We're Lucky to Have a Country

Ken Burns’ “The American Revolution” makes it quite clear that the birth of this nation followed a long and painful labor. We may think we won the war against the British, but one of my takeaways from the TV series is that what really ended the war for both sides after eight years was sheer exhaustion and the lack of resources to continue. Britain could have carried on the fight to hang on to her colonies but ran out of the necessary patience and the willingness to spend more money.

And not everyone here was a revolutionary. There were many loyalists who steadfastly supported the British side. After all, they weren’t that many generations away from being born in Britain. When the war was over, a sizeable number of them boarded ships and went to the place they preferred to call home.

I learned a few things about George Washington too. He was a good general, winning battles in Boston and at Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey. But he also suffered some humiliating defeats, especially in New York and at Brandywine, Pennsylvania, before achieving final victory with the siege of Yorktown in Virginia. The men he commanded may have been passionate about fighting for their new country at first, but after a while, were more concerned with not getting fed or paid consistently. Washington’s real skill was keeping his army together, in spite of these challenges.

But he wasn’t kind to Native Americans who had sided with the enemy.  He took serious revenge on the Iroquois and ordered his own forces to not only destroy their settlements but dig up all their crops to boot.

Indians fought on both sides during the war, as did Black people. Slavery had been practiced or at least tolerated in the colonies, and Black slaves aligned themselves with whichever side they thought could give them the best deal, including their freedom.

The work of building a real country came after the war ended. Connecting all the parts of that famous Join or Die snake and coming up with the Constitution and then getting all the states to ratify it, was a years-long process. Vermont was a separate country until it joined the Union in 1791. Uprisings by groups of citizens disgruntled for one reason or another were pretty common. The Americans and the British returned to hostilities in 1812. But the nation survived, even past the biggest rock in the road, the Civil War.

These days, though, we seem to be trying out a different kind of country. How is that going for us? If you’re asking me, in spite of all its flaws, I kind of miss the older model.

Me Too, Chapter 2?

 The vote in the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking saga is now in, and almost all legislators in Congress agree that the FBI files in the case should be released. Some may be grateful to put this behind and get back to what they feel are more important things. But this certainly IS an important thing right now.

There has been a debate over the application of the word “pedophilia” to the Epstein story. Arguments have been made that this term shouldn’t be used in this case because it implies sexual offenses involving very young children, not the teenage girls who were the victims in Epstein’s ring. According to textbook definitions, those who make that argument are technically correct: the P word applies to prepubescent children.

There are wide legal and cultural variations around the world as to just when a girl becomes a woman. May-December relationships happen, and some turn into successful marriages.

But of course, that’s not what we’re talking about here, and hair-splitting over words almost misses the point. If you don’t like the P word, there should be no argument about the T word: trafficking. And it applies to more than just minors. When a girl in this country becomes a legal adult at age 18, she could still be a victim. In fact, the social services community recognizes the concept of transitional age youth, or TAY, which includes people up to 25 years old, an age at which many young women remain vulnerable to predators. Reaching legal adulthood should mean that women are all fully their own agents and always make rational decisions without pressure. I think we can agree that is not quite the case.

The sex trafficking in the Epstein ring was on an industrial scale, said to be valued at a billion dollars. It operated for decades and had in the neighborhood of a thousand victims. But how many other, lower-level Jeffrey Epsteins are out there, and what is the priority for investigating them? Are these crimes getting as much attention as they deserve, especially in our federal law enforcement arena? I think there’s a bigger social picture here, and a little zooming out is in order.

In the Me Too movement of a few years back, the names of men who used their wealth and power for the sexual exploitation of women were revealed. While relatively few were charged with crimes, many, including legislators, Hollywood executives, and even prominent journalists, fell precipitously from grace, and only some have managed to resurface. This is going to happen again, and maybe it needs to, but we had better brace ourselves for it.

 

Would the Real Me Please Stand Up

 

(text version of podcast)

AI has gotten so good now that it is easy to fool us. Audio and video representations of an individual who appears to be saying or doing certain things are almost perfect. You may even be wondering if you are now really hearing MY voice.

