What Can't I Handle?

I am tired of people trying to censor ideas because they don't agree with them.

I don't agree with plenty of people, but I let them speak.  Voltaire said, "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."  I'm not so sure that I'd die for something trivial, but I still believe that people have the right to say things I don't want to hear.

I don't want to hear, for example, commentary ad nauseum about Barack Obama's speech at Notre Dame's graduation.  He said what he said, which I thought was pretty measured.  Let people think for themselves.

I don't want to hear the KKK or Nazi apologists spout racial and religious hatred, which includes hate speech against not only Jews but Muslims and Christians and whoever else they have in their sights.  I don't want to hear Bill Maher go on one of his anti-religion rants.  But the Constitution guarantees, despite the ill-considered Patriot Act, the freedom of speech.  If I get too offended, I can switch channels, turn off the television, read a book, poke Q-tips through my ear drums, listen to the Jonas Brothers, push bamboo splints under my fingernails, or whatever else I can think of.  

These people have the right to say whatever they want.  I have the right not to listen, or to disagree, or to speak against their ideas.  But I cannot shut them up or censor them.

I have close friends who tell me that they keep things from people, usually their parents, who "can't handle" their ideas or actions or beliefs. Self censorship is probably a good idea, and it's one of the reasons I don't drop my favorite F-bomb adjective throughout this post.   I never used that excuse though.  I didn't tell my parents things because it was either none of their business or they would try to use it against me or both.  I didn't try to justify that they "couldn't handle it."

I do not believe that government agencies should keep things from us because they fear we "cannot handle them."  [On the other hand, the previous administration managed to get itself reelected in 2004 by injecting and projecting fear.   It extorted votes from the population.  In the most recent election that tactic stopped working and they got voted out.]  We need to know facts that affect us.  If there is an anthrax - or swine flu - threat, we need to take precautions.  And I need to decide for myself what I can "handle."  

I don't want to hear about swine flu particularly, and for this reason I have stopped watching most television news.  When I do watch, I look for the information I need and then turn it off or switch channels.  

The right to free speech has two sides.  I can say what I want and listen to what I choose.  

On nine-eleven, for example, I did not have the television on until a relative called and told me to watch CNN.  I saw what was happening, was suitably horrified, and turned the television off.  I checked in every couple of hours, but most of what I saw was constant repetition, a devaluing, even trivializing in effect, of the event.  I did not end up with post-traumatic stress disorder from seeing the twin towers fall a gazillion times.  I did feel great betrayal, anger, fear, and distress at the event.  But I was not required to sit glued to the television having the tragedy imprinted over and over on my brain.

The graduates at Notre Dame last week had/ have the same two options I have.  Some of them chose to stay away.  They chose not to hear what our president had to say.  Others listened whether they agreed or not.   The two sides of the coin (should) apply equally. 

To comment, please click on the link below.  

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is Thursday, and it is a time to reflect on what we are thankful for - besides too much to eat and too many football games on television and too many dishes to wash.

I have a lot to be thankful for, beginning with family: My wife of 41 years, Ann. My son Daniel who died almost 16 years ago, but is still with us in our hearts. It is amazing to me that he has been gone almost as long as he lived. His girlfriend Sandra, who continues to be in our lives, and her Mark, who puts up with us gracefully.

My chosen family, including grandsons David and Jonathan, and their dad Tim, who gave them to us after Daniel died. Their mother Priscilla who agreed to that arrangement, still honors it, and has done her best to raise them well. Tim’s new wife Karen, who happens to be a former student - who’d a thunk it?- and her kids, our new grandchildren Alexa and Grayson.

Of course, Derek and Shannon who chose me their dad. I tease that I’m their old dad and their new dad. And Bill and his son Carter, who are like son and grandson. And chosen sister Laurie, my sister the doctor, who received her Ph.D. from Stanford earlier this year. Go Laurie! And my cousin Rochelle, whom we love dearly, and her family. And my other cousin Margaret.

And our close friends, especially Theresa and Mark. Our wonderful neighbors, especially the “G” neighbors: Gertzes, Godfreys, Graces, Gordons.

