Welcome to the Church of NineEleven. Brothers and sisters, we gather today in praise of Ground Zero, a site so holy it has the power to expand its size to encompass any proposed mosque.
Did you know that the name Ground Zero actually goes back over five hundred years? Grondaseero was an Algonquin word meaning “place where enormous metal trees will be hit by flying machines flown by Muslims.”
Over time the name faded from usage. Instead the area became known as “downtown”, “the World Trade Center”, and “the porn district.” Then, of course, came DEVINE CHANGE (Day EVerthing INstantly CHANGEd), when Americans discovered that not only had Osama Bin Laden attacked us, his fellow Muslims had occupied most of the world’s oil producing regions. (Note: the Church of NineEleven is not anti-Islam.)
Islam is an evil religion that teaches its followers to hate America. For reasons that are not entirely clear, Muslims did not attack us during our first 215 years. We refer to this period of American history as “The Big Snooze”, when Presidents Washington through Clinton daydreamed while our enemies patiently waited for the perfect time to strike.
Due to our generous nature, we did not respond to DEVINE CHANGE with a war against all Muslims – only most of their countries. From Afghanistan to Iraq to Pakistan to Yemen to Somalia, we’ve shown the Islamic world how a civilized nation goes about using airplanes to kill people.
Meanwhile, back in the homeland, Saint Rudy (blessed be his name) founded our Church on a few simple beliefs:
1) NineEleven is not a date. It’s a way of life.
2) We are born fearful and angry and should strive to return to that pure natural state.
3) All races and creeds should form a brotherhood of man against Arabs and Muslims.
In recent years, the Church has gone through some hard times. Americans have disappointed us with their lack of enthusiasm for endless war against Islamo-petroleumism. The 2008 election almost broke our spirit entirely. Not only did people elect a man whose name rhymes with Osama, they didn’t even give the Republican nomination to Saint Rudy (praised be he, a pox on his ungrateful children.)
But now things are looking up - thanks to Ground Zero. Who would have thought that a proposal to build an Islamic cultural center based on “multifaith dialogue” (yuck!) could turn so quickly into its glorious opposite? Oh NineEleven, you sure do work in mysterious ways!
Every day more Republicans come back to church. Democrats are quietly coming too, shuffling in the side door with a liberal two-step – “I believe in freedom of religion, just not here.” Smile Democrats! Just because the Church doesn’t allow you to sit up front doesn’t mean NineEleven doesn’t love you.
It gratifies us to see so many people refer to Ground Zero as “hallowed ground” for those who died there. However, we are afraid that this term is too limiting. Most of the Church elders - like Sister Sarah and Brother Newt – aren’t actually connected to those who died that day. But that doesn’t make us any less qualified to speak to the true meaning of NineEleven.
In fact, it makes us more able cast out the Judases in our midst: so-called “9/11 families” who oppose endless war. Someone who lost a loved one on DEVINE CHANGE probably wouldn’t be able to scream “shut up!” at a Judas suffering the same grief. Brother O’Reilly could.
Besides, if Ground Zero is merely hallowed ground, than how can we expand our Church? NineEleven belongs to all Americans. If your town wasn’t lucky enough to have a Ground Zero, you should be able to build your own - federally funded and Church administered. We’ll call them Ground One, Ground Two, etcetera. And maybe they’ll just happen to be located near Muslim houses of worship.
At this point, some of you may have voice in your head raising questions: Isn’t this a little crude? What about freedom of religion? Here’s how you can put that little guy on mute: Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and repeat these words: “Nine Eleven. Nine Eleven.” Now picture the towers coming down. Forget all those burdensome facts you learned in the days and years after. That moment is the truth.
Okay, open your eyes. Did you feel the spirit of NineEleven? Welcome to the Church!
No? Then we’ll see you in hell. Or prison, depending on the next election (good luck Sister Sarah!)
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
A Toast to Stephen Slater
First published 8/17/10 at http://socialistworker.org/2010/08/17/toast-to-steven-slater
Today we raise a glass to Stephen Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who gave a vicarious thrill to workers across Great Recession America.
Stephen, when the light dinged on in your head that you were now free to tell off that rude passenger, pop open the emergency exit, and just slip slide away, you did more than fulfill your own long-held fantasy.
Thanks to you, Stephen, flight attendants are walking those narrow aisles today with a swagger and air travelers are making eye contact with them to let them know “you wont have any trouble from me.”
You have taught America that our working class heroes can be gay. Badass gay at that. You escaped from the airport, raced home, and jumped into bed with your boyfriend, which is how the police found you. That is ridiculously cool.
You’ve showed us that solidarity via Facebook can force media wise-asses to take their narrative (Daily News Day 1: “Planely Nuts”) and shove it (Day 2: “Hero to Working Stiffs.”)
Finally, Stephen Slater, we toast you because before you left that plane, you stopped and grabbed a couple of beers from the beverage cart.
That’s what gave your freakout some flair. It transformed the act from postal to rebel. With or without the beers, we still would have identified with your rage. But they made the difference between our saying “Damn I wish I could do that” and not “Lord, I hope that’s not me in five years.” Taking the tallboys signalled that you weren’t a rampaging maniac, just a guy saying “no job is worth this shit.”
