Money madness
Jon Carroll
Thursday, April 23, 2009
People are angry. Of course, people are always angry, because it's one of the seven deadly sins - except you don't actually die from them, at least not right away - but people are perhaps more angry than usual, or angry about different things.
Let me tell you about my life. No, stop looking at your watch - this is just 850 words, and you can sit still for that. Without revealing too many details, let me just give you an overview of my financial situation. I'm employed, although I'm employed in the newspaper business, so how much does that really count? But still, a paycheck. Yes, I am one of those millions of Americans - a majority of Americans, actually - who continue to hold down a job.
Assuming you call this a job. I'm still in my jammies.
I do have a mortgage. It is overwater, or whatever they call it. I have a 9-year-old car. I own a shovel and a rake. In the late fall, I buy tulips. I have a desk I stole in 1972, but really, that was a long time ago. The statute of limitations has passed on office furniture pilferage. I have a wife and children and grandchildren. I have utility bills and cable TV bills and Waste Management bills and water bills, and I pay them all on time, incurring no penalties.
I have credit cards, and I pay them on time too, because using the "credit" in credit cards is exactly like giving money to evil dictators. Those companies charge you 17 percent interest and they kidnap your children. Did you know that? Credit card companies are legally allowed to kidnap your children. I know a man who has a 14-year-old boy sitting in a Thai prison operated by Visa.
Of course, he's a 14-year-old boy, so the thinking is, maybe it would be best for him to stay there for a while.
Also, I always park 18 inches from the curb. I'm a boring sort of fellow, really, one of those "works hard and pays his taxes" Clinton exemplars of ordinary good-hearted plain-speakin' Democrat-votin' Americans. And like all of my kind, I'm asking: Where's mine?
The American auto companies were run into the ground by idiots. (My 9-year-old car is a Honda made in Japan. It runs well; not a coincidence.) They wanted to make gigantic gas-guzzling dumbo-machines to appeal to the lost sense of virility in the American man - a lost sense of virility that may indeed have sprung from paying pointless 17 percent interest on his credit card debt - and they didn't care about gas mileage or global warming or even profits. Aren't corporations supposed to care about profits? Have I misunderstood the system?
And they're in trouble, and what do they get? Money! Government money! My money! I need a new shovel; where's my damn money? I park 18 inches from the curb; where's my yearly virtue stipend? Ah, but there are no virtue stipends; there are only stupidity stipends.
Oh, and the banks. The government - which is to say, us - gave them lots of money to lend back to citizens so the citizens could get back on their feet. They'd been downsized or outsourced or, what's the word, screwed. And guess what? According to Timothy Geithner, the Cabinet secretary in charge of money, "reports of bank lending show significant declines in consumer loans, including credit card loans, commercial loans and industrial loans." In other words, we gave them money in order for them to give it back to us, and they said, "Aw, hell, let's just keep it. Let's buy pens."
OK, they need pens. The bank pen situation is really bad. But there are people (losing their jobs, losing their houses, losing their families, unable to pay for medical care, alone and broken in their rooms at night crying because they can't figure it all out), and the banks are going all ball-point on our asses.
Someone needs to say that the rules have changed. Someone needs to say that you can't get away with that nonsense anymore. We tried it their way, the "markets will correct themselves and commercial leaders will make intelligent decisions based on their self-interest" way - great theory, turned out not to work. Corporate leaders will make short-term and shortsighted decisions, it turns out, and every market can be gamed. The smartest people will figure out the best games.
I am not one of the smartest people. I have one house and two cats and a 9-year-old car. I have a 401(k) account that's gone down 40 percent. And I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm a winner!
This is how revolutions start. You know that, right?
I'm an ordinary man, the sort who never would, never could, run amok in the streets with a large ice cream scoop screaming, "You bastards!"
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... 176K4L.DTL
Today's Jon Carroll column
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Amskeptic
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Never say never. If the Mocha Almond Fudge supply gets interrupted, I'll be there.static wrote: Money Madness
Jon Carroll
Thursday, April 23, 2009
I'm an ordinary man, the sort who never would, never could, run amok in the streets with a large ice cream scoop screaming, "You bastards!"
Colin
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles
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satchmo
- Old School!
- Location: Crosby, MN
- Status: Offline
Yes, right. But where were we the last 10 - 20 years, as the rich got richer and looted the wealth of this nation for themselves? We had our heads deep in the trough, sucking up the 'good life,' thinking that because we were doing fine, everyone else was fine too, or they at least could be comfortably ignored. Now that 'we' are hurting; now that 'we' have lost our job; now that 'we' have seen our retirement savings decline; now that 'we' can't afford health care, it's time for revolution. That's rich.static wrote:Money madness
Jon Carroll
Thursday, April 23, 2009
People are angry.
This is how revolutions start. You know that, right?
Tim
By three methods we may learn wisdom:
First, by reflection, which is noblest;
second, by immitation, which is easiest;
and third, by experience, which is bitterest. -Confucius
First, by reflection, which is noblest;
second, by immitation, which is easiest;
and third, by experience, which is bitterest. -Confucius
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Amskeptic
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Well of course, Tim. It depends on who is "we".satchmo wrote: Yes, right. But where were we the last 10 - 20 years, as the rich got richer and looted the wealth of this nation for themselves? We had our heads deep in the trough, sucking up the 'good life,' thinking that because we were doing fine, everyone else was fine too, or they at least could be comfortably ignored. Now that 'we' are hurting; now that 'we' have lost our job; now that 'we' have seen our retirement savings decline; now that 'we' can't afford health care, it's time for revolution. That's rich.
Tim
Like any statistical sample, the consensus of "we" can be quite narrow. Large events will affect a larger part of the sample. Many of "we" Americans have been having a tough go of it for quite some time prior to the economic turmoil of late, but they did not appear in the sample as anything more than an aberration at the edge of the curve. Not now. The event has swamped the middle of the curve where our scribes live even.
The Elite at the upper end may have screwed up their assessment of the effects of their actions. It is going to be interesting. Not a bad thing to have a larger sample of the population being affected. No growth until the catatonic patient snaps out of it and actually stands up and exclaims, "what the hell am I doing here?"
Colinfugue
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles
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static
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If it's yellow, stop and ponder
Jon Carroll
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Like you, I was fascinated by reports that the astronauts had installed and started to operate a water recovery system on the international space station, one that processes urine as well as all the other liquids the humans and machines on the vehicle produce. In the words of Science Daily, "that includes water evaporated from showers, shaving, tooth brushing and hand washing, plus perspiration and water vapor that collects within the astronauts' space suits. They even transfer water from the fuel cells that provide electric power to the space shuttle."
I was also charmed that reporter John Schwartz of the New York Times tried a sample of the water at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and pronounced it "not bad, actually," although he did complain of a faint iodine taste. The iodine is put in the water for the same reason that backpackers drop iodine tablets into their canteens, just one more way to make sure that no malign bacteria linger in the fluid.
(A decade from now, I can envision a tasting panel sampling recycled pee water, with expert participants noting a "fruity finish" or "a hint of oak and blackberry." Anything can be a gourmet item. It's all marketing.)
