Baby, It's Cold Everywhere

It’s hard to think of a Christmas season song actually offending anyone, but “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” has managed to do it. The classic holiday tune is heard by some as sanctioning date rape. At first, I was in the “Oh, come on now” crowd, but I guess I can see their point. That said, this doesn’t seem like the best battle to pick.

But it IS a good excuse for me to offer you a little Christmas allegory about the types of men women encounter. It goes like this: It’s holiday shopping season, and a locked car is parked on a city street with a brightly decorated package clearly visible in the back seat. We don’t know what’s in the package, but the wrapping is impressive and attracts attention. Four different men walk by.

The first is doing a business deal on his phone. He sees the package, says, “That’s nice,” but keeps walking and returns to his phone  He’s busy. The second guy, sees the package, says, “That’s nice. I want that, but it's not mine and hasn’t been offered to me, and I’m really not a candidate for it.” He walks on. The third sees the package, stops, says “That’s nice. I want that. Maybe if I hang around nearby for a while, the owner will show up and I can persuade her to share it with me.” Finally, the fourth man appears, stops, says “That’s nice. I want that. And because I want it, I’m entitled to it!” He smashes the car window to steal it.

OK, so we all know that the last guy is a bad penny, but what about the other three? We could give the first man credit for resisting temptation, but he simply had other priorities. The second guy may be the mensch of the group. He is tempted by what he sees but but resists on principle. The third guy hopes to get what he wants by following what he perceives to be the rules. Maybe he’s a nice, normal, charming individual -- or maybe he’s just a manipulator.

So what’s the point here? It’s that to face the modern world as realists, women must prepare themselves ahead of time for how they are going to respond to any of the kinds of men crossing their path, and there are certainly more than these four. There are good ones out there. Men, for their part, can ask themselves what a real man might appreciates in a real woman. And adults in general must make it a priority to teach children what successful relationships are and what their role in them will be as they grow up. It’s way more than about fixing song lyrics.

Naming, Blaming, and Fading

You have no doubt heard by now of the drive to remove the Zuckerberg name from the San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. The new building was made possible in part by the $75 million contribution from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. But lately Mr. Zuckerberg’s name is MUD. Or at least he’s picked up some on the soles of his shoes, largely because of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the seemingly cavalier way in which Facebook handled users’ information.

It’s hard these days to get a name to stick on things. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the home of the Giants ballpark has had three names since it was built: Pac Bell Park, SBC Park, and now AT&T Park. For a while, the late legendary Candlestick Park was Monster Park, after a prominent manufacturer of electronic cables.

Events change names, too. I spent some time in Palm Springs, in  an area that is the site of  many. The now-well-known Palm Springs International Film Festival, for a number of years, was known as the Nortel Networks Palm Springs International Film Festival, and an annual film achievement award was even named after the sponsor company’s CEO. Nortel went bankrupt a while back. The women’s golf tournament once known as the Colgate Dinah Shore is now called the ANA Inspiration. The Bob Hope Desert Classic became the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, and then his name fell off.

It’s one thing when names just fade into history, and another when history turns on them. The famed Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University almost lost its name when it was determined that President Wilson was something of a racist. These days, many iconic figures of the past have been found to have had unacceptable flaws or were simply on the wrong side of history. Maybe the safe thing to do is not to name anything after anyone. Or, paint the names on with watercolors, so they can be easily washed off.

I have had only one thing named after me – a sandwich in a local restaurant that has long since closed. I didn’t care what they actually put in it, as long as they held the mayo.

Mea Culpa

"I’m sorry if my remarks offended anyone, that was not my intention.” How many times have we heard that in recent days? The bigger question is, when you hear that, do you buy it?

Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, just elected in Mississippi, took a lot of heat for saying that if a political supporter invited her to a public hanging, she would be in the front row. It was intended as a compliment or a thank-you for that individual, but as has been pointed out, public hanging has a special meaning in her state, because of the lynching of black people following Reconstruction after the Civil War, So, was she ignorant or was she dog-whistling? A joke? Racial overtones aside, it seemed to me like an odd and unpleasant thing to say. But it didn’t bother most of the voters in Mississippi, it appears. And she did apologize.

That said, it’s truly fascinating to hear or read some of the stuff that comes out of people’s mouths or what they write. They can apologize for offense, but the question remains, what were they thinking? Public radio host Harry Shearer  has a segment on his show called Apologies of the Week, devoted to outrageous comments for which the speakers or authors have apologized. There was one example of a Thanksgiving print ad for a Colorado pizza parlor in which a Pilgrim says to a Native American, “Sorry about all the smallpox, how about a slice of pepperoni?” The parlor owner apologized, saying he was trying to be “edgy,” and offered to pull the publication.

Look, we all have said offensive things occasionally and have had to apologize. We were drunk, angry, or perhaps something just seemed funny at the time, and we misread the audience. I bet most of us have had racist, sexual, or just plain outrageous thoughts, but most of the time, they don’t make it to our mouths or our keyboards. We can apologize for what got through the gate, but that’s just the first step. Our concern must be the pain we have caused, not the damage we have done to our nice-guy or gal image of ourselves, and if necessary, we have to follow it up with appropriate action to demonstrate our concern.

I disagree a little with Jesus here. We don’t have to feel bad about every sinful thought that occurs to us. But we should when they turn in to actual sins against others in the form of words or deeds. When it comes to speech, we may be legally free to say or write whatever comes in to our heads, but as I always say, we are never free from the consequences of that speech, and we would do well to consider them carefully before opening our traps, especially in this world of PC. Sometimes, it’s actually refreshing when people keep their authenticity to themselves.

Accidents of Birth

For most Americans, it’s been a given that if you were born here, you’re a citizen, no questions asked, end of story. The President has floated the idea that he can put an end to that by executive order, even though legal scholars say it’s in the Constitution and he can’t do it that way.

Birthright citizenship is a fairly widely accepted concept in the world. In our case, If you’re born here, you don’t have to wait in line, take history tests, or learn English, you’re American. In most cases, our ancestors had to do the heavy lifting, making the trip here voluntarily, or in many cases, involuntarily. For those born here to decide to put a hurdle in front of future babies who enter the world on our soil  just isn’t quite fair, is it? And wouldn’t it be the worst paperwork nightmare ever? I see no justification for those of us who only had to be born here to act superior. We had no control over it, and can’t take credit for it. We were just lucky, and our first response, one would think, would be gratitude.

