilemma. The people in my office are, like most of the people in this country, divided on the subject. We agree only that it is a hard choice, and we feel bad for those who have to make it.

As I said, reasonable, intelligent, moral people are divided on this subject. But good Americans are, by and large, shocked and appalled by the terrible efforts which so many our elected representatives are taking to secure the votes of the stupid and the gullible at the expense of our nation's Constitution and tradition of good government.

Seventy percent deemed the congressional intervention inappropriate, while 67 percent said they believe lawmakers became involved in the Schiavo case for political advantage rather than the principles involved.

Those of us in my office, being government employees in Washington, D.C., are appalled, but not particularly shocked.

---

Well, there's nothing for it. I have begun to complain about the broken system in this country and, like a train wreck, there is nothing one can do to stop the rant. If you liked that bit about how moral people can disagree, stop here. In fact, just pretend I've written nothing after “...not particularly shocked,” because that's where the good stuff ends.

I will lay off senators and congressmen, who have little else to do since they gave up their power to govern in the middle of the last century, and made the President the King of Democracy.

Let us turn, then, to those who ought to know better: our journalists. They have rightly examined the motives of Shciavo's husband, who appears to want his brain-dead wife to be bodily dead as well so he can marry his long-time girlfriend. This selfish desire to live a happy life is universally condemned as bad because God wants us to suffer, as a test of our devotion to His Commandments, which no man can bend or break, unless he has a television ministry, in which case Commandment Seven* is strictly optional. That said, it's hard to have sympathy for a husband who is clearly a selfish prick.

Meanwhile, Schiavo's parents talk to their daughter every day, and they know, deep in their deeply American, joined in true, one-man-one-woman marriage heart of hearts, that she hears them and that she is trying so hard to talk back. These are people one can feel sympathy for. Unfortunately, rather than expressing this sympathy through a sensitive piece explaining how delusional behavior can be caused by severely traumatic events like the death of a beloved child, this poor couples' psychosis is held up as a shining example of True Christian Love.

The moral of the story is, everyone is stupid and selfish, but not everyone has a good P.R. agent.

---

In the Catholic and Hebrew Ten Commandments, number seven covers adultery. In the Protestant version, theft. Our televised men of God use whichever version covers whatever they happend to be doing at the time.

---

On reflection, some of that seems a little bit harsh. I'm gonna leave it up so I can be misquoted later, but also because in this case harshness is necessary. Not harshness against Schiavo, the husband, the parents, or anyone else involved; not Christians, or even those radical right-wing Christians who I make fun of so much. The worst of them are not half as bad as our mainstream media. Forget biases, liberal or conservative; the ability of the media to insult the intelligence of all Americans, to hold the very public they are supposed to protect in the greatest contempt, to force-feed us such spectacular loads of complete and utter bullshit without the slightest twinge of regret is—well, it's been getting to me a little.

A good weekend. Horseback riding trip on Sunday. I now have enough experience riding horses to know I don't know jack about riding horses, which puts me comfortably above most of the kids that were on the trip. No worries: the horses have dealt with Job Corps kids before, and greeted us with the same air of resignation I'm used to seeing at bowling trips or on charter buses.

It's shocking how pretty Maryland is, so very close to the District. We'd crest a ridge and there'd be no sign of a city on the horizon, nor even much civilization; just endless tree-lined hills, warm despite the frosty early spring wind. Even on the bus on the way back, it was all country roads with trees and even tractors, until suddenly over a ridge pokes the great marble phallus that honors our first president.

Even a mere five-minute walk from center leads you to a beautiful creek like this one. The air is somewhat humid and, at this time of year, nice and crisp. Stand on the old stone bridge, and you can picture Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamiston standing on the then-new stone bridge, discussing their plans to create a city and leave a new nation with a new capitol, and themselves with highly profitable real estate ventures.