Those are six powerful words that bear repeating. No Job Is Worth This Shit. You don’t hear them too often right now, when folks haven’t been able to find work for two years.
Stephen, what you did felt like a throwback to the 1970s, like something Lily Tomlin would have done in “9 to 5” or Johnny Fever in “WKRP in Cincinnati.” Back in the Seventies, Ronald Reagan was just a nutty governor and down-sizing wasn’t a word. Being an American worker didn’t mean having your ass handed to you every day; it meant clocking in with your head high and your middle finger ready.
Here’s what I mean. In 1972, autoworkers in Lordstown, Ohio went on a strike that wasn’t about money or benefits – they didn’t have too many complaints about that. No, what they were pissed about was assembly line speedups. The local union president told author Studs Terkel that the guys were striking for the right to be “able to smoke, bullshit a bit, open a book, daydream even."
Can you imagine anybody doing that today? Imagine the picket line chants: “No YouTube? No Work!”
Stephen, you reminded workers in America that the bankers and CEO’s haven’t always gotten their way in this country without a fight. That’s why even talk show hosts like Jimmy Fallon are writing ballads about you.
Of course, not everybody has a sense of humor about what you did. Incredibly, you face up to seven years in jail for reckless endangerment and criminal mischief. Come on. The only thing you endangered was $25,000 of JetBlue’s money, which apparently is what it costs to replace the emergency slide.
Speaking of JetBlue, no one seems to be talking about its role in all this. The combination of profit seeking and terrorism paranoia has made air travel a delightful experience. We’re packed into tiny seats like mindless cattle only minutes after our shoes have been given a search worthy of a world-class criminal. Rude passengers are inevitable in this situation and yet airlines let their flight attendants be human shields to face the cabin crackpots.
For example, a few years ago, one of your co-workers, Mala Amarsingh hadn’t even started work when she was verbally assaulted and spat on by drunken man who had been denied boarding on previous flights. What did JetBlue do to defend its employee? It fired her, officially because she dared to curse at her assailant. Want to know the unofficial reason? Because Mala Amarsingh thought JetBlue flight attendants should join a union.
With that in mind, I’ll end my toast with a question. What now, Stephen Slater? The same pundits who initially dismissed you now assume that you’re a passing fad whose only shot at lasting significance is landing a spot in a reality show. After all, they say, things have changed since autoworkers went on strike over smoke breaks.
Indeed they have. But, Stephen, your popularity shows that people haven’t changed that much. As often as we’re told differently, we still can’t get it into our heads that we’re only as good as our production quota or evaluation form.
So here’s to you, Stephen and here’s to you Mala Amarsingh, are here’s to all the JetBlue flight attendants still talking union. When you guys finally win, we’ll all raise two beers in your honor.
Today we raise a glass to Stephen Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who gave a vicarious thrill to workers across Great Recession America.
Stephen, when the light dinged on in your head that you were now free to tell off that rude passenger, pop open the emergency exit, and just slip slide away, you did more than fulfill your own long-held fantasy.
Thanks to you, Stephen, flight attendants are walking those narrow aisles today with a swagger and air travelers are making eye contact with them to let them know “you wont have any trouble from me.”
You have taught America that our working class heroes can be gay. Badass gay at that. You escaped from the airport, raced home, and jumped into bed with your boyfriend, which is how the police found you. That is ridiculously cool.
You’ve showed us that solidarity via Facebook can force media wise-asses to take their narrative (Daily News Day 1: “Planely Nuts”) and shove it (Day 2: “Hero to Working Stiffs.”)
Finally, Stephen Slater, we toast you because before you left that plane, you stopped and grabbed a couple of beers from the beverage cart.
That’s what gave your freakout some flair. It transformed the act from postal to rebel. With or without the beers, we still would have identified with your rage. But they made the difference between our saying “Damn I wish I could do that” and not “Lord, I hope that’s not me in five years.” Taking the tallboys signalled that you weren’t a rampaging maniac, just a guy saying “no job is worth this shit.”
Those are six powerful words that bear repeating. No Job Is Worth This Shit. You don’t hear them too often right now, when folks haven’t been able to find work for two years.
Stephen, what you did felt like a throwback to the 1970s, like something Lily Tomlin would have done in “9 to 5” or Johnny Fever in “WKRP in Cincinnati.” Back in the Seventies, Ronald Reagan was just a nutty governor and down-sizing wasn’t a word. Being an American worker didn’t mean having your ass handed to you every day; it meant clocking in with your head high and your middle finger ready.
Here’s what I mean. In 1972, autoworkers in Lordstown, Ohio went on a strike that wasn’t about money or benefits – they didn’t have too many complaints about that. No, what they were pissed about was assembly line speedups. The local union president told author Studs Terkel that the guys were striking for the right to be “able to smoke, bullshit a bit, open a book, daydream even."
Can you imagine anybody doing that today? Imagine the picket line chants: “No YouTube? No Work!”