My podcast usually runs about three or four minutes, but it often takes me several hours to produce. First, of course, I have to write it. Then I have to read the script aloud and record it. Even if I believe I have read a commentary perfectly, I usually make about half a dozen small boo-boos. To come up with a finished product, I record three versions. I pick the best one as a base, then go in and replace a bad section with the same section from one of the other two versions, where I hopefully have not made the same error. Just so you know, I record the three versions one after another so that my voice sounds the same in the cutting-and-pasting process. So that’s how this sausage is made.

But why spend all this time, you may ask. There is a program out there whereby I could just provide a sample of my voice, send the script in, and the program would spit out me reading it perfectly in one take. You probably wouldn’t notice or care that its AI. But I do.

I have an artist friend who paints stylized portraits of people on commission from photos they send her. Maybe it takes her a day or two to come up with her finished product. But for years now, there have been programs to which you can send photos of yourself, and you will get back 50 versions of you in minutes. My artist friend worries about losing business, and says Ai might have even stolen some of her technique.

I tell her this: If people want to hang the Mona Lisa or paintings by Van Gogh or Gainsborough on their living room walls, they can easily have copies made and do it. But for the most part, they don’t. They want to hang originals on their walls, and since they can’t afford those masterpieces, they choose the work of lesser-known artists, because they are proud to own and display genuine originals, or at least a signed print.

While it may be of no ongoing financial comfort to my artist friend, those of us who own one of her paintings prize her original work, and it is more valuable than anything AI could come up with.

So I will continue to record these podcasts in my old-fashioned Boomer way. As Sammy Davis Jr. once sang, I just gotta be me.

Logging Off

 

I am losing patience with this macabre scorekeeping, in which participants on opposite sides of the political spectrum try to tell us which side is guilty of more mass shootings or high-profile assassinations. The important score is the total number of victims, and it’s sad that Charlie Kirk had to be added to it, no matter what you think of his politics. But TV host Bill Maher raises an important point: Many of the perpetrators of these crimes are not on anyone’s team, so to speak, as they are usually lone wolves with their own set of motivations and delusions.

But the next part of this game is fixing blame on an institution. Is it social media, which the governor of Utah called a “cancer?” He then urged us to log off.

I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with social media. They offer us human connection. But I do think many humans just can’t use them responsibly. It’s the easy access to an audience that drives some to use social media for good or ill, and it seems like the latter is winning.

But if users are having trouble acting responsibly, how about those running these companies? Their platforms’ algorithms are good at activating users. But are they dividing us by sparking rage against the “other side”? And what can we do about it?

Logging off is a start, but for how long? If a majority of users logged off for one day, they would send a message to the social media companies to change their ways. If the log-off period were longer, the message would be louder, and might even impact them financially. But would there be real change?

There is always the nuclear option: the repeal of Section 230, which currently protects the social media giants, and their users, from legal liability for what is published. The protection was useful in earlier days, but if those running these platforms aren’t able to control what they have created, repeal of 230 may be the only way to tame these tigers. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but it may have to.

In the meantime, there’s a danger that if we all log off, we will tune out too – not good, at a time when it’s vital that we all stay engaged with what’s going on out there.

 

Is Listening In...Now Out?

 

Some may remember the old TV show “Car 54, Where Are You?” The city of Oakland has now joined some other California jurisdictions that are encrypting police radio calls, which means that the location of Car 54 is none of the public’s business anymore.

I worked for decades as a radio station news director in Southern California. Not long after I moved away, I learned that my former home city had signed on to a regional encrypted communications system. There, anyone at home with a radio scanner can no longer hear their local police traffic. Have listeners been deprived of a public right?

For me, the answer had always been an unequivocal YES. The scanner in our newsroom was a critical piece of equipment when major incidents occurred that required police response, and we made sure that our own listeners, many of whom were taxpayers, were kept in the know as we followed up on those stories. In the case of a fatal traffic accident, a jewelry store holdup, or a school shooting, the public needs the information.