I managed to catch The Ten Commandments on cable, which was quite the spectacle. Given it's superficial adeherence to scripture, I can see why many faithful Christians feel that Hollywood has lost it's way and is now a pagan business. But on every substantive level, The Ten Commandments is nothing like The Passion of the Christ, and almost exactly like The Lord of the Rings.

Caught a cable airing of Fight Club as well. I mention this only to say that FX's new “DVD on TV” idea is quite possibly the most inane, imbicilic thing on television in weeks, possibly months. (Not counting, of course, the spectacular freakshow that passes for news.)

Fortunately, I do not often have to resort to the boob tube to amuse myself. I worked through a couple of excellent books last week, I began an internship (which I shall get to presently), and, happily, my friend Candice Gibson spent her spring break in Virginia, with a mutual high school friend, Christinia Gibson. They came into town on Tuesday and Friday for me to show them around the city.

We did the tourist thing, of course; I took a good picture of them in front of the monument and showed them the original shooting model of the USS Enterprise, which is in the gift shop of the National Air & Space Museum. When we saw Skylab, no big deal, but the Enterprise—that, I must get a picture of them in front of. Candice, being a political junky and future president of the United States, was thrilled by a guided tour of the Watergate, where we had our picture taken.

Friday night, a movie with Candice and two other friends, Sean Madden and Justin Smith. I love those days when random friends from different walks of life meet, see a movie, chat, and go their separate ways. So does everyone involved, so much so that they forgave me for getting us all hopelessly lost on the way to the theater. That would never happen in a city I was new to, where I didn't know my way at all. It can only happen in a city I'm almost familiar with, where I'm just certain enough I know where I'm going not to check the street signs.

In any case, I finally tracked down Washington's larger independent movie house, which I hope to become quite familiar with indeed, and we saw a Japanese movie that was horrible.

When I say this movie was horrible, I don't mean it was bad. The movie—Nobody Knows, written and directed by Hirokazu Koreeda—was very good, with superb acting, excellent directing, and a superior script. When I say horrible, I mean that if you are planning on visiting an airport, working with children, or just plain feeling good about yourself at any time in the next couple of days, do not see this movie.

You see, some movies have a happy ending. Some have an unhappy ending. With some movies, you even have the sneaking suspicion that the director wants you to feel bad.

Hirokazu Koreeda does not want you to feel bad. He wants you to suffer.

Again, Nobody Knows, by Hirokazu Koreeda. Go see it. Carefully.

Quilly has thoughts on McCain-Feingold:

The intent, supposedly, of the McCain-Feingold bill was that some people have a bigger voice than others because of their wealth, therefore an attempt was allegedly made to level the playing field...

In general things, if left the frell alone, seem to balance out. Too much money from Big Business? Balanced by Unions and Hollywood. Someone look at the amounts of money raised. Both Kerry and Bush raised oodles of dough from formerly non-traditional sources. Which were not covered by the McCain-Feingold bill.

Look at MoveOn.Org and the Swifties. Both _clear_ partisan hacks with tremendous reach. Meanwhile Unions, the NRA and other mainstream PAC-type groups are frozen out. Does this make any sense?

The truly frightening part is that, by comparison to the Swift Boat Veterans or, yes, MoveOn, the NRA is a moderate group.

Yipes.

I love the city.

I was on the Metro, and I found myself talking with a good looking young man from France. (Here, “young man” means someone only a year or two older than I am. I shouldn't brag, but I'll only be twenty once, maybe twice, the way medical science is advancing.) This young man does something at the French embassy, but I couldn't understand exactly what.

He apologized: “My English is not good.”

I flirted: “You're English is better than my French. I know only merci, oui, and merde.”

He smiled, to assure me that some things can be communicated without language. Then we were at his stop. He turned and waved goodbye as the escalator carried him into a long, dark tunnel—or, more accurately, out of one.

And that is how I almost went out with a Frenchman. Who knows what I'll almost do tomorrow.

