The T Word Again

It was the worst mass shooting since Newtown. Fourteen dead, 17 injured as of this posting. Naturally, the news media, including the major networks and cable outlets, jumped into wall-to-wall coverage, as they were obliged to do. The only problem was that afterwards, the information about what was happening came out in sparse bursts. Some cable anchors even sounded a little whiny about why more information wasn’t being released. So, those anchors had time to fill.

Much of that time was spent discussing whether the shooting was an act of terrorism. Terrorism has been defined generally as a violent act to create fear, I think we can safely say, that was the broad motive involved, though revenge is a good one, too. The only problem with the “T” word is that it’s politically toxic. Listeners hear “terrorism” and many of them mentally fill in a word before it: “Islamic,” just because that phrase has been drummed into our heads.

Later in the evening, the news anchors were telling us that it was more likely a disgruntled employee of San Bernardino County, which would account for why a county agency holiday party was the target of the shooting.. Complicating the issue, though, is that the disgruntled one is of Middle Eastern extraction. Anyway, if it wasn’t Islamic terrorism after all, what are we supposed to feel? Relief? Of course not – so now we go back to the gun control/mental health debate. When is it all going to stop?

Some of us may be upset with the frenetic wall-to-wall coverage these things get, and the inane and sometimes inflammatory comments made while the anchors fill time. I used to think that. But now we have social media. If we didn’t have this intense coverage by the major media institutions, we would be left to the mercy of Tweeters. Do you think we’d be better off with an untempered rumor mill?

Whatever you want to call this incident, 14 people are just as dead – the definition doesn’t really matter, does it. Perhaps this is the new normal in our lives. The only thing that occurred to me was that if it takes 18 months for a Syrian refugee to be admitted to this country, why can’t we make it take that long to get a gun? Just wondering.

Two Minds

It’s painful to see what happens to people when they get hung up on what they believe to be absolutely right and can’t abide conflicting ideas. The Colorado Springs shooter apparently targeted the Planned Parenthood clinic because he believes the organization is actively harvesting fetal body parts, perhaps even encouraging abortions for that purpose. It’s likely he believes abortion is murder -- but he was willing to commit some himself to get his point across.

Look, I will be honest. I’m pretty well convinced that human life begins with conception. The ball is rolling, so in broad concept, I’m not a fan of abortion. But do I think a woman who has been raped or subject to incest should be forced to bear a child? Or that one who simply can’t afford to raise a baby be forced to give birth? No. But it all doesn’t affect my core belief. That said, I’m not interested in changing the law of the land. It’s a situation where I just have to hold two conflicting positions at once. How do I live with myself? Well, for the moment, I do.

Maybe you’re against abortion because of what you feel is the sanctity of human life. But are you also in favor of the death penalty for those who commit especially heinous crimes?

More examples: Many of us believe that we have to kill suffering animals to release them from their misery. But we have an awful problem with human beings getting similar help to be released from theirs.

You may be against humanity’s contribution to climate change. And you may love animals. But have you considered that your enjoyment of red meat not only requires slaughtering animals, but contributes to global warming? Will you really re-think dinner tonight?

Are you a nice person who abhors violence but likes to watch a little football or boxing on weekends?

Are you a social drinker, but troubled by the prospect of legalizing marijuana?

For centuries, otherwise good people tolerated bad things, like slavery. It was a given that women weren’t allowed to vote. These were once absolutes. But what needs to change for the better usually does, when it’s time. The right ideas survive, and eventually, we sort things out – but it doesn’t happen with guns. In practice, we watch the tares grow with the wheat – and it’s not always easy to tell the difference when we’re standing in the middle of the field.  

When we find ourselves of two minds once in a while, maybe we need to cut ourselves a little slack. If you hear more than one voice, maybe it’s not such a bad thing. At least it means you’re listening.

The Garden of Good and Evil

By now, we know what the acronym PC means. To start with, it’s the thing I’m typing this post on – but you know what I’m talking about: Political Correctness. Inoffensive ways of saying, doing, or demonstrating things. Disabilities being renamed “challenges,” you know the drill. But then there is the revision, or more precisely, the suppression, of history. Removing the statues of former heroes who turned out to be bad guys. The late Penn State football coach Joe Paterno is one of the best examples, for his perceived cover-up of child sex abuse. The number of winning football seasons, and the prestige and money he brought to the university, became secondary. As for the living, Bill Cosby is being stripped of an honorary degree because of the numerous drug-date-rapes he is accused of. The comedy albums that made millions laugh will stay in the back of the record cabinet (do you even have a “record cabinet”?).

This week, though, it hit closer to home for me. An organization of students wants Princeton University to make the name Woodrow Wilson go away. Wilson was the 28^th president of the United States, but before that, he was governor of New Jersey and the president of Princeton, where I went in the last century. But he was a racist. He supported segregation. His favorite movie was “Birth of a Nation.”  But President Wilson also supported women’s suffrage. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his sponsorship of the League of Nations, a precursor to the U.N. One of the most prestigious schools of international affairs at Princeton bears his name, so far, anyway. Oops, but then there’s the income tax.

OK, so what are we to conclude here? He wasn’t the greatest president we’ve ever had, but nor was he the worst. He was a human being, full of contradictions. Thomas Jefferson fathered children with a black slave. Andrew Jackson signed the legislation forcing Indian tribes off their land. But I'm not ready to teer up my $20 bills just yet.

I partly went along with the Confederate flag thing. I agree that it had no business being on state flag designs or on the flagpoles of state buildings. But is it only about slavery? Or is the symbolism a little broader than that in the South? Is it quite the same as the Nazi flag? I’m supposed to be sure about the answers – but sorry, I’m not.

The Civil War was an awful thing.  Hundreds of thousands of young men died. Yet, Fort Sumter in South Carolina, where the first shot was fired, is a national monument. A friend who visited there recently told us that the bricks at the fort were created by black slaves. Civil War battlefields are historic sites all over the East. Every year, many slightly overweight men try to squeeze into Union or Confederate uniforms for Civil War reenactments. Almost like it’s a great big game.