The California Department of Justice hasn’t mandated encryption, but has directed police agencies to prevent confidential criminal justice material and personal identifiable information from disclosure in radio transmissions. Police departments have found that total encryption is the simplest way to meet this standard. Plus, it’s argued that the safety of police officers is at risk if listener access continues. State Senator Josh Becker has authored legislation to fight the total encryption trend in the interest of public transparency, but so far, his effort have been unsuccessful.

These days, I can see both sides. If I were a police officer on patrol, I might wonder if being “live on the air “has anything to do with my job, which is enforcing the law. Does the public really need to hear my every move in “making the sausage,” so to speak? In many jurisdictions, officers are required to wear body cameras, so they’re already making videos of their performance, just not live ones.

The scanner isn’t completely silent, though. Even in areas where police calls are encrypted, fire department traffic typically is not, so the public still can listen to firefighters responding to incidents. And in the modern world, there are many other electronic means of communicating vital public safety information.

If it were up to me, I would allow routine police patrol channels to be open to listeners, or at least give news media such access. Many police departments can easily switch to encrypted channels in sensitive situations. There is room for compromise here, but whatever side you’re on, I guess that in the end, what’s most important is how the sausage comes out.

 

Happy National Radio Day

 If commercial radio had a Golden Age, I grew up in a big part of it!

First, as a child, I lived in New York City. On WINS 1010, there was Murray the K, who aired the latest Beatles songs as they were phoned into him from the UK. On WABC, there was Dan Ingram. On WMCA, there was Barry Gray’s talk show at night. On WOR, Dr. Carlton Fredericks warned us every Sunday afternoon of the dangers of cholesterol, way before that was cool.

I attended a summer camp in Maine when I was a boy, and occasionally we would go on hiking trips, sleeping overnight. I couldn’t sleep well outside at night, so I played with my 6-transistor Sony portable radio. The first station I tuned in was WCFL in Chicago. CHICAGO, I thought, amazing! Then there was WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia, WOWO in Fort Wayne, Indiana, WCCO in Minneapolis, and KMOX in St. Louis. I was so excited I wanted to tell the other campers, except it was midnight, and I had to wait until morning.

Later, I would have a show at my college station. My first real commercial job was at New York’s WCBS 880, shortly after its all-news format was introduced. As a lowly desk assistant, I had to bring copy to anchors such as Charles Osgood. Ed Bradley, a reporter, sent me a Christmas card. I went on to work at stations in Central Virginia and Palm Springs, California. I never wanted to be on TV. Radio was my thing.

Now, I have nothing against the internet, which like most of us, I use all the time. Even accessing a podcast from a car involves radio waves. You just can’t get  away from it.

There are those times when your local radio station may save your life. If there is a disaster of significance where you live or work, access to the internet and the broadband networks may be difficult or impossible. Your power may be out, and  you won’t be able to see cable TV or your local TV stations. But chances are, you have an old-fashioned battery-operated receiver to hear local radio stations still on the air, telling you what you need to know. There may be fewer of those, as the powers-that-be in the federal government don’t want to fund public radio stations anymore. Sad!

Many think that radio, as we have come to know it, is dying. Not me!  After all, conventional radio is the only free medium whose content you can consume while you do other stuff, without being tied to a printed page or a screen. I think we still need it.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Nothing like a good conspiracy to spice up the summer headlines, as if they needed spice these days. Now there is a burgeoning demand for releasing government files on the late Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender accused of the abuse and sex trafficking of minors, who died six years ago after killing himself in jail – or so we have been told.

Epstein had a large social coterie of rich and powerful people, some of whom may have  been his clients seeking sex with teenage girls. First, the government implied there was a client list, but later denied it. This has only intensified the call to release all the federal files in the case.

Those seeking the release want names, names, names – including those of people who partied with Epstein or flew to his private island or possibly committed crimes themselves -- people it is alleged that the government has been protecting from exposure. It should be noted that there are many names out there already, available not only from news accounts but from public court transcripts. But for many observers, that’s not good enough.

Just being named could cause considerable embarrassment or even shame. The court of public opinion is sometimes far less forgiving than our judicial system. Is it fair that everyone in Epstein’s circle, including those only there to hobknob with other rich and powerful people, be shamed?