I do have a problem, though,  with one legal provision: that you have to be born here to be President. It’s a romantic idea. But why should someone foreign-born, who has taken the trouble to become a citizen, who loves this country and considers it home, follows the principles we espouse, and is deemed to have the necessary qualifications, be automatically excluded from the Presidency, just because of an accident of birth?

Let’s stop this “anchor baby” talk. Heck, we might even take it as a compliment that foreigners, including many who are talented and have contributions to make,  want to live here. At the rate things are going, that might not always be the case.

Hanging Five

It wasn’t exactly the Blue Wave that Democrats were hoping for in the midterms, but it was a lot better than nothing. While ground was lost in the Senate, there was enough of a surplus of Democratic victories on the House side to achieve way more than a slim majority. And with the chair positions on key committees switching to blue, the rubber is off the stamp for President Trump. Let’s not forget the almost 100 women among the winners.

A couple of other things to note: While voters couldn’t seem to resist electing Republicans in a few marquis races, the red paint was often a lot lighter on down-ballot choices for state legislature and on measures. Florida voters, for instance, elected a Republican governor but approved Amendment 4, which will allow felons to vote if they have served their time. And in several states, voters favored the expansion of Medicaid, another decidedly Democratic victory.

One of the TV pundits said something I really liked, which many of us may take for granted. This country has a tradition you don’t find in many others: the gracious private congratulation from the loser to the winner, and the often eloquent concession speech, which not only symbolizes the continuity of our system, but often gives the loser a bit of a star turn, as was the case with Beto O’Rourke, who clearly has a bright future ahead of him.

But we shouldn’t kid ourselves. The next two years aren’t going to be pretty. There’s a fair amount of blah-blah about this being an opportunity for deals to be made between Republicans and Democrats, but I have serious doubts. There are no signs of anyone coming to Jesus anytime soon.

 I’m just wondering if it isn’t time for a new political party now. We haven’t always had the same two major parties, and the names changed fairly often. We even had Whigs for a while. Is the Republican brand fatally damaged? I don’t know what we would call a new party full of honest, authentic, and reasonable people. Might it be Sanity, or is that too obvious? Gee, who’d want to vote against THAT?

 But hey, surfers, if you’re waiting for the really big waves, you better pick another day to go to the beach. Have faith, though, they are still coming.

Peanuts and Crackerjack

INSFB is an acronym in my written posts that stands for “I’m Not a Sports Fan, But…” I have a few relatives and friends who are glued to the TV for every contest that involves a ball or a puck, horses or wheels. Not me, I don’t care. But then, there is baseball. This doesn’t mean I watch regular-season games or go to the ball park without being invited. But the World Series always pulls me in somehow.

First of all, I grew up mostly in New York and was a child back when the city had three Major League teams. I went to all-boys schools, and when the fall rolled around, I simply did not have any friends unless I could talk baseball for at least five minutes at a time. So I started listening on the radio and occasionally watching TV. What was not to like? There was Mel Allen doing play-by-play, and there was Red Barber, too. I went to a game in Yankee Stadium when Mickey Mantle was in the Yankee lineup, with the untranslatable Casey Stengel managing. My brothers collected baseball cards that came with the bubblegum, and so did I. If I still owned those cards, I could buy and sell many of you reading this right now.

What is different about baseball? First, it’s the most American of our sports, and it seems the majority of us have a passing acquaintance with the rules of the game. Baseball metaphors pervade everything, even sex. And it’s one of  the few sports that have no time limit, as we discovered with this season’s World Series Game Three.

I like to watch it on TV because of the closeups on the players’ faces .There is no better definition of the word “focus” than what is on the pitcher’s face before the ball is thrown. The batter’s face isn’t far behind in that department.  And with 90-to-100-mile-per-hour pitches and the ease with which fielders make double-plays, it’s a wonder that anyone gets on base at all. The team managers have it down to a science about which pitcher to put in to face which opposing batter. It all seems to be under strict control. But the level of uncertainty injects just the right note of drama. The pitcher may throw a string of perfect innings, and then the circumstances arise where the next ball arrives at the bat just right, and it all changes instantly.

We’ve heard repeatedly that the upcoming election is a battle for the soul of America. I’m grateful that baseball, a significant part of that soul, is not involved. It will be there whichever party wins. And the way life is now, we will always need distractions like this iconic game.

Anger Management

This past week I heard and watched several radio and TV programs devoted to women’s rage – not only what they were angry about, but whether they were allowed to be angry at all, as women have traditionally been raised to be nice and to keep the boat afloat instead of rocking it. Those days are clearly over.

I’m angry too, maybe for slightly different reasons. The way I look at it, the whole Brett Kavanaugh drama was unnecessary. I’m angry at whoever it was that leaked Christine Blasey Ford’s confidential information about sexual assault, virtually forcing her to testify. I’m angry that President Trump didn’t pull the Kavanaugh nomination early on, or that Kavanaugh himself didn’t withdraw, which he could have done without having to admit to any wrongdoing and save us all this grief . I’m angry that President Obama wasn’t afforded the opportunity to have his own Supreme Court nominee considered a year and a half ago, and wonder whether some of the arcane rules of the Senate and perhaps the House that permit such manipulations are constitutional.

But I’m willing to accept that maybe all this WAS necessary. We seem to be going through a period of what 19^th century religious leader Mary Baker Eddy called a “moral chemicalization,” when the tolerance for wrongs protected by practice or tradition runs out. It happened with taxation without representation, with slavery, with women being denied the vote and gays being denied marriage, with bullying, and now with sexual violence. Like the guy in the movie, women are saying, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”

Upheavals happen in nature all the time. Take earthquakes, hurricanes, even forest fires. They are not about God taking out His or Her anger out on us sinful humans here below (sorry for the gender binarization). They’re about relieving stress and restoring balance. It is never a comfortable process, and isn’t supposed to be. The explosion or eruption seems sudden, but the tensions leading up to it have been building for a long time. Like a pain that suddenly appears in our body, it says, “Pay attention to me!”