The New York Times covers Bush's choice of Paul Wolfowitz to run the World Bank. Wolfowitz, the article points out, has a doctrate in international relations and experience in the State department and Foreign Service, whereas other candidates to head the World Bank had experience in things like banking and finance.

(Or, in one case, platinum albums. But we won't get into that.)

In any case, Wolfowitz at the World Bank doesn't upset me too much. If he really is as radical as he seems, there's not much damage he can do there. If he's not, he'll be able to do a lot of good—the World Bank was where Robert McNamara went to be a good samaratin after he left the DoD. Either way, “"We'll have to swallow Wolfowitz like we swallowed John Bolton, since this is what we now know the administration means by effective multilaterialism," said a foreign diplomat here who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.”

The interesting this is what happens with Wolfowitz's old job:

In Washington, the appointment removes Mr. Wolfowitz from the president's inner circle and a skilled bureaucratic in-fighter from the Pentagon. It clears the way for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to take further control of Iraq policy, and opens the field for possible successors to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, whose future is a constant source of speculation in Washington...

Mr. Bush appeared expansive and almost light-hearted at the news conference, and he was clearly reveling in the developments in Lebanon and Iraq, where he asserted that democratization was on the rise. But he also, for the first time, made clear the limits of his patience with Iran - to which he extended modest new offers of American incentives last week to give up its nuclear program. He said it had only one chance to take the deal he had offered along with France, Germany and Britain.

Annia Ciezadlo deconstructs the idea that the Iraq invasion is the cause of the democracy movement in Lebanon, or even more than tangentally connected to it. Back to the press confrence.

Iran, he said, "must permanently abandon enrichment and reprocessing" of nuclear material, a step the Iranians have so far insisted they will not take. "The understanding is we go to the Security Council if they reject the offer," he said. "And I hope they don't."

Yet he set no timelines, and said at the end of his news conference that "there's a certain patience required in order to achieve a diplomatic objective."

I'm tempted to regress into Bush-bashing. But I'm an adult, and I can excercise self-control.

Mr. Bush also defended his administration's policy of "rendering" terror suspects to nations that have been suspected of using torture, saying that he was never knowingly allowing anyone to be sent abroad so that they could be subject to interrogation techniques not permitted in the United States. The United States sends suspects "back to their country of origin with the promise that they won't be tortured," he said. "That's the promise we receive. This country does not believe in torture." But then, almost as an aside, he added: "We do believe in protecting ourselves."

Oh, screw self-control. “Hey, semi-theocratic, authoritarian regime with a long history of torturing people? You promise not to torture this guy, right? Greeeat!” That article should have read, “Bush also defended the indefensible.” Wouldn't be exaggerating in the slightest to say that. Not. Even. A. Little.

When Republican and Democratic Senators or MoCs give a press confrence on something, my uncle informs us, “it's either silly or bad. They're lucky when even half of them get something right.”

Which is true enough. After all, when Hillary Clinton and Rick Santorum give a joint press conference, it's time for our elected representatives to bitch about things they can't change. Let's watch!

This week, the good folks at the Kaiser Family Foundation managed to raise our collective anxiety to new heights with the news that not only are kids glued to the telly, they're combining their tube time with all other manner of "new media." ...

A heartbeat after the study's release, a bipartisan quartet of senators--Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Lieberman--leapt into the spotlight, introducing legislation to fund government research into, as Santorum's press release so grandly put it, "the effects of viewing and using all types of media--including television, computer games, and the Internet--on children's cognitive, social, physical and psychological development." For anyone wondering about the lawmakers' preconceptions as to what these effects are likely to be, it bears noting that Senator Clinton, speaking earlier that day at the very event at which the Kaiser study was unveiled, inveighed against the sex-and-violence-soaked media "contagion" plaguing our children.

That's The New Republic's Michelle Cottle, who points out that our esteemed—or at least elected—representatives aren't just pointlessly griping, but being hypocritical as well.