So I wondered, is there any way of using this technology on Earth? We have a lot of places that need water, and we certainly have a lot of people producing urine. Reprocessing it in a timely manner and getting it to the places where it's needed would obviously be useful. Is it feasible?
(We are, of course, already drinking recycled urine, since it all goes into the rivers and the oceans one way or another, or it enters the aquifers, and then there's rain and, lo, the process of life, and there are atoms of Napoleon's pee in my tea. But that natural time scale, as we have seen, is not enough to prevent droughts.)
Allocation of resources is a seemingly insurmountable problem sometimes. I looked at those floods in the Dakotas this year and I thought - wouldn't it be great if we could get all this water to sub-Saharan Africa? The people in the Dakotas would thank us, the people in Somalia would thank us, and we'd have, you know, world peace.
The urine-recovery idea has another advantage. The steadily increasing population is one of the factors blamed for the reoccurring drought. But every new person is a new urine-producing device. Economies of scale, maybe!
Certainly there are devices that work locally to recycle water. There are solar stills that capture rainwater efficiently. Dean Kamen, the guy who invented the Segway, has something called a "slingshot vapor compression distiller," which, he says, can produce 1,000 liters of clean water a day out of anything, including the ocean or a "50-gallon drum of urine."
Conventional sewage systems that return wastewater to the environment work by separating green water (that's our topic), black water (not the security company) and gray water (rain runoff and the like) and treating them with sundry chemicals. The process takes a lot of energy, though; if there were a way of separating the urine from the other stuff at the source, then the recycling could happen using a fraction of the energy, plus removing the nitrogen and phosphates in the urine from the system would make the other parts of the recycling more efficient.
I know this because it's all real; it's all happening now. According to an article in the magazine NewScientist, there are now 3,000 buildings, mostly in Sweden (of course Sweden - you could see that coming), that contain NoMix toilets. One does not wish to get into detail - although NewScientist plunges into the specifics with an almost unseemly glee - but let's just say that, in order for the device to work properly, men have to micturate sitting down.
And even if urine is not turned into potable water, the chemicals in it could be turned into fertilizers. And the liquid part can be recycled as, of course, toilet water. Think for a moment about the fact that we are using drinking water to flush our toilets. We are purposely contaminating part of our personal water supply at a time when we are being urged not to water our lawns.
Obviously, the water used in the home is only a small part of the total drought problem - we are nothing compared with agricultural irrigation, a lot of which is still brutally inefficient. But it's all one big system, and conservation ideas tend to spread. It's good not to let the "ick" factor prevent us from thinking about the problems we create and the responsibilities we have.
Heck, if the astronauts can take it, so can we. Even if it does taste a tiny bit like iodine.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... 17PIG0.DTL
This article appeared on page E - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Jon Carroll
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Like you, I was fascinated by reports that the astronauts had installed and started to operate a water recovery system on the international space station, one that processes urine as well as all the other liquids the humans and machines on the vehicle produce. In the words of Science Daily, "that includes water evaporated from showers, shaving, tooth brushing and hand washing, plus perspiration and water vapor that collects within the astronauts' space suits. They even transfer water from the fuel cells that provide electric power to the space shuttle."
I was also charmed that reporter John Schwartz of the New York Times tried a sample of the water at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and pronounced it "not bad, actually," although he did complain of a faint iodine taste. The iodine is put in the water for the same reason that backpackers drop iodine tablets into their canteens, just one more way to make sure that no malign bacteria linger in the fluid.
(A decade from now, I can envision a tasting panel sampling recycled pee water, with expert participants noting a "fruity finish" or "a hint of oak and blackberry." Anything can be a gourmet item. It's all marketing.)
So I wondered, is there any way of using this technology on Earth? We have a lot of places that need water, and we certainly have a lot of people producing urine. Reprocessing it in a timely manner and getting it to the places where it's needed would obviously be useful. Is it feasible?
(We are, of course, already drinking recycled urine, since it all goes into the rivers and the oceans one way or another, or it enters the aquifers, and then there's rain and, lo, the process of life, and there are atoms of Napoleon's pee in my tea. But that natural time scale, as we have seen, is not enough to prevent droughts.)
Allocation of resources is a seemingly insurmountable problem sometimes. I looked at those floods in the Dakotas this year and I thought - wouldn't it be great if we could get all this water to sub-Saharan Africa? The people in the Dakotas would thank us, the people in Somalia would thank us, and we'd have, you know, world peace.
The urine-recovery idea has another advantage. The steadily increasing population is one of the factors blamed for the reoccurring drought. But every new person is a new urine-producing device. Economies of scale, maybe!
Certainly there are devices that work locally to recycle water. There are solar stills that capture rainwater efficiently. Dean Kamen, the guy who invented the Segway, has something called a "slingshot vapor compression distiller," which, he says, can produce 1,000 liters of clean water a day out of anything, including the ocean or a "50-gallon drum of urine."
Conventional sewage systems that return wastewater to the environment work by separating green water (that's our topic), black water (not the security company) and gray water (rain runoff and the like) and treating them with sundry chemicals. The process takes a lot of energy, though; if there were a way of separating the urine from the other stuff at the source, then the recycling could happen using a fraction of the energy, plus removing the nitrogen and phosphates in the urine from the system would make the other parts of the recycling more efficient.
I know this because it's all real; it's all happening now. According to an article in the magazine NewScientist, there are now 3,000 buildings, mostly in Sweden (of course Sweden - you could see that coming), that contain NoMix toilets. One does not wish to get into detail - although NewScientist plunges into the specifics with an almost unseemly glee - but let's just say that, in order for the device to work properly, men have to micturate sitting down.
And even if urine is not turned into potable water, the chemicals in it could be turned into fertilizers. And the liquid part can be recycled as, of course, toilet water. Think for a moment about the fact that we are using drinking water to flush our toilets. We are purposely contaminating part of our personal water supply at a time when we are being urged not to water our lawns.
Obviously, the water used in the home is only a small part of the total drought problem - we are nothing compared with agricultural irrigation, a lot of which is still brutally inefficient. But it's all one big system, and conservation ideas tend to spread. It's good not to let the "ick" factor prevent us from thinking about the problems we create and the responsibilities we have.
Heck, if the astronauts can take it, so can we. Even if it does taste a tiny bit like iodine.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... 17PIG0.DTL
This article appeared on page E - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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static
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I'm a reasonable guy
Jon Carroll
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
I try to be reasonable. It's always felt like a comfortable place for me. I know other people who try to be reasonable, and we form little clubs of reasonable people who say reasonable things in a reasonable tone of voice. We may seem boring to others; in fact, I'm sure we do.
We understood that our attitude was unglamorous when we adopted it. No one ever said: The chicks dig the reasonable guys. And often they don't. The nice thing, though, as you get older, is that a lot of the unreasonable people die off. Bar fights, motorcycle accidents, bad lifestyle choices - everything helps. So the chicks are left with a large pool of reasonable guys. Score!