This is where we have a choice. We can stew in our anger, or we can fix what’s broken, channeling the anger into doing the repair work. Our founding fathers (yeah, the ones who made it into the history books were male), left us the tools to do it, and the next opportunity comes in November. But elections are not just about beating the other guys and racing to the opposite extreme. We have to think of them as a way to restore balance. After all, If we rock the boat too hard, we all drown.

Permanent Record

Those of us of a certain age will remember the times in our youth when our parents warned us, “Don’t do anything bad at school. You don’t want it to be on your permanent record!” What was this exactly? In those days, perhaps, we thought of it as a paper document which followed us forever, transported by some unknown handler to the next school or even workplace in a Manila envelope. It could never be altered in any way, so any dings acquired in our life’s journey would be there forever, along with the good stuff.

When we prepared a resume, or if we were really fancy, a CV (I always wanted one of those!), we naturally tried to shine the best light on ourselves. We left out the missteps, hoping the employer wouldn’t find us out. Depending on the position we were seeking, the resume might be accepted at face value, and if we performed well in the interview, and the references we supplied said that we walked on water, we got the job. For some positions, though, the background checks were more serious. I am reminded of the female radio talk show host, who received a marriage proposal from a successful businessman she’d been seeing. She would not say yes until he showed her his tax returns for the previous three years.

Of course, it is much harder now to skate by, as there really IS a permanent record for young people, thanks to social media. But in the darker ages, fact-finding was more difficult. A consistent theme in a novel I finished a few years ago was: “You really don’t know people.” The late writer Anais Nin used to say that if a hundred people who knew her were to write biographies of her, there would be a hundred different versions of her life, depending on what each writer saw.

Sometimes, the last snapshot someone took of us might be an ugly one. The other 99 people might think we are a paragon of rectitude – but there’s that one, or more than one, we offended, disrespected, or even injured. Have we apologized, even if we don’t remember what happened, or do we continue to feed the good-guy or girl myth, even believing it ourselves? We may or may not be suitable candidates for the United States Supreme Court, or President, or Pope, and maybe we just have to admit that and move on. We have a much better shot at forgiveness, though, if we just own up to our checkered past and accept being human.

Quick March

The sorry Kabuki-esque nature of this week’s Supreme Court confirmation process has generated plenty of heat but relatively little light. We have seen this movie before, and once should have been enough. Does it have to happen again when the next Supreme Court vacancy occurs? The process has to be standardized, by legislation or some other means. Clearly, we can’t completely remove partisan politics from what goes on, but there are ways to make it fair, or at least fair-er. So I’m going to try an idea.

To start with, there should be a series of deadlines, with the clock starting as soon as there is a vacancy on the Court -- a deadline for the President to make a nomination – with one or two backups in case the first choice falls out. All three would be subject to background checks by the FBI. There is another deadline for the Senate Judiciary Committee to open hearings for the nominee. As part of that, there is a deadline for receiving information about the nominee from other sources to be turned over to the FBI – this, to discourage last-minute bomb-throwing – a “speak now or forever hold your peace” provision for this process. All government records relating to the nominee would have to be made available to the committee in a timely manner. The ommittee would only question the nominee during the hearings. Others with information would face questioning by the FBI.

The committee would have its own deadline for taking a vote, and the full Senate would have a deadline for yea-ing or naying the nominee. If it’s nay, the Judiciary Committee moves on to the second choice, and if necessary, the third.

Under this timeline, there would be no more Merrick Garland situations. The Judiciary Committee, even if the majority were from an opposing party to the President, could not hold things over until a new President took office.

I’m sure you can see the flaws in this. Suppose a vacancy occurs in an outgoing President’s last days before a new President is inaugurated? I know that’s a problem. But it would be more the timing governing the process and less the party politics. It’s certainly not a perfect scheme – but then, how’s the current one working for us?

To Tell the Truth

When I first heard about the attempted rape allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, it was eye-roll time for me. “Oh, God, not another one of those things!” and more than a little skepticism followed when I heard it was about drunken behavior at a high school party three decades ago where the participants were minors. I attended upscale, all-male institutions myself right through college, and the concept of a privileged young man feeling entitled to take advantage of a young woman after the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol was not exactly new. This case is NOT Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill 2.0. Nevertheless, out came the historic video clips, and we cable news junkies had to live through that all over again.

Did what happened to Christine Blasey Ford qualify as a #metoo? In those cases, the downfall of highly placed men has come after the establishment of a pattern of bad behavior. In this particular case, there is no such pattern, at least not yet. But Dr. Ford has a point.  We need an investigation to get to the truth, or very close to it,  before she testifies to the Senate committee. She says he did it; Judge Kavanaugh says he didn’t. Both can’t be right. I am not trying to minimize the damage done to Dr. Ford as a teen and what she is going through now. It’s awful. But the simple question remains: Did he do it?

 As for disturbing patterns, though, there already appears to be one in Kavanaugh’s case -- questions about his relationship with the truth, which have come up during his confirmation hearing. We all may have different evaluations of the behavioral excesses of a drunken teenage boy, but veracity certainly does have a bearing on whether this man is qualified for the Supreme Court.

It’s the timing that stinks more than anything here. The Republicans wouldn’t even consider President Obama’s pick of Merrick Garland to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, choosing instead to wait till after a new President took office. There should be a similar delay now until a new Congress is seated. This is a fairness no-brainer.

A Bloodless Coup

Are they heroes or cowards? That’s the question being asked about the writer of the anonymous New York Times op-ed piece and those in the Trump administration who make up what is called in the piece the “Resistance.” These are the self-styled “adults in the room” who believe they’re holding things together in the White House in the face of the President’s ever-loosening grasp on reality.

Personally, I’m way past trying to judge the writer or the writer’s like-minded colleagues. The ship is taking on water and these folks are throwing things over the side to keep it from sinking. They’re doing it largely because those whose job it is to do it won’t. As for the New York Times, I’m confident the paper would not have allowed the publication of an anonymous op-ed unless it came from someone high up. At the time I am writing this, we don’t know who it is.