Kaiser estimates that, since 1999, kids spend nearly 4 hours a day (28 hours a week) watching TV. That number sounds ghastly, shameful, unbelievable--until you consider that, according to data complied by Nielsen Media Research in 2000, adult women in this country watch close to 5 hours of TV a day (35 hours a week), while adult men watch four and a quarter. (By comparison, Nielsen had kids and teens watching only between two and three hours daily.) Even allowing for a fat margin of error on Nielsen's part, the basic point remains: Mom and Dad would have a lot easier time convincing Junior of the hazards of excessive TV if they could tear themselves away from "SportsCenter" and "Oprah" once in a while.

A must-read article from US News & World Report, followed by three excellent articles at The New Republic recently:

• A Courtship Worth Watching—Dan Gilgoff examines the Republican party's outreach to black voters. Scary thought: George W. Bush, someone much of the African-American community dislikes for many of the same reasons they disliked Ronald Reagan, can crack 10% of the black vote in some places, what happens if the GOP runs someone who's actually lived in a city in 2008?
• Local Yokels—Michael Crowley profiles the local blogs that played a surprising role in the defeat of Tom Daschle, examines how Daschle left himself vulnerable to the attack, and warns Democrats on the consequences of not learning from his mistakes.
• Climate Change—Joseph Braude examines the expanding role of the internet in Arab politics.
• Write Off—Ryan Lizza profiles GOP pollster Frank Luntz. A nice way to relax after three serious, though-provoking articles, and Lizza obviously enjoyed typing “I am not making this up” quite a bit.

I am writing this entry from the Library of Congress, as usual. To get from a small bakery in Dupont Circle to the Library of Congress on the subway here, I transfer from the Red Line to the Orange or Blue line at Metro Center. Today, there was a large crowd in the lower level. A train was stopped at the station, and a non-threatening female voice was explaining that the train would not be moving on or opening its doors. No one seemed to know why. Fortunately, the stopped train was going the other way, and my own train arrived in short order.

Before it did, I asked a woman if she knew what was happening. She said he had no clue, and I told her I hoped we wouldn't die of anthrax. She laughed, but she was nervous, and so I apologized.

“I'm sorry,” I told her. “I'm new to the city. I still freak out when I see the planes headed for a landing at Reagan.”

That is a slight exaggeration.

I had to write a paper on the history of Metrorail for the transportation portion of the program I'm in. Metrorail is run by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which was created by President Johnson; most of the bills to create Metrorail were signed by President Nixon. Part of my paper was this:

In 1973, WMATA purchased Washington D.C.'s four privately-owned bus companies, an action that would have outraged Ayn Rand, had she not died the previous year.

I also discussed this map:

I wrote:

This map is both well-designed and ubiquitous. Virtually every resident of Washington and the neighboring counties in Maryland and Virginia is familiar with it. The everyday commuters and Metrorail riders can picture it with their eyes closed. It fills their waking lives and haunts their dreams. This map is just that good.

That is a slight exaggeration.

No one will read my paper closely, if anyone reads it at all. Still, I decided to take out this part:

...and when you exit a Metrorail station, you swipe your farecard again, and the correct amount is automatically deducted and placed in a WMATA account, where it is used to operate, maintain, and expand the Metrorail system, or possibly embezzled and used for strippers and coke.

I don't think the teacher in my transportation class knows who Ayn Rand is, or why Ms. Rand would be offended by nationalization of transportation companies. But strippers and coke is pushing it.

I don't use a farecard anymore. I have a SmarTrip® card, which looks a lot like a library card or a credit card. You don't swipe it through anything. You simply hold it near a lit-up plastic circle, and it reads the correct fare without physical contact of any kind. It's like magic. Or better yet, Star Trek.