Also, we have converts. Rage is fine when you're 21, but by the time you get to 35, you can just about feel the veins bursting in your brain, and you think: May be time to ease off the accelerator. May be time to see the other person's point of view. I can't stay mad 24/7. I have to ration my anger.
Which is the reasonable thing to do. We all feel anger. We all want to put rat poison in someone's stew. We all want to tie someone's thumbs to an overhead beam. We all want to take little tiny needles tipped with curare and rig a device using rubber bands, plywood, springs from an old office chair and bungee cords that will, just as someone opens a door, swing down and hit him, ha ha, in the rear end and it will seem like a prank until the curare kicks in and then, well, the joke will be on him and we will laugh ha ha with our heads thrown back and we will quaff the nectar of righteousness from the cup of revenge.
But that is not reasonable behavior. It is not an efficient use of one's time to try to buy curare at your local herbal-remedy store. And suppose the wrong person opened the door? That would be bad, and a reasonable person would consider that possibility. And by the time the reasonable person has thought about it carefully, the target will have moved to Seattle or something.
We reasonable guys enjoy the play "Hamlet" by Mr. William Shakespeare. Hamlet was reasonable and only killed people by mistake, usually. Of course he had doubts; it is only reasonable to have doubts. Nothing is certain, not even certainty. Indeed, one could make the argument that certainty is dangerous. That's a reasonable argument.
On the other hand, one must have principles. Principles are things you are certain of. It is a dilemma for a reasonable person when a principle runs up against a dedication to reasonableness. Most people solve that problem by ignoring it. Denial is a reasonable response. It gets a bad rap, denial, but, speaking personally, I couldn't live without it.
Now, at this point you may be thinking: This is an odd thing to read about in a newspaper column. Perhaps you are from out of town and sitting in the cafe of your hotel and eating some lovely sourdough toast and reading this and thinking: This fellow seems to have some issues. Unresolved issues, you might even think. But oh no, not I. I am merely a vessel for expressing the dilemmas that face us all as human beings. My personal feelings do not enter into it.
That's the reasonable position. Maybe things happen in the world, and they make me feel unreasonable emotions. What am I supposed to do with those emotions? I mean, I don't think the government should be in the marriage business at all. Let's just sign our names in blood to parchment documents. I also think taxes are way too low. Given how much money is missing for vital government services, that's a reasonable position. All my positions are reasonable.
Others may disagree. It is reasonable to suppose that they will. Indeed, when I talk to my reasonable friends, it's sort of as if we're on a different planet from the people on radio and television and yes, in the newspapers. We could solve everything in about 12 minutes, except Afghanistan. But no one has ever been able to solve Afghanistan. It's not called the Horn of Africa for nothing. Indeed, it's not called the Horn of Africa at all.
So I am validating, much like a local merchant. I am saying to those who sometimes think they are crazy: They are not crazy. They are reasonable, and in the land of the blind, the reasonable person waits for an opening in the traffic flow. So that is my plan: I am awaiting developments. I am anticipating opportunities. Don't see anything right now, but I will let you know.
Staying calm - it's an ugly job, but someone has to do it. It's a hard job as well, because the times do not exactly dictate an attitude of serenity.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... 17TKSA.DTL
Jon Carroll
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
I try to be reasonable. It's always felt like a comfortable place for me. I know other people who try to be reasonable, and we form little clubs of reasonable people who say reasonable things in a reasonable tone of voice. We may seem boring to others; in fact, I'm sure we do.
We understood that our attitude was unglamorous when we adopted it. No one ever said: The chicks dig the reasonable guys. And often they don't. The nice thing, though, as you get older, is that a lot of the unreasonable people die off. Bar fights, motorcycle accidents, bad lifestyle choices - everything helps. So the chicks are left with a large pool of reasonable guys. Score!
Also, we have converts. Rage is fine when you're 21, but by the time you get to 35, you can just about feel the veins bursting in your brain, and you think: May be time to ease off the accelerator. May be time to see the other person's point of view. I can't stay mad 24/7. I have to ration my anger.
Which is the reasonable thing to do. We all feel anger. We all want to put rat poison in someone's stew. We all want to tie someone's thumbs to an overhead beam. We all want to take little tiny needles tipped with curare and rig a device using rubber bands, plywood, springs from an old office chair and bungee cords that will, just as someone opens a door, swing down and hit him, ha ha, in the rear end and it will seem like a prank until the curare kicks in and then, well, the joke will be on him and we will laugh ha ha with our heads thrown back and we will quaff the nectar of righteousness from the cup of revenge.
But that is not reasonable behavior. It is not an efficient use of one's time to try to buy curare at your local herbal-remedy store. And suppose the wrong person opened the door? That would be bad, and a reasonable person would consider that possibility. And by the time the reasonable person has thought about it carefully, the target will have moved to Seattle or something.
We reasonable guys enjoy the play "Hamlet" by Mr. William Shakespeare. Hamlet was reasonable and only killed people by mistake, usually. Of course he had doubts; it is only reasonable to have doubts. Nothing is certain, not even certainty. Indeed, one could make the argument that certainty is dangerous. That's a reasonable argument.
On the other hand, one must have principles. Principles are things you are certain of. It is a dilemma for a reasonable person when a principle runs up against a dedication to reasonableness. Most people solve that problem by ignoring it. Denial is a reasonable response. It gets a bad rap, denial, but, speaking personally, I couldn't live without it.
Now, at this point you may be thinking: This is an odd thing to read about in a newspaper column. Perhaps you are from out of town and sitting in the cafe of your hotel and eating some lovely sourdough toast and reading this and thinking: This fellow seems to have some issues. Unresolved issues, you might even think. But oh no, not I. I am merely a vessel for expressing the dilemmas that face us all as human beings. My personal feelings do not enter into it.
That's the reasonable position. Maybe things happen in the world, and they make me feel unreasonable emotions. What am I supposed to do with those emotions? I mean, I don't think the government should be in the marriage business at all. Let's just sign our names in blood to parchment documents. I also think taxes are way too low. Given how much money is missing for vital government services, that's a reasonable position. All my positions are reasonable.
Others may disagree. It is reasonable to suppose that they will. Indeed, when I talk to my reasonable friends, it's sort of as if we're on a different planet from the people on radio and television and yes, in the newspapers. We could solve everything in about 12 minutes, except Afghanistan. But no one has ever been able to solve Afghanistan. It's not called the Horn of Africa for nothing. Indeed, it's not called the Horn of Africa at all.
So I am validating, much like a local merchant. I am saying to those who sometimes think they are crazy: They are not crazy. They are reasonable, and in the land of the blind, the reasonable person waits for an opening in the traffic flow. So that is my plan: I am awaiting developments. I am anticipating opportunities. Don't see anything right now, but I will let you know.
Staying calm - it's an ugly job, but someone has to do it. It's a hard job as well, because the times do not exactly dictate an attitude of serenity.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... 17TKSA.DTL
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Amskeptic
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I adopted "reasonable" at too early an age. Time to find the real stuff in the name of authenticity.static wrote:
Jon Carroll
I try to be reasonable. Rage is fine when you're 21, but by the time you get to 35, you can just about feel the veins bursting in your brain, and you think: May be time to ease off the accelerator.