Human history is always about contradictions, because it’s all about us. Why can’t we get used to that, live with them, and more importantly, learn from them, instead of fussing quite so much over symbolism? A black-and-white world is a lot easier to understand and navigate. But it’s just not the world we live in.

Compassion and Caution

ISIS must be pretty proud of itself. An attack perpetrated by only a few people with relatively low-tech weapons on a Friday night in Paris, and the rest of us are quaking in our boots. And now, what to do with Syrian refugees? Let them in, and there might be bad guys among them. Gasp!

First, let’s be realistic about a couple of things. We don’t let very much into this country without checking it first. Food items might have Old World pests in them. Toys may be toxic. Exotic pets may be cute, but they could multiply and kill off our native species. Imports carry a risk. What about human beings? Remember all the jumping up and down we did because somebody carrying Ebola landed in a couple of our cities?

Yes, all that give-me-your-tired-and-your-poor stuff sounds great, but we have always been a little picky about who we let in. Those arriving at Ellis Island, right under Liberty’s torch in the early 20^th century, were checked for disease, and that was just the beginning.

So what to do with the Syrians? A majority of governors don’t want them until they’re checked out – and a majority of Americans agree. President Obama chastised critics as being afraid of “widows and orphans,” while many of the Syrians showing up in Europe now are young, single males. Having a concern about terrorists being among them doesn’t automatically make us inhumane. But we do have to figure out a way to humanely process those who would come here.

Three or four years ago, I remember watching CNN night after night and seeing how the Assad regime turned a mechanized army on its own people. I still remember the brave reporters – mostly women – who risked their lives covering it. What was our response? We shook our heads and said, isn’t that a shame.

The Middle East refugee crisis didn’t start in 2015. It’s been going on for years. The U.N. and other agencies have been talking about it a long time. The Western world didn’t wake up to it until people started getting on boats and heading for Europe. There could have been some kind of a system in place in the EU for vetting them. Too late now.

But what do we do here? As I’ve said, we have it easy; we have two oceans to protect us, so we have a little more time to figure out a response. I just can’t believe we can’t throw together some databases (seems like we have lots of those) to check these people against in a reasonable amount of time. Does it really have to take 18 months plus to admit one of these refugees? Ebola was by no means new, and was ignored by Big Pharma for a long time – but a few researchers got their acts together and came up with a vaccine in a hurry when it was needed.

Can we keep out everyone who would do us harm? No, but we can keep out some. The fact is, however, that those who would do us harm are likely already here – and some may not even be Muslim! (Gasp again). The New Normal isn’t pretty. But we can’t pretend we didn’t have a role in creating the Middle Eastern mess, through a mistaken war and simple neglect.

Blame is about history; responsibility is about the present. I don’t know what the solutions to the current problem are, but I do know we’re pretty good at finding them when we have to.

Taking It to Isis

I really hesitate to reveal myself as a hawk, but beaks and talons are kind of difficult to hide. There are just a few common arguments I’m having trouble with as we consider what to do about ISIS.

“We (the U.S.) can’t be the policemen of the world.” No, we can’t. It certainly isn’t our job to deal with every group of bad guys by ourselves. But often we have to take a leadership role and exercise moral authority. We have to demonstrate what effective policing is, bring “recruits” along, and teach them how to do it with us. Messages have to be sent about terrorism not being tolerated. And no, it isn’t fair! We may not be able to deal with every situation equally. But we have to start somewhere.

“They hate us because we’re over there.” No, they hate us because we EXIST. Those who embrace this twisted version of Islam won’t be satisfied with a caliphate confined to Iraq and Syria. They want an end to decadence, and that is what we are about in their book. We don’t have to allow this barbarous philosophy, religion, or whatever it is, to have its own country.

“If we attack them in Syria and Iraq, they will just go somewhere else.” The terrorists are all over the place, brainwashed by whom they’ve been listening to or what they read on the Internet. But this snake has a head in a particular place. And not cutting it off will just allow those establishing themselves in other locations to feel that much more secure.

“What about Russia and Iran?” What about them? Will battling ISIS mean we might shoot down a Russian plane accidentally, or vice-versa? Has any war not had “friendly fire” incidents? You may even question the use of the word “friendly” here.

“The real solution is education, assimilation, and negotiation.” ISIS isn’t interested in any of that, and right now, we don’t have the time for it. That’s for later.

“If we strike them, they will come after us.” Is this really a reason for inaction? They will come after us anyway. And BTW, they don’t need WMD to do it – they are scaring us just fine with low-level, conventional weapons.

“We will have to become a police state to protect ourselves.” Truth be told, we have been reasonably good at thwarting plots without paranoid security measures. But will sleeper cells and others succeed occasionally? Yes, that is the new reality. We have a false sense of safety given to us by two oceans. Israel is surrounded by several potentially hostile states, and yet has always managed to defend itself.

“If we get involved over there, it will never end.” That’s partly because of the WAY we get involved. We fight wars without declaring them and without well-defined missions, and don’t allocate the resources to get the job done. I said the other day that our Middle East policy has been like starting a fire, letting it grow to a thousand acres, and then throwing a couple glasses of water on it and wondering why it doesn’t go out. No, a fire has to be drowned or smothered. ISIS numbers only about 30,000 at the most. Doable, IMHO.

The second part is that we might have to be there for a while, even after we “win.” After World War II, the Allies occupied Germany and Japan, and basically stayed there until we could help those countries get back on their feet. That takes a lot longer than our short attention spans and impatience permit these days, and it’s a messy process.

“We can’t afford it; it’s not our problem, let all the factions there blow each other up!”  Can we really believe we didn’t have a role in creating the present situation? And what happens if they all do blow themselves up? Then what?

We are usually late to these “parties,” but at some point we have to knock on the door.

Answer the Question!

So now the tables are turned, it’s open season on the media types running Presidential debates. When I was in the media, I sat on panels and frequently moderated these kinds of things myself. With all due respect to Dr. Carson, it’s not brain surgery.