You’d have to be living in a cave not to notice the confluence of events in recent days. The funeral of John McCain was a deep expression of yearning, within government and without, for a restoration of balance and a recovery of the loss of national pride. Then there is the Bob Woodward book, revealing the chaos in the White House, and, as if to confirm it, the Times op-ed piece.

The revelations we’re being presented with are not surprises. It’s all been going on for many months, like the earthquakes warning us that the volcano is about to erupt. Some are trying to put a lid on the crater. But now, the hot lava is starting to flow, and those in the way of the stream will be compelled to figure out their next steps. And forgive me for the metaphor mixes here.

I don’t believe President Trump would resign voluntarily. The one absolute power it seems that nobody around him can thwart is the pardon. Whether he could pardon himself is a question, but he may need it for others, possibly even members of his own family. He has warned that if he is ousted, the stock market will crash and there will be violence in the streets. I believe the exact opposite is true. The Dow will soar like a rocket, and there will be parties in the streets, as stability returns.

So then, the Resistance: heroes or cowards? I don’t know, but somehow, for the moment at least, I’m sorta glad they are there.

Saint John the Divine

As tributes continue to flow for the late Sen. John McCain, the praise may seem a little excessive to some. But there’s a simple reason for it. He was an old-school Republican who very easily could have been President, in a time when candidates for that office were actually Presidential.

McCain, as we all know, would have been the first to tell us that while he would have made a good President, he wasn’t sainthood material. He made more than one serious mistake in judgment, including going along with those who gave him bad political advice. As one who thought of myself as a Republican, I had to draw the line in 2008, when Sarah Palin was on the ticket with him. I likely would have voted for him, were it not for the prospect that if something happened to him while in office, she would become President. In my view, we dodged a bullet then, but in 2016, a similar bullet found us.

What do we admire about McCain? We know about his heroism as a prisoner of war in in Vietnam, his fight for campaign-finance and immigration reform, and most recently his vote against the repeal of Obamacare, much to the chagrin of the President and most other Republican legislators. We also know about those mistakes, that he had the honesty and authenticity to admit he had made.

He was clearly flawed and didn’t always live up to his own values. But the difference between McCain and what we have now, is that he HAD values and set goals that were beyond what were expedient for him. And he appreciated the critical value of relationships in accomplishing what he thought, and what quite a number of his colleagues in both parties agreed, was best for the country.

The elevation of John McCain seems over the top right now because it’s not just about him. It’s a rebuke to our current President and to his supporters in Congress. Being Republican used to stand for something besides just being in power. I first was a little sad that McCain didn’t stay alive long enough to witness the coming downfall of the current occupant of the White House. That would have been nice karma. But Sen. McCain’s death is the 2-by-4 hitting the Republican Party over the head with the message: Wake up, and clean up your act, or be added, to borrow a phrase from one of the senator’s speeches,  to the ash heap of history.

Getting Used to It

Right-wing talk show host Laura Ingraham raised more than a few eyebrows with her recent comments on immigration – both illegal and legal – that has foisted “massive demographic changes” on this country, so that in some areas at least, “the America we know and love doesn’t seem to exist anymore.” Is she right? As Bill Maher pointed out on his show last week, Fareed Zakaria – certainly no right-wing ideologue – seems to agree in one sense.

“The scale and speed of immigration over the past few decades represent a real issue,” Zakaria has written. “Since 1990, the share of foreign-born people in America has gone from 9 to 15 percent. Most of the new immigrants come from cultures tha are distant and different, and societies can only take so much change in a generation.”

Is this racism? It’s actually about something much deeper: evolution, a process we get more familiar with the longer we live on this planet. It seems folks either resist it or accept it. But as with most life issues, there is a spectrum here. At one end of the scale are those who fight change tooth and nail, and at the other end, those who embrace it with enthusiasm. In the middle, though, there are those who are still on the fence. I submit that it’s OK, even natural, to be a little conflicted about it.

I have noticed a few subtle things. I live in a techie area these days, and in certain movie theaters, among the condiments offered to put on popcorn is curry, reflecting the taste of many of the East Indian tech folks in my area. Curry on popcorn? Another one: I turned on the TV to get updates on an impending disaster in a town where I once lived in the South. Almost all of the people being interviewed there did not have Southern accents. They had moved there from someplace else. For a second, I was a little sad about that. I missed how the locals talked when I lived there.

But clocks do not run backwards. Things will never be the same again, but they aren’t supposed to be. And evolution includes competition. I don’t think it has to be a negative. I like to think that when cultures, religions, even political views are allowed to rub up against each other, the way they do in this country, there is always friction, but  the best ideas seem to survive as the harmful ones fall away. It just takes time.

Those of us who say we embrace change would do well not to look too far down our noses at those who resist it. They may seem to be motivated by hate, but it’s really fear. There are people whose minds will never be changed. But there are many more in the who are unsettled and just not sure. They are the ones who need to be cut some slack and given a little  time to process it all.

Choice and Compromise

Am I pro-life or pro-choice? Can I be both?

It’s a little tougher than walking and chewing gum at the same time. First, I recognize that I shouldn’t be discussing this at all for two big reasons: I am not a woman, and I have no children. But to be brutally honest, I have a hard time shaking some internal conviction that life begins at conception. Another human will potentially be joining us on Earth.

I say this because one of the justifications for abortion is that fetuses don’t quite count until they reach a certain stage, what is called viability. That’s a comforting construction. It relieves us of the thought that abortion might actually involve killing something.

OK, at this point, I can hear the blood in some of you boiling at me. But let me finish. Roe v. Wade is less about defining life than it is about allowing a woman a choice, up to a point in the fetus’s development. I support that choice.

Laws have always been about compromise, about threading needles, turning lofty principles into  workable rules for living down here on this planet. We permit the taking of life under certain circumstances, such as self-defense. And physician-assisted suicide is increasingly allowed. We are starting to accept the notion of choice at the end of life as well as at the beginning.

The determination of the beginning of life is by no means a settled issue in the law. Someone who kills a pregnant woman can be charged with two crimes in many states. And in a few, pregnant women who drink or take drugs are committing child abuse or neglect. Frequently, these are low-income women who have difficulty accessing legal abortion and/or giving up a bad habit.