Today I got a cup of coffee at a small bakery in Dupont Circle before I came to the Library of Congress. That is why I was riding the train. A small bakery is as close as you can get to a real coffeeshop in D.C., where there are no real coffeeshops, except for Starbucks™, which is a real coffeeshop, but is not somewhere I like spending my money. While I was sitting at the bakery, I struck up a conversation with a man sitting next to me. He was reading a book about Chinese influence in Heidegger's philosophy.

This man was Michael Steinberg. He talked about Heidegger, eastern philosophy, and fascism. I learned that there were quite a few Zen philosophers who were enthusiastic supporters of statism (or did he say totalitarianism?) in 1930's Japan. I don't know if any of them were influential in the Nipponese government. I do know a good summation of Zen philosophy that is also a light bulb joke.

How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Two. One to screw in the light bulb and one not to screw in the light bulb.

Michael Steinberg also talked about eliminating dualism in our understanding of human behaviour. There are now two schools: psychology, which studies individuals, and sociology, which studies large groups. He thinks they are one in the same. At the very least, I think, it's like the beach. The ocean laps onto the shore, and the shore erodes into the ocean.

Here, someone who knows more about sociology or psychology than me could make a very good analogy involving sea shells or jellyfish or something.

He used the phrase “the culture of capitalism” several times in casual conversation. He liked the phrase so much he used it as the subtitle of his book: The Fiction of a Thinkable World: Body, Meaning, and the Culture of Capitalism, by Michael Steinberg, New York University Press, April 2005. You can buy the book at NYU Press' website. You can also buy it through Amazon, but you shouldn't. If you look for “other books by this author” on Amazon, #3 is Professional WebObjects with Java by Thomas Termini, Peer Information, October 2001. #10 is Protecting the American Homeland: A Preliminary Analysis, by Peter Orzag, Brookings Institution Press, November 2001.

The Brookings Institution is a very old think tank here in Washington, D.C. For some reason, I usually think of it as conservative, even though they take a lot of money from Bill and Melinda Gates and from U.C. Berkeley. I learned of that by reading Wikipedia, which I have just discovered is a wonderful way to see who is giving who money. For example, I have just learned that in 1981, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation gave money to Merce Cunningham, who is a famous choreographer. Like most famous choreographers, Merce Cunningham's name is familiar to me because I have heard Sam talk about him. Apparently he was in Martha Graham's company for some time. Merce Cunningham, I mean; not Sam. Martha Graham died before Sam was born, just like Ayn Rand.

As I said, Wikipedia is a wonderful way to see who is giving who money. And it's important to know who is giving who money. That is the culture of capitalism, and the culture of the capitol, Washington, D.C., where you never know who you'll meet in a small bakery or at the Library of Congress.

No, not me the guy who writes the blog. The blog itself. Today, InappropriateContent turns one year old, exactly!

Fine, don't believe me. Check the archives for yourself. There on the right.

I'd love to put up a picture of what the blog looked like when I was first figuring out that "HTML" stuff. But that's not how it works, and it probably looked like crap anyway. So happy birthday to me!

Number Seven:
A Canticle for Leibowitz
By Walter Miller

My drama teacher had a phrase he liked to use. “Post-Apocalyptic Wicked MacBeth.”

Most of the time, Post-Apocalyptic Wicked Whatever is cheap, awful sci-fi, on the order of Mad Max, with no redeeming value except the chance to see Mel Gibson demonstrate just how Christian he is by killing a lot of people in an incredibly violent manner. And to be fair, we can see that in practically any genre.

Canticle has slightly more going for it than cheap irony.

Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk. Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America—burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again?

That's the sort of prose that flows across every page of this book, this story of the Brothers of Saint Liebowitz who keep a tiny portion of the knowledge of the twentieth century alive in the centuries following the Flame Deluge. I found out later that the author was a devout Catholic for much of his life; in his writing he has the enviable ability to rip the church to shreds with subtle, accurate criticisms while simultaneously wholly believing in it and holding it up as the standard for humanity.