The first, and simplest thing, is making candidates stick to the time limits. Now there’s discussion about buzzers, gongs, etc., to signal time is up. My favorite low-tech solution is a gavel. Everyone knows what that means, and repeated whacking when someone doesn’t shut up makes the speaker look bad.

The second important principle is forcing candidates to answer the questions -- which means interrupting the speaker if they evade or try to bring up a new topic. And if it means repeatedly asking the question to get an actual answer, it must be done. The panelist must be a bulldog.

If one candidate mentions another in a negative light, certainly the “victim” should be given the opportunity to respond – but it’s nobody else’s business.

Do media people ask stupid questions sometimes? To quote Sarah P., you betcha. Questions that goad one candidate into attacking another, for instance, should be absolutely off limits. Maybe this is a point where you need an impartial moderator who can knock a bad question down.

But are candidates’ past lives and statements fair game?  Absolutely! If there’s a “gotcha,” well, the audience needs to know two things – not just the quality of the explanation by the candidate, but also how the candidate reacts to the question. Calm? Defensive? Truthful? Evasive? We are electing human beings with personal qualities, which are sometimes more important than whether we agree with them on particular issues.

This is the big one, and it’s our job as audience members, not the media folks’. A candidate may be entertaining up there on the debate stage. But we have to mentally put that individual in front of the podium during a White House news conference, perhaps after an emergency. As President, every word that comes out of his or her mouth will be dissected and interpreted, and could have major national or international impact. Which of the people we are looking at now would we feel comfortable seeing in that situation?

The quality of these debates, or forums or whatever name we give them, may vary depending on the format or the questioners. But we learn something new every time. Even a little sunshine goes a long way,

Squeezing the Trigger

Is it shock and horror, or is it weariness? Are we finally done with tolerating gun violence? And when will we stop going around this same tragic circle? It’s assault weapons and gun shows. No, it’s mental health. Arm teachers, etc.

Tackling this problem won’t be a one-shot deal, and needs approach from all sides. Yes, we have to tighten gun laws, close the gun-show loophole and insist on a gun-purchase waiting period. Yes, we have to do something about mental health, especially that of isolated young males. Yes, the media have to re-invent the coverage of mass-shooting incidents. We even have to change how guns work: owner-recognition technology, etc. And we may have to spend big bucks buying back guns and destroying them.

The experts seem to agree that more guns, more armed Americans, will make the problem worse, not better. Many people still don’t accept that, notably Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson. But one professor of sociology, interviewed on NPR, likened this debate to the one on climate change. How can there be less violence with more guns?

We do have to recognize that guns are part of our culture. This country was born amid gun violence. There was a good reason for the Second Amendment. The Wild West was preceded by the Wild East. But that was then. Guns have been a time-tested means of resolving conflicts here. Does it always have to be that way?

Guns are almost a fashion accessory. American men of a certain age all had cowboy outfits as kids, complete with two silver toy guns. The cigarette was also a fashion accessory for decades, but now it’s fading, as the forces of disapproval are winning the battle. The tobacco lobby was once as powerful as the NRA, but we have evolved.

Evolution is the time-consuming part. Prohibition seemed like a good idea to many in the 1920s, but the general population wasn’t ready to accept it. The abolition of slavery, the arrival of women’s suffrage, and the acceptance of gay marriage all took time, and a shifting of cultural tectonic plates is sometimes violent. But the inevitability finally becomes clear.

So what do we do about guns now? The first thing, IMHO, an obvious one, is for those of us who want tougher laws to elect people to Congress who support the legislation desired and replace those who won’t. But it goes way beyond that. What attitudes about guns do we have in our own families? How are children being raised to view this issue? What kinds of movies, TV and video games do we all-too-casually consume? There’s pornography -- and then there’s pornography.

The good news is, sea changes do happen. Those of us who’ve been around a little bit have seen them in our lives many times over now, and they don’t take nearly as long as they once did. But we’re the ones who have to make the waves.

The Mule and tte 2x4

The world is now getting the message about the Syrian refugee crisis, but the mule needed a few blows to the head with that large piece of wood to hear it. Those blows have included story after story about the loss of “boat people,” and, of course, the heart-wrenching photo of the dead toddler in the red shirt washed up on a beach.

But this is not exactly a new problem, and it’s more than just about Syria. The UN has been reporting on the enormous scale of the Middle East refugee situation for years, perhaps one of the worst in our memories. Millions have been prompted to leave their homes. What’s different now is that local “coyotes” have been selling seats in substandard boats. Some have sunk. Others have made it to various European shores, with the refugees receiving varying degrees of welcome.

In Syria, it started in 2011, when the ultra-thin-skinned Bashir al-Assad decided he couldn’t put up with a relatively small number of demonstrators protesting conditions in his country. For the most part, they weren’t even interested in removing him from power. Years before that, in fact, there were news stories about what a progressive leader he was. But his response to the unrest was to turn the country’s army against his own people. I still remember the two brave CNN reporters, both women, who were on TV night after night reporting from the shelled cities, and the late Stanford fellow Fouad Ajami providing his comments about the dire situation to Anderson Cooper. The West did very little more than shake its head.

Then there were the reports that Assad’s army was using chemical weapons, and President Obama drew a “line in the sand,” which sounded very good – but did it sort of say that the use of conventional weapons before that to kill hundreds of thousands was OK? You be the judge. And then the Russians said, back off, we’ll handle this. BTW, I wonder how many refugees the Russians are taking in these days.

Some of the EU countries are less than happy about having to deal with this. By contrast, Germany welcomed tens of thousands just last weekend – more asylum-seekers than the country accepted during all of 2007. Germany may accept as many as 800,000 before all is said and done. So far, the U.S. has taken in about 1,500, but pressure is mounting for us to do more.