We make moral compromises all the time. Before we bite into the hamburger, do we think about the fellow being it came from? We didn’t have to look the cow in the eye before it was slaughtered. We comfort ourselves with the thought that the animal was bred for this fate or that protein is good for us. I have not stopped eating meat, though, and probably won’t, as long as it’s legal.

As for the courts, they will always be raising or lowering bars. Since this country’s founding, Supreme Court decisions have sometimes been shockingly unfair, on either side of many issues. What were those justices thinking? we ask. But it seems that even jurists gradually learn to adjust their decisions to accommodate clear moral shifts, or at least to admit reality. That said, I don’t see a nice clean ending to the debate over abortion anytime soon. But I’m not a big fan of euphemisms, either.

When Bleep Happens

I can’t use the word I want, as this will likely be on the radio.

Anyway, when bleep does happen, the first thing we do is search for the reason, and then the blame game starts. How did Trump happen? It was the Russians. No, it was the media giving him too much free publicity. No, it was Hillary, who couldn’t connect with her “deplorables.” Or, how about the Democratic leadership, trying to tube Bernie? As for me, I blame the Electoral College. It was all of those things, maybe more.

Systemic failures usually have many causes – big things and little things that somehow sync up and expose a flaw that wasn’t thought of. With all the backup systems built into nuclear power plants, there are still Three Mile Islands, Chernobyls, and Fukushimas. The levee system designed to protect New Orleans failed in Katrina. The same media that saved our bacon in Watergate couldn’t keep us from getting into a questionable war in Iraq. The system of government our Founding Fathers created, with all its checks and balances, didn’t protect the country from Andrew Jackson, Warren G. Harding, or Donald J. Trump.

No system designed by humans is foolproof. There will always be something that gets by or around it. In some cases, there will be warnings, sometimes loud ones, that go unheeded. But in a way, we can be grateful for failures, because they expose the flaws in the equipment or institutions we depend on. We can address these flaws and build better defenses. The President’s shameful news conference performance in Helsinki hopefully will serve to wake up those of us who have been asleep, in time for November.

We have learned that we do in fact need a wall -- not the kind Mr. Trump talks about, but a cyber-wall to protect us from Russian and possibly other future intruders. Suppose the money budgeted for the next umpteen-zillion-dollar bomber were spent instead on hardening technology?

The ship of state may have a massive hole in it right now, and it has to limp into port for repairs. But I am optimistic that the ship will not sink. Our free press is far from perfect, but this time around, the much-maligned mainstream media have protected us from real catastrophe. Robert Mueller and his team, along with the intelligence community, are telling us exactly what’s been going on, and at least some justice will be done. This particular national nightmare will eventually be over.

Summertime for Hitler?

 I have no children, but like many others, I was moved by the pictures, and especially the sounds, of kids separated from their parents as part of the current administration’s zero-tolerance policy on illegal immigration. We often miss the impact of these stories until we are hit over the head with dramatic 2-by-4s. Remember the little Syrian boy with the red shirt found dead on a Turkish beach after he fled his country?

The comparisons to Nazi Germany have been made: children separated from parents; detention facilities in scattered and usually undisclosed locations; controlled tours of facilities designed to show that things weren’t so bad, and the head of state using the word “infest” to characterize the influx of immigrants. Of course, there is no real comparison to the Holocaust, just echoes, though rather loud ones.

All that said, I’m also interested in getting beyond emotions and symbols to find out what happens now. The President has rescinded the separation policy, and a federal judge has ordered that families be swiftly reunited. But how much has this ill-thought-out program cost so far, and what will it cost in the future? The question of damages and/or reparations will likely come up. Will we taxpayers have to pay that bill?

Then, will the current Congress, or the new one, finally get down to crafting a comprehensive, workable immigration law that imposes reasonable controls on who gets into our country, but is flexible enough to accommodate legitimate asylum-seekers, the Dreamers, needed seasonal workers, and the professionals we seek to fill shortages in certain sectors?

We did relatively little over the years as we watched Syria devolve, but that was an ocean away. Now we have our own little ISIS-type enclave, or violent groups of them, in Central America to deal with, motivated not by twisted religion but by power, greed, and more than a little misogyny, which women and their children understandably want to escape from. What are we, and other countries in our hemisphere, going to do about this? Can’t we see beyond putting up walls?

Too many questions and not enough answers. But I think we have to remember that most of us, as descendants of immigrants, were born here by sheer luck. We didn’t have to lift a finger to be American. If less-fortunate people born in other places want to come here, and we deem them worthy of staying here, we have to help them become the Americans we want them to be, and to make sure we have a government worthy of not only their respect, but our own.

It's Your Life, Anyway

That’s a play on the title of one of my favorite movies, 1981’s “Whose Life Is It, Anyway?” in which Richard Dreyfuss plays a successful sculptor who is left paralyzed from the neck down following a traffic accident and goes to court seeking permission to die.

I am not opposed to assisted suicide, which has now gained a level of acceptance. We allow abortions, so why shouldn’t similar allowances be made on the other end of life? And typically, it is done with friends and family made aware. But the suicide of those who can easily do it themselves is another thing, as in the recent cases of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, and prior to them, Robin Williams and some others. Folks even get a little angry, as in, “They had everything: money, fame, lovers, and maybe even a sense of accomplishment, so what was their problem?” When it’s a celebrity, especially a beloved one, part of the sadness and anger is related to the fact that their gift-giving has ended. We won’t get anything more from them.

The basic fact is, we don’t really know people. We believe that great artists are telling us everything about themselves through their art – but we’re often wrong. We buy into the mask they present to us, which in some cases only adds to the pressure they are under to keep wearing it. And we get upset when it’s torn off.

The problem with suicide is that the perpetrator thinks that he or she is doing it in isolation. Often, the opposite is true. They have, in that moment, forgotten the positive impact they have had on the lives of others…and what awful impact killing themselves will have on those receive the news after they’re gone. There are people in my life I thought disliked me, whom I have resumed contact with on social media in recent years, Now, they’re telling me how great I was earlier on and even how much they learned from me. I sure didn’t get that impression at the time they were learning it.