Stephen, you reminded workers in America that the bankers and CEO’s haven’t always gotten their way in this country without a fight. That’s why even talk show hosts like Jimmy Fallon are writing ballads about you.
Of course, not everybody has a sense of humor about what you did. Incredibly, you face up to seven years in jail for reckless endangerment and criminal mischief. Come on. The only thing you endangered was $25,000 of JetBlue’s money, which apparently is what it costs to replace the emergency slide.
Speaking of JetBlue, no one seems to be talking about its role in all this. The combination of profit seeking and terrorism paranoia has made air travel a delightful experience. We’re packed into tiny seats like mindless cattle only minutes after our shoes have been given a search worthy of a world-class criminal. Rude passengers are inevitable in this situation and yet airlines let their flight attendants be human shields to face the cabin crackpots.
For example, a few years ago, one of your co-workers, Mala Amarsingh hadn’t even started work when she was verbally assaulted and spat on by drunken man who had been denied boarding on previous flights. What did JetBlue do to defend its employee? It fired her, officially because she dared to curse at her assailant. Want to know the unofficial reason? Because Mala Amarsingh thought JetBlue flight attendants should join a union.
With that in mind, I’ll end my toast with a question. What now, Stephen Slater? The same pundits who initially dismissed you now assume that you’re a passing fad whose only shot at lasting significance is landing a spot in a reality show. After all, they say, things have changed since autoworkers went on strike over smoke breaks.
Indeed they have. But, Stephen, your popularity shows that people haven’t changed that much. As often as we’re told differently, we still can’t get it into our heads that we’re only as good as our production quota or evaluation form.
So here’s to you, Stephen and here’s to you Mala Amarsingh, are here’s to all the JetBlue flight attendants still talking union. When you guys finally win, we’ll all raise two beers in your honor.
Michael Bloomberg: Kleptocrat
First published 7/14/10 at http://socialistworker.org/2010/07/14/kleptocratic-mayor-of-new-york
In the past year, the mayor of New York City has become two billion dollars riches while his city has grown one billions dollars poorer.
When this type of thing happens in a country in Africa or Central Asia, we call it a failed state. Their failure, apparently, is a lack of subtlety. Looting your country’s grain reserves to build the world’s largest tetherball arena makes you a kleptocratic dictator. But if you get stinking rich selling information technology to the banks that have looted your treasury through bailouts, well you’re just Mayor Mike.
Of course, the real saving grace for Michael Bloomberg is that, unlike a banana republic strongman, he hasn’t kept all the wealth to himself but generously shared it with a few thousand of his city’s 8 million inhabitants.
These hedge funders and investment bankers are too numerous to depict themselves in a 200 foot golden statue that rotates with the sun, as did the late Turkmenestan dictator Saparmurat Niyazov. Instead, various smaller monuments to gluttony dot the city’s boutiques and restaurants in the form of bejeweled flip flops and $150 hamburgers.
If countries like Nigeria are said to suffer from an “oil curse” because petroleum revenues have corrupted their political system, does New York have a “bank curse”?
Consider that Bloomberg is eliminating two thousand public school teachers to close a budget gap caused by bailouts to Goldman Sachs execs who could each pay a teacher’s salary and benefits with the money they spend on their own children’s private school and tutoring. (This isn’t an exaggeration. Wealthy New Yorkers routinely pay $25-$50,000 on private tutors for the SATs and academic help – on top of $30,000 plus tuitions for private schools.) Each of these public school teachers would have taught this year about one hundred children whose parents didn’t love them enough to become bankers.
Last month, New York’s lame duck governor David Paterson dared to suggest a small tax on hedge funds, the folks who brought you the recession. Parents and teachers might have expected their mayor to back this plan. Not exactly.
"I think it's the best thing that ever happened to Connecticut,” Bloomberg sneered. “I can't imagine why every hedge fund wouldn't pick up tomorrow and move.”
Our mayor is advising them to leave. He may even round up some friends and a van to help. In most cities, mayors are civic boosters, tireless pitchmen for their towns armed with pie charts showing why East Shitsburgh is a great place to start a business and raise a family. But the mayor of America’s business and cultural capital can’t think of anything New York City has over Stamford, Connecticut. After all, “Hedge funds are a bunch of desks with terminals on them -- they can be anyplace.” Um, mister mayor, those are “Bloomberg terminals”, correct? There wouldn’t be any conflict of interest going on between your business interests and mayoral duties, would there?
Nonsense, says Mayor Mike. He’s just following basic economics: "The first commonsense rule of taxation is, 'Don't tax people that can leave,'" Left unstated is the obvious corollary to this rule: grab what you can from everyone who can’t. Like any good predator, Bloomberg has his eyes on the young (public schools), the old (25 senior centers and a day of library service cut), and the sick (cuts to HIV services).
According to the anti-corruption group Transparency International, the kleptocrat in recent history was Suharto, who embezzled over $15 during his three decade reign in Indonesia. Michael Bloomberg has almost matched that in only nine years as mayor, quadrupling his net worth from $4 billion to $18 billion.
Here’s the silver lining: Almost everyone on TI’s corruption list was eventually deposed by popular movements, from Suharto to Ferdinand Marcos in the Phillipines to Mobutu Sese Soko in Zaire.