I keep turning over all sorts of complimentary adjectives—restless, engrossing, sublime—but none seem to do it justice. I'm no good at that anyway, but this is a book that really doesn't lend itself to a neat little anecdote that relates it to my life or politics. It is one of the few books I have ever read that stands up purely on it's own as art.

Which beats the hell out of Mad Max, eh?

Number Eight:
Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
Director's Cut
By Jhonen Vasquez

No doubt you take one look at the picture to the right and think, “aww—that's so cute! The teenagers are handling their angst issues by identifying with a young man who disembowels people with hack saws!”

And I certainly can't deny that there's some of that going on. There's a whole webring of Johnny fansites out there, and most of them are—surprise!—teen angsty.

But Johnny is a bit more in the Dr. Strangelove vein, standing out as sharp-edged cultural criticism. Johnny engages in deep philosophical debates with his alter egos (a floating bunny head and some talking Styrofoam Pillsbury doughboys) and he laments the shallow, exploitative society he lives in. He laments that people trivialize violence and wallow in their own worst qualities, especially when there are people—like Johnny—who engage in violent acts for the much more important reason that they are insane.

The characters in Johnny span the gauntlet, representing every imaginable member of the human family—just so long as they're the kind of person who'd hang around with the artistic or pseudo-artistic crowd in a second-rate metropolis.

Being raised in Salt Lake, I found some of these people a bit familiar.

I wondered which one I was. Quizilla told me:

What Johnny the Homicidal Maniac character are you?

Number Nine:
Harfmul to Minors:
The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex
By Judith Levine

This is a book I've read before, but it's also the only book I have that has it's own Wikipedia entry! (Actually, it's not.) The online encyclopedia tells us that

“In the book, Levine lambasts US laws concerning child pornography, statutory rape, and abortion for minors. It also analyzes abstinence only sex education, which Levine considers counter-productive and dangerous.

“Because of its controversial nature and content, it was nearly impossible for Levine to find a publisher—one prospective publisher even called it "radioactive." University of Minnesota Press eventually agreed to publish the book, despite cries of outrage from the right wing of Minnesota's political establishment.

“It became famous after it won the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Conservatives such as Joe Scarborough and Robert Knight inaccurately accused Levine of promoting pedophilia for her suggestion that the US adopt statutory rape laws similar to those in the Netherlands. Some demanded the book be removed from libraries.”

Well, Levine doesn't quite promote pedophilia. What she does is something that strikes quite a few people as much more dangerous. In her words, she is an “an advocate for pleasure.” In other words she believes people should be happy. That is being radical. Not just a political radical, but a spiritual radical. Now, I won't go to deep into the controversy here. But I'll say three things.

First, if you have time, do go a bit deeper into the controversy and read this article. Better yet, read the book.

Second, that article is home to the best example of everything that's wrong with American politics and culture today. And it's just one sentence:

He calls the book "very evil", although he admits he hasn't read it.

Third, believing people deserve to be happy is one of those world-changing ideals. It's also my heritage: the phrase “spiritual radical” is something I first heard used to describe my grandmother.

It's simple. People deserve to be happy. But trying to help even a few more people understand that is a lifetime's work.

Symptoms—Headache, nasal congestion, sinus pain, fatigue, slight fever, and joint pain.

Presenting—Tomorrow, maybe the day after.

Diagnosis—An infirmary that will give you plenty of meds once your actually sick, but won't give you simply multi-vitamins to prevent it—not even when you know you are fighting off a cold.

Treatment—Complete re-alignment of western concept of medical care, disease, and health, perhaps preceded by whacking certain PJCC Med Center staff with rolled-up magazines. (Preferably magazines espousing the benefits of preventive care.)

Because if you're not reading the Blue-Eyed Infidel yet, you should be:

If you're that woman in the Overstock.com commercials, Christ, do I hate you. You repulse me with your overconfidence. Your hair is scraggly and greasy-looking and yet for some reason you seem to think it looks sexy when you let it down and shake it out. You are annoying as all shit, quite frankly, and the fact that you are actually paid money to appear on television makes me angry at God.

