This morning in Kansas, a gunman walked into a Wichita Lutheran church and gunned down one of the ushers. The usher, Dr. George Tiller, was notorious in the pro-life community for performing late-term abortions.
Most folks who have commented have said all the right things, including the hard-line group Operation Rescue, which said "We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning."
But somewhere, I'm sure there are at least a few folks thinking that killing Tiller meant that at least a few additional babies might live.
I consider myself pro-life in a qualified sort of way -- more on that later -- but if there's one thing I know, it's that you don't grab the high moral ground in this debate by killing doctors. What happened in Wichita is every bit as much an act of terror as a suicide bomber walking into a restaurant in the Middle East and setting himself off.
Killing is killing, and that's the reason I am opposed to capital punishment, euthanasia and assisted suicide as well as abortion.
Here's where my position becomes "qualified," though. I believe that as long as our laws and our society are the way they are, abortion needs to be safe and legal. That said, if a woman in my life became pregnant, I would do whatever I could to dissuade her from terminating her pregnancy.
Of course if I couldn't, the choice would be up to her. That's a choice I'm perfectly willing to let her make, as long as she understands that her actions have consequences and that she may have to justify herself before God at the end of her life.
Before I would even consider restricting abortions, I think we need to do everything we can to help women make the decision for life. That includes financial aid if needed, pre- and post-natal health care, adoption assistance and child care if she decides to raise the child.
Without those things, we're not pro-life. We're just pro-birth.
"Those who fail to remember the lessons of history yadda yadda yadda ..." -- GEORGE COSTANZA on SANTAYANA
To be fair, I'm not sure this particular quote ever appeared on "Seinfeld." It's just that I figure you all know it, so rather than insult you by making a big deal out of it, I decided to have a little fun with it.
I'm not sure we have forgotten the lessons of history. I just think we don't think they matter anymore.
It wasn't even 30 years ago that President Reagan said these words: "The defense policy of the United States is based on a simple premise: The United States does not start fights. We will never be an aggressor."
"Yes, but .... didn't 9/11 change everything?"
Most scientists now believe than man has been on this planet for somewhere in the neighborhood of two million years. That's 2 with six zeroes. In the overall scheme of things, do you know how little change takes place in say, a century?
Look back a hundred years and you see a country very different from the one we occupy today. In 1909, roughly 40 percent of Americans were farmers, fishermen, forestry workers, miners and other outdoor types.
They occupied a country in which white men didn't take any guff from anyone. Women couldn't vote except in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. California would follow suit in 1911, but it would be 1920 before all American women could vote. Black people knew their place, and if they didn't, there were lynchings and other atrocities to remind them.
In 1915, the most popular movie ever made, "Birth of a Nation," had members of the Ku Klux Klan as its heroes. Ten years later, more than 400,000 Klansmen in full regalia held a march through the streets of Washington, D.C.
But we've changed, haven't we?
No one gets lynched anymore, at least not that we hear about. We don't even need affirmative action, do we? Gosh, even Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter say we live in a post-racial society.
Hey, we elected a black man president.
That we did, and it was a wonderful thing.
But do you ever really surf the Internet? Do you visit some of the right-wing Websites and see some of the vile things people have been saying about Barack Obama? Have you heard about the classified ad that got sneaked into the newspaper in Warren, Pa., the other day?
"May President Obama follow in the footsteps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy."
I suppose the fact that the employee who took the ad didn't make the connection is another one of those "lessons of history" things.
I wish racism were gone from our society, but I'm afraid it has only gotten smarter and more subtle. Limbaugh can call the mayor of New Orleans "Mayor Nay-ger" and then just say he made a mistake. "Urban" can become a code word for black, just as Richard Nixon used "law and order" as code words in his Southern Strategy.
Yes, we're a better country now than we were in 1909, 1915 or 1925.
But let's not kid ourselves that we're past racism. The men marching in those hoods in 1925 were our grandfathers and our great-grandfathers. Maybe not mine, maybe not yours, but they were somebody's ancestors.
I'm not saying we need to keep apologizing or atone for anything. I'm just saying that when it comes to discriminating or speaking ill of people, we ought to remember one rule when we think of doing something.
I'm sorry, but I have never been a fan of Ronald Reagan.
I know he was a popular governor and a beloved (at least in some circles) two-term president. He was even pretty good on "Death Valley Days," hawking 20 Mule Team Borax.
But I don't see why we have to name everything in the world after him.
Ever since President Reagan left office in 1989, and with increasing frequency since he announced he had Alzheimer's Disease in 1994 and died 10 years later, there has been more and more pressure to name things after him.
He got an airport (which is ironic when you consider that firing the air-traffic controllers screwed up the system for years), a massive federal building in Washington, D.C., (and we all know how much he loved big federal buildings) and everything from freeways to schools, hospitals and maybe even churches.
Some folks have suggested adding him to Mount Rushmore. Others wanted Reagan to replace FDR on the dime.
There's even a group devoted to making sure that something is named after him in every county in the USA.
Great, but why did Thomas Starr King have to suffer for it?
King didn't suffer much personally. After all, he died in 1864, nearly 50 years before Reagan was born (although Bob Dole was already around). But King, one of the greatest men in California history, is having his statue bumped from the National Statuary Hall to make room for -- you guessed it -- a 7-foot tall Ronald Reagan.
Wonder who King was? Here's part of what his bio says in the Hall:
Thomas Starr King, "the orator who saved the nation," was born December 17, 1824, in New York City. The sole support of his family at age 15, he was forced to leave school. Inspired by men like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Ward Beecher, King embarked on a program of self-study for the ministry.
At the age of 20 he took over his father's former pulpit at the First Unitarian Church of Charlestown, Massachusetts.In 1848 he was appointed pastor of the Hollis Street Unitarian Church, Boston, where he became one of the most famous preachers in New England. He vacationed in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and in 1859 wrote a book about the area entitled "The White Hills: Their Legends, Landscapes and Poetry."
In 1860 he accepted a call from the First Unitarian Church of San Francisco. In California during the Civil War, he spoke zealously in favor of the Union and is credited with saving California from becoming a separate republic. In addition, he organized the Pacific Branch of the Sanitary Commission, which cared for wounded soldiers.
The baby boom generation has often been accused of thinking the world began when they were born. Well, I wish Republicans would stop thinking the world began when Ronald Reagan was born.
King is just the sort of person who fades away into history, and that's a shame.
He deserves better than having his statue taken down, crated up and sent to Sacramento. After all, where are we going to put it there once they get that Terminator statue finished?
I'm sure most of you have heard of him, at least in passing. He's a great American singer, songwriter and all-around pain to people in power. He wrote such classics as "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," "If I Had a Hammer" and "Turn, Turn, Turn" (that last one with a little help from Ecclesiastes.
While there are certainly those who will disagree with me, I firmly believe that few people in the 20th century worked harder to help the poor, the disaffected and people of color than Seeger did and is still doing. Yes, he made the mistake of being a Communist in the 1930s and supporting the way Joseph Stalin was running Russia.
He later renounced those views and blamed himself for not looking deeper and trying to see the meaning behind the meaning.
Can you imagine very many modern politicians doing that?