What would it take for that to happen here? Three simple words: Tax the rich. One of two things would happen. Either they shut up and finally pay their share. Or they leave for the suburbs as threatened and their mayor leaves with them and starts a government in exile, leading search parties for doggie spas and $50 sashimi.
Then the real New Yorkers, the ones who can’t leave, could go about rebuilding our democratic and civil institutions after years of Bloombergian misrule.
In the past year, the mayor of New York City has become two billion dollars riches while his city has grown one billions dollars poorer.
When this type of thing happens in a country in Africa or Central Asia, we call it a failed state. Their failure, apparently, is a lack of subtlety. Looting your country’s grain reserves to build the world’s largest tetherball arena makes you a kleptocratic dictator. But if you get stinking rich selling information technology to the banks that have looted your treasury through bailouts, well you’re just Mayor Mike.
Of course, the real saving grace for Michael Bloomberg is that, unlike a banana republic strongman, he hasn’t kept all the wealth to himself but generously shared it with a few thousand of his city’s 8 million inhabitants.
These hedge funders and investment bankers are too numerous to depict themselves in a 200 foot golden statue that rotates with the sun, as did the late Turkmenestan dictator Saparmurat Niyazov. Instead, various smaller monuments to gluttony dot the city’s boutiques and restaurants in the form of bejeweled flip flops and $150 hamburgers.
If countries like Nigeria are said to suffer from an “oil curse” because petroleum revenues have corrupted their political system, does New York have a “bank curse”?
Consider that Bloomberg is eliminating two thousand public school teachers to close a budget gap caused by bailouts to Goldman Sachs execs who could each pay a teacher’s salary and benefits with the money they spend on their own children’s private school and tutoring. (This isn’t an exaggeration. Wealthy New Yorkers routinely pay $25-$50,000 on private tutors for the SATs and academic help – on top of $30,000 plus tuitions for private schools.) Each of these public school teachers would have taught this year about one hundred children whose parents didn’t love them enough to become bankers.
Last month, New York’s lame duck governor David Paterson dared to suggest a small tax on hedge funds, the folks who brought you the recession. Parents and teachers might have expected their mayor to back this plan. Not exactly.
"I think it's the best thing that ever happened to Connecticut,” Bloomberg sneered. “I can't imagine why every hedge fund wouldn't pick up tomorrow and move.”
Our mayor is advising them to leave. He may even round up some friends and a van to help. In most cities, mayors are civic boosters, tireless pitchmen for their towns armed with pie charts showing why East Shitsburgh is a great place to start a business and raise a family. But the mayor of America’s business and cultural capital can’t think of anything New York City has over Stamford, Connecticut. After all, “Hedge funds are a bunch of desks with terminals on them -- they can be anyplace.” Um, mister mayor, those are “Bloomberg terminals”, correct? There wouldn’t be any conflict of interest going on between your business interests and mayoral duties, would there?
Nonsense, says Mayor Mike. He’s just following basic economics: "The first commonsense rule of taxation is, 'Don't tax people that can leave,'" Left unstated is the obvious corollary to this rule: grab what you can from everyone who can’t. Like any good predator, Bloomberg has his eyes on the young (public schools), the old (25 senior centers and a day of library service cut), and the sick (cuts to HIV services).
According to the anti-corruption group Transparency International, the kleptocrat in recent history was Suharto, who embezzled over $15 during his three decade reign in Indonesia. Michael Bloomberg has almost matched that in only nine years as mayor, quadrupling his net worth from $4 billion to $18 billion.
Here’s the silver lining: Almost everyone on TI’s corruption list was eventually deposed by popular movements, from Suharto to Ferdinand Marcos in the Phillipines to Mobutu Sese Soko in Zaire.
What would it take for that to happen here? Three simple words: Tax the rich. One of two things would happen. Either they shut up and finally pay their share. Or they leave for the suburbs as threatened and their mayor leaves with them and starts a government in exile, leading search parties for doggie spas and $50 sashimi.
Then the real New Yorkers, the ones who can’t leave, could go about rebuilding our democratic and civil institutions after years of Bloombergian misrule.
The fear-mongers go to work
First published 5/14/10 at http://socialistworker.org/2010/05/14/fear-mongers-go-to-work
THE FAILED car bombing in Times Square has New Yorkers, some of whom still have nightmares from 9/11, on edge once again.
While most of us can't afford therapy, at least we have universal access to the soothing counsel of politicians and pundits. For the past two weeks, we've received dozens of cheery reminders that none of us are safe from terrorism--ever.
At times like this, it's nice to know that we have the kind of straight-shooting elected officials who aren't afraid to jump in front of the nearest camera and tell us their foolproof plan to prevent anybody from ever packing a car with common, yet explosive, materials and parking it on a street somewhere in the United States of America.
Of all their helpful suggestions--stripping suspects of citizenship, eliminating Miranda rights, and adding the phrase "for whites only" to each of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution--none of them have proposed to stop doing the thing that seems to have actually caused the Times Square attempt: our own bombing of Pakistan.