No, we aren’t to blame for this problem, but we do have some responsibility to help. We did virtually nothing in Syria, and maybe way too much in Iraq, and haven’t really followed through in Libya. But there are lots of people needing help, just as there are after a natural disaster like an earthquake. And it’s time we stepped up to do our share – not assume the entire burden, just our share.

While I’m not into animal abuse, the mule has to wake up sometime.

Thank You, Mr. Trump

Donald Trump is right. His comments about Mexican “rapists” and impregnable border fences, outrageous though they may be, have forced his fellow Republicans, and the rest of us, to talk about immigration. It’s truly the “elephant in the room” on many levels.

It’s very easy for us to have a theoretical discussion about immigration. True, we have problems: millions of people here illegally or semi-legally, who many of the rest of us think are draining our resources. But what would we do if our country were in Europe right now instead of being conveniently isolated by two oceans? What would we do if all these desperate people were washing up on our shores – if their boats even made it that far? Would they be a drain on our resources? Very likely – but some European countries, like Greece, don’t have any resources left to drain. We do have an easy life here!

Let’s roll back the tape a little bit. A few Arab Spring demonstrators several years ago in Syria inexplicably prompted their government to turn a mechanized army on its own people, killing hundreds of thousands. Nothing we can do about it, we said, not our problem, and the other Western powers largely agreed. Let them fight it out for themselves, we said. The country descended into total chaos, and now there is ISIS. Millions have been displaced, and not just from Syria. Did neglect come back to bite us? We haven’t really been bitten yet in this situation, just the Europeans. Some countries are still trying to say, not our problem. But the desperate thousands arrive anyway – their problem whether they like it or not.

There are no easy solutions to our own immigration issues, parochial as they may seem by comparison. Certainly, we have to come up with a fair system that allows for people living here and contributing to our economy as well as for those seeking asylum or those just seeking a better life. But as a friend of mine pointed out recently, most of our ancestors were immigrants – not always nice ones – who displaced the native population. We forced others to “migrate” here as personal property. You can keep rolling back the tape, and you’ll find that the hard distinctions between good guys and bad guys just get blurrier and blurrier.

But at some point we are going to have to set aside demagogic talk about anchor babies and fences and understand that we are all in this boat --- on this planet – together, and the hard distinctions between “our problems” and “their problems” are also a lot blurrier than they used to be.

The Morning of Living Dangerously

Another shooting in America. A crazy person with a gun. So what else is new?

Well, THIS was. It wasn’t Ferguson or Baltimore or a movie theater in Colorado. It was at a rural lake resort area in Central Virginia. A female TV reporter was interviewing a Chamber of Commerce representative about tourism, when shots were fired. The reporter and the videographer were killed, the Chamber lady was hurt – and it was all caught on live TV. The shooter got away, but according to the story, filmed (generic term) the whole thing while he was shooting and posted it on social media. Police closed in at a location in northern Virginia, and several hours later, he shot himself and eventually died.

Certainly this isn’t the first time journalists have been crime victims. But we have all these new issues. How dangerous is routine journalism, even for those doing the morning-coffee beat? Do they now have to carry guns, or have a security guard tag along? And how do other journalists cover this story? What do they show of the incident? How can they tell the story without giving the shooter what he wants: publicity? Will there be copycats? How do social media platforms keep a lid on graphic video?

Think of the challenge for news anchors all over the country, even the national stars. Most of them started off at small-market stations, likely interviewing Chamber officials at scenic locations for a morning show. How can they not be pierced to their core, as CNN’s Brooke Baldwin was, while reporting on this? It wasn’t all that long ago that she was a reporter at a TV station in Charlottesville, only a few hours’ drive from the shooting scene. You can’t quite blame her if she came close to “losing it” as she paid tribute to her fallen journalism colleagues. And what about the dead reporter’s own fiancé, who works at the Roanoke station as an anchor?

I was asked today how I felt about anchors “losing it” on the air in such situations. Well, Ms. Baldwin held it together, she didn’t lose it, but she was obviously deeply moved, as I’m sure all her viewers were. Some of us remember Walter Cronkite’s simple gesture of taking off his glasses and looking at the clock to tell us when President Kennedy died. That was how we knew he was moved. But anchors are human, too, and we know that part of them when we see it.

The fact is, general daily journalism isn’t safe. It’s not unlike being a cop. When you report to work in the morning, you don’t know for certain what you might be covering. An Easter egg hunt or a fire with a toxic waste cloud? An Apple store ribbon-cutting or an earthquake? A school spelling bee or an angry mob? The schedule can go to hell in an instant. You have to make judgments on the fly about where to put your equipment and vehicles, and yes, even your own body. That is, if you’re even given that chance.

And at some point, we are going to have to figure out how to cover these things – the balance between factual reporting – telling us what we need to know -- and drama, and how to keep from glorifying the wrong people. And, of course, how to keep crazy people away from guns. We don’t quite have those acts down yet.

Bye Bye, Donald

When it comes to PC, the world is now a china shop – yet we seem willing to tolerate the presence of the bull, and find it amusing when he knocks over a couple pieces of crockery. But then he hits the Ming vase, and he’s done.

I said to friends yesterday that I actually admired one quality in Donald Trump – that whatever anyone threw at him, he was invariably able to catch it and throw it back. Maybe what came out of his mouth was complete BS, but he said it with absolute conviction. He never let anything slow him down.

At a certain point, though, our expectations get so low that we’re not surprised when something bad happens. Look, I am no lover of Megyn Kelly. It’s chemical with me. I admire strong women, but she is what a female friend used to call a “hard number.” There was something unsavory to me about how the first individual question to Trump during the debate Thursday night had to come from her, and it was about his documented attitude toward women – and she asked the question with just a little too much glee for my taste. His response was kind of a joke, but he showed no sign of distress. He put his head down and charged.

But that was Cleveland, not Pamplona, and it was a Presidential debate, not reality TV – even though some 24 million people watched it, and I’m sure the popcorn consumption went up that night.