He was a contemporary of the man regarded as the greatest of the folk singers, Woody Guthrie, and while Guthrie's guitar was inscribed with "This machine kills fascists," Seeger had an inscription of his own on his favorite banjo.
"This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender."
He was one of the leading musical voices in the civil rights movement and was actually the man who popularized the old Negro spiritual, "We Shall Overcome," as a civil rights anthem.
He even got the Smothers Brothers in trouble with CBS when he sang "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" in December 1967 to protest the Vietnam War.
In more recent years, his work has dealt more with the environment, and many of you doubtless saw him at the Obama inauguration when along with Bruce Springsteen and his own grandson, he performed Guthrie's wonderful anthem, "This Land is Your Land."
And wasn't it wonderful for Seeger to live long enough to see a black man elected president of the U.S.?
Godspeed, Pete. When you're gone, I doubt we will see your like again.
"That's why everyone MUST be forced to go to public school and forced if necessary to give up these primitive viewpoints. ... If I had you in one of my classes, you'd learn to drop your stupid, 'hatemongering' ways or I'd fail you. It doesn't matter to me what your grades are -- it's time we concentrated on reprogramming you idiots with the right and proper viewpoint." -- COUSIN IT
I actually don't like the idea of calling our friend from the education community "Cousin It."
That's a little demeaning, even though she refuses to give her name. I think it would probably be nicer -- and maybe more accurate -- to call her Mrs. Tingle. There was a 1999 film starring the excellent Helen Mirren called "Teaching Mrs. Tingle," in which students tried to get back at a vicious teacher who terrorized her classes.
Now I'd be willing to guess from the quotes above that our own Mrs. Tingle doesn't much like her own students, unless they knuckle down, toe the line and follow instructions to the letter. She clearly doesn't see education as learning -- people who use words like "forced" and "reprogramming" rarely do.
I would be very interested in knowing what subject she teaches, because the best teachers I ever had -- in public schools, yes -- didn't always try to get you to agree with them, but to look for deeper meanings on their own.
I really didn't think any of the comments -- even though I disagreed with some of them -- were "hatemongers," except for maybe Mrs. Tingle. I will guarantee you one thing. Whether this woman is straight or gay, she is incredibly sexually frustrated. If you'll pardon the expression, it almost drips from every word she writes.
Is America really supposed to be a Brave New World, where everyone fits into the niche the authorities decide they belong in? We have enough economic shackles on us these days that freedom often seems less than free, but I guarantee you that if the purpose of the public schools is what she describes in the beginning, Americans would tear down those schools brick by brick.
I don't ban anyone from posting here, and I don't delete any comments. I try not to ridicule anyone who goes to the trouble to read and comment, but this woman is a joke. In fact, I wouldn't be too surprised to see that it was someone faking what they think is political correctness run amok.
Sorry, Mrs. Tingle, but people don't always vote the way you want. That means you need to do a better job of making your case.
It doesn't mean we drag them into your classroom and lobotomize them.
At some point later today, the California Supreme Court will either uphold or strike down Proposition 8, in which voters decided that same-sex marriage in California should not be legal.
My guess is it's a tough call that could go either way, but just as my own views have evolved over the last decade or so, so has the consensus in California.
In 2000, there was a proposition on the ballot declaring marriage as being between a man and a woman. I voted for it.
In 2008, Prop 8 took the same stance. I voted against it.
The 2000 proposition passed with 61 percent of the vote; last year's passed with 52 percent. Give Californians another eight years and you'll see a solid vote in favor of allowing anyone to marry, gay or straight.
Nine years ago, I didn't see it as a civil rights issue. I still didn't know whether being gay was a choice or a genetic condition, and my own religious values got all tangled up with defining marriage. I figured civil unions were fair enough.
But even my friend Mitch, one of the last of the great homophobes, is evolving on this issue. (Even though he doesn't believe in evolution) Thirty years ago, Mitch told me that if he found out one of his friends was gay, that would be the end of the friendship.
A couple of soul kisses cured him of that.
Just kidding. He came to realize that just as most straight people don't see their sexuality as what defines them (sorry, Mr. Hefner), neither do most gay people. Sexuality is just a part of what makes us who we are.
The problem with banning gay marriage, or same-sex marriage, or whatever you want to call it, is that civil marriage is not about religion. It's about property rights, and benefits, and visitation and all sorts of other things.
I think everybody ought to have the same rights when it comes to that stuff.
That's why I'm hoping the court rules against Prop 8 today. It isn't a matter of public opinion. When the court struck down laws against mixed-race marriages more than 60 years ago, 90 percent of Californians thought it was a bad decision.
"They say it was a shocking sight, After the field was won; For many thousand bodies here lay rotting in the sun; But things like that, you know, must be ... after a famous victory." -- AFTER BLENHEIM, Robert Southey
I wonder why it is that the English have always been so much more eloquent in honoring their war dead. Whether it's Southey, or Canadian John MacRae's haunting "In Flanders Fields," or a host of others, their words can almost make you feel the sacrifice of so many young lives, often for such poor reasons.
When was the last time we sent our young off to war without the motive being questioned? When was the last time our military men and women really felt they were fighting to protect our freedom and the folks back home agreed with them?
It doesn't really matter. It has been said that war is old men sending young men off to die, and even if the cause isn't all that just, it in no way diminishes the selfless sacrifice the young make. That's why I was so infuriated to hear Dick Cheney the other day when he blamed Abu Ghraib on "a few sadistic prison guards (who) abused inmates in violation of American law, military regulations, and simple decency."
There isn't a military unit in the world where those at the bottom of the ladder take that sort of thing upon themselves. Soldiers follow orders, and if they didn't get specific orders about how to treat prisoners, they certainly followed the tone of what their superiors said.
That's why when President Eisenhower warned us of the emerging "military-industrial complex" in 1961, he also said privately, "God help us if we get someone in this office who doesn't understand these people."
Yes, the world is changing. Particularly with Vietnam almost 40 years in the past and World War II nearly 65 years gone, we're more likely to get presidents without first-hand military experience than we once were.
But when we get presidents -- and vice presidents -- who want to use the U.S. military for empire building, we not only cheapen the sacrifice, we make it far more likely that young men and women in our military will die in unnecessary ways.
It isn't our job to police the world, or to decide which dictators to overthrow.
It isn't our job to bring democracy to the Middle East.
We need to elect wise leaders, leaders who will send men and women into battle only when it is truly necessary to protect the people of the United States and our allies.
Otherwise, some future poet will again be writing of bodies rotting in the sun, and calling it a famous victory.
The Golden Rule is part of almost every religion known to man, including that non-religion known as secular humanism.
Yet we go so far out of our way in this country to show no religious preference that we can't even get that one right. It's pretty obvious when you look at public policy in almost every area that we live more by the satirical quote above than we do by any law of reciprocity.
Think about this. The cost of money to banks right now is just about as low as it can go. If you figure in the various federal bailouts, it's actually below zero. The government is paying banks to take its money.
Yet when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the senate's only avowed Socialist, tried to add a provision to the credit card bill to limit interest rates to 15 percent, only 32 other senators voted with him. The other said they were concerned that limiting the amount banks could charge would cause them to be more restrictive in the credit they offer.