Colin
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles
-
static
- IAC Addict!
- Location: Somewhere on I-5
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Rachel Maddow is my sweetie
Jon Carroll
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
OK, today I am expressing unconditional love for Rachel Maddow. Not romantic love, of course, because I'm definitely not her type - she was named the Hottest Butch of 2009 by something called Sinclair Sexsmith's Top Hat Butches - but in a cozy and pure intellectual way. She has her own television program, "The Rachel Maddow Show" - great name - that comes right after "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" on MSNBC.
I like Olbermann because he was the first out-there liberal voice on cable television, both entertaining and combative, but I like Maddow better because, while entertaining, she is not overtly combative. In fact, she is unfailingly polite, particularly with those guests she disagrees with. She seems dedicated to restoring civility to public discourse, and lots of people, including people in power, appreciate that about her. No shouting matches on "The Rachel Maddow Show."
Also, she often begins her interviews by asking the guests whether her summary of the issues was correct. This is virtually unheard of in TV news, where the star of the show must, like the pope, always maintain the aura of infallibility.
Another thing in her favor: She's funny. She mocks right-wing ideas by making them seem silly, and she makes space for comic, or at least weird, news items on her show - what she calls "Holy Mackerel Stories." Another great occasional feature is "Talk Me Down," in which she chooses an issue that's making her crazy and asks an expert on the show to convince her that the sky is not, in fact, falling.
Occasionally, her sense of strategy fails her - she let Pat Buchanan spew his racist garbage for far too long without lobbing a pointed question back - but apparently Buchanan was kind to her when she was pretty much a nobody, and she seems like a loyal person, even to her political enemies. (Has it occurred to you that, at the moment, Republicans are pretty much a time suck, and maybe we should all just ignore them and get on with trying to figure out the extremely thorny problems facing the nation? They're not helping, on purpose, because they think helping would be bad politics. Jerks.)
She's a local girl, Castro Valley born and bred, so there's another plus. Here's a paragraph from her official biography: "Rachel has a doctorate in political science (she was a Rhodes Scholar) and a background in HIV/AIDS activism and prison reform. She shakes a mean cocktail, drives a bright red pickup, hates Coldplay, loves arguing with conservatives, spends a lot of money on AMTRAK tickets, and dresses like a first-grader."
During her activist phase, she was pretty much a community organizer, but she has been quoted as saying: "I have never and still don't think of myself as an Obama supporter, either professionally or actually."
For a long time, the sanity of our republic was kept together by Jon Stewart, which is pretty strange when you think about it, but true anyway. Somebody had to point out that the emperor had neglected to consult his wardrobe experts. Stewart was joined by Stephen Colbert and his jujitsu politics, which are classic bits of performance art but not exactly what we needed. But now we have Rachel Maddow - calm, kind of goofy, occasionally intense, very smart.
She's a genuine wonk (particularly on defense issues - her father is a former captain in the Air Force) and as close to a true intellectual as we're likely to get on cable TV. She may not be unbiased, but she's very careful with her facts. She's the one who traced the town hall disruptions back through several layers of corporate shells to lobbyists for the health care industry, and she has tried to shame the mainstream media into reporting on those links. These shout-downs are not spontaneous expressions of public outrage; they're a bullying tactic designed to prevent any reasonable discussion about health care reform.
She was also the only TV news show host, to my knowledge, to concentrate day after day on Sonia Sotomayor's judicial record as opposed to all the "wise Latina" nonsense. She wanted to know what kind of judge she'd be. Amazing! Why didn't anyone else think like that?
She's an out lesbian, the first one to host a news show, as far as I know, and that's a hopeful sign to those of us who think that the gay rights movement will win a lot of battles just by being more visible and not demonstrably an agent of Satan. And she looks like me - not exactly, of course, because she's 25 years younger and a woman - but she looks like the people I see every day. Her appearance and her sly grin are themselves an indication that the world has changed.
I've waited a long time for Rachel Maddow, and I'm glad she's arrived.
Also, she does this cute little thing with her nose when she's amused, and ... this is getting creepy, isn't it?
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... 195JTU.DTL[/url]
Jon Carroll
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
OK, today I am expressing unconditional love for Rachel Maddow. Not romantic love, of course, because I'm definitely not her type - she was named the Hottest Butch of 2009 by something called Sinclair Sexsmith's Top Hat Butches - but in a cozy and pure intellectual way. She has her own television program, "The Rachel Maddow Show" - great name - that comes right after "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" on MSNBC.
I like Olbermann because he was the first out-there liberal voice on cable television, both entertaining and combative, but I like Maddow better because, while entertaining, she is not overtly combative. In fact, she is unfailingly polite, particularly with those guests she disagrees with. She seems dedicated to restoring civility to public discourse, and lots of people, including people in power, appreciate that about her. No shouting matches on "The Rachel Maddow Show."
Also, she often begins her interviews by asking the guests whether her summary of the issues was correct. This is virtually unheard of in TV news, where the star of the show must, like the pope, always maintain the aura of infallibility.
Another thing in her favor: She's funny. She mocks right-wing ideas by making them seem silly, and she makes space for comic, or at least weird, news items on her show - what she calls "Holy Mackerel Stories." Another great occasional feature is "Talk Me Down," in which she chooses an issue that's making her crazy and asks an expert on the show to convince her that the sky is not, in fact, falling.
Occasionally, her sense of strategy fails her - she let Pat Buchanan spew his racist garbage for far too long without lobbing a pointed question back - but apparently Buchanan was kind to her when she was pretty much a nobody, and she seems like a loyal person, even to her political enemies. (Has it occurred to you that, at the moment, Republicans are pretty much a time suck, and maybe we should all just ignore them and get on with trying to figure out the extremely thorny problems facing the nation? They're not helping, on purpose, because they think helping would be bad politics. Jerks.)
She's a local girl, Castro Valley born and bred, so there's another plus. Here's a paragraph from her official biography: "Rachel has a doctorate in political science (she was a Rhodes Scholar) and a background in HIV/AIDS activism and prison reform. She shakes a mean cocktail, drives a bright red pickup, hates Coldplay, loves arguing with conservatives, spends a lot of money on AMTRAK tickets, and dresses like a first-grader."
During her activist phase, she was pretty much a community organizer, but she has been quoted as saying: "I have never and still don't think of myself as an Obama supporter, either professionally or actually."
For a long time, the sanity of our republic was kept together by Jon Stewart, which is pretty strange when you think about it, but true anyway. Somebody had to point out that the emperor had neglected to consult his wardrobe experts. Stewart was joined by Stephen Colbert and his jujitsu politics, which are classic bits of performance art but not exactly what we needed. But now we have Rachel Maddow - calm, kind of goofy, occasionally intense, very smart.
She's a genuine wonk (particularly on defense issues - her father is a former captain in the Air Force) and as close to a true intellectual as we're likely to get on cable TV. She may not be unbiased, but she's very careful with her facts. She's the one who traced the town hall disruptions back through several layers of corporate shells to lobbyists for the health care industry, and she has tried to shame the mainstream media into reporting on those links. These shout-downs are not spontaneous expressions of public outrage; they're a bullying tactic designed to prevent any reasonable discussion about health care reform.