Then there is Trump’s other quality. True to form, he couldn’t leave things alone. He had to pile on Ms. Kelly during a CNN interview on Friday with remarks about what seemed to be her menstrual cycle. Could it be that even those who have been secretly enjoying Donald Trump now have to admit that their Enough Already buttons have been pushed?

Metaphors and analogies are so much fun, so I’ll leave you with another – and you can bring your popcorn. When I was a little boy, I liked going to grown-up movies, because I knew that a cartoon was shown at the beginning, so I had at least something to enjoy. But the cartoon lasted only about five minutes. The grown-ups who took me along may have chuckled at the cartoon a little, if it was good, but they weren’t there to see that. They wanted the movie to start. That’s what they paid their ticket money for.

The cartoon is over for the Republicans. Time to roll the feature.

He's Not Funny, Folks

A comedian friend of mine used to say when evaluating a colleague, “I know funny, and he isn’t.” Is anyone really enjoying Donald Trump? If I hear one more person say, “Isn’t it great how he’s shaking things up?”… No, I’d better not say what I might do.

Let’s see, he’s given us Mexican rapists crossing the border, John McCain not being a war hero, and the cell phone number of a fellow Republican he disagrees with. If Mr. Rogers were here, he’d be channeling Rick Perry: “Can you say, ‘Commander-in-Chief’?”

That’s not just a snarky comment. Donald Trump is showing us what kind of battles he picks – and one of the biggest jobs a U.S. president has is picking battles. If the battles Trump has been picking represent what he thinks will win him the presidency, what kind will he pick if he were actually elected? (A concept which is, thankfully, very remote).

In the case of McCain, one could actually make a semantic argument over the use of the word “hero,” though anyone who spends years as a POW has to be given some credit for simply surviving. And, of course, Trump never had to serve one minute in the armed forces, so he doesn’t have the standing to even raise that issue.

This is about judgment. I actually wouldn’t have minded if McCain had become president himself – but he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate, or at least let others pick her for him. What did that say about his judgment? I didn’t think anyone could possibly make me miss Sarah Palin, but Mr. Trump has done it. The sexist pig in me says she is much nicer to look at.

In a perfect media world (that I controlled) I would cease on principle to give Donald Trump one more second of airtime, drop of ink, or digital keystroke. Don’t we have better things to do? Can’t somebody just make him go away?

As for Trump “shaking things up” in the GOP, is the party, or the nation, that bored? I live in California, but I don’t sit around longing for the next earthquake. They usually just cause damage. And Trump is just shaking the surface anyway. The Republican Party needs to be shaken to its foundation if it expects to survive this Trump, or future Trumps – or survive, period.

Bookends

In about a month, I will have officially logged another year on Earth, and there have been quite a few of them. This being Throwback Thursday, it’s simply a reminder that we Boomers have a lot more backward time “in the can” than forward time left. But it also means we’ve been alive long enough now to see what seems like the beginning and the end of big things – bookends, if you like.

Many of us are talking this morning about Caitlyn Jenner, who won the Arthur Ashe Courage Award last night on ABC. I must confess that when I first heard about this earlier in the day, I did an eye-roll. But the “preview” piece about Bruce Jenner’s struggle to accept him (now her) self, followed by Caitlyn’s moving speech crafted to persuade others to accept trans people, moved me. Perhaps I was moved because I was alive in the Bruce Olympian days – the first bookend – which is just “the past” to some younger people for whom history is not a favorite subject. But even for young people, “transes” were the butt of jokes just a few months ago. Not anymore.

Then there is Pluto. I have been alive long enough to remember the consternation in this country over the Russians getting into space first (Sputnik, 1957). I also remember our manned spacecraft circling the moon on a Christmas Eve, with one astronaut reading Bible verses while the Earth was in the background on our black-and-white TV, and then our guys landing on the moon a relatively short time later. And now, our spacecraft flying by this ex-planet several billion miles away, and sending back pictures.

President Obama is calling this week for major prison reform, and to that end, commuted the sentences of almost 50 nonviolent drug offenders. I’ve been around long enough to remember when possessing even a tiny amount of marijuana for personal use could get you a very long time in the slammer, and that marijuana was considered eeeevil.

(Now if they could only do something about immigration. I’d like to see a bookend on that one.)

If we’re around long enough, these “bookend” events really stand out to us. But our very lives are bookends: they start somewhere and end somewhere else. We just have to remember that these big stories began before we were born and will continue on after we die.

I’m glad that I have lived long enough (so far) to have one foot in the relatively distant past and the other here, to see all these changes. Do most older people feel that way?

Many of us thought the year 2012, according to the Mayan calendar, would mark the end of the world. Well, maybe it did, but we didn’t finish the phrase: it was just the end of the world as we thought we knew it.

Irresistible

I had nothing in particular on the agenda one day, so I considered watching paint dry. It’s the definition of boring, because I know I can’t see it happening. I may even get a little impatient with the time it takes, but I trust the process, at the end of which I can move on to use the thing that was once wet.

Life’s processes often take much longer. I drove through L.A. this past week, and noticed that I could see the surrounding mountains. This used to be a rarity years ago because of the smog. But now, generations of cleaner-burning cars have filled the roads. There are so many of them – it’s Southern California – that I didn’t get anywhere fast, but at least the scenery was nicer than it used to be. The clearer skies seemed like a sudden event, because I don’t live in L.A.

The past couple of weeks in this country have been dazzling indeed. “Sea change” doesn’t begin to do it all justice. Same-sex marriage is now legal, and Confederate flags are being erased from view. The U.S. and Cuba have agreed to open embassies on their respective soils. Those still alive in future decades will be telling grandchildren where they were when the news of these things broke.

But unless we live with a process daily, we forget that it took an enormous struggle for these things to happen. In the case of gay marriage, it started with Stonewall in New York almost half a century ago, followed by hundreds of legal and social battles. It was just plain time for the Supreme Court to do what it did.

Since the end of the Civil War, the Confederate flag has been a symbol that most Americans have tolerated as a quirky Southern historical symbol, one that many Southerners still embrace. Now it is a symbol of racial oppression. The Civil War was a necessary event, but of course, it didn’t settle everything. We often forget that the process seemed to begin with the Abolitionist movement that started decades before in New England -- all of this leading up to 2015.