Well, excuse me, but maybe the problem is that they haven't been restrictive enough.
When I came of age in the '70s, you had to have good credit to get a credit card. You sort of worked your way up, maybe starting with a gas card or a department-store card and showing you could make payments on time. Then, after a while, you could apply for a Master Charge (that's what it was called then) or a BankAmericard (the old name for Visa).
You started with a low credit limit and get it raised as you proved your ability to handle it. I think my first bank card had a limit of $200.
Nobody had the right to have credit. You had to earn it.
As of about three weeks from now, I'll be out of the credit-card business. I have a small balance still to pay on the cards I have in my wallet, which between them offer me $52,000 in EZ credit. Once I'm done I'll close two of the accounts and keep one card for emergencies.
It just isn't worth it to use them. We had a balance of $19.95 on one of our cards last month. I sent in a check to pay it in full, but it was received a day after the due date. We were charged $35 for a late fee on a balance of $19.95.
It's ridiculous. Even in the '70s, before Congress allowed credit card companies to charge whatever the state in which they were headquartered allowed. South Dakota and Delaware repealed their usury laws, and most of the companies moved there. That's why you see rates of 25 percent, 30 percent or even more in some instances.
Sanders is one of the few people to call this what it really is -- usury, which is defined as an unconscionable or exorbitant rate of interest for a loan.
Now the banks will tell you that no one is forced to use credit cards. In fact, no one is forced to borrow money from them. Let's be real, though. Do they expect people who don't have enough money to pay their rent, or to buy groceries, or to pay medical bills, to just go and live in a cardboard box?
Maybe they do.
Maybe all this is about Social Darwinism. Maybe it's just the survival of the fittest. The problem with that is that we don't come into the game at the beginning. Most of us come into a one-mile run with other people already halfway through the course because of advantages their parents or their grandparents gave them.
There's another thing about saying people don't have to use credit cards.
Even for voluntary purposes, it can be pretty damned hard to resist when 80 percent of the advertising out there is aimed at separating you from your money for all these things you just must have.
Interestingly enough, most major religions speak against usury. In the Bible, it's "thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother." (Deut. 23:19). The Koran is even more forceful: "God condemns usury." It goes on to say that "those who charge usury are in the same position as those controlled by the devil's influence."
It's a shame we have to wait to the next world for the usurers to get what's coming to them. At least that's what the Senate says.
"A hundred years from now? All new people." -- ANNE LAMOTT
I have never wanted to live an extremely long life.
The thought of being around for 110 years or so, blinking through cataracts and unable to hear anything less than a jackhammer, has never appealed to me. When I read about the 115-year-old woman who died in Indiana just before Thanksgiving, several things about the story jumped out at me.
First, she had married the love of her life, but when he died of a heart attack, she was a widow for about 70 years.
Second, she had outlived her children and all of her grandchildren. There were plenty of great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren still alive, but the two generations following her were gone.
It reminded me of the saying that if you live long enough, you lose everyone you love.
That's why I always said I would be happy with 80 good years, free from dementia and still able to get around. If there's more, fine, but I certainly wouldn't want to live 30-35 more years with my 80-year-old mind and body.
I first saw the Lamott quote in a biography of the wonderful singer/songwriter Steve Goodman, an old favorite of mine who died at 36 after living nearly half his life with leukemia. Goodman wrote some wonderful songs for Jimmy Buffett ("California Promises," "Banana Republics"), one great song that a lot of people did ("City of New Orleans") and a couple of songs ("Go Cubs Go," "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request") that immortalized him on the north side of Chicago.
I think he knew he wasn't going to live very long, but I think he also realized that some of those "all new people" would still know him through his music.
I don't know if any of my work to date -- my newspaper columns, the stuff I've written for the Web -- will be that long-lasting. By its very nature, this sort of stuff is ephemeral, transitory.
But I certainly hope the part of me that has been imprinted on my children as I raised them will outlive me, and I hope some of the things they learned will be passed along to their own children.
You see, for most of us, there are only two things about our lives that matter -- the way we treat other people while we're here and the way we raise our children. How many insurance policies we sold, or how many loans we made or most of the other work-related stuff doesn't count for much. If we didn't do it, someone else probably would have.
That's why you hear folks say that while a lot of people at the end of their lives say they wish they had spent more time with their families, very few say they wish they had worked harder at their jobs.
I don't know whether to be happy or sad about the failure of the California budget propositions Tuesday.
I didn't vote -- for the most point, I avoid participating in this part of the electoral process -- although if I had voted, I'm pretty sure I would have been against all of them.
You see, there are two men basically responsible for the mess in which the state finds itself, one living and one dead. Both of them for pretty much the same reason.
The dead guy is Howard Jarvis, the leader of the tax revolt and the author of 1978's Proposition 13, which set such stringent limits on property taxes that it pretty much permanently hamstrung the state budget process.
The living guy is our governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who ran in 2003 on the platform of cutting the vehicle tax. That move almost single-handedly created the budget problems we now have when it comes to a shortfall of revenue.
Yes, spending in some areas is too high. Union contracts, particularly in the area of pensions, are killing the state. I'm not sure it's necessary for state employees to have gilt-edged pensions at a time when private companies have all but eliminated them.
Health care hurts too. We've got way too many Californians -- illegal immigrants and otherwise -- without health insurance, seeking care at the state's emergency rooms.
You want to know one thing we don't have, though?
Onerous taxation.
All we ever hear from the right is that we're staggering under some of the highest taxes in the nation. The fact is, though, that our taxes and fees as a percentage of income rank 18th among the 50 states.
We also hear that we can't soak the rich for everything. True, but according to non-profit Citizens for Tax Justice, the rich are barely getting wet. The top 1 percent of wage-earners, who made an average of $2.3 million in 2007, paid 7.4 percent of their income in state taxes last year.
Those earning $20,000 or less paid 10.2 percent.
The main reason for this is the sales tax, the most regressive of all taxes. Since poor people have to spend much more of their income, they pay a lot of sales tax. That's why whenever you hear someone pushing something called a "Fair Tax," where the only tax would be on consumption, you know they're either on the payroll of the rich or they don't understand taxation at all.
So what's wrong in California?
Actually, quite a few things:
-- When it comes to the federal government, California -- like most blue states -- pays in a lot more than it gets back. That's particularly true when it comes to illegal immigrants. We're paying to educate them, heal them and jail them, and we don't even get any say in whether they can be deported. That's federal.
-- We're locked into an archaic tax system because of Prop 13 and the requirement for a two-thirds vote to pass budgets.
-- We are locked into mediocre legislators because of term limits.
-- Our school system is way too top-heavy with administrators, adding billions of dollars in cost.
All that's just scratching the surface. One of the biggest problems is that no one tells the truth to voters about paying for the government they want, and the initiative process has turned into a private game for rich people.
I've lived in California for nearly 20 years, and I'm glad my kids went to good California public schools and excellent public universities. But I'm also glad they're grown and neither is planning to live in the state permanently.
We won't retire here, either. The next 10-20 years are going to be way too painful, and that's if they can straighten all this out.