That, at least, is what the suspected Times Square bomber said his motives were. In the past year, pilotless U.S. planes have dropped bombs that have killed more then 300 Pakistanis. Most of them were non-combatants, many of them were children, all of them lived in a country with whom we are not at war.
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" we do not. Of course, the guy who coined that phrase was one of those radical Middle Eastern clerics flagged as a terrorist and taken out by the authorities--2,000 years ago.
IT'S NOT exactly a secret that the suspected Times Square bomber was motivated to murder by our own murders. A New York Post headline in early May screamed, "Why He Did It: Revenge for U.S. Drone Attacks on Taliban Terrorists."
The Post ran this cover not to make a point about imperial blowback, but as just another sinister detail of the "Taliban lackey's twisted mission." Which only demonstrates that those in charge of molding public opinion have a moral code that owes less to Jesus Christ than it does to that other Jewish philosopher, Mel Brooks. "Tragedy," Mel once said, "is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."
Terrorism, according to our conventional wisdom, is when we suffer anxiety from a barbequed Pathfinder. Foreign policy is when you and your family die a fiery death while lying in your beds at night.
Of course, in case some readers got the wrong idea from its headline, the Post ran another article that day declaring that the "drone attacks have been incredibly successful in the war on terrorists in Pakistan." Seems that the only downside to this incredibly successful weapon against terrorism is that it produces terrorism.
According to some in the media, the Times Square incident actually proves the wisdom of the drone bombings because it shows that the Pakistani Taliban are growing desperate [1].
So we've come full circle. George Bush justified his disastrous war in Iraq by saying that we were fighting "the terrorists" over there so that wouldn't have to fight them here. Now Barack Obama can claim that his escalation of the Afghanistan war is so successful that the terrorists we were fighting over there are now fighting us over here.
By this logic, we'll know that we're really close to winning the war on terror when there's another attack in the U.S. on the scale of 9/11.
It would be nice to laugh at this lunacy, but it's obviously not a joke. I'll have to settle for watching the next tough-on-terror press conference at Times Square and rooting for the politician of the day to step into one of my fine city's many open sewers.
THE FAILED car bombing in Times Square has New Yorkers, some of whom still have nightmares from 9/11, on edge once again.
While most of us can't afford therapy, at least we have universal access to the soothing counsel of politicians and pundits. For the past two weeks, we've received dozens of cheery reminders that none of us are safe from terrorism--ever.
At times like this, it's nice to know that we have the kind of straight-shooting elected officials who aren't afraid to jump in front of the nearest camera and tell us their foolproof plan to prevent anybody from ever packing a car with common, yet explosive, materials and parking it on a street somewhere in the United States of America.
Of all their helpful suggestions--stripping suspects of citizenship, eliminating Miranda rights, and adding the phrase "for whites only" to each of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution--none of them have proposed to stop doing the thing that seems to have actually caused the Times Square attempt: our own bombing of Pakistan.
That, at least, is what the suspected Times Square bomber said his motives were. In the past year, pilotless U.S. planes have dropped bombs that have killed more then 300 Pakistanis. Most of them were non-combatants, many of them were children, all of them lived in a country with whom we are not at war.
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" we do not. Of course, the guy who coined that phrase was one of those radical Middle Eastern clerics flagged as a terrorist and taken out by the authorities--2,000 years ago.
IT'S NOT exactly a secret that the suspected Times Square bomber was motivated to murder by our own murders. A New York Post headline in early May screamed, "Why He Did It: Revenge for U.S. Drone Attacks on Taliban Terrorists."
The Post ran this cover not to make a point about imperial blowback, but as just another sinister detail of the "Taliban lackey's twisted mission." Which only demonstrates that those in charge of molding public opinion have a moral code that owes less to Jesus Christ than it does to that other Jewish philosopher, Mel Brooks. "Tragedy," Mel once said, "is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."
Terrorism, according to our conventional wisdom, is when we suffer anxiety from a barbequed Pathfinder. Foreign policy is when you and your family die a fiery death while lying in your beds at night.
Of course, in case some readers got the wrong idea from its headline, the Post ran another article that day declaring that the "drone attacks have been incredibly successful in the war on terrorists in Pakistan." Seems that the only downside to this incredibly successful weapon against terrorism is that it produces terrorism.
According to some in the media, the Times Square incident actually proves the wisdom of the drone bombings because it shows that the Pakistani Taliban are growing desperate [1].
So we've come full circle. George Bush justified his disastrous war in Iraq by saying that we were fighting "the terrorists" over there so that wouldn't have to fight them here. Now Barack Obama can claim that his escalation of the Afghanistan war is so successful that the terrorists we were fighting over there are now fighting us over here.
By this logic, we'll know that we're really close to winning the war on terror when there's another attack in the U.S. on the scale of 9/11.
It would be nice to laugh at this lunacy, but it's obviously not a joke. I'll have to settle for watching the next tough-on-terror press conference at Times Square and rooting for the politician of the day to step into one of my fine city's many open sewers.