Our church friends, and school friends, those I taught with as well as those I went to school with. And my writing friends.

My dog park friends, many of whom I know by their dogs: Monte’s mom, or April’s mom. But I know many by their own names: Beth, Kathy, Fred, Connie, Pat, Gail.

My opera friends Marianne and Gary. Certainly our travel buddies Ted and Carol. And . . . Well, the list goes on.

I am especially grateful this year for Barack Obama, who as a graceful politician earned the presidency and is now leading the country, W having taken a grateful back seat apparently. With time I can see President-elect Obama becoming a statesman as well a politician and leader.

What a joy to have the “Irish Mafia” back in the White House: the O’Bamas and the O’Bidens. That, of course, is a joke, but Obama’s great, great grandfather (or something like that) was from Ireland, and he does have Irish “blood” on days other than March 17.

I am thankful that we are able to continue to live a comfortable life, despite the current economic mess. And that I can say and publish whatever I want on my various blogs. I do try to keep them from being too nonsensical or too much of a rant.

Thursday we are going to our friend Theresa’s for dinner. Theresa doesn’t have a sports gene either, so there won’t be television blaring out football games (I know, how un-American!), and we’ll be able to talk, and play board games or dominoes, to settle the world’s problems after we eat.

That alone is plenty to be thankful for.

Don’t forget to join us for the Free Hugs Campaign either in your own town or in Chicago, something else to be thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving.

As always, feel free to click comment below and leave your thoughts.

Cynical Joke or Smart Choice?

John McCain has named Sarah Palin, the Republican governor of Alaska, as his vice presidential running mate.  I have heard a lot of people describe this choice in different ways:  cynical, smart, practical, insulting, anti-feminist, risky, and a joke.

I'm not sure which this decision is, and I tend toward cynical although it may turn out to be a very smart decision.  Sarah Palin may well pull the Hillary Clinton supporters, whom she called whiners, into the Republican fold.  I don't believe that any demographic group votes as a block.  All Black people don't support Barack O bama, for instance. And I certainly don't believe - even despite acquaintances who tell me I'm wrong - that all women, most women, or even a substantial number of women, especially Hillary Clinton supporters, will vote for Sarah Palin merely because they all share anatomy.

Sarah Palin's views are diametrically opposed to Hillary Clinton's.  According to published reports, Sarah Palin believes that any sort of birth control, including a married couple using a condom, is wrong.  Unlike HC, she has neither national nor international political experience; in fact, her main claims to elected office include being named first runner up in the Miss Alaska competition in 1984, being a council member and then mayor of the little town of Wasilla, Alaska, and then governor of Alaska for one month longer than Barack Obama has been junior Senator from Illinois.  In science, she denies that global warming is caused by human carbon use, and she advocates teaching creationism rather than evolution, which, after all is merely a theory rather than a proven fact.  She is a life-long member of the NRA.  None of these positions mirrors HC's.

I also wonder about Sarah Palin's common sense.  She doesn't seem stupid, but she does seem insular and perhaps self absorbed.  Why else would she deliver a speech in Texas after her water broke and then fly eight hours home to Alaska to have the baby a month prematurely?  

Why would she name her children Trig? or Track? or Willow? or Bristol? or Piper?  Can you guess which of them are male and which are female?   Hint: she has two sons.  (In the interest of fairness, I do believe that children's names should be gender based and not chosen because they're "a cool name."  I don't believe that names should be a source of embarrassment or grounds for teasing.)  Somehow, I'd like a little more quiet wisdom in my national leaders.

An acquaintance suggests that having five children, including four under sixteen and one an infant with Down's Syndrome, should preclude her from being in political office, indeed from working at all.  This acquaintance, a female, a strong feminist, says that that choosing to have children means also choosing to take care of them; that being a baby machine and a full-time member of the work force means delegating to others the raising of children.  If our country's most important resource is our children, then cherishing and nurturing and caring for them should be a priority.

Another friend suggests that having a developmentally challenged child will pull voters to her as the underdog.  Who knows?

Perhaps, on the other hand others are more equipped to raise children than parents whose work is more important.