I bet almost all of us have toyed with the idea of offing ourselves at fleeting moments. One of the hard parts is finding a painless and un-messy way. But there is one overarching reason that I would probably never do it. None of us knows what’s on the “other side.”  I was raised Catholic and was taught that suicide is a mortal sin. And you know where they say mortal sinners go after death. Suppose the Catholics are right? If what they say is true, whatever your situation is here on Earth, if you kill yourself, you will be in a lot deeper doo-doo than you are right now, and it will last forever. It’s not a chance I want to take.

There She Goes...

Wow. The swimsuit competition gone from Miss America? As an old person who watched the pageant as a child (yes, when Bert Parks was there) and who placed an informal bet with other members of the family on which state would win, it takes a minute to absorb this news.

One moment that stood out to me was in the 1961 pageant, when, as I recall, Miss Michigan’s high heel broke during the swimsuit portion. She simply kicked off the other shoe and walked the runway barefoot. “Who walks in high heels while wearing a bathing suit, anyway?”  she said during her personality interview -- and went on to win the Miss America crown.

Along came women’s lib, and it became much more difficult to defend the usefulness of beauty pageants. But I tried. I reasoned that many of these young women were interested in careers in modeling, the media, and public relations, or even politics, and their gift of beauty gave them a leg up, if you’ll pardon the expression, in pursuit of these goals, through the training, exposure, and scholarship money that was provided by the pageant experience and by the ensuing reign as the winner. The argument sounded more and more hollow with time, but it will always be the human experience that beauty opens doors, and it will continue to do so, unfair as it may seem.

Typical Americans, though -- we turn everything into an Olympic sport, even cupcake-baking. If Miss America remains a competition, will the participants have the opportunity to advance a cause that currently gets insufficient attention? That could be a good thing.

We are indeed in a revolutionary period, much like the French one. First it was sports figures in trouble, Then, Confederate flags and statues were toppled. Then #metoo. Many of our Hollywood and media, and even political icons have been pulled down from their pedestals, and we have to keep the baskets moving to catch all the rolling heads as cultural standards change.

But as we older people live longer, one of the side effects is seeing history dissolve in front of us. And we are all supposed to be clapping loudly. As new generations come along, it seems easy for younger people to quickly make it in leaps and bounds up to the moral high ground. Pardon us, but I hope we older folks get a little extra time to make the climb  -- and to adjust to breathing the air up there when we arrive.

The Velvet Rope

I never liked Roseanne Barr. I know she came to our attention as a working-class Everywoman, not the usual glamorous types we were used to seeing on small and big screens, but when I look at a screen, I don’t necessarily want to see Everywoman. That’s my problem, I guess. But even in the modern era, a little celebrity doesn’t give anyone the right to say just anything. I will amend that to say, they have the right, perhaps, but no immunity, as I have said many times, from consequences afterward.

What on Earth possessed Ms. Barr to fire off a racially offensive Tweet about former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett? It was mean and ugly, and while Ms. Barr later apologized and called it a joke, and even blamed Ambien use, there was nothing funny about it, which is required of a joke. ABC had absolutely no choice but to cancel her comeback.

There are some who think we are all basically racist. I go along with that, in the following sense: If all of a sudden, the world was a high school lunchroom, and we could sit with whomever we wanted, almost all of us would sit with members of our own tribe, our own color. If we are white, we might sit with an individual black or brown friend. But would we automatically think about looking for a seat at the black or brown table? We would probably not want to head for a table where we felt unwelcome. And they would reasonably feel the same way about our table.

There may be natural repulsions at work here, buried way more deeply than whatever we have absorbed from our culture. And I think allowances have to be made for them until they are naturally overcome, which takes time. Emancipation proclamations and civil rights laws do not by themselves make those feelings go away. Having said that, there are rules of the road, there are thoughts that we just don’t express, lines that we just don’t cross, in an enlightened society. On TV, I heard Sherrilyn Ifill talk about a “velvet rope,” like there used to be at movie theaters – we could easily cross it, but we just didn’t. Whatever license we think the Internet or President Trump himself may have issued to others who believe they have been freed to give voice to ugly sentiments, Barr jumped over that velvet rope. Or maybe crawled under it, is a better way to say it.

Racism has deep emotional and even sexual roots. We may have the fairest of minds, but our feelings don’t always catch up with them. I think that is eminently human.  But as individuals, the first step in the healing process is acknowledging those feelings in ourselves, making sure at the same time we are always keeping our minds open to new ways of looking at and hearing others. We are healed when our feelings catch up with our better angels, and we find out that we are all in this together.

The Missiles of April

With the missile attack on chemical weapons facilities in Syria, the U.S., along with Britain and France this time, slapped a new coat of paint on the “red line,” apparently crossed again by the Assad regime. Moved by pictures of civilians suffering in agony following the chemical attack, President Trump called Bashir al-Assad an “animal” and warned that American missiles would fly – which they did.

The only trouble with the red line, first laid down by President Obama, is that it was not only late, but painted in the wrong place. While there was a lot of talk about how the civilized world could not tolerate the use of chemical weapons, especially against civilians, it had tolerated seven years in which conventional military assaults, including shelling, attacks from the air, and the use of the less-conventional but horrendous barrel bombs, were perpetrated on Syrian civilians.

Mr. Assad, an ophthalmologist by training, was initially seen as somewhat progressive after coming to power in Syria. He had a distinctly distorted view, however, of what were mostly peaceful protests during the Arab spring. Convinced they were the work of terrorists planning to overthrow him, he unleashed his military on city populations in his country. Cable news covered all this night after night. CNN had two brave female reporters in the thick of things, while panelists like the late Fouad Ajami wondered how long the West would put up with Assad’s atrocities.

Two years later, President Obama wanted to do something about it following news of a chemical attack, drawing the red line in the sand. Along came the Russians, who said they would make their ally Assad give up his chemical weapons. But he remained in power, and conventional atrocities continued, with the assistance of the Russians, who convinced us they were also helping to fight ISIS.

But the internal civil war raged on in Syria. Hundreds of thousands died, millions more were displaced, many of them drowning as overburdened refugee boats crossed the Mediterranean. The hordes arrived in a largely unwelcoming Europe, though Germany agree to take in a million survivors, while we virtually shut our doors.