"I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part." -- ERIC "OTTER" STRATTON
Ever since the first time I saw "Animal House" in 1978, it has been my favorite movie.
Friends and acquaintances who know me as a serious, mature adult capable of deep thoughts always ask me how a movie whose greatest quote is "You fucked up, you trusted us" could possibly mean so much to me.
They don't understand how not only does the movie fit into the great tradition of the '70s -- probably the last great decade of American cinema -- it also might just be the quintessential movie about being a guy.
Think about it. Not one person in that movie has any sort of awakening in which he realizes he needs to grow up, settle down or get on with his life. Otter becomes a gynecologist, Boon and Katy get married and divorced and Niedermayer is fragged by his own troops in Vietnam.
Yes, Bluto becomes a U.S. senator, but if you think he grew up at all, just look at the example of our recent president.
Then there's my favorite of all -- "Daniel Simpson Day, whereabouts unknown."
Think about all the movies "Animal House" inspired, and think of all the "bromances" you're seeing these days. None of them even compare. Even the good ones -- "Talladega Nights," "Wedding Crashers" and others like them -- always show the protagonist learning some sort of lesson. Growing up. Getting in touch with his feelings. Appreciating friends and family.
Not in "Animal House."
In that movie, Pinto does have sex with the 13-year-old. The bad guys do beat the good guys, such as they are. And in the end, in their "really futile and stupid gesture," the Deltas do get revenge for their expulsion by trashing the entire downtown area.
And they don't get punished for it.
It's one of the few movies I've seen in the last 35 years that is funny just for funny's sake, one of the few that doesn't worry about who is offended.
I suppose I wouldn't love it so much if I hadn't been in a fraternity, although our chapter of Sigma Phi Epsilon was much less outrageous. We did have one guy who was a little too tightly wound, talking about the .44 Magnum he kept in his apartment in case anyone tried to break in.
My brother Steve -- my real brother and my fraternity brother -- turned to me and said, "Best argument for gun control I've ever heard."
For the last 18 months or so, my son has been working toward two great goals.
A short time after graduating magna cum laude from Cal State Northridge, Virgile decided that he wanted to follow his sister into the Foreign Service. He also decided that he wanted to complete an Ironman Triathlon. Either one of those goals would be daunting to the average person. Both together made me want to curl up in a corner and whimper.
The Ironman is one thing. The one he set sail for will be held in Nice, France, on June 28th. He'll swim 3.8 kilometers in the Mediterranean Sea, bicycle 180 kilometers and then run 42.195 kilometers.
For those who are metrically illiterate like me, that's about a 2-mile swim, a 112-mile ride and a 26.2-mile run. It'll take somewhere in excess of 11 hours.
He tells me that theoretically, anybody could do it as long as they didn't care about their time. I'm not sure. I know I couldn't swim two miles in open water.
He has been working toward this by training almost every morning. Some days he swims, some days he rides and other days he runs. He has competed in shorter events all around the West Coast, but June 28th will be his first shot at the whole magilla.
At the same time, he has been working toward succeeding at the highly competitive Foreign Service Officer exams. Six months ago, he took and passed the written exam, the first stage that qualifies people for the oral exams.
That's a pretty big accomplishment in itself. Most folks don't pass phase one.
But this week he went to Washington, D.C., for the oral exams. It was such a thrill to get the call yesterday.
"I passed, Dad."
Of course he did. I wanted to explain to him that I had expected nothing less, but I was afraid he would misunderstand.
It isn't that I demand success from him, or that I would be disappointed in him if he didn't succeed. Neither of those is true. What I meant when I say I expected it is that I have complete and total confidence in both my children. Both Virgile and Pauline are wonderful kids who don't settle for anything less than success.
When they're going after something, I don't worry that they won't get it. I know they will.
There's a scene in the Robin Williams movie "What Dreams May Come" where he tells his son that if he ever had to storm the gates of Hell, he's the one person he would want with him. Well, that's how I feel about my kids. If I ever had to undertake some seemingly impossible life or death quest and could have one person at my side, it would be Pauline or Virgile.
The whole thing with the foreign service reminded me of when I first became Virgile's dad. Nicole and I married when he was 7, and we agreed that he would call me "Dad."
He did come up with one humorous alternative.
"Can I call you 'Officer?'"
With that in mind, and thinking of the job he just qualified for, I guess I can say this:
"What good is a book? Not much in the hands of people who do not think, and to be honest, most Americans do not even know how to think. Just consume." -- JOE BAGEANT
If you've been following this blog and its earlier incarnations, you know how much I admire Joe Bageant, the author of the amazing book "Deer Hunting With Jesus." Along with Thomas Frank and Barbara Ehrenreich, Bageant writes eloquently about what has happened to the working class in this country over the last 30 years.
Bageant's subtitle alone says a lot -- "Dispatches from America's Class War." He basically points out that the working class would vote Democratic -- in its economic interest -- except that Democrats not only don't understand them, they insult them.
Republicans might be stealing them blind, but they're doing it while they're complimenting them and telling them what fine Americans they are.
When I read Bageant and the others, I become extremely discouraged at the possibility of political solutions. I think our society has slid so far into a crass, soulless materialism that people are desperate for any chance to feel good about themselves.
"Just consume."
Other than committing actual crimes, do you know what the worst thing Americans could do as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century?
You guessed it. Stop consuming. Our economy is so dependent on a certain percentage of us eating fast food every night, a certain percentage buying x number of DVDs and a certain number replacing television sets, refrigerators and cell phones every year, among other things.
This is our duty as Americans. If we don't spend money, other people lose their jobs.
Bageant calls our society the "American hologram," writing that the picture of our society that most of us accept is anything but what we really inhabit. In the hologram, folks are smiling, playing ball and enjoying their lives. In reality, 70 percent of American families are either just getting by or not getting by financially.
So what do we do about it?
I'm sorry, but I don't think there are political solutions to this problem. I certainly believe it's better for working people when Democrats hold power, but I think the Democratic Party of 2009 is basically Republican Lite on economic issues.
I think one step is that just one person at a time, we can start behaving ethically toward the people around us. We can refuse to cheat or con them, refuse to take advantage of them and not encourage them to buy things they don't need.
Aside from that, my solution would be as much as possible, do this:
Refuse to participate in the consumer society.
Don't buy a new computer if your old one still works. Don't buy a new car until your old one falls apart. Save your money, in credit unions instead of banks as much as possible.
And look for a way to define yourself other than as an American consumer.
I'll finish with a paraphrase from a Garth Brooks song that I think says it pretty well.
Don't do this so that you can change the world. Do it so the world won't change you.
When I was 5 years old, I used to lay awake at night in my bed in my grandparents' house and listen to the sounds of night.
They lived in north central Ohio, in a little town named Crestline that once was the biggest railroad center between Pittsburgh and Chicago. There was a massive roundhouse outside town where locomotives from several railroads were serviced, repaired and renovated.
Dozens of trains passed through town, both day and night, and each and every one of them had that long whistle that signaled their presence with what is without doubt the most evocative sound I have ever heard.