Will Sarah Palin help McCain's chances of being president?  I have no answer to that.  Is her choice cynical, smart, practical, insulting, anti-feminist, risky, or a joke?  Again I have no answer.  But I suspect that American's hidden bigotry may well play a more important role.  No one wants to appear prejudiced and will therefore tell pollsters that they have no trouble voting for a person of color.  But once they're in the privacy of the voting booth, they may not be able to vote their public declarations.

As always, I invite your comments.

The Mother Robin and the Democratic Convention

N.B. Many of my political prejudices show here and since I'm heading toward my dotage, I get to take many tangents to express them.

The Democratic Convention in Denver is well under way at this point, and I watched some of it last night with the same kind of concentration lots of people devote to the Olympics.

I watched the Olympics for a while - the first week - but got tired of the same sports being featured (Beach Volley Ball and the scantily clad athletes? Too gruesome for words. Ann pretended to be really disgusted that the women who played BVB wore next to nothing and no doubt ended up with sand in unspeakable places, but the men who played BVB wore long shirts that covered up their pecs, their abs and their deltoids, and long, floppy shorts that deprived her of the eye candy our President seemed to enjoy so much as he awarded the female players with pats on the ass. The thought makes me shudder.) I would have thought, at least from the network coverage, that about two hundred people total participated in the Olympics - in addition to the million plus Chinese volunteers who spent a year making sure the Olympics went well.

So I learned from the Olympics and watched the Democratic Convention on C-SPAN. It offered complete coverage with no comment from so-called experts, at least during the convention sessions themselves. Early this morning when I tuned in briefly, the commentators on C-SPAN were interviewing people from all over the country about whom they would vote for: Obama or McCain - and why - especially in regard to the Clinton supporters who are re-focusing their loyalty, sometimes to McCain.

I heartily endorse the idea that the "common people" should have a voice, but it seems to me that the primaries and state caucuses are the forum to express their support for candidates. In February I hobbled over to the local school to vote in the primary after I broke my ankle, and rather than break more bones, I asked the election officials to haul a voting machine up to the landing of the stairs in accordance with federal handicap guidelines. Anyway, it seems to me that too many slack jawed yokels have opinions based on their emotional reactions to McCain's POW status, or their one-issue litmus tests (Abortion, Immigration, Censorship, or the Briefs/Boxers/Depends debate) rather than a broad examination of the issues and the candidates' stands on them.

I recorded one of the network's prime time programs of the Convention on our DVR. I was appalled first that the networks made America's Got Talent and Two and A Half Men (both no doubt part of the current administration's diet of bread and circuses) a priority over the nomination of the candidates for president. I was taken aback that for the single hour the Convention was broadcast, the regular number of commercials reduced actual coverage to about 40 minutes.

I was more disgusted with the coverage itself, however. Rather than showing the Convention, the talking heads commented on it. This speech was to the point. That tribute covered all the bases.

I am sick to death of being treated by the media as if I am too stupid to do my own thinking. I can watch Michelle Obama's speech and make my own judgments about it without being told what to think by so-called experts who pretend to be smarter than I am. I can watch the tribute to Ted Kennedy and realize that it is a beautifully done propaganda piece, not that the network I watched showed more than a few highlights.

Propaganda is not bad, it merely puts the best face on things. I knew when I was being emotionally manipulated - and I permitted it because Ted Kennedy is dying of brain cancer. And because he has done more things I admire than things I don't. And because his family has made more sacrifices in the name of public service than most I can think of.

On C-SPAN I watched Emil Jones, Illinois Senate Democratic Leader, mouth platitudes and fail to mention that he is retiring and has slated his son to take over his seat in an act beyond nepotism and into primogeniture. On C-SPAN I watched the leaders of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers speak about education and agreed with most of what they had to say about involving teachers in educational goals - instead of lawyers who somehow get elected to office and then think all teachers have to do is stand in front of a group of students and talk off the cuff.

On C-SPAN I watched Jesse Jackson, Jr. speak about his association with Barack Obama. He's my federal Congressman, and I enjoyed noting that he's listed as from both Chicago and Homewood, the village where I live.