Yes, it's a new category, Click Here!©

It's like a cop directing traffic, only I'm directing you to cool stuff. (Cool stuff as in other websites you may enjoy reading, not cool stuff as in a chance to win a free iPod. Although I promise to do that as soon as somebody gives me lots of money.)

Today, we specialise in people who are bitter, but funny bitter, like Blue-Eyed Infidel, or Larry David, or Peter David, or David David:

So many people claim that being opposed to gay marriage has nothing, no NOTHING to do with the same type of prejudice that once prohibited marriage between blacks and whites or Jew and Catholic. Heavens no. It has to do with concern over saving marriage itself, even though not one shred of evidence has been produced indicating that gay marriage would somehow threaten straight marriage.

There's the simple answer, then. Ban divorce. Put it on the voting referendums of every single state that banned gay marriage, watch it go down and flames, and expose them for the screaming hypocrites that they are.

A friend of mine has a book called Exceptions to the Ten Commandments. Every page is blank, except for the first one, where my friend has scribbled in the local poison control number and directions to his girlfriend's dorm room.

I mention this merely to bring up the Ten Commandments; the US Supreme Court today heard arguments on displays of the commandments in Kentucky and Texas. CNN reports (not that I'm suggesting anyone get their news from a 24-hour news channel, but CNN is the only news site I can read on my cell phone):

In the Kentucky case, two county executives separately posted copies of the King James version of the Ten Commandments on the walls of their courthouses. They were displayed among 11 frames of privately donated historical documents and symbols that helped form the basis of American law and government, including the Declaration of Independence. All but the Ten Commandments were secular in nature...

In Texas, Thomas Van Orden, a self-described "religious pluralist," filed suit against the placement, with private funds, of a 6-foot-tall monument on the grounds of Austin's Capitol Building in 1961. It bears the words "Ten Commandments," a star of David, a symbol representing Christ and the words "I am the Lord thy God."

Now most democrats naturally have a little bit of Onomatophobia—fear of hearing certain words—when it comes to the words “ten” and “commandments.” (In fact, House parliamentarians change $10 million appropriations to $11 million appropriations on all legislation.) After all, this is one of those issues that provokes an immediate, emotional response in people.

Take me, for example. When I read the reporting above, I think to myself, ‘Okay, Kentucky had the commandments with other documents, in an exhibit, presumably with some informational material and clearly in an educational setting. I may not agree with their premise that the commandments “helped form the basis of American law”—if you actually read the founders' writings, especially the Federalist Papers, you'll see how much most of the founders would have disagreed—but anything is better than Disney's Pocahontas, so good for them.

‘On the other hand, that Texas thing is a big monument right between the capitol and the judicial buildings with “a symbol representing Christ and the words ‘I am the Lord thy God.’ Maybe you have to be there to get the context, but something tells me that if you put up a statue of Gordon B. Hinckley with the words “Prophet, Seer & Revelator” in the same place, it might be a smidge less popular.’

Much as I'd love to see the High Court adopt “could you put a statue of President Hinckley there?” as a standard in commandment cases (or even better, the L. Ron Hubbard litmus test) the point is that my thoughts on this case are very emotional and gut-level—and I'm being far more moderate than most people!

Apparently some of the Justices have the same reaction. CNN's newer story informs us that Justice Souter believes “everybody knows what's going on” when the commandments are displayed. Scalia believes “what the Ten Commandments stands for is the human affairs of God.” And Ruth Bader Ginsburg informs us “these are not simple messages, like “In God We Trust’ [on U.S. currency]. The Ten Commandments are a powerful statement of the covenant God made with his people.”