There is another layer, though -- people connected to Epstein who knew about his sexual activity but failed to report it. Should they have said something?

Some names will likely never be released officially, such as those of key witnesses who contributed to the investigation and, of course, those of the victims.

Suppose the release of the Epstein files happens but doesn’t do the political damage that is expected or fails to confirm the elements of conspiracy theories. Will we be hearing about it forever, when there is so much else going on?

I certainly would like to see criminal and/or moral justice done, wherever the chips may fall, but I pray that it happens quickly. We do have to remember that the Epstein case includes real teenage victims. Those still living are adults now but could be forced by the resurfacing of this story to relive their trauma while many of the rest of us are publicly obsessing about it. That’s the part that’s really not fair.

 

Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda...and Oughta

It absolutely never fails. A great disaster comes along, followed very shortly thereafter, maybe too shortly, by the critics needing to pin the blame on somebody.  In the case of the Texas Hill Country flood, some Democratic leaders pointed to the Trump administration’s funding cuts to the National Weather Service.

If blame is to be accurately fixed, it should go way back before this and spread out among many people. It’s said that almost a decade ago, the Texas legislature failed to approve money for a siren system to alert those along the Guadalupe River to a flood emergency. There has been much talk about it since, but no impetus for action until now.

As for the Weather Service, it did issue warnings before the flood, and there were extra staff members on duty. The reported lack of an experienced NWS emergency coordinator due to his taking early retirement in the DOGE days has been cited, but I’m willing to bet that the individual didn’t leave the job with key information trapped in his head. I’m sure that procedures were written down for others to follow. It’s government, remember. But did people receive the warnings?

We are so digitally connected now that we think we will always get the message when something is wrong. Really? Even in a hilly place where connections to a cell tower may be spotty? And when people are on vacation, some are there because they DON’T want to be connected to the outside world.

Sirens seem so old-fashioned as a means of getting our attention. So what, if the job gets done? More modern but still old tech, and cheap, is the NOAA weather radio, which will wake folks up if an alarm is sounded.

All of this said, when the analysis of this Texas flood response is done, it will turn up not only procedural but human errors. You can have all the machinery in place, but it has to be used correctly. And there have to be layers of redundancy, so that if a ball is dropped, it will be picked up somewhere else.

Things have changed over the years, like the climate, ya think? Sure, the Guadalupe River area had seen flash floods before, but nothing like this. You can put the Palisades and Eaton firestorms in a similar category: Santa Ana winds, even severe, had hit Southern California many times, but nothing quite like the 100-mph blast last winter. There will be plenty more of these incidents, and we had better get on top of the learning curve about how to be ready for them.

 

Even in Palm Springs

 

Palm Springs, California, is not a strange place to headline writers. All kinds of stories from this international resort region make the news, via celebrity sightings and their occasional misdeeds, Presidential visits, Coachella fashion, major golf and tennis tournaments, the odd wildfire and earthquake, and its lovely winter weather, spring sandstorms, and 120-degree heat in summer. But a bombing?

I speak from some experience, as I was a radio news director in the city for the better part of three decades, and I just don’t remember one of those. One of the elements that makes this big news, of course, is that such things just aren’t supposed to happen in a place like Palm Springs.  But now that this unfortunate box has been checked, I have noticed a familiar pattern about the aftermath.

First, the news conferences put on by the authorities aren’t that much help, information-wise. “it’s under investigation.” In this case, the cops and city officials used a good portion of their time to send a “Palm Springs Strong” message. That may seem a little beside the point, but Palm Springs, while officially a city, is a small one, and a tight-knit community that needs to hear such things right now.

The next phase is, now that the deceased bomber’s name is known, every single moment of his life has become a subject of intense interest to determine a motive. There is usually a third thing, the “woulda, coulda, shoulda” phase, in which the goal is to find out what signals were missed before the incident and who missed them.

The really unusual part of this is, the perpetrator’s apparent motive for targeting an IVF facility. I must confess I was unfamiliar with the “anti-natalist” movement. Apparently, these are folks who believe that it’s cruel to bring a child into the world, who will only face suffering. Of all the demons that prompt someone to commit violent acts, these are the darkest I have ever heard of.