And Americans will soon be traveling to Cuba in large numbers, and vice versa. It seems like yesterday that Cuba was a mortal enemy, once a direct threat to our survival. But the thawing of hostility was a half-century process, and people actually had to get old or die off to allow it to happen.

Evolution is a logical and methodical process, but it’s usually long, sometimes invisible, and almost always painful, even on an individual level. Someone we thought of as a close friend evolves into a different person. It may be time for a connection to end, but we may resist the process, not recognizing that we have changed too. Evolution is inevitable, and resisting it often results in pain. Not everyone is pleased with the outcome, at least for the moment.

But if you are allowed to stay on this planet long enough, the threads become more and more visible. You begin to see how the dots connect. A little knowledge of history helps you accept, and hopefully appreciate, the process when it involves positive movement. And you realize that a milestone is just a marker on what is a very long path.

Red Flag

Following a short social media post I made about the Confederate flag, a friend, who is not African-American, commented that for her, the flag has always symbolized hate and bigotry. Well, that wasn’t always the way it was for me, and I suspect I am not alone.

To me, as I said in the post, the Confederate flag was always a fun, quirky Southern thing. You could see it at high school football games. One of its most famous uses was being painted on the hood of the General Lee, the iconic car in “The Dukes of Hazzard.” That was a popular TV show once. I had no idea that if I watched it, saw the car and smiled or laughed, I was supporting bigotry and hatred.

The Civil War, as many writers have pointed out, was more than just about slavery. It was about states’ rights in general – their ability to decide what was legal within their boundaries, and supporters even used the U.S. Constitution to back this right. Was every Confederate soldier fighting to support slavery? Was every Union soldier fighting to abolish slavery? I don’t think so.

I’m sure all of us know a Civil War buff, somebody who can tell you the name of every general that fought in every battle, and where all the battles were fought. In many parts of the country, there are Civil War re-enactments every summer. If the Civil War was just about slavery, does that mean our friend the “buff” has turned an atrocity into a hobby, and the re-enactors have turned it into a game?

I was always a little scared of handling the American flag because of all the lore associated with it. At summer camp, when it was my job sometimes to raise and lower it, I was mortally afraid of dropping it. I thought if it touched the ground you were supposed to burn it because you had desecrated it by being careless. But in the ‘60s, the American flag meant something else to many people. Vietnam War protesters burned it. Some people wore it on the seat of their jeans. To them, it represented policies they disapproved of.

Fast forward to the South Carolina situation today. The Confederate flag has flown over the state capitol and other public facilities, and now there’s a demand it be removed. It seems the Republicans are being dragged kicking and screaming into supporting this view since the AME church massacre, and now “Should the flag come down?” is a litmus-test question for Presidential candidates.

It could very well be argued that the young man who shot up the Charleston church and killed nine people, in one single action, drastically narrowed the meaning of the Confederate flag. It’s now all about bigotry and oppression. Perhaps it has been for a long time for African-Americans; the rest of us may be slower to catch on, and we can only ask forgiveness.

But a flag is only a symbol, like a word. The meanings of words can change over time. If this is what has happened here, we have no choice but to demand that the Confederate flag be removed from our national consciousness. All I’m saying is that it hasn’t always meant what it now means, here in the summer of 2015.

Water Moralizing

California, as the world knows, is in the middle of an historic drought. Yes, water is a precious commodity that we don’t have much of, but we have more than our share of moralists now.

It’s fun for the media to fly over large parcels of property where wealthy people have green lawns or lush gardens and wag fingers about the excessive use of water. My own town has many such properties, and the state wants water reductions of 36 percent. At our town council meeting the other night, one property owner told the city that he had spent $40,000 or so on professional landscaping in 2011. He had made several big reductions in water use since then, but he doesn’t get credit for the ones prior to the 2013 benchmark date. Now he figures that if he adds the new percentage on top of what he has already achieved, his reduction since the installation of the system will be closer to 80 percent, and many of his plants will die. But he’s rich, tsk, tsk, isn’t that too bad.

I used to live in Palm Springs, a lovely target for moralizers. Swimming pools, golf courses, and yes, those “misters” at restaurants that make it possible for people to dine outdoors in hot months. So shut off the misters and close the golf courses, they are just tourist luxuries, right? Well no. These are revenue-producing amenities. Golf brings in tourists, who might like to eat a meal in comfort on a hot day. But when you close one thing and turn off another, you are also affecting people’s jobs as well as the local tax base. So it all isn’t quite as much of a no-brainer as outsiders might think.

You can take moralizing back even further. California is largely a desert and was never intended to support the millions who live here now. Too bad for us, why didn’t our stupid planners think ahead? Heck, if you want, you can moralize about green lawns. Where did the need for manicured lawns come from? Well, maybe the white European ancestors of those who may live on these properties now brought this notion with them from the Old World (fortunately, the technology behind fake grass has improved so much that it seems like a reasonable design alternative now).

Some think California agriculture is getting something of a free ride. But many farmers have let some of their fields go fallow. Prices will go up; jobs are affected. And then there’s the beef industry, among the biggest water users. Shall we check the trash cans or compost pits of the moralizers to see who has given up steak?

The good news in all of this is that the drought may focus more attention on real waste: inefficient practices that can be modified. It’s not usually about whether gardens are watered, for example, but how. Drought-tolerant landscapes will become fashionable and attractive as we get used to them. And solutions that seemed prohibitively expensive decades ago, like desalination plants, suddenly seem like good ideas.

No question, there is pain to be shared here, and plenty of it to go around, along with attitude-adjusting. But arguments centered on, “Your pain isn’t as necessary as mine,” just don’t hold a lot of water with me.

Different Strokes

While it’s no longer a surprise to see people “come out of the closet,” we are learning just how many closets there are, and that the doors to those closets don’t always open at the same speed.