Triumph of the Shrill
First published 5/4/10 at http://socialistworker.org/2010/05/04/triumph-of-the-shrill
It’s nice to see Republicans raging at their own impotence. We’ve wasted too much time watching this party be taken seriously in the name of “bipartisanship” even as they pander to their lunatic fringe. Here’s a condensed version of the health care debate:
Obama: So, Republicans. Tell me your suggestions.
GOP: Go suck it you sleeper cell Indonesian! You want to create secret death panels run by Jewish bankers and Mexican migrants. You’ll never take us alive!
Obama: Hmm. Interesting point. How about we drop the public option?
When the Democrats finally decided to pass the bill with their own damned votes, they punctured the Beck-Palin hot air balloon. But the defeat of nutty Republicans was canceled out by the triumph of nutty anti-abortion Democrats.
These folks insisted that people getting health insurance through the new federal exchange program have to write separate checks for the part that covers abortions. And Obama caved in, even as he claimed there would be no change to “longstanding precedent.”
Well why is it in the bill then? Does Bart Stupak think that abortions are like cooties that people might catch by touching an infected check? No, Stupak knows that insurance companies wouldn’t cover their own mothers if it ate into the bottom line and that many of them will stop covering abortions rather than pay for the administrative costs of handling double checks.
Anti-abortionists are the hallowed forefathers of the militias and tea baggers. Some of them probably sit on park benches complaining that in their day “we didn’t have any Fox News or YouTube. Back then, if you wanted to get a tv interview you had to scream at women outside a clinic for months! Maybe throw in a bomb scare or two.”
These days the movement has gone mainstream with corporate lobbyists and polished ad campaigns. But underneath the expensive suits are people with an idea as fanatical as any Michele Bachmann speech: that removing a lima bean-sized bundle of cells is the moral equivalent to murdering a woman, child, or man.
Am I being overly simplistic? The conventional wisdom is that abortion is a terribly complicated issue. This is how Obama put it on the campaign trail:
“I don’t think you’re ever going to get a complete agreement on this issue. If you believe that life begins at conception, then I can’t change your mind.”
I don’t buy that. Of course some sort of life begins with a fertilized egg. And it’s awesome to ponder that a thinking feeling human being develops from that microscopic little thing – precisely because the two are NOT THE SAME THING.
The bizarre notion that abortion is murder logically leads to the truly deranged idea that the one in three women who terminate a pregnancy at some point in their lives are murderers. Since this isn’t exactly a mainstream view of humanity, the fertilized-egg saviors have to employ softer gentler arguments to reach out beyond the hard-core.
These arguments’ only weakness is that they also don’t make sense. Take for example, “abortion changes you.” The is the name of a pseudo-counseling service running ads on New York City subways that show people with their heads in their hands and other very sad poses to demonstrate how they’ve been changed by having an abortion. So according to these folks, if you really don’t want your life to change, have a baby. With that type of advice it’s not exactly shocking to read at the bottom of www.abortionchangesyou.com that “this site is not a professional counseling site.”
Another logically impaired ad was the infamous Super Bowl spot football hero Tim Tebow and his mother, who chose to continue her risky pregnancy against the advice of doctors. The ad, paid for by Focus on the Family, attracted controversy because many felt that our country’s most sacred holiday was not the place for Christian extremism.
Not enough was made of the silliness of the ad’s main message: An abortion would have prevented Tim Tebow from being born and leading the Florida Gators to a national championship. (Football being football, there were surely Tennessee fans watching the ad complaining that they could have won it all too if someone didn’t abort their great quarterback twenty years ago.)
But there are a million factors that could have prevented Tim from being born before his mother ever got pregnant. What events led Tim’s ancestors to come to this country where his parents met and conceived him? Given that most people don’t emigrate because they’re travel buffs, they may have been wars or famines. Should we celebrate these tragedies since they eventually led to the birth of Tim Tebow? Using this logic, I can proudly claim that if it weren’t for the Nazi Holocaust, I would never have been born - although I’m not sure I could get my mom to do that ad with me.
It may be satisfying to poke holes in the logic of “pro-life” (Warning: this label does not apply to those suffering loss of life from the U.S. war machine, criminal justice system, extreme poverty, or workplace accident.) But the fact is that they’re winning. Recent polls show that for the first time in decades a minority of Americans identify themselves as pro-choice.
The problem we face is that while there are many groups that will take your donations to preserve the right to abortion, not enough will put people in the streets to fight for it. Many who used to lead those fights have disappeared into the smothering embrace of the Democratic Party, which promised us the world if we gave them a Congressional majority but instead gave us Bart Stupak. Too often the old leaders now talk like politicians, using cautious words like “choice” and “privacy.” As a result, people who have come of age in the last twenty years have only heard the word abortion spoken by the people holding up doctored photos.
This is not a complicated debate. We can trust women. That was the simple slogan of the late abortion doctor George Tiller. Or we can trust the folks who scream at women, the folks who care more about fertilized eggs than Iraqi children, think that having a baby won’t change you and that abortions are bad for the Florida Gators, and, oh yes, who supported the murder of Dr. Tiller.
