Todd Seavey’s recent comment on his blog on why he saw Brokeback Mountain, “it was a lady’s idea,” prompted me to write these long-simmering thoughts.
I think that there is a whole little volume waiting to be written on the phenomenon of women pressuring straight men into seeing Brokeback Mountain. Here’s my contribution. (more…)
I am writing to tell you about an abuse of power in Asheville, NC by a police sergeant.
I occasionally stand on an interstate overpass near my place of work in the mornings and hold a sign that says ‘IMPEACH BUSH / CHENEY’.
On Wednesday August 15, I was standing alone with my sign for about 10 minutes, when I was approached by Police Officer Russell Crisp. He asked me how long I was planning to stay there and I told him just a few more minutes because I had to go to work at 8:00. He asked for my ID and I obliged. I asked him if I was doing something wrong, and he said that his Sergeant was on the way and he was going to wait for him. SO, I went back to my sign holding over the interstate. <more…>
After reading this account of a peaceful and cooperative protester being arrested in North Carolina, I am shocked and dismayed. For peacefully and unobtrusively displaying an “Impeach Bush/Cheney” sign on an Asheville sidewalk, this man was cited, handcuffed and arrested. This outrageous behaviour by the police is a dangerous and chilling impediment to free political speech. It is my sincere hope, that when this matter is resolved, if the above account is true, that all the police officers involved, and any other officials that gave then their marching orders, are fired and put on trial for their unconscionable actions.
The very essence of democracy is the ability to speak your mind and express your views without fear of reprisal. To slander this right is an egregiously infamous act repugnant to all believers in a free and democratic republic. This is not a politically partisan issue, except to the most corrupt and bloody-minded miscreants. While one may strongly disagree with the views stated by this protester, one must vociferously support his right to speak if one is to consider oneself a good citizen. Only by keeping officials accountable, like these officers, for such outrageous actions, can we hope to maintain a free and just civil society.
And, uh, oh yeah, impeach Bush/Cheney.
Here’s another item for the “American Decline” file. Apparently, there are well-connected people out there who would support a fascist America.
An article encouraging President Bush to declare himself President-For-Life was posted on the conservative web site, “Family Security Matters“. A cached version of the article is still available online, though the original has since been taken down. The website’s principal advisor, Barbara Comstock, was a former Justice Department spokeswoman under John Ashcroft, and familysecuritymatters.org is a front for an influential conservative think tank, or so it is said on the blogosphere.
The article was quickly taken down and may just be a harmless aberration, but one has to wonder how many conservative fifth-columnist are really out there, ready to turn the United States of America into a banana-republic style military junta. The list of advisors and directors for Family Security Matters has some recognizable public names on it, and they really should reconsider the company they keep. Even worse, maybe they have considered the company, and decided that they liked it.
I wonder if I’m putting myself on a secret enemies list just by writing about this. What’s most frightening is that it is not an idle thought. Something is going very wrong with this country. There is an air of fear and paranoia that has no proportion with the pipsqueak terrorists that we are supposedly being protected from.
I’m just hoping that we make it to free elections in 2008, that we get some good and honest national leadership, and that enough of the country is courageous enough to demand a return to a free and civil society. I like to think everything will be okay. I believe that the bad guys are just incompetent and paranoid, not brave or evil enough to ruin this country. But I’m not one-hundred percent sure, and it bothers me to lack confidence in the integrity of our government. I’ve never been struck with such angst over our country’s future.
Last night’s debate on gentrification went by with laudable interested discussion. As a moderator, there are a few things that tick me off, and they are mostly a question of impolite audience members. It is amazing to me that people will talk in full voice in a private conversation at an event while debaters on the stage are speaking. I have noticed that during the debate, proponents of the more “left-y” side of the discussion tend to be the more unruly ones, barging in with guffaws and heckling, seemingly unaware that they are not welcome to take part in the act unless called upon. I suppose their extreme democratic notions make them oblivious to the restictions imposed by elitist rules of decorum. The trend of the philosophical and political allegiances of the misbehaved is not a total one, though. The aforementioned yakkers, inconsiderate of the neighbors’ unwelcome attention, were certainly conservatives.