I was born in California and lived in Chicago when I was very little, but the only part of my life I could remember was in Ohio. So the thought that trains were passing through and taking people to Chicago, or New York, or far-off California was very exciting to me. I dreamed that someday I would be riding on trains like that, traveling all over the world.
They had such great names, too. The Broadway Limited ran from Chicago to New York, while the California Zephyr took passengers from Chicago to San Francisco. Then there was the train immortalized in song by the late Steve Goodman, which ran from Chicago to St. Louis to Louisville and then on to the City of New Orleans.
John Denver, Arlo Guthrie and Willie Nelson all had more famous versions, but I also liked Jerry Reed's performance.
Wonderful trains, wonderful memories. And sadly, almost all of them are gone now, lost to a world that started turning faster and faster and lives running at such hyperspeed that getting on a train to cross the country was a total waste of time.
But of course, we lost something when life speeded up so much. Not only did we cram ourselves into smaller and smaller airplane seats, not only did we stand in longer and longer lines. No, we also put ourselves on the short leashes of laptops, cellphones and BlackBerries that have almost totally destroyed any sense of privacy we once enjoyed.
But imagine that 5-year-old. It was 1955 and the American Century was at flood tide. Imagine the dreams of an American generation whose parents had survived the Great Depression and saved the world for democracy in World War II.
We could do anything, and the trains would take us there.
A few of them still exist, but nothing like they once did. It has been a quarter of a century since passenger trains stopped in Crestline, Ohio, and apart from the East Coast corridor, nobody rides trains for business anymore.
I can't remember the last time I rode a train in this country. In 2001, I took the Chunnel train back and forth between London and Paris, and in 1977 I rode around Europe with my first wife using Eurail passes.
But someday I'm going to fly to Chicago, take a taxi to the railroad station and board the train with what I always thought was the greatest name of all.
It was named for James J. Hill, head of the Great Northern Railroad, and it has covered a 2,206-mile route from Chicago to Seattle since 1929.
"Fastest and finest between Chicago and Seattle," the ad read, and in those early days, it must have been an amazing way to travel. Passengers got to see all of the northwestern United States, from Chicago through Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho and Washington.
At Spokane, the train split, with the last four cars hooking up to another locomotive for the run to Portland, Oregon, while the Builder went on to Seattle.
I can only imagine a 5-year-old, living out on the prairie, hearing the sound of the train passing through and thinking that someday he or she would go to Seattle ... or to Chicago ... or to anywhere the train could take them.
"Good morning, America, how are you? Don't you know me? I'm your native son ..."
Don't ever fool yourself into thinking we don't pay a price for progress.
"Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya ..." -- Gullah spiritual song
When someone wants to accuse someone else of being naive in their dealings with others, they accuse them of thinking we should all hold hands and sing "Kumbaya."
I wonder if any of them even know what it means.
I was 11 years old and spending a week at Camp Templed Hills the first time I heard the song. I remember the summer of 1961 pretty well. It was the only time I got two weeks of camp, one of them at Camp Kern, the YMCA camp, and the other at Templed Hills, the church camp.
At our evening campfires, we sang, and one of the songs we learned was "Kumbaya." We were taught that it was an African tribal song, and that "Kumbaya" meant "come by here." The song was intended to invite the presence of God among those singing it.
Of course Africa had little to do with the origin. The song actually came from the early 20th century Gullahs on the South Carolina and Georgia coasts. It was revived in Angola, of all places, in the 1950s, and American folk singers like Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and Peter Paul & Mary picked it up from there.
Of course it's ridiculously naive. Who would even imagine inviting God among us these days. Who would want God to see what they're doing or how they're behaving?
I hope you can tell I'm being sarcastic.
I know not everyone is religious, but I also know that every religion except Satanism -- and I include secular humanism in this -- involves the principle of reciprocity. You know, "do unto others ..."
Now most of us follow a somewhat twisted version of that. With our guards firmly raised, we treat others the way we expect them to treat us.
But what if we didn't? What if we did take a "kumbaya" attitude, if we made a decision that we would behave in a way that would make God ... or our mother ... or even ourselves proud of the way we had acted?
What if we behaved morally, not just legally?
Now before you write me off as hopelessly naive, I don't mean smiling and holding out a hand of friendship to our enemies. Osama bin Laden is still on the "bad" list.
But what if we dealt with people who hadn't shown themselves to be our enemies as if we hoped they would be our friends? Or at least that they would walk away from the encounter respecting us?
Just imagine what the world would be like if each one of us resolved to be proud of ourselves.
It was my fault. I was working for someone who didn't like me, and I should have realized he would jump at an opportunity to get rid of me. I was essentially set up to be fired, and I fell into the trap.
I didn't fight it, and I'm pretty sure that was his biggest disappointment. He got the thrill of getting rid of me, and he milked it for all it was worth, but I stood up for myself without groveling.
In the end, I told him I understood and that I forgave him.
I've been thinking about that a lot in the 16 months since. He obviously didn't react well to it; he showed his anger in at least one action I've mentioned before, and I'm pretty sure he has been spreading false allegations about me as well.
It would be nice to say I didn't give a rat's ass, and I certainly have been fortunate that my wife has a good job and that unemployment insurance has been very generous. But I was a damn good journalist for 29 years, and it wasn't pleasant to have my career end the way it did.
What was exceedingly weird about the whole situation, though, was how much pleasure my former employer seemed to get from it all. Several of the things he said really had nothing to do with the situation, and seemed to be there only for the purpose of making me feel bad.
It left me wondering why some people really do seem to think that putting other people down somehow lifts them up. I used to be like that, when I was much younger and much less happy with myself. Now all I have are regrets when I think of some of the things I said or did back then.
When you meet someone, do you expect them to behave well or are you on guard for bad behavior? Do you automatically figure that people are honest or that you had better hold onto your wallet or you'll lose it?
Are you outgoing ... or guarded?
A puppy that has never been around people will be friendly and curious, but one that has been hit or kicked even once will never be totally open toward humans again.
I think it's probably the same way with children, although parents can certainly instill fear in their young ones just by repeating it over and over again. "Don't talk to strangers." "Don't get into strange cars."
You know the drill.
We have too many Bernie Madoffs and too few Mohandas Gandhis, too many people who will betray your trust and too few who will honor it.
Changing the world is a difficult thing. Any effect any one of us has is probably comparable to a stream running through mountains -- nothing visible, but in a million years there's a deep cut and a big river.
When I forgave my former employer, it was more for me than it was for him. I knew that if I were angry and bitter, it would hurt me a lot more than it did him.
As it is, I'm OK. I've probably had dozens of nightmares about what happened in the months since, but at least I can tell myself I behaved honorably.
In the end, that's all we can do.
Behave honorably and hope the light from our example can affect even one other person.
What's the most important thing about our country?
It's a question I've been asking myself for quite some time now, and it's one I've written about in this space. What concerns me most about it is that our "republic, if you can keep it," as Ben Franklin once said, depends a great deal on an educated citizenry. That's something I'm not sure we have right now.
Once was a time -- actually just a few years ago -- when I toyed with the idea of running for Congress. My plan was to do retail campaigning, going door to door, mall to mall and shaking as many hands as I possibly could. I would run on sensible, moderate-to-liberal positions, and I would refuse to do any negative campaigning at all.