These deluded people have somehow wandered out of their far right corner of the room and into the mainstream of American politics. We need to escort them back where they belong.
It’s nice to see Republicans raging at their own impotence. We’ve wasted too much time watching this party be taken seriously in the name of “bipartisanship” even as they pander to their lunatic fringe. Here’s a condensed version of the health care debate:
Obama: So, Republicans. Tell me your suggestions.
GOP: Go suck it you sleeper cell Indonesian! You want to create secret death panels run by Jewish bankers and Mexican migrants. You’ll never take us alive!
Obama: Hmm. Interesting point. How about we drop the public option?
When the Democrats finally decided to pass the bill with their own damned votes, they punctured the Beck-Palin hot air balloon. But the defeat of nutty Republicans was canceled out by the triumph of nutty anti-abortion Democrats.
These folks insisted that people getting health insurance through the new federal exchange program have to write separate checks for the part that covers abortions. And Obama caved in, even as he claimed there would be no change to “longstanding precedent.”
Well why is it in the bill then? Does Bart Stupak think that abortions are like cooties that people might catch by touching an infected check? No, Stupak knows that insurance companies wouldn’t cover their own mothers if it ate into the bottom line and that many of them will stop covering abortions rather than pay for the administrative costs of handling double checks.
Anti-abortionists are the hallowed forefathers of the militias and tea baggers. Some of them probably sit on park benches complaining that in their day “we didn’t have any Fox News or YouTube. Back then, if you wanted to get a tv interview you had to scream at women outside a clinic for months! Maybe throw in a bomb scare or two.”
These days the movement has gone mainstream with corporate lobbyists and polished ad campaigns. But underneath the expensive suits are people with an idea as fanatical as any Michele Bachmann speech: that removing a lima bean-sized bundle of cells is the moral equivalent to murdering a woman, child, or man.
Am I being overly simplistic? The conventional wisdom is that abortion is a terribly complicated issue. This is how Obama put it on the campaign trail:
“I don’t think you’re ever going to get a complete agreement on this issue. If you believe that life begins at conception, then I can’t change your mind.”
I don’t buy that. Of course some sort of life begins with a fertilized egg. And it’s awesome to ponder that a thinking feeling human being develops from that microscopic little thing – precisely because the two are NOT THE SAME THING.
The bizarre notion that abortion is murder logically leads to the truly deranged idea that the one in three women who terminate a pregnancy at some point in their lives are murderers. Since this isn’t exactly a mainstream view of humanity, the fertilized-egg saviors have to employ softer gentler arguments to reach out beyond the hard-core.
These arguments’ only weakness is that they also don’t make sense. Take for example, “abortion changes you.” The is the name of a pseudo-counseling service running ads on New York City subways that show people with their heads in their hands and other very sad poses to demonstrate how they’ve been changed by having an abortion. So according to these folks, if you really don’t want your life to change, have a baby. With that type of advice it’s not exactly shocking to read at the bottom of www.abortionchangesyou.com that “this site is not a professional counseling site.”
Another logically impaired ad was the infamous Super Bowl spot football hero Tim Tebow and his mother, who chose to continue her risky pregnancy against the advice of doctors. The ad, paid for by Focus on the Family, attracted controversy because many felt that our country’s most sacred holiday was not the place for Christian extremism.
Not enough was made of the silliness of the ad’s main message: An abortion would have prevented Tim Tebow from being born and leading the Florida Gators to a national championship. (Football being football, there were surely Tennessee fans watching the ad complaining that they could have won it all too if someone didn’t abort their great quarterback twenty years ago.)
But there are a million factors that could have prevented Tim from being born before his mother ever got pregnant. What events led Tim’s ancestors to come to this country where his parents met and conceived him? Given that most people don’t emigrate because they’re travel buffs, they may have been wars or famines. Should we celebrate these tragedies since they eventually led to the birth of Tim Tebow? Using this logic, I can proudly claim that if it weren’t for the Nazi Holocaust, I would never have been born - although I’m not sure I could get my mom to do that ad with me.
It may be satisfying to poke holes in the logic of “pro-life” (Warning: this label does not apply to those suffering loss of life from the U.S. war machine, criminal justice system, extreme poverty, or workplace accident.) But the fact is that they’re winning. Recent polls show that for the first time in decades a minority of Americans identify themselves as pro-choice.
The problem we face is that while there are many groups that will take your donations to preserve the right to abortion, not enough will put people in the streets to fight for it. Many who used to lead those fights have disappeared into the smothering embrace of the Democratic Party, which promised us the world if we gave them a Congressional majority but instead gave us Bart Stupak. Too often the old leaders now talk like politicians, using cautious words like “choice” and “privacy.” As a result, people who have come of age in the last twenty years have only heard the word abortion spoken by the people holding up doctored photos.
This is not a complicated debate. We can trust women. That was the simple slogan of the late abortion doctor George Tiller. Or we can trust the folks who scream at women, the folks who care more about fertilized eggs than Iraqi children, think that having a baby won’t change you and that abortions are bad for the Florida Gators, and, oh yes, who supported the murder of Dr. Tiller.