On the national network, those people got short shrift or none at all. Instead, the talking heads talked to other heads about the speeches - if they mentioned them at all - and filtered those comments through their own prejudices. Just as I filtered my analysis of Emil Jones in the earlier paragraph.

Barack Obama has been accused by the Republicans of elitism. And the media have given his "elitism" a lot of play, at the same time they report on how many houses McCain owns or thinks he owns. It is the media that are elitist, however. They seem to believe that they can take in all the information, all the nuances, all the events at the Democratic Convention - and I'm sure at the Republican Convention coming up - chew them up, digest them for me and 300 million other Americans, and then, like the mother robin, vomit them into my waiting mouth. They seem to believe that they are without bias and reporting straight. They aren't.

I'm smart enough to make up my own mind about candidates and the people who support them. And until the current administration started testing all students on facts instead of the ability to think, so were most Americans.

As always I welcome your comments. Click on comments below to express them.

DAQ: Dumb Ass Quotient

The other day, while we were having lunch at Gabe’s Place in Glenwood, IL (great burgers if you’re looking for one), daughter Shannon commented that “There are plenty of dumb asses in the world. If you can prevent yourself from acting like one, you have the obligation to do so.”

She was talking about being in the dating scene and some of the guys who want to go out with her, but her comments apply in a much larger context. I am the first to admit (well, maybe not the first, there are a lot of people pointing fingers at me) that I am a dumb ass a lot of the time. I try not to be, but it just happens. I suspect that most of us are. My Dumb Ass Quotient is about average, I hope: 100.

But it’s the times when we have more control that Shannon spoke of. The political headlines in the past couple of weeks speak directly to dumb ass-ness, and Dumb Ass Quotients:

Idaho Senator Larry Craig’s behavior screams that his DAQ is very high. Why else would he bash gays, support a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, and then try to consummate a non-heterosexual assignation in a restroom in the Minneapolis airport, with an undercover cop no less? DAQ in the genius level for that one.

Ted Nugent waves machine guns around at a concert and suggests that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama should “suck on this” and that another Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, should “ride one of these into the sunset.” I think that everyone in America is entitled to his own political views, but this seems to me to be a threat, and perhaps the Secret Service should step in. Nugent appears to be inciting assassination, not one of the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution. He’s another genius level DAQ.

Republicans do not have a monopoly on high DAQ’s. Democratic Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has vetoed funds to schools because he sees funding as “pork.” On the other hand, he continues to live in Chicago and spend about $5000 every time he goes to the capital in Springfield, at least once a week. No irony there. I’d drive him for half that and not bill for mileage. Blagojevich is also suing Democratic Leader of the Illinois House Mike Madigan for not calling a special session of the Legislature when Blagojevich called for one. Each is playing Mine Is Bigger (and we all know that guys who play that are really smaller) in lieu of looking after the best interests of the citizens of the state of Illinois. I grant both of them genius level DAQ’s.

Locally, one of the councilmen in the village I live in has suggested that because end of summer teen crime activity has increased, both the Police Department and the Fire Department need better oversight. He’s just the man to do it. The fact that he is a police detective in a neighboring suburb gives him, apparently, the expertise. To say nothing of the power he could wield. He doesn’t have a DAQ as high as genius, but I bet it’s at least 135. The village president reminded the councilman that oversight already lies in the village manager’s duties. Village President: low DAQ, high CSQ, common sense quotient.

I suggest a modest list of ordinary people with high DAQ’s:

People whose reflexes, vision and hearing are shot because of substance abuse, alcohol, illness, fatigue, or old age, but who continue to drive. Causing accidents, even if the drivers aren’t involved in them, is unconscionable.

People who stand in check-out lines and then act surprised when they don’t have enough cash, or who paw through their wallets looking for a credit card when they could/should have had it ready. High DAQ’s.

Service people who overbook, and that includes but is not limited to medical personnel, hair cutters, cable repairpersons, nail techs, and airlines. My time, and that of patients and customers, is just as valuable as theirs.

I’m sure you can add to the list, and I invite you to click comments and do just that. My thanks to Shannon for sparking this piece. And I ask that readers grant me the grace to keep me believing my DAQ is an average 100 - or below.