She was also the only TV news show host, to my knowledge, to concentrate day after day on Sonia Sotomayor's judicial record as opposed to all the "wise Latina" nonsense. She wanted to know what kind of judge she'd be. Amazing! Why didn't anyone else think like that?
She's an out lesbian, the first one to host a news show, as far as I know, and that's a hopeful sign to those of us who think that the gay rights movement will win a lot of battles just by being more visible and not demonstrably an agent of Satan. And she looks like me - not exactly, of course, because she's 25 years younger and a woman - but she looks like the people I see every day. Her appearance and her sly grin are themselves an indication that the world has changed.
I've waited a long time for Rachel Maddow, and I'm glad she's arrived.
Also, she does this cute little thing with her nose when she's amused, and ... this is getting creepy, isn't it?
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... 195JTU.DTL[/url]
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metric Cwrench
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great columns, thanks static!
it all starts with discussion, it's the beginning of everything. we need a whole lot more of it, much less of the "i'll tell you what to think" nonsense that far too many tv, radio, print, etc is pushing.
i'm a big npr supporter, one of the absolute best shows is diane rehm. as carroll praises rachel maddow, so i praise diane rehm. such class and grace is so sorely lacking in all areas of our culture today. she keeps control of her guests and callers, and maintains "discussion" instead of allowing things to fall apart into shouting matches that just make everyone look dumb and waste air-time.
i'll keep watching for more updates and columns here, and probably check out the links, too. thanks again for feeding my brain.
it all starts with discussion, it's the beginning of everything. we need a whole lot more of it, much less of the "i'll tell you what to think" nonsense that far too many tv, radio, print, etc is pushing.
i'm a big npr supporter, one of the absolute best shows is diane rehm. as carroll praises rachel maddow, so i praise diane rehm. such class and grace is so sorely lacking in all areas of our culture today. she keeps control of her guests and callers, and maintains "discussion" instead of allowing things to fall apart into shouting matches that just make everyone look dumb and waste air-time.
i'll keep watching for more updates and columns here, and probably check out the links, too. thanks again for feeding my brain.
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static
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Those darned Democrats
Jon Carroll
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
So here was the plan. I was going to write a column - and I may still - about how annoying it is to be a Democrat. The Republicans really seem to have their act together, propagandawise, and the Democrats are all over the map. The town hall meeting disruptions seemed to take them completely by surprise, as did the weird persistence of the birther controversy.
Now, the birther thing is totally without merit, so maybe the Democratic leaders figured it would just sink of its own evident bogosity. But this is an America in which Rush Limbaugh is a star. There are people who will believe anything, and they vote. And there are people who have still not accepted that a black man could win the presidency, and they're looking for anything to make that nightmare go away.
Times are changing. Change is scary. Our nation is on its way, purely by demographics, to becoming a rainbow coalition, and the people who like it the old way, the lily-white way, don't want it to change. So they will cling to anything. No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, said P.T. Barnum, who went on to have a long career proving that axiom.
So we are caught in a vortex of stupidity. We have fallen and we can't get up. And now the wing nuts with money, firm believers in the Barnum philosophy, are hiring PR companies to promote ideas like "health care reform will kill old people" or "health care reform means involuntary sex-change operations," and some people are believing that too.
So the conversation becomes about that, and not about the real compromises and limitations that genuine health care reform will involve. This is a really hard and dangerous issue. Bill Clinton tried health care reform, and somehow his wife became a punch line for a few years. (That went away, and praise God for small favors.)
Anyway, I planned to start this column, some of which you have just read because I couldn't help myself, with an apposite quote from Will Rogers, who died in 1935. I went to a very useful Will Rogers quote page (links.sfgate.com/ZHVM) to make sure I got the wording right. Here it is: "I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat."
I'm not sure when Rogers first said that - it was part of his stand-up comedy act, which also included rope tricks - but it sure does indicate that plus ca change and all that. And I immediately found another Rogers quote: "Democrats never agree on anything, that's why they're Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans."
Right. It's as if Democrats are the astronauts in the movie "2001," and the Republicans are the monolith. How do they do it? Sex scandals, money scandals, lying-through-their-teeth scandals, and yet they survive. Bill Clinton gets oral sex in an anteroom, and there's a public trial. Gov. Mark Sanford flies to Argentina to be with his longtime mistress, and everyone starts talking about "forgiveness" and "second chances."
The Republicans are all very Christian unless the transgressor is a Democrat. Then, not so much.
Will Rogers said: "If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" A darn good question. President Obama is unwilling to try stupidity, but he does seem willing to try some of the Republicans' worst ideas. He's going to defend the torture policies of the Bush administration, because ... well, who knows? He's going to defend the Defense of Marriage Act because ... well, got me.
He's going to try to compromise with people who don't believe in compromise. He's got the country on his side; he has a large majority in both houses of Congress; he has a fair number of people who are willing to go to metaphorical war for him if he'd be willing to lead.
Instead, he chooses to be diplomatic. Will Rogers said: "Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a rock." Obama already has the rock. But he's being pushed around by people who compare him to Hitler. Hitler! And where are the Democrats expressing outrage? Those Blue Dog Democrats may have issues with the health care plan, but does that mean they can't find the courage to get up and express anger at this slander? Or are they trying to retain every vote they can in the next election? Do they really believe that the Hitler shouters are going to vote for a Democrat?
Republicans have terrible ideas and the courage of their convictions. Democrats have some good ideas, except they have trouble remembering what they are. Maybe they could take a hint from their own campaign speeches. Maybe Obama could take a hint from his.
Will Rogers said: "The more you observe politics, the more you've got to admit that each party is worse than the other."
In which we find an unexpected prophet whom everyone already knows about. The old prophets are the best.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/12/DDB9196K45.DTL
Jon Carroll
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
So here was the plan. I was going to write a column - and I may still - about how annoying it is to be a Democrat. The Republicans really seem to have their act together, propagandawise, and the Democrats are all over the map. The town hall meeting disruptions seemed to take them completely by surprise, as did the weird persistence of the birther controversy.
Now, the birther thing is totally without merit, so maybe the Democratic leaders figured it would just sink of its own evident bogosity. But this is an America in which Rush Limbaugh is a star. There are people who will believe anything, and they vote. And there are people who have still not accepted that a black man could win the presidency, and they're looking for anything to make that nightmare go away.
Times are changing. Change is scary. Our nation is on its way, purely by demographics, to becoming a rainbow coalition, and the people who like it the old way, the lily-white way, don't want it to change. So they will cling to anything. No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, said P.T. Barnum, who went on to have a long career proving that axiom.
So we are caught in a vortex of stupidity. We have fallen and we can't get up. And now the wing nuts with money, firm believers in the Barnum philosophy, are hiring PR companies to promote ideas like "health care reform will kill old people" or "health care reform means involuntary sex-change operations," and some people are believing that too.