I'm a really good public speaker, and I relate well to people in small groups or individually as well. I actually thought I might have a chance if I could devote a year to it, full time.
Of course I was crazy.
I could never have won. I probably wouldn't have even gotten into double digits in an election. Any opponent would have pounded me as inexperienced (the last election I was in was in 1980 for president of my fraternity -- I won) and as someone who would be a disaster in Washington.
You see, I believe in American values.
I believe that freedom of speech is nearly absolute, that political correctness on the left and on the right is an abomination.
I believe in freedom of the press, and think that concentrated ownership of the news media is destroying the independence of the Fourth Estate.
I believe in freedom of religion, and feel strongly that even though I am Roman Catholic and accept Jesus as my savior, folks who have other faiths -- or no faith -- are every bit as American as I am.
I believe that to the extent America is a force in the world, it needs to be a force for good. That means repudiating the idea of pre-emptive wars and also of torturing prisoners.
I do not believe in laissez-faire capitalism. Every time we've done it, the rich have gotten richer and the rest of us have gotten screwed. On the other hand, managed capitalism as we did it from Roosevelt to Reagan was the most effective -- and fairest -- economic system in the modern world.
I believe a lot of other things, but mostly that American exceptionalism, a term thrown around a lot in recent years, is only valid when we behave well, both toward our own people and toward the rest of the world.
We were never meant to be an empire.
All we ever really wanted was to be special, and there's no reason we can't be that again.
A close friend of mine went to a job fair the other day.
He's got a job, which is better than a lot of us can say these days, but he was looking to see if maybe he could find something better. His current job doesn't provide health insurance, and it's costing him a small fortune to keep his family covered.
He spoke with a recruiter who shall remain nameless working for a company that shall remain nameless and he dropped off a resume. The recruiter was polite at first and told my friend he was well-qualified and that he would pass his resume along.
My friend wasn't expecting much, so he thanked the recruiter and started to walk away.
Then the recruiter decided to be "honest" with him.
"We're not going to offer you a job," he said. "You're qualified, but you're 56 years old and we just aren't hiring anyone that old unless we go out and recruit them from another company."
My friend wasn't surprised. He asked the recruiter how old he was and found that he was 42.
"Nobody wants to hire anyone that old," he said. "If we hire someone in their 20s or even 30s, we can train them the way we want them and then have them be part of our company for 20 years."
It makes sense. My friend has heard it before and I've heard it before. But then the younger man decided he just had to be a little bit mean, I suppose.
"At your age, you've got nothing left to look forward to except grandchildren and death," he said.
I would have punched the guy, but my friend just asked, "What about retirement?"
The guy sneered. "Nobody's going to be able to retire in this economy," he said. "Everybody's retirement savings have been wiped out."
My guess is our Gen-Xer's 401(k) account has taken a major hit, because he's certainly not accurate in what he says. I know people in their late 50s who have already retired, who are about to retire and who are very well prepared to retire.
But "grandchildren and death?"
Sounds like our recruiter is lacking in some people skills. It also sounds like someone has a lot of hostility toward the Baby Boom generation.
I covered sports for the first 17 years of my journalism career. From 1979-96, I wrote stories about youth sports, high school and college athletes and professionals who had reached the pinnacle of their world.
I met wannabes who had a chance and plenty who didn't but still wouldn't give up on the dream of someday being somebody, of being special enough to play at the highest level.
Some of them took steroids. Some admitted it, some didn't and more than a few of them probably never got caught.
I've heard all the arguments against it. It's cheating, for one thing. It can cause serious harm to your health, for another. NFL great Lyle Alzado, who died some years back of brain cancer, was convinced that his steroid use had caused the cancer.
Here's the problem, though. The rewards of being able to play a sport at the highest level have become so outrageous -- both in terms of money and fame -- that they outweigh the negatives. It isn't even close.
Some years back, there was a study that showed former linemen in the National Football League -- the really big guys -- were living about 20 years less on average than ordinary American males. They were doing so much damage to their bodies that they were sacrificing two decades of life.
So I asked some friends of mine this question:
If you could play in the NFL, make a lot of money and be famous, knowing you would live 20 years less in the end, would you do it?
You would be surprised at how many people didn't say no.
Most of us have heard the famous Henry David Thoreau quote about men leading lives of quiet desperation, but I wonder how many of you have heard the whole quote.
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."
Pretty profound, huh? The average major league baseball player makes between $3 and $4 million a year. Manny Ramirez, who just received a 50-game suspension for violating baseball's drug regulations, was scheduled to make $25 million this year.
Would you do steroids and risk damaging your health if you could make $25 million a year and be worshipped by baseball fans?
When I graduated from high school in 1967, a minimum-wage employee working full-time made $1,300 a year. The average major leaguer made about $19,000. Decent money, but hardly a salary that separated players from average folks.
Now someone making the federal minimum wage as of this summer will earn $15,080 a year. Not even in the same galaxy as the average ballplayer anymore. In fact, playing two months for the average salary, a ballplayer earns more than a minimum-wage worker will earn in a lifetime.
That'll pay for one helluva song.
So if you tell some kid whose only future is in sports not to do steroids, you'd better come up with a better reason than they've managed to come up with so far.
Unless you're one of those old-fashioned types who makes decisions based on whether something is right or wrong, the pluses outweigh the minuses by way too much.
"Will Obama follow the UK's lead and ban politically incorrect speech? Based on his administration's left-wing agenda and the recent attack on Rush Limbaugh, it's highly likely that the administration will follow suit." -- Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, host of the Jesse Lee Peterson radio show
Hey, big controversy. The United Kingdom refused to allow talk radio host Michael Savage to enter the United Kingdom. Savage is outraged that he has been placed on a list that includes Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members and purveyors of hate.
Imagine that. Savage, who goes places even Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity fear to tread, is getting punished for some of the things he has said.
-- He has accused the president of "hating America" and "raping America."
-- He accused Muslims of devising the swine flu and using illegal immigrants to bring it into our country.
-- He said the government is out to take everyone's guns and predicted a "Reichstag fire" in America within a year.
-- He said Obama has a plan to force our children into a paramilitary domestic army.
-- He said any heterosexual woman over the age of 25 who grew up in this country is basically a dominatrix.
-- He called Glenn Beck a "hemorrhoid with eyes."
Hey, maybe he gets one right once in a while.
Now before you accuse me of overreacting, let me state that I think Savage wishes he had one-tenth the influence Limbaugh or Hannity have. I don't worry about him at all. But the point of this is that we do allow lunatics like this guy to speak in this country, and very few people are trying to get him off the air, regardless of what Rev. Jesse Lee says.
And who are half of these other hosts quoted on World Net Daily in support of Savage? I get the feeling there are more right-wing talk radio hosts than there are right-wing voters.
As for the Rev, his quote at the beginning is full of fallacies, most importantly that the administration's "attack on Rush Limbaugh" means that Obama is trying to ban right-wing talk radio. I'm certain there are a few in the ultra-PC crowd who would like to see Rush digging ditches or cleaning latrines, but I think most people -- like me anyway -- would just like to see him give the truth a chance.