What exactly are we to do with the information that one of our most respected male athletes, Bruce Jenner, is becoming a woman? And that’s not even the right way to say it: he knows that he has always been one, just issued the “wrong” body. Like being forced to wear clothes that don’t fit. Chaz (formerly Chastity) Bono had the reverse situation, but even his story wasn’t quite enough to make the rest of us take this seriously. Bruce Jenner’s walk out of his closet may be a game-changer, and could stop comedians’ jokes dead in their tracks, at least for a while.

If any of us are having trouble getting our heads around Jenner’s announcement – as at least one of his ex-wives has admitted – think what would have happened had he made this revelation some 40 years ago, at the height of his Olympic fame. He wouldn’t have been simply the butt of jokes, but a pariah. It’s also true so many of those in closets have taken so long to come out because they weren’t even allowed to admit their orientation to themselves. And closets can change – children can sometimes be unclear of what their orientation is as they grow up.

I went to an all-boys high school. God really did have to deliver any student who was homosexual or even exhibited a small degree of effeminism. A life could literally be ruined by such things. Even when I was a child, a relative once said to me he was glad I was “normal.” Lovely word, “normal” – except that we often forget that it is a mathematical term meaning “conventional.” It does not mean “correct.” I have often said that those looking for “correct” in human sexuality are not only barking up the wrong tree – they’re in the wrong forest.

Then there is that other lovely family of words, “perversion” and “pervert,’ sometimes called PREvert. The dictionary defines perversion as an “aberrant sexual practice habitually preferred to normal coitus.” (Just for the record, I don’t think I have ever written “coitus” before in this space). We Americans traditionally have had a low tolerance for perversion. It’s true that some practices, like those involving children, are harmful and can’t be allowed. But we are very quick to call someone a “pervert” if it involves a predilection that isn’t our own – when perhaps we should be thanking God or whatever didn’t saddle us with the urges we so easily condemn.

The book and movie “50 Shades of Grey” has opened another closet door. Now, some of those who are into bondage and S-and-M are seeking acceptance. There is even an acronym (that escapes me now) for their organization. But have times changed all that much? I believe that as we learn more about ourselves as human beings we are going to find that there are about as many strokes as there are folks. And then we’re going to have to consider where, when and why it matters.

Opening the Envelope

We can’t help ourselves. There is something that compels many of us to rip apart the Oscars, the annual ritual of Hollywood congratulating itself, or bashing itself, take your pick. The gags that didn’t work, the dresses, the award-winners thanking not only their colleagues but their ancestors, their spouses, their offspring, and this year, even the family dog, some of them using the occasion to lecture us about what’s wrong with our culture.

But we’re all there. It’s one of those prized collective experiences that seem lacking these days. Like many, I attended a party featuring a competition for guessing the most Oscar category winners correctly. I got 20 out of 24. “You’re good,” someone said. But my group is tough. I was only a co-winner of our event, and there were others that were only one or two guesses off. But we do research ahead of time. We have to.

Playing the guessing game is one way to spice up an occasion that has become a little too predictable. The average football game or beauty pageant offers more surprises. The Oscars have turned into just another election, and the winners are often determined by who puts on the best campaign, not the best performances or artistic work. Patricia Arquette did a creditable job in “Boyhood,” but was her performance really better than Emma’s, or Keira’s, or Laura’s, or Meryl’s? And then, Ms. A used the occasion to lecture us about gender equality. It would not have upset me to see Michael Keaton win Best Actor, but he was up against a degenerative disease – almost no contest there, Eddie Redmayne’s moving interpretation of the Hawking story notwithstanding.

Reese Witherspooon used the occasion to lecture us, too. “It’s not about the dresses,” she said in a red carpet interview. Really? Annually, at one of the greatest concentrations of female beauty on this planet, are the designers going to let the occasion go by without showcasing their work?

Then there was the whole guilt trip about the lack of diversity. The jokes about “whitest” and the standing ovation for “Glory” were part of the penance. Personally, I don’t think an implied quota system is a good thing in an artistic awards competition, but that’s another discussion. There have been some pretty good years in this department; 2014 just wasn’t one of them (This being such a sensitive issue, did we really need Sean Penn’s crack about green cards at the end?).

But my thirst for surprises didn’t go entirely unquenched. Thank you, Lady Gaga!

Let’s step back a bit, though. Whether we like this annual Hollywood Kabuki or not, movies represent one of the artistic linchpins of human culture. We forget that this technology is less than a century and a half old, and films have been “talking” for way less than that. But no other art form, IMHO, has taught us as much about ourselves, which is, in the end, what art is for, and has reached as many people. I don’t quite know what my life would be like without the movies – and I’m sure I have lots of company.

Feet of Clay

As the old song goes, another one bites the dust. Brian Williams’ career as a major network TV news anchor may be numbered, due to his apparent fabrication of an experience covering combat in Iraq. For the time being, he is the butt of jokes.

Our news anchors seem to have a special place in this country. In the UK and elsewhere, these people are called “presenters,” because that’s what they do -- they present the news. Not good enough for us here! We expect them to be people of impeccable morals, unassailable integrity, and unquenchable heroism. We have the Cronkites and the Murrows to thank for that, I guess.

Mr. Williams will never find himself up there with Saints Edward and Walter. He did something really stupid, especially since it was unnecessary – he didn’t need to make anything up to burnish his image. He was doing just fine. Does this incident make him bad at his job? Or negate his successes?

We spend a lot of time putting people on pedestals, but it only takes a character flaw or two to pull them down again. I may be off base, but there’s a part of us that seems to enjoy this process. It’s as if our love of celebrities carries the hidden seed of envy, so that part of us smiles at seeing the mighty fall. People that we once loved and admired for their accomplishments: Bill Cosby. Joe Paterno. Lance Amstrong. Woody Allen. David Petraeus. Helen Thomas. Richard Nixon. The list has no end. The sad part is that almost every time, once the offense is committed, we don’t remember them for their accomplishments, just the offense. It can be a peccadillo or a heinous crime. It almost doesn’t matter.