So the conversation becomes about that, and not about the real compromises and limitations that genuine health care reform will involve. This is a really hard and dangerous issue. Bill Clinton tried health care reform, and somehow his wife became a punch line for a few years. (That went away, and praise God for small favors.)
Anyway, I planned to start this column, some of which you have just read because I couldn't help myself, with an apposite quote from Will Rogers, who died in 1935. I went to a very useful Will Rogers quote page (links.sfgate.com/ZHVM) to make sure I got the wording right. Here it is: "I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat."
I'm not sure when Rogers first said that - it was part of his stand-up comedy act, which also included rope tricks - but it sure does indicate that plus ca change and all that. And I immediately found another Rogers quote: "Democrats never agree on anything, that's why they're Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans."
Right. It's as if Democrats are the astronauts in the movie "2001," and the Republicans are the monolith. How do they do it? Sex scandals, money scandals, lying-through-their-teeth scandals, and yet they survive. Bill Clinton gets oral sex in an anteroom, and there's a public trial. Gov. Mark Sanford flies to Argentina to be with his longtime mistress, and everyone starts talking about "forgiveness" and "second chances."
The Republicans are all very Christian unless the transgressor is a Democrat. Then, not so much.
Will Rogers said: "If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" A darn good question. President Obama is unwilling to try stupidity, but he does seem willing to try some of the Republicans' worst ideas. He's going to defend the torture policies of the Bush administration, because ... well, who knows? He's going to defend the Defense of Marriage Act because ... well, got me.
He's going to try to compromise with people who don't believe in compromise. He's got the country on his side; he has a large majority in both houses of Congress; he has a fair number of people who are willing to go to metaphorical war for him if he'd be willing to lead.
Instead, he chooses to be diplomatic. Will Rogers said: "Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a rock." Obama already has the rock. But he's being pushed around by people who compare him to Hitler. Hitler! And where are the Democrats expressing outrage? Those Blue Dog Democrats may have issues with the health care plan, but does that mean they can't find the courage to get up and express anger at this slander? Or are they trying to retain every vote they can in the next election? Do they really believe that the Hitler shouters are going to vote for a Democrat?
Republicans have terrible ideas and the courage of their convictions. Democrats have some good ideas, except they have trouble remembering what they are. Maybe they could take a hint from their own campaign speeches. Maybe Obama could take a hint from his.
Will Rogers said: "The more you observe politics, the more you've got to admit that each party is worse than the other."
In which we find an unexpected prophet whom everyone already knows about. The old prophets are the best.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/12/DDB9196K45.DTL
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JLT
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X2. None of our local NPR stations carries her show, but I listened to it quite a lot when I was in Syracuse taking care of my father's situation after his stroke, and I agree that she's a class act.metric Cwrench wrote: i'm a big npr supporter, one of the absolute best shows is diane rehm. as carroll praises rachel maddow, so i praise diane rehm. such class and grace is so sorely lacking in all areas of our culture today.
Another class act is Bill Moyers, also on NPR. Yeah, he's a liberal and proud of it, and reflects that bias in his show, but he also lets the other side make its case. I remember him having Cal Thomas on his show and debating what relevance Christian values have to political action. They disagreed fiercely, but showed respect for each other's positions. The result was a dialogue that was truly illuminating, not just a shouting match.
-- JLT
Sacramento CA
Present bus: '71 Dormobile Westie "George"
(sometimes towing a '65 Allstate single-wheel trailer)
Former buses: '61 17-window Deluxe "Pink Bus"
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Sacramento CA
Present bus: '71 Dormobile Westie "George"
(sometimes towing a '65 Allstate single-wheel trailer)
Former buses: '61 17-window Deluxe "Pink Bus"
'70 Frankenwestie "Blunder Bus"
'71 Frankenwestie "Thunder Bus"
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metric Cwrench
- Getting Hooked!
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npr is one of the last bastions of broadcast actual news and real discussion. sad, but true- other media (excepting many newspapers) seems to be quite content with spending their time covering "not-news," and when they do actually cover news, it's from a distinct slant (tending to be of the right inclination).
will rogers was a damned smart guy, not to mention that he's one funny character. i laughed so hard reading those quotes in "Those darned Democrats," especially this one:
many of us voted for democrat candidates because we supported the ideas they were pontificating during their campaigns (and because frankly, we are scared to death of having republicans in control in washington after the last eight years). that said, why are they not following up on the campaign points?
the torture issue comes to mind. how can obama not do everything to strike that cancer from america?
attempting forward movement towards a health care reform/plan/something is good, but the republicans, corporate-organized-and-paid-for "grass roots" organizations, and a bunch of people who buy anything limbaugh and others tell them have quite effectively stalled progress by slinging epithets (likening obama to "hitler") and promoting fear. and democrats don't take advantage of this and rally together to shine light on what is really going on, and to denounce in the harshest possible manner this attempt to manipulate the american people??
like the republicans were so fond of saying in previous years, "we have a mandate from the american people." the democrats have this, they need to exploit it to affect the changes we were lead to believe we would get from them.
keep it up, static, these are great columns. thanks
will rogers was a damned smart guy, not to mention that he's one funny character. i laughed so hard reading those quotes in "Those darned Democrats," especially this one:
the article has it right, though. republicans have an amazing ability to circle their wagons and stand together when it counts (or when they are told to do so by the party leaders). democrats, on the other hand, seem to lack a spine. it's infuriating, really."Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a rock."
many of us voted for democrat candidates because we supported the ideas they were pontificating during their campaigns (and because frankly, we are scared to death of having republicans in control in washington after the last eight years). that said, why are they not following up on the campaign points?
the torture issue comes to mind. how can obama not do everything to strike that cancer from america?
attempting forward movement towards a health care reform/plan/something is good, but the republicans, corporate-organized-and-paid-for "grass roots" organizations, and a bunch of people who buy anything limbaugh and others tell them have quite effectively stalled progress by slinging epithets (likening obama to "hitler") and promoting fear. and democrats don't take advantage of this and rally together to shine light on what is really going on, and to denounce in the harshest possible manner this attempt to manipulate the american people??
like the republicans were so fond of saying in previous years, "we have a mandate from the american people." the democrats have this, they need to exploit it to affect the changes we were lead to believe we would get from them.
keep it up, static, these are great columns. thanks
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static
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Mom, just let me go
Jon Carroll
Monday, August 17, 2009
Sometimes it's a good thing that I cannot reach into my newspaper and pull out a person quoted in a story and rip his larynx out. I mean, not that I would ever do that, because larynx ripping takes a long time and I'd probably calm down before I did any serious damage, and it would be a messy and distracting business.
For instance, last week the New York Times had a story about how banks, having been given emergency bridge loans to tide them over after the unholy mess they made of the entire financial system with their greed-driven mortgage loans, are now reluctant to lend that money back to struggling small businesses.
Loans are not being made. Why? Let Paul Merski, chief economist for the Independent Community Bankers of America, a trade organization, tell you why. "There's not a lot of profit motive in a $35,000 loan stretched over six years."
Profit motive? Profit motive? The American taxpayers came in and saved your sorry asses, rewarding your bad behavior because every other option was even less good, and now certain struggling American taxpayers are asking for five-figure loans, and you guys are whining about profit motive?