It should never have happened in Palm Springs, but it did. It’s just the latest reminder that such things can happen just about anywhere, and over time, probably will. But life, as they say, goes on, and we can be grateful for how many incidents like this don’t happen, not only because of the diligence of police investigators, but because neighbors and others in their own communities are able to see what’s coming and take action. I do enjoy the internet and social media – except when these seem to fuel fires that might otherwise burn themselves out.

 

Owning It

President Trump, who likes to surprise and shock, did it again by suggesting that the US should “own” the Gaza Strip and transform it into the Riviera of the Middle East after the immense damage caused by Israel’s war with Hamas. His idea has not been received well by countries in the region – especially the part about moving almost two million Palestinians out of the territory while the rubble is cleaned up.

It's useful to remember that among the roles Mr. Trump had before he was President was that of developer. Developers are drawn to see opportunity where there is a depressed area. The only problem with such ideas is that there are often people in the way. You might think, as Mr. Trump does, that those who lived in Gaza before the war could not possibly want to stay there now amid all the rubble. Except that’s what many are doing, as it’s their home. They can’t just leave forever.

Our country does own something: the responsibility for helping to rebuild Gaza. We might think that’s not our job. But among the debris on the ground that Gazan children are playing with are the remains of bombs with “Made in the USA” on them, or words to that effect, as we supplied many of the bombs Israel has dropped during the war. At the very least, it’s a serious optics issue for us.

What Gaza needs is kind of a Marshall Plan, named after George C. Marshall, the American general and Secretary of State who put forth the idea of the US helping Western Europe recover from the ravages of World War II. Among the countries it benefited was our former enemy in that conflict, Germany. The goal was simply to help these places get back on their feet, not to take them over permanently.

I actually don’t have a problem with what appears to be part of Mr. Trump’s vision. Gaza’s long Mediterranean coastline is a valuable asset, and resort hotels being built on portions of it could be a significant source of income for the territory, or autonomous region, or enclave, whatever Gaza is called. Maybe someday it could be an independent country, preferably without Hamas in charge.

Does the Israeli-Palestinian conflict need a two-state solution? It almost could be three states, since the Palestinians in Gaza are said to be different from their brethren in the West Bank, and unified governance might be difficult. But let’s not get ahead of our skis, as they say – the war isn’t quite over yet.

Birthright

 

If you were born here, you are an American. That’s what the Constitution says, and that’s what a federal judge said in response to our new President’s attempt to eliminate birthright citizenship by executive order.

That judge is right. But if it were up to me, and I had a magic wand, I would add one wrinkle. Even if you were born here, when you turned 21, you would, if capable, have to take the same civics test given to immigrants seeking citizenship, which demands at least a minimal knowledge of how our country works. If you failed, you would have to take a civics course and try again.

Why would I even suggest such a thing? I think it’s because it appears to me that many of us who were born here believe that it makes us better than others who weren’t, especially where race is involved. But we can’t take credit for being born here. We were just lucky, or if you prefer, blessed.

The same, by the way, goes for race. I am Caucasian, but I had nothing to do with that. Before I was born, God did not show me a bunch of color swatches like in a paint store. I did not get to say, “I think I’ll go with beige today.”

My proposal has exclusions. Native Americans would not have to take the civics test. They were here first. Black people who are descendants of slaves would be excused from the requirement as well, because their ancestors were imported here against their will.

It may seem contradictory, but I would not have a problem with someone foreign-born being elected a US President. That individual would have to be a naturalized citizen for at least 25 years and would have to have resided here during that time. This would open the door to talented people with a love of this country who are currently shut out of the Presidential election process. Yes, it could open it up to bad people too, but history shows that the current US birth requirement hasn’t always produced the best results.

OK, calm down folks, these are just ideas I have been playing with in my head. It’s unlikely that anybody is going to change the law in the near future – amending the Constitution is difficult, and it should be. And my ideas would just call for more bureaucrats for administration anyway. But I have a persistent conviction that being American is more than just a question of geography.