Who knows, maybe this is why we need religion. Human beings can’t stand up to worship. Inevitably we seem to find something the matter with them. But we still crave the perfect and the pure, and if we don’t find it here, we make it up. Or, perhaps since we can conceive of it, it must be real, and out there. Too big a subject for tis humble post.

We may not be able to fully forgive everyone who sins. But are we able to accept a few dings in our heroes, or find any compassion at all for those who squander the investment in our opinion of them with more serious offenses? Can we ever say, there, but for the grace of God (or reasonable facsimile thereof), go we?

Speaking in Tongues

Words have power, but first you have to know what they mean. The worst arguments I have ever been in had to do with words – and nobody involved in these disputes ever wants to back down. Who wins in the long run? I think it’s always the Average Bear.

Today I had a discussion – fortunately a pleasant one – with a former colleague who was writing a newspaper story which partly concerned a horse being stuck in the mud. She wanted to know if she could say “mired in the mud.” It sounded right to her, though it’s technically redundant, because “mire” IS mud. I looked it up, though, and thankfully found that “mire” (which Jim Morrison didn’t want to wallow in) could also mean slush or dirt – which in turn meant to me that my friend could safely specify and get away it. She was on the right track – it didn’t sound right to say it the “correct” way. The Average Bear would ask, “Mired in what?”

I almost lost my own newspaper job a few years ago, when I changed a headline from something about “running a gantlet” to “running a gauntlet.” I said, “Nobody knows what a ‘gantlet’ is – the readers will think we spelled it wrong.” So I put the “u” in it. Well, technically speaking, the gantlet is what you run, and a gauntlet is a glove -- that’s the thing you throw down. But what did Clint Eastwood run in that movie? Would anyone have gone to see it if it was called “The Gantlet”? I think not.

Sometimes the sticklers win out, and for this we have to go back to horses. A reporter wrote a story about a real estate developer “chomping at the bit” to finish a project.  Our editor was upset. “It’s ‘CHAMPING at the bit!’” he said. Not what the Average Bear would say, but I’ll cut him a little slack – he was from Kentucky, where they know their horse flesh.

But sticklerism is a dangerous path. When I was in college long ago, there was a guy in my dorm named Harry, whose hobby was lying in wait for victims to misuse or mispronounce English words. He threw down the gauntlet (right this time), wanting us to take issue with him so that he could triumphantly shove a dictionary in our faces, opened to the appropriate page, to demonstrate that we were wrong. Not long ago, I went to look Harry up on Facebook, but couldn’t find him. Not surprising, because I don’t think he was allowed to live much past the age of 30.

My favorite example of the Average Bear’s power is “chaise lounge.” That’s what we call that thing out by the pool, originally called “chaise LONGUE,” French for “long chair,” which is what it is. But lounging is what it’s for, said the Bears, who always win -- because language is a living thing. As for the chaise, I’m going outside to rest my body in it – along with my case.

Je ne suis pas Charlie

Though I consider myself to have a relatively good sense of humor, I have to confess here that I have never really had much taste for satire. The big problem with satire is that those who need most to get the joke don’t. All they get is pissed off, and then bad things usually happen.

The editor and staff at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo are now the heroes of free speech – actually, its martyrs. Borrowing an analogy from my previous post, they had been tickling the rattlesnake for a long time, and finally, the rattlesnake had enough.

 It was a terrible price, but their martyrdom seems to have been required to galvanize the rest of the world into recognizing the perversion of Islam – not Islam itself – for the danger that it is. I am just as angry as anyone else who has been watching the news the past several days, and would be absolutely thrilled if a way were found to erase terrorists from the Earth – especially those who are teaching children – and adults who haven’t found something better to do with their lives -- to follow their murderous course.

In solidarity with the slain French journalists, media outlets and individual Internet users alike have republished the cartoons said to have started the whole thing. But the right to republish a few irreverent cartoons, to me anyway, is somehow missing the larger point. How do we shine a light into the dark recesses where twisted versions of religion are nurtured – the places where, in the marketplace of ideas, there’s only one product on the shelf, and there hasn’t been anything new since the Middle Ages? Does spreading around a few cartoons accomplish this end?

I think to really get this job done, you need a lot more than satire. You need more Gandhis. More Martin Luther Kings. More Aung San Soo Kyis – or in the case of Islam, more Malalas.

The Freedom Not to Speak

Sometimes you just can’t win.

Let’s start by saying that the fatal attack on the Paris magazine Charlie Hebdo for publishing satirical cartoons targeting fundamental Islam was an unpardonable act of terrorism. Nobody should have to die for simply saying something offensive.

Unfortunately, free speech isn’t really “free.” The editor of the magazine knew that all too well, and hired security to protect him and the publication’s staff. It just wasn’t quite good enough.

But now, major news outlets that have declined, for one reason or another, to re-publish the cartoons are being castigated for “caving” to terrorism. Some say their policy is not to publish provocative images, but critics say these outlets can’t serve their readers or audiences by failing to tell the full story, which they argue requires republication of the offensive material.

The implication is the non-publishing news outlets are cowards for choosing not to spread the offensive stuff around. But doesn’t freedom of speech include the freedom NOT to do so, for whatever reason? Maybe such outlets fear an attack; maybe they just don’t want to cause offense to readers or viewers, even those who won’t be inspired to commit retaliatory murder. The truth is, the reason isn’t even the public’s business, unless the newspaper, TV network or other medium chooses to make it so.

I’ve always said that if you tickle a rattlesnake, you can’t be all that surprised if it chooses to bite you. If you insist on publishing jokes about the beliefs of maybe a billion or so people, you can’t be too surprised if some of them don’t feel quite as strongly about freedom of speech as you.

Clearly, both speech and silence have a price, but it’s up to the speakers as to whether or not they feel like paying it. That said, it does distress me to hear this being couched in terms of bravery and cowardice. I just can't help thinking there's a little more to it than that.