Paul Merski, be thankful I don't know where your larynx is.
Listen up, banks: Now is the time to, as they say, give back. Now is the time to remember your place in the community. We're not even asking you to lose money, even though we all did - we're just asking you to accept a slim profit margin. You still get to make money, although in a just universe you'd be in jail trying to find the profit margin in arbitraging cartons of cigarettes, and you get to make the community stronger and healthier, which presumably even you understand is good for everyone.
Another member of the endangered larynx community, Bob Seiwert of the Center for Commercial Lending and Business Banking at the American Bankers Association, complained that "stringent underwriting standards" make small loans as much work as big loans, making them even less economical.
Bob, those standards are stringent because you guys apparently can't be trusted to police yourselves. You screwed the pooch. It's obscene for you to turn around and say you can't make the loans because, oh, the government wants you to keep records and check credit and things. Do you really want to be the bad guys in the American movie for the next two decades? No? Then step up to the plate, do the extra work, rescue the good businesses and start acting like citizens again.
Bad toilets: Dear Abby, whose real name is Jeanne Phillips, is embroiled in a controversy about whether to let a 7-year-old boy go to a public men's room unattended. The alternative, her questioner suggested, was taking the lad into the ladies' room with her.
Abby (we can call her Abby) suggested that the woman let the kid go to the john, stand outside the door and say in a loud voice, "I'll be waiting right here!" OK, I guess that's better than taking him into the ladies' room, although I'd hate to be the 7-year-old in question with my mom's voice trailing after me as I entered Guyland.
Oh, readers were outraged. They said that Abby was being irresponsible, that she did not understand the dangers inherent in a one-minute visit to a public restroom. Further precautions were needed. Mom should inspect the men's room first, be sure it was vacant, then bar the door to any men attempting to enter while little Jimmy was taking a whiz. If he could even take one then, what with Stress Level Red having been declared for his urinary emergency.
When did the idea get out that men's rooms were a secret hotbed of molestation? I mean, there are some men's rooms - including, apparently, one in the Minneapolis airport - where consensual homosexual activity between adults has been known to happen. But that's not at all the same thing as child molesting; that's just a form of speed dating.
Men's rooms, may I say, are boring. Ain't nothing going on in them. Molestation typically happens in other places, usually in a private home. And statistically it's no more common than it was 30 years ago. As I've said before, if you're looking for the people most likely to molest your child, look at the members of your own family, because that's how it usually happens. People don't want to admit that, so they invent phantom pedophiles in the nation's men's rooms.
Parents should just calm the hell down and let their kids live and grow in the real world. Of course every child should be told not to talk to strangers, to run away from anything that seems wrong. But after that lecture, let the boy experience a rite of passage into the adult world, and be happy.
It's time for the bankers to cowboy up and stop thinking with their greed centers, at least for a little while.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... 198A8L.DTL
Jon Carroll
Monday, August 17, 2009
Sometimes it's a good thing that I cannot reach into my newspaper and pull out a person quoted in a story and rip his larynx out. I mean, not that I would ever do that, because larynx ripping takes a long time and I'd probably calm down before I did any serious damage, and it would be a messy and distracting business.
For instance, last week the New York Times had a story about how banks, having been given emergency bridge loans to tide them over after the unholy mess they made of the entire financial system with their greed-driven mortgage loans, are now reluctant to lend that money back to struggling small businesses.
Loans are not being made. Why? Let Paul Merski, chief economist for the Independent Community Bankers of America, a trade organization, tell you why. "There's not a lot of profit motive in a $35,000 loan stretched over six years."
Profit motive? Profit motive? The American taxpayers came in and saved your sorry asses, rewarding your bad behavior because every other option was even less good, and now certain struggling American taxpayers are asking for five-figure loans, and you guys are whining about profit motive?
Paul Merski, be thankful I don't know where your larynx is.
Listen up, banks: Now is the time to, as they say, give back. Now is the time to remember your place in the community. We're not even asking you to lose money, even though we all did - we're just asking you to accept a slim profit margin. You still get to make money, although in a just universe you'd be in jail trying to find the profit margin in arbitraging cartons of cigarettes, and you get to make the community stronger and healthier, which presumably even you understand is good for everyone.
Another member of the endangered larynx community, Bob Seiwert of the Center for Commercial Lending and Business Banking at the American Bankers Association, complained that "stringent underwriting standards" make small loans as much work as big loans, making them even less economical.
Bob, those standards are stringent because you guys apparently can't be trusted to police yourselves. You screwed the pooch. It's obscene for you to turn around and say you can't make the loans because, oh, the government wants you to keep records and check credit and things. Do you really want to be the bad guys in the American movie for the next two decades? No? Then step up to the plate, do the extra work, rescue the good businesses and start acting like citizens again.
Bad toilets: Dear Abby, whose real name is Jeanne Phillips, is embroiled in a controversy about whether to let a 7-year-old boy go to a public men's room unattended. The alternative, her questioner suggested, was taking the lad into the ladies' room with her.
Abby (we can call her Abby) suggested that the woman let the kid go to the john, stand outside the door and say in a loud voice, "I'll be waiting right here!" OK, I guess that's better than taking him into the ladies' room, although I'd hate to be the 7-year-old in question with my mom's voice trailing after me as I entered Guyland.
Oh, readers were outraged. They said that Abby was being irresponsible, that she did not understand the dangers inherent in a one-minute visit to a public restroom. Further precautions were needed. Mom should inspect the men's room first, be sure it was vacant, then bar the door to any men attempting to enter while little Jimmy was taking a whiz. If he could even take one then, what with Stress Level Red having been declared for his urinary emergency.
When did the idea get out that men's rooms were a secret hotbed of molestation? I mean, there are some men's rooms - including, apparently, one in the Minneapolis airport - where consensual homosexual activity between adults has been known to happen. But that's not at all the same thing as child molesting; that's just a form of speed dating.
Men's rooms, may I say, are boring. Ain't nothing going on in them. Molestation typically happens in other places, usually in a private home. And statistically it's no more common than it was 30 years ago. As I've said before, if you're looking for the people most likely to molest your child, look at the members of your own family, because that's how it usually happens. People don't want to admit that, so they invent phantom pedophiles in the nation's men's rooms.
Parents should just calm the hell down and let their kids live and grow in the real world. Of course every child should be told not to talk to strangers, to run away from anything that seems wrong. But after that lecture, let the boy experience a rite of passage into the adult world, and be happy.
It's time for the bankers to cowboy up and stop thinking with their greed centers, at least for a little while.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... 198A8L.DTL
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RussellK
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static
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Tiger, Tiger, not so bright
Jon Carroll
Friday, December 11, 2009
Quite a while ago, I met Wilt Chamberlain in a hotel room in Chicago. He was lying on the bed when I entered; he got up to shake my hand. This exceptional unfolding of a human being is still in my memory; his head almost touched the ceiling. He was gracious and funny; it was a nice 15-minute chat.