OK. After Iraq and Afghanistan, we were war-weary, and Syria was so not our problem. But “not our problem” makes it everyone’s problem. Were we complicit in this tragedy by doing nothing? We insist we are not in favor of regime change, but if any situation calls for it, it’s this one. It’s a real pipe dream on my part, but could we work with the other players in the region to help rebuild Syria after Assad is removed?

The boundaries of Syria, Iraq and a few other countries in the Middle East were drawn by two men, one English and one French, after World War I. They did it armed with a map and rulers. I hope the world can somehow do better by this region going forward, pipe-dreamy as that may sound.

Take My Data...Please

The outrage over Facebook supplying personal user data to Cambridge Analytica, when you put it all into perspective, is about nothing that new. Facebook is a media company dedicated to delivering eyeballs to other entities that seek to persuade us to buy something or believe something.

Broadcast media have long targeted demographics. When I worked in radio programmers at my station went after the cherished 25-54-year-old demo, the group said to have the biggest buying power. TV and radio stations pursued ratings to show advertisers they could deliver those eyeballs or eardrums. Advertisers use greed, fear, and of course, sex, to convert users into buyers. For years,  the target – the demo – has been the broad side of a barn. The only thing different is the accuracy of the targeting, thanks to the information at hand. As for the barn, well, the privacy horse left it long ago.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he is not opposed to regulation, but the issue is the kind of regulation. Keeping our personal information away from advertisers or political entities is a non-starter, though, as it’s the basic media business model. Facebook doesn’t charge us as individuals for using its service. That said, these social media platforms should be required to educate users about what’s happening with their data – and that means going way beyond a fine-print user agreement that nobody reads. And Facebook does have to keep track of who gets this data and how it is used, what apps are doing with it…and by the way, keep those clients out of our Friends lists. Just as an aside: if we want our data kept from prying eyes, would we be willing to pay for belonging to Facebook?

It may be in fashion now to hate Facebook, but most of us like keeping up with friends and family, and social media have allowed us to reconnect with people long since forgotten. I work from home and have no co-workers, so Facebook allows me to maintain ties with former colleagues. True, these contacts are no substitute for actual human interaction, but I still think they’re better than nothing. At its best, Facebook offers a reminder in our low points in life that whatever the situation, we are not alone.

We users are not victims, unless we allow ourselves to be.  If we want privacy, we have control of the switch or the plug and can always turn it off or pull it out. But if we do want to use these media, we have choices, and it’s our responsibility to choose those that best serve and inform us, and for which we are willing to sacrifice some level of privacy.  We can also teach our kids how to make the best choices, and impress upon them that in the end, we are our own editors, in control of our eyeballs, eardrums…and brains.

Daylight Shifting Time

That’s what they should call it, because it really doesn’t save anything. There are the same number of hours of daylight and darkness, however you slice it. But the debate over DST’s benefits has had a long history – a century of it, in fact.

The U.S. did not invent it. Apparently, it was the Germans who did so on the grounds of conserving fuel during World War I. In this country, President Roosevelt made it a year-round thing during World War II – it was called War Time, but it didn’t last. Congress has fussed with it on and off since then. It used to run only from April to October. More recently, it was extended from March to November. Unfortunately, some of my older electronic devices did not get the message. They automatically switch under the original schedule. So, I have to reset timers four times a year instead of two.

As to the benefits, I love the long twilit evenings, but would it work as a year-long thing? Proponents, mostly business people, say year-round DST would be better for the economy because it would promote more shopping, recreation and entertainment. Would it save energy? That record is much spottier. Opponents have long argued that children would die because of accidents related to their having to get up in the dark in winter to go to school. And there are those who argue that we should just pick one time scheme and stick to it, due to the bad health effects of “instant summer and instant winter,” and traffic accidents related to it.

The federal government has largely taken control of this issue, but the dumbest thing, IMHO, is that the law still allows states to decide whether to observe DST or not. We are now down to only two states that don’t: Arizona and Hawaii.  In Arizona, by the way, the state doesn’t recognize daylight saving, but the Navajo nation does on its tribal lands. Puerto Rico and other US territories don’t. But now, here comes Florida, planning to observe it all year.

I think the time should be the time, and that we should pick one nationwide scheme and be done with it. Now, I live in a latitude where if Standard Time were in effect year-round, the 4:45 am birds that wake me up in late spring and high summer would be doing so at 3:45 a.m. At least with one scheme, though, the jarring effects of time-shifting and the inconvenience of clock-setting would go away, and we might appreciate the seasons more. My vote is to keep Standard Time all year. I’ll live with the birds if it keeps the school kids safe. However, as a fallback position, so to speak, how about DST from the first day of spring to the first day of autumn? OK, OK, it was just a thought.

Revolution by Hashtag

Genuine national movements – those that involve a major part of the population, used to be pretty rare. I am old enough to remember the last ones, which really got going some 50 years ago. The civil rights movement swept the South, and anger over injustice and assassination swept north and west, and cities burned. Then the whole country seemed to turn against the Vietnam War, forcing President Johnson to give up the idea of running for a new term. There were revolutions in sexual mores, and clothing. Men’s hair got longer and women’s skirts shorter. Culturally, we would never be the same again.

Half a century on, the #metoo movement is one of those revolutionary culture-changers. And now there is #neveragain, teens leading the charge for gun control. Though the subterranean forces of change have been at work all along, these movements have erupted like wildfires racing through dry brush, thanks to ubiquitous connectivity and that previously little-used thing on our keypads, the hashtag.

More people are hitting the streets for more reasons than ever before. Certainly, more are running for office than ever before. It seems like history is being made constantly now. We don’t have to wait for the future judgment of historians as to whether any of it was important enough to make it into their books.

As is often pointed out, one big modern challenge is dealing with the compression of events in time. Things that took decades gradually only took years, then only months, then only weeks. Today, even the so-called 24-hour news cycle seems too long. And, of course, another challenge is that the hashtag is a tool available to anyone, including those who may not have what we might think of as benign intentions. They could start their own revolutions.

For the moment, though, the most dangerous place to stand is on the wrong side of one of these hashtags. We will only get run over.