A Los Angeles hospital feels it necessary to share private patient information for purposes of “protective services for the President and others“. A full copy of the privacy policy is available here. The full explanation is that they “may disclose medical information about you to authorized federal officials so they may provide protection to the President, other authorized persons, or foreign heads of state or to conduct special investigations”. The fact that the provision is explicitly spelled out strongly suggests that the disclosure of information has already been made in the past. Is this a matter of a hospital being co-opted into an increasingly totalitarian state, or merely Liberal hysteria about legitimate law-enforcement activities? A close reading of the document suggest reasons for alarm from any person concerned about their privacy and civil liberty.
I like the site Violent Acres. It’s funny and witty and well-written. As the author herself points out, the Internet is generally too nice and her wit is acid enough to burn up a few sacred cows. Her philosophy is basically common-sensical libertarian, with a strong streak of self-reliance and distrust of arbitrary authority. The author maintains her anonymity, so I will refer to her as Ms. Acres in the context of this post.
Ms. Acres writes frequently about child-raising, often with acerbic astuteness, but like her spiritual and philosophical soul-mate, the science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein, I wonder how much of her experience is first hand, from start to finish, with children of her own? What is clear is that she has stepchildren from her husband’s previous marriage whom she supervises occasionally. She also has shown justifiable disdain for the moral supersession of absent biological fatherhood over a good step-dad.
Her most recent post speaks of the humiliation of being an adult waiting in line for the latest Harry Potter book. Given her frugality, and the high cost of competent baby-sitting, and her complete silence on the matter. I find it hard to imagine that Ms. Acres has children of her own that she watches on a full time basis.
I like Ms. Acres writing. I like a lot of what she says about child-raising and wish more parents had her point of view. I am not so dull as to assert that those who observe rather than participate in an activity are incompetent to comment thoughtfully on it. I just look forward to the day when Ms. Acres bitch-slaps herself, admitting that dealing with her own kids full-time is nothing like she imagined, and that her idealistic notions are like tattered tissue paper in the face of one’s own screaming infant child.
It’ll be just my foot-in-mouth luck that Ms. Acres has some serious biological bar from bearing children, allowing her tragical immunity from my existential barb.
A friend’s recent musings on literary endings prompted some of my own.
This last Saturday, in a small park closest to the Barnes & Noble in our area, I saw three young women reading the last Harry Potter book. It even prompted my wife to want to get back into the series, though she has only read the first book and that was many years ago.
My favorite series of books was Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin adventures. Sadly the author died before ever properly completing the series, and I have never had the heart to pick up the last uncompleted, yet still published, book in the series.
I am now finishing Robert Graves’ Claudius the God and I dread the tragic ending that looms.
These fictional characters become our friends, beings we know as intimately as we know ourselves. We feel their loss as deeply as any flesh and blood relation’s. We dread their death, and unlike the living, we can delay their doom with our own imaginings and an aversion to their author’s act of execution. We postpone the hanging by postponing our attendance. But like Orpheus longing for Eurydice, we cannot help but take one final look.
Phaemon the philosopher had a little dog whom he had trained to go to the butcher every bring back a lump of meat in a basket. This virtuous creature, who would never dare to touch a scrap until Phaemon gave it permission, was one day set upon by a pack of mongrels who snatched the basket from its mouth and began to tear the meat to pieces and bolt it greedily down. Phaemon, watching from an upper window, saw the dog deliberate for a moment just what to do. It was clearly no use trying to rescue the meat from the other dogs: they wouild kill it for its pains. So it rushed in among them and itself ate as much of the meat as it could get hold of. In fact it ate more than any of the other dogs, because it was both braver and cleverer.
– from Claudius the God, by Robert Graves, 1935
Such is the cruel fate of the virtuous when faced with suffuse and irradicable corruption.
Johann Hari, a columnist for Great Britain’s Independent newspaper has written a devastatingly frank memoir of his recent trip on one of the National Review’s ocean cruises, intermittently held political-rallies-cum-vacations for readers of the conservative magazine with lots of discretionary income to blow on an overpriced voyage.
Last June, a Haitian mother was brutally raped and her young son beaten by a pack of young Black hooligans in a West Palm Beach housing project. Her neighbors did not come to her aid or even call the police. She and her son had to walk a mile to the hospital after their ordeal.