The idea that now that Democrats are in power, they're going to ban right-wing talk radio, well, that's a bunch of garbage. It's the right wing creating a straw man to raise money. It's not going to happen.
No matter what the Rev says.
As for Savage visiting England, well, that's their choice.
Some of the weirdest moments of family life involved group photographs.
Either it's the parents trying to stage some cutesy/bizarre tableau, or it's a picture that had to be taken when someone's hair was filthy, someone else was retaining water or a third person had a giant zit on the end of their nose.
You can't win, unless you're one of those made-for-Hallmark families that always look great. But for the rest of us, there's an amazing Website. It's called Awkward Family Photos, and it's got every sort of weird family picture you can imagine.
Consider this one:
This was obviously either Dad or Mom's bright idea, one of those "wouldn't it be funny if ..." pictures that probably resulted in one or both children either killing themselves out of humiliation or running off to join the Moonies.
What could they possibly have been thinking?
It's like the parents who give their children cute names or cute initials that result in the kid being bullied from first grade through 12th.
And excuse me, but there's got to be something very very wrong with the little girl in the picture fondling daddy in an extremely familiar place.
I'd be willing to bet that no matter how odd or disabling your childhood was, it doesn't compare with this particular family.
Check out the site. There are quite a few other humorous pictures, including one that doesn't look all that strange at first glance. It's a good-looking family, with a smiling dad, a happy mom and two cute blonde girls. The only thing at all odd about the shot is that the two girls are wearing shirts in the pattern of the American flag.
The background behind the family is very nice too. It's a seaside shot that looks like it was taken somewhere in New England, as you can see.
Nice family.
Cute little girls.
The parents look a little like someone famous, I suppose. Maybe it's the dad.
Q. What's a thousand lawyers on the bottom of the ocean?A. A good start.
My apologies to the barristers among you, but I wanted to make a point very quickly.
If you're introduced to someone you don't know, and you hear they're a lawyer, the odds are pretty good one of your first thoughts will be of one of the dozens of lawyer jokes you've heard.
Q. What looks good on a lawyer?A. An angry Doberman.
In a world where our senses are constantly assaulted, a world in which we meet new people every day, we often draw conclusions based on very quick information.
What do you think if you meet someone who's morbidly obese?
Or a blonde woman with large breasts? (Or a blonde man with large breasts, for that matter)
How about someone whose first comment to you is, "I'd like to talk to you about Jesus?"
Now not everyone with a major weight problem is sloppy in their personal habits, and there are certainly large-busted blonde women with high IQs. There are probably even people in the last category who aren't obsessed with evangelizing.
But what's probably true is that before we get a chance to know all that, we've formed an opinion that may or may not be accurate.
What happens if you're the father of a teenage daughter and her prom date drives up with rap music booming loudly from his car speakers?
Or if you meet your son's girlfriend and the first thing you notice is her tattoos and piercings?
First impressions aren't always wrong, but they aren't always right either. When I first met my future son-in-law, I learned that he considered himself a connesseuir of beer and had a tattoo of Ireland over his heart.
I was reminded of Dan Hedaya's classic line from "Clueless:"
"Anything happens to my daughter, I have a .45 and a shovel and I doubt anybody would miss you."
Imagine my surprise when Ryan turned out to be a wonderful young man, an outstanding husband to my daughter and a terrific father to my granddaughter.
That's when I realized once and for all that stereotypes are just lazy.
"People are smarter and more aware of what's going on than at any other time in human history. The average 19-year old today knows ten times as much as a 19-year old did forty years ago. Look at the technology and information that is routinely mastered." -- AARON, commenting on earlier post
Do you really think so, Aaron?
I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one, and I think I come to it from a fairly reasonable perspective. You see, I was 19 in 1969, which was exactly 40 years ago.
I'm not going to deny that there is more knowledge available now. After all, 40 years ago this month we were still two months or so from going to the moon for the first time. For most of us, computers were large machines that took punch cards (do not fold, spindle or mutilate) and kept only important records.
Heck, who could have figured that by now we'd have computers in most middle-class homes?
Not me, that's for sure.
In 1969, 19-year-olds weren't allowed to vote. It might have made a difference. If we'd had the vote in 1968, we might have spared the U.S. two terms of Richard Nixon.
But that's not the point.
I think you're making a mistake when you talk about average kids. I think the smarter kids today know things we only dreamed of knowing, but did you know that high school kids in the '60s scored significantly higher on the SAT than kids do now, and that was before the test was dumbed down.
You know what we didn't have?
Video games.
You know what else we didn't have?
Cable TV.
You know what else we didn't have?
An epidemic of fat kids, an epidemic of over-medicated kids, an epidemic of kids whose attention span is about equal to the lifespan of a gnat.
I'll tell you something else. Go back 40 more years -- to 1929 -- and you'll find kids who were more serious about their education and harder-working than we were. Evolution isn't making kids smarter as the years go on. In fact, in an awful lot of cases it's making them soft.
We're turning into a race of eloi, and if you know what that means, you are smarter than the average 19-year-old today. Between a school system that's more about training than it is about teaching and mass media that's aimed more at the groin than at the intellect, we're probably within a generation or two of either total societal collapse or complete authoritarianism.
Did you know that two-thirds of all Americans now work in service industries? We can joke all we want about "Do you want fries with that," but the fact is we used to make things. We used to build things and then stand back and take pride in what we had accomplished.
Comes the time, we'll have decisions to make.
One choice will be to accept the yoke, while the other will be to take to the hills, tear everything down and get back to what America used to be. Heck, we didn't need socialized medicine or any of that other stuff because we had communities. We cared about our neighbors and we took care of each other.
Now most of us don't even know who our neighbors are.
"Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, teach gym." -- WOODY ALLEN
Whenever I write anything to suggest that the way we educate our children is less than perfect, there is always at least one teacher who comes out of the woodwork and suggests that my feet stink, my parents weren't married and Jesus doesn't love me.
I suppose it all depends on whose Al is gored.
A few years ago, it was a woman teaching at a community college who suggested that everyone should leave thinking and decision-making to those people who had proven themselves worthy by earning doctorates in their chosen field.
Now it's this (man, woman) who at various times has suggested that I am a) a neocon, b) a Nazi, or c) dooming the world to chaos.
If (he, she) could answer just one question satisfactorily, I would leave this subject alone forever.
Why do so many kids -- good kids, smart kids -- absolutely hate school?
I know the answer, and I'm trying to do something about it. Too many kids with high IQs and tremendous potential get sidetracked -- some of them for a lifetime -- because of a system that rewards obedience ahead of intelligence. A system that if kids don't fit right into the little niches where the teachers want them, they're either ignored, beaten down or medicated into submission.
To quote my admirer on the purpose of the schools:
"A certified teacher has spent years learning how to shape and steer your children into fitting into society. Teachers and school officials know what they're doing. Imagine a world where parents had to supervise their children's education. It would be chaotic and nothing would ever be accomplished. People need structure, training, and guidelines to know where to sit, where to stand, and how to serve the needs of the nation."