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Tell Me Why

OK, so you are the proud owner of an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. I don’t think you’re evil. I just don’t understand why this is so important in your life. So you have to help me out a little here.

Maybe you’re a collector. That I get. I was in the news business and used to listen to police scanner radios at work. It then became a hobby with me, and when the latest radio came out, I was the first to get it. I didn’t own every radio made, but I was good at picking out the classic ones, which I still have. They are not just decoration. It’s important to me that each one functions. So if you own a gun, I can see that it’s more than just something for a display case – it has to work.

Maybe you just like testing the limits of the gun, what it can do, how accurate it is. Maybe it’s target practice, hitting a bull’s eye, or maybe mowing down empty cans or bottles on a stone fence. Maybe it’s your release, your way of relaxing.

Maybe you’re a hunter. I won’t think ill of you if you’re hunting un-endangered animals, maybe to help thin out a herd or get rid of real pests. It’s not something I would do, but I’m not you. I wasn’t raised with it, maybe you were. You do have to ‘splain to me, however, why you need an AR-15 for that purpose, I don’t see the sport in it, and it doesn’t seem fair to the animal somehow.

I’m having a little more trouble with the other potential reasons. Perhaps you own the gun because it makes you feel safer and gives you the assurance that you can protect yourself and your family. Fine, but against what, exactly? Somebody breaking into your house with evil intent? Wouldn’t a simple handgun work for that? Do you envision multiple people breaking in, is that it? Or do you need it for the time after the earthquake when the ravenous hordes threaten you? So how many hordes must you hold off? 

Do you have the weapon just in case your government goes bad and it might want to disarm and enslave you? Or some other government’s army invades the country, and as a patriot, you have to defend your homeland? I like war movies too…but, really?

It’s some of the personal reasons that worry me the most. Do you secretly think of yourself as weak, and the gun makes you feel more powerful? Do you want to be respected, and perhaps even a little bit feared, like nobody better f*** with you? Or, do you just want to be noticed and remembered, make a splash, so the world will know you were here, that you counted for something?

Maybe all this is none of my damn business. OK. But if you don’t want to answer these questions for me, at least answer them honestly for yourself, and please think long and hard about why your answers make sense.

Running With the Ball

I would like to impress you with some game-changing profundity about school shootings, but I can’t. Those more eloquent than I have long since covered that ground. And we are all repeating ourselves anyway. The only thing that’s significantly different now is the timing. The Parkland, Florida tragedy has presented those concerned about guns with an opportunity.

Maybe some of us are a little tired of the idea that guns represent an insoluble problem and that the NRA has an unbreakable stranglehold on the electoral process. But it’s still only February, and the congressional election, along with the ones for many state and local offices, are months away – plenty of time to start identifying legislators who have taken campaign money from the NRA and putting up candidates against them who refuse to do so. Single-issue politics? More like football. It’s about running with the ball that’s been thrown and caught. Football is about focusing on a single objective: getting the ball across the goal line.

We also hear the refrain that mass shootings are the new normal, that the repetition of these events has forced us to numb ourselves to the pain because there is no other choice. I believe the opposite, that the cumulative effect of shooting after shooting has finally reached a tipping point. Now, it’s school kids themselves accusing their government of failing them. Can they energize a movement where no one else could?

In football, most passes are not touchdown runs. The term “rushing” is a little curious, as most drives to the goal consist not of those big forward pushes but of many little advances -- and the movement is not always forward. Why did the FBI drop the ball on warnings about the Florida shooter?  But life, like football, is about seeing opportunities, taking advantage of them, and persevering until the ball is carried into the end zone, so to speak.

How many of us can remember when it seemed that everyone smoked? I did, most of my friends did, and most everyone in movies and TV did. Now, smokers, of tobacco at least, are a dwindling number. Smoking is thought of as not only unhealthy but inconsiderate of others, and smokers find it more and more difficult to indulge their habit, as venues for it disappear and the prices for cigarettes shoot through the roof. Smoking is still legal, but it’s no longer celebrated, just tolerated. Who would have foreseen that in 1960? This is how it has to be with guns in this country, for change to happen. Will today’s teenagers – the ones who will grow up to be tomorrow’s legislators -- be our ball-carriers on this drive?

Start 'Em Young

The #metoo and #timesup movements caused a strange leap in my mind. I thought of Emily Post, the iconic American author best known for her books on manners. I know this is going to sound like gross trivialization of a very serious subject. But stay with me.

When we hear the word “manners,” we typically think of little things that apply to family mealtimes: not putting elbows on the table, passing the dinner rolls to others before we take one for ourselves, or to make it current, not texting our friends after we sit down.

At their core, manners are about respect for others. The child at the dinner table takes his smartphone out of his pocket to text. He thinks he’s entitled to use it. Maybe you are a parent who happens to have an instinctively empathetic kid who knows not to do that because of the disrespect to others at the table. More likely, though, you don’t, and you have to teach him that there is a time and a place for texting, and the dinner table isn’t one of them.

So here’s the connection. Men in positions of power may come to believe they are entitled to certain behavior when it comes to women over whom they have authority, as in the workplace. Where did they learn this? I submit that it’s more about what they didn’t learn growing up, or perhaps forgot. I heard part of a radio series last week called Beyond #metoo. One of the segments featured a program in a Northern California middle school to teach boys about respecting girls. It is run by athletic coaches, as these are the figures many boys relate to as mentors. The boys are taught not only to respect girls themselves, but to intervene if they see other boys disrespecting them.

The shaming of abusive men in power is just the beginning of what needs to happen. Males must be taught as children what respect for women is. And the other part of this is that girls must be taught to respect themselves, to learn the power of the word NO, when to use it, and the remedies available it a male in their life doesn’t hear it.

Some half a century before women were granted the right to vote in this country, a noted female religious writer weighed in on the issue women’s suffrage. She said she hoped it would be granted someday. But in the meantime, she said, society should put its efforts into raising what she called a “nobler race for legislation” with “higher aims and motives.” By “race,” I believe she meant those who would create and administer our laws. I think we can all agree that we are badly in need of noble legislators -- noble male and female leaders. Parents and mentors had better get to the business of raising them.