Which makes these cases very much the judicial system's equivalent of the Michael Jackson trial (the actual Michael Jackson trial being, at best, only tangentially connected with the judicial system). These cases get a rise out of people, make us feel angry for one reason or another, yet they don't really affect us all that much. As personally offensive as I find the Texas display, I can always, as Justice Kennedy observed, simply look away. It does not violate my civil rights in a way that a constitutional amendment that prevents me from marrying whom ever I please does. It's not even as bad an infringement on my rights as the dress code I had at Bryant Junior High School.

No matter how the court rules on the commandments, it's not going to affect me much. All it will do is prompt a whole lot of lawmakers to do photo ops with, issue press releases about, and pass non-binding resolutions in support of, the commandments—in short, a whole lot of members of congress will be distracted from their jobs and fail to get much legislating done. For that, at least, we can be thankful; after all, a book about the bad things that happen when congressmen don't legislate would be a lot like a book on exceptions to the ten commandments: blank.

Last weeks US News & World Report (Feb 28) has a look at teen literacy. Like most news about education, it's depressing as all hell:

Close to 70% of eighth graders read below the “proficient” level, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, meaning they can't easily spot the purpose of a passage and find supporting evidence.

Willard Brown, a teacher in Oakland, California, observes that his students “think, ‘My eyes passed over the page, and I pronounced all the words.’ They don't realize that they really didn't get it.” I find things like this far more apocalyptic than anything Tim LaHaye could dream up. After all, horsemen and the sound of trumpets are, to be gentle, unprecedented. But a brave, new world where we've disconnected from literacy, from history, from reality—well, it wouldn't be the first time, and as my 10th grade history teacher was fond of saying, “they don't call them the dark ages because it was cloudy a lot.”

It's not all bad news, of course. The US News article covers a range of innovative programs being tried across the country. Actually, “innovative” is a word which here means “common sense.” The Oakland teacher concerned about his student's eyes just passing over the page has a simple program:

Brown asks his classes to tackle new material—how atoms bond, for instance—by marking up written handouts and then wrestling as a group with what the text really means. What can they figure out from the wording and graphics about why atoms join together? What does the process look like—can they see it in their heads?

...On the other side of the country, Monica Ouly is taking a similar tack in her family and consumer-science class at Springhouse Middle School in Allentown, Pa. ... Language skills are also being stressed by a surprisingly wide range of teachers at New York's Bronx Lab School: Not only do Karena Ostrem's ninth graders routinely translate math equations into word problems, but her colleague Kristin Smith has created a “word wall” in her art room...

The list, I'm happy to say, goes on. And the best news is that these ideas are grassroots ideas, spreading from teacher to teacher; they're immune to the far right's paranoid (and mostly unfounded) fear of the NEA; they fly under the radar of the far left's pointless (and intellectually insulting) “everyone is special” doctrine. Most importantly, they're immune to the real threat: the bipartisan, awful obsession with standardized tests. Mostly, anyway.

When Brown began working on reading skills on his own several years ago, he found that other chemistry teachers typically got weeks ahead of him in the fall. “But I could get ahead by spring, because there was opportunity for independent learning—the text started to make sense.”

I had several classes in high school where I fell victim to a teacher who was concerned with how we did on “The Test.” Once or twice, they were concerned because the school's budget depended on the test. A couple of times, they were concerned with the college credit students could earn by taking the AP test at the end of the year (in Utah, there's a huge cultural pressure to have some college credit when you get out of high school). In every case, the result was the same: I checked out, tuned out and often didn't even turn up.

I know, I know—liberals harp on teaching to the test a lot, and it often seems like mere sniping at the administration's No Child Left Behind act. But teaching to the test really does defeat the point of education, and it really is a serious problem. After all, even Ted Kennedy was a co-author of NCLB—everyone likes this horrible idea.

The purpose of education is to teach children how to think, not what to think. And in the rising sea of darkness that is the American education, our only hope lies with teachers like Willard Brown, teachers who teach.