Now I've been called a lot of things, including a Socialist, but I have never suggested that anyone in this country needs to be trained on "how to serve the needs of the nation."
I'm not an anarchist, but I do believe that each of us gets to choose his or her own way to fit into this world, up to the best of our own drives and abilities. I didn't become a journalist because some wise teacher pointed me in that direction. I did it because the jobs I really wanted -- president, pope, center fielder for the Dodgers -- were all taken, and I liked to write.
If a teacher had suggested a field for me, I might have said I would look into it and appreciated their interest. If a teacher had told me I needed to go into the exciting world of fast food, I probably wouldn't have been as polite.
There's an old saying that I think pretty well sums up what it means to be an American. It goes like this:
"An Englishman walks the earth as if he owns it. An American walks the earth as if he doesn't give a damn who owns it."
Now some teachers might be smart enough to manipulate people into doing what they want them to do. I've never met one, but they might exist.
But nobody "shaped" or "steered" either of my children, and as I believe I mentioned earlier, both of them were honors graduates from their universities. We taught both of them to be polite and respectful, but never to take any crap from anyone that wasn't necessary.
I've had good teachers and bad ones, and I know one wonderful teacher. My friend Mick never wanted to teach, but he wound up as an adjunct professor at Pasadena City College and at Citrus College. Almost without exception, his students love his classes and rate him highly.
The last thing he would ever do is try to steer someone in the direction he thinks they should go. Encouraging them is a different story, and I know many people have come out of his classes more knowledgeable, more in love with learning and feeling more positive about themselves.
Mick is a Teacher.
My anonymous critic is someone who teaches.
The saddest comment on our educational system is that there are far more people who just teach than there are Teachers.
I promised to continue our education debate in the next post, but it's going to have to wait till Monday. I certainly can't let Mother's Day pass without talking about what it means to me.
I have known four wonderful mothers in my lifetime (only one of them was mine), and each of them were different in their own way. My grandmother (my mother's mother) is probably the finest person I have ever known. She was intelligent, insightful, empathetic, loving and gentle. She raised two children to appreciate the values of education and family, and she lived almost 95 years.
My own mother was part of the first generation of women that didn't automatically think they were supposed to stay home and raise families. She was in and out of the working world for years with five children, something that certainly limited how far she could rise.
I have no doubt that if all her efforts had been devoted to a career, she would certainly have been a CEO, or perhaps even a senator or president. She's one of the two smartest people I have ever known, and also one of the two hardest workers.
She has also been a wonderful mother, both protective of her children and also encouraging. She has been a widow for the last year, an adjustment after more than 50 years of marriage to the love of her life. If she's slowing down some, it isn't much. She can still run circles around me.
The third mother I know well is my wife, who did a wonderful job with two children first through a bad marriage, then through five years alone and finally through the last 16-plus years with me. What has always impressed me the most about Nicole as a mother is that she never tried to limit her children's dreams, and she reacted fiercely to anyone who did.
Whenever either Pauline or Virgile needed someone to talk with one of their teachers, I was always the one delegated to do so. You see, if anyone had tried to say anything bad about either one of her babies, my wife might have scratched their eyes out.
That's three generations of mothers, and each can be judged favorably by the fact that their children not only grew up strong and successful, they all still love their mothers very much.
The fourth mother in this story is Pauline, who had her first child last September. From everything I can see, she may turn out to be the best mother of the lot. Despite the fact that she works full-time as a foreign service officer with the Department of State, her daughter is getting all the attention, all the love, that a baby could ever want.
I'm so proud of her, and I love her so much.
I'm actually proud of all of them. So on this day when we honor our mothers, I'll think of Florence Kindinger, Yvonne Rappaport, Nicole Rappaport and Pauline Kastner and I'll smile.
Happy Mother's Day to all of you.
And baby Maddie, you've got a lot of tradition to live up to.
I'm not surprised that there was a fairly violent reaction to yesterday's post, but it's a little disappointing that my anonymous critic didn't bother looking up John Taylor Gatto before branding him a "traitor."
Gatto actually taught in the New York City public schools for more than 30 years, and was named both NYC Teacher of the Year and New York State Teacher of the Year for his efforts.
It's precisely because he was such a wonderful teacher that he objects so much to the way things are done now. In his book "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling," he starts by listing and explaining seven things a public school teacher is trying to teach his or her students.
1. CONFUSION: Particularly in elementary school, kids have everything thrown at them. From astronomy to adjectives, from long division to physical education, nothing is emphasized as being more important than anything else. Essentially kids are told that it's better to know a little about everything than a lot about one thing.
If you want to learn a lot about something, there's always college, trade school or the military. The education you get in K-12 is almost worthless in helping you live your life.
2. CLASS POSITION: Where we assign you is where you belong. You learn to envy and fear the kids who are smarter and have contempt for the ones who are dumber. It's a caste system nearly as rigid as India, and it's nearly as difficult to escape your assigned position.
You learn that there will always be people better than you.
3. INDIFFERENCE: We teach children not to care too much about anything. You might love math and be really good at it, but when math is over it's time to move on to history. We learn on the installment plan, and we learn when the teacher wants us to learn.
There's always time later to be enthusiastic -- if you don't get burned out.
4. EMOTIONAL DEPENDENCY: Thirsty? Need to go to the bathroom? Ask the teacher, and if someone else is already using the hall pass, prepare to wait your turn. The teacher giveth and the teacher taketh away.
Everything depends on the teacher, and if the teacher doesn't like you ...
5. INTELLECTUAL DEPENDENCY: A good student waits for the teacher to tell them what to do. Gatto says this is the most important lesson of all, that we must wait for people smarter than we are to tell us what our lives mean.
My critic put that in a very interesting way: "We just need to help every child from the time he or she enters school to start thinking properly."
6. PROVISIONAL SELF-ESTEEM: Kids are constantly being judged and evaluated, and if they don't measure up, we tell them there's something wrong with them.
The catch here is that kids who know their parents love them unconditionally can't be touched by this one. Both of my children ran afoul of a teacher at one point during high school, and in each case, the teacher told them they were bad kids.
They knew they weren't, though. They knew we loved them and were proud of them no matter what someone else said about them. Yeah, they were bad kids. So bad, in fact, that my daughter got two degrees from UCLA cum laude and my son graduated magna cum laude from Cal State Northridge.
7. ONE CANNOT HIDE: Kids are under constant surveillance, constant supervision. Anytime they leave the classroom, they need a pass. Even in their free time, they're given homework so that the teacher can have some control over what they're doing.
***
We did this.
We created generations of kids who hate school, and by extension who hate learning. Why is it that something like 65 percent of adults never read books after they finish school? My guess is because they're taught that reading is a chore, something to be endured.
Would I eliminate public education? Not on your life. Everybody needs to know how to read, to write and to do basic mathematics, but I'm not sure that learning how to fix a computer wouldn't be more useful than memorizing facts about the sack of Rome or the exports of Argentina.
What I would eliminate is a system based on fear and loathing, a system where fitting in and winning teacher's approval is first and foremost.
What we have now is little more than a baby-sitting service, little more than a way of keeping kids off the streets while their parents are working.
It seems to me we can do better than that, and we'll talk more about this next time.
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