I got to meet him because he was having a fling - if that's the right expression - with a friend of mine. He told me then - and I think he put this in his book - that he had never gotten married because he never wanted to lie to a woman. He said that in all his years of professional basketball, he had met only one man who, as far as he knew, had been faithful to his wife during those long nights on the road.
That man was Jack Twyman, by the way; not a name that will resonate these days except with hard-core basketball fans.
I suspect that ratio remains pretty much the same among all professional athletes. Young men very much aware of their own bodies, coming down from the huge adrenaline rush of performing physically before 10,000 or 30,000 or 50,000 screaming fans - depending on the sport - need some kind of way of releasing tension. Some popular methods of unwinding - like breaking windows, say, or getting in bar fights - are not available to people whose income depends on their public behavior.
Other methods, getting drunk or getting laid or taking illegal drugs, remain - and there are plenty of people around willing to accommodate those needs. The athletes don't have to go looking; the temptations come to them, almost gift wrapped, sometimes with no charge to the consumer. For someone under 35, it's as though the gates to adult Disneyland were always open, and there were plenty of guards to maintain the privacy of the stars.
Now here's a thing you probably already know about young men: They think with their penises. This is just true. For most young men, the penis often has a hard time getting what it wants; its owners are too shy or too unattractive or too devout or too penurious. They may even have a moral compass, although it is my observation that moral compasses tend to swing wildly when temptation is attractive enough or available enough. Eventually, of course, those fires are banked, and the young man can only thank God that he did not do more damage during his crazy years.
But for rich and famous athletes, temptation is constantly knocking at the door. It's a phone call away. Confidentiality guaranteed. And mostly it works out OK for the athletes. Mostly wives understand what the deal is when they walk down the aisle. The deal is, "Don't ever embarrass me in public." The deal is: "Be here for the kids." The deal is: "Be safe at all times." The deal is, "When this madness is over, come on home. Otherwise, I've got this prenup and I intend to use it."
It's not just athletes, of course. Among my readers, right now, how many of you have been entirely faithful through your whole lives? Men and women both, 100 percent of the time? Do your spouses know? Probably not. Keep it that way. But when something like the Tiger Woods affair comes up, spare me the sanctimony. Spare me the shock and horror.
The Internet will provide you with a list of prostitutes in every city. You think these women are all making it with the same guy? Do you think they'd be there at all if there wasn't money to be made? Maybe most of Tiger's indiscretions were, how shall we say, professional. Should his wife kick him out? Her choice, her life. The rest of us should back off and let them figure it out.
Tiger Woods is an intense and charismatic professional golfer. He owes it to us to play his best; he owes it to us to play fairly and not get involved with gamblers. Beyond that, he owes us nothing. He's a figure of fun now, a guy lying half-conscious beside his car at 3 a.m., humiliated, a mere mortal in a world of mere mortals. But he was always a mortal; everything else was hype. You believed the hype; more fool you. All the actors and athletes and politicians who "disappointed" you; the disappointment was because of your expectations, and your expectations were foolish.
Nothing but human beings here. We try our best, we screw up, we act heroically, we take a nap. Celebrities are human beings who've found a way to make money. Good for them; we're all trying to make money. Now the people who had sex with celebrity Tiger Woods are trying to make money. Probably they worked hard for the money. I dunno. I just twisted my ankle; I think I'll worry about that instead.
I gather a 7-iron is the implement of choice for breaking a car window. A sharp, crisp swing; that's the ticket.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 1B1R4T.DTL
Jon Carroll
Friday, December 11, 2009
Quite a while ago, I met Wilt Chamberlain in a hotel room in Chicago. He was lying on the bed when I entered; he got up to shake my hand. This exceptional unfolding of a human being is still in my memory; his head almost touched the ceiling. He was gracious and funny; it was a nice 15-minute chat.
I got to meet him because he was having a fling - if that's the right expression - with a friend of mine. He told me then - and I think he put this in his book - that he had never gotten married because he never wanted to lie to a woman. He said that in all his years of professional basketball, he had met only one man who, as far as he knew, had been faithful to his wife during those long nights on the road.
That man was Jack Twyman, by the way; not a name that will resonate these days except with hard-core basketball fans.
I suspect that ratio remains pretty much the same among all professional athletes. Young men very much aware of their own bodies, coming down from the huge adrenaline rush of performing physically before 10,000 or 30,000 or 50,000 screaming fans - depending on the sport - need some kind of way of releasing tension. Some popular methods of unwinding - like breaking windows, say, or getting in bar fights - are not available to people whose income depends on their public behavior.
Other methods, getting drunk or getting laid or taking illegal drugs, remain - and there are plenty of people around willing to accommodate those needs. The athletes don't have to go looking; the temptations come to them, almost gift wrapped, sometimes with no charge to the consumer. For someone under 35, it's as though the gates to adult Disneyland were always open, and there were plenty of guards to maintain the privacy of the stars.
Now here's a thing you probably already know about young men: They think with their penises. This is just true. For most young men, the penis often has a hard time getting what it wants; its owners are too shy or too unattractive or too devout or too penurious. They may even have a moral compass, although it is my observation that moral compasses tend to swing wildly when temptation is attractive enough or available enough. Eventually, of course, those fires are banked, and the young man can only thank God that he did not do more damage during his crazy years.
But for rich and famous athletes, temptation is constantly knocking at the door. It's a phone call away. Confidentiality guaranteed. And mostly it works out OK for the athletes. Mostly wives understand what the deal is when they walk down the aisle. The deal is, "Don't ever embarrass me in public." The deal is: "Be here for the kids." The deal is: "Be safe at all times." The deal is, "When this madness is over, come on home. Otherwise, I've got this prenup and I intend to use it."
It's not just athletes, of course. Among my readers, right now, how many of you have been entirely faithful through your whole lives? Men and women both, 100 percent of the time? Do your spouses know? Probably not. Keep it that way. But when something like the Tiger Woods affair comes up, spare me the sanctimony. Spare me the shock and horror.
The Internet will provide you with a list of prostitutes in every city. You think these women are all making it with the same guy? Do you think they'd be there at all if there wasn't money to be made? Maybe most of Tiger's indiscretions were, how shall we say, professional. Should his wife kick him out? Her choice, her life. The rest of us should back off and let them figure it out.
Tiger Woods is an intense and charismatic professional golfer. He owes it to us to play his best; he owes it to us to play fairly and not get involved with gamblers. Beyond that, he owes us nothing. He's a figure of fun now, a guy lying half-conscious beside his car at 3 a.m., humiliated, a mere mortal in a world of mere mortals. But he was always a mortal; everything else was hype. You believed the hype; more fool you. All the actors and athletes and politicians who "disappointed" you; the disappointment was because of your expectations, and your expectations were foolish.
Nothing but human beings here. We try our best, we screw up, we act heroically, we take a nap. Celebrities are human beings who've found a way to make money. Good for them; we're all trying to make money. Now the people who had sex with celebrity Tiger Woods are trying to make money. Probably they worked hard for the money. I dunno. I just twisted my ankle; I think I'll worry about that instead.
I gather a 7-iron is the implement of choice for breaking a car window. A sharp, crisp swing; that's the ticket.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 1B1R4T.DTL