These deluded people have somehow wandered out of their far right corner of the room and into the mainstream of American politics. We need to escort them back where they belong.
Duncan's Twisted Vision for Our Schools
Hurricane Katrina was "the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans," according to Arne Duncan, who unfortunately is not a diabolical Hollywood villain but the U.S. Secretary of Education.
Four years after the hurricane, there are barely half as many children in New Orleans public schools. That's 30,000 mostly African American boys and girls who have been driven from their homes, possibly permanently.
Besides this easily being the Cheneyist thing anybody in the Obama administration has said, Duncan's words are so striking because he claims he thinks of his education policies as "the civil rights issue of our generation."
But then, Duncan has always been a strange type of civil rights leader. On the day he claimed to speak out for this generation's civil rights issue, he was the "CEO" of the Chicago public schools, which is the fourth most segregated school system in the country, according to a study sponsored by the Center for Urban Research and Learning at Loyola University.
It's not just Chicago. All around the country, schools are about as racially integrated today as they were before Brown v. the Board of Education. Schools named after Martin Luther King are often exclusively non-white. This is like having a George Washington High with Redcoats for teachers.
There are no rewards in Duncan's "Race to the Top" program for states that desegregate their schools. To Duncan, however, segregation is so "last generation." If he were to give a Martin Luther King-style civil rights speech, it might go like this:
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and give an equal opportunity to some of its children.
I have a dream that from the streets of Harlem to the hills of Georgia, children will be judged not by the color of their skin but by their score on a test...which is based on the school they attend...which is based on the color of their skin.
I have a dream that our nation will have enough educated workers to meet our needs without having to actually educate everybody.
And finally, I have a dream that our most disadvantaged children--the little girl coming to school from a homeless shelter, the boy from Mexico just learning our language, the children struggling with autism--I have a dream that these children will just go away because they are very poor investments.
The New York Times reports that Duncan is planning "sweeping change" to the notorious No Child Left Behind law pushed through by George W. Bush.
Like many things in the age of Obama, this sounds great until you keep reading. "Right now, most federal money goes out in formulas, so schools know how much they'll get, and then use it to provide services for poor children," Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, who attended a recent meeting with administration officials, told the Times. "The department thinks that's become too much of an entitlement."
Amen. If you've ever spent time in a school with poor children, the first thing that strikes you is their sense of entitlement: "I don't want to climb five flights of stairs to get to my 7th period class," they whine about the constantly broken elevator. "I have asthma."
As Jennings continued: "[Obama and Duncan] want to upend that scheme by making states and districts pledge to take actions the administration considers reform, before they get the money."
Darn right, kids! You don't get any money from this administration before you change your failing ways. Just ask AIG. Or the Pentagon. Or Joe Biden.
But we all know that children aren't the real villains. Teachers are. The thing that's really insidious about teachers is they're so committed to ruining education that, unlike many school administrators, they devote their whole lives to the field. Well, no more. The heart of the Duncan's plan is to "evaluate teachers based on student test data."
Using test scores to pay and fire teachers is such a good idea that this method should be applied to all professions. Firefighters should be judged according to the percentage of the fire that they put out--tough luck if you were driving the truck. Doctors should be paid based on survival rates, so when EMTs rush a multiple gunshot wound victim into the emergency groom, they'll find everyone out for a coffee break.
The other main element of the new policy is charter schools--lots of them. Teachers don't like charter schools in the same stubborn, unreasoning way that 11-year-olds don't like sweatshops.
But charters have proven teachers wrong on one thing. At least some teachers in their darkest moments have looked at their students and thought that if they could just get rid of that one kid--usually the one running a dice game in the corner of the classroom--the entire class would be better off. But charter schools have shown that you can exclude all those kids, as well as the ones with special learning needs or parents who can't spend 20 hours a week at the school, and still not show improvement over regular schools.
Hopefully, Duncan's education "reforms" will go the way of the health care bill. But don't count on it. The Obama administration might show more backbone taking on teachers and kids than it did with the insurance companies. After all, this is a question of civil rights.
Four years after the hurricane, there are barely half as many children in New Orleans public schools. That's 30,000 mostly African American boys and girls who have been driven from their homes, possibly permanently.
Besides this easily being the Cheneyist thing anybody in the Obama administration has said, Duncan's words are so striking because he claims he thinks of his education policies as "the civil rights issue of our generation."
But then, Duncan has always been a strange type of civil rights leader. On the day he claimed to speak out for this generation's civil rights issue, he was the "CEO" of the Chicago public schools, which is the fourth most segregated school system in the country, according to a study sponsored by the Center for Urban Research and Learning at Loyola University.
It's not just Chicago. All around the country, schools are about as racially integrated today as they were before Brown v. the Board of Education. Schools named after Martin Luther King are often exclusively non-white. This is like having a George Washington High with Redcoats for teachers.
There are no rewards in Duncan's "Race to the Top" program for states that desegregate their schools. To Duncan, however, segregation is so "last generation." If he were to give a Martin Luther King-style civil rights speech, it might go like this:
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and give an equal opportunity to some of its children.
I have a dream that from the streets of Harlem to the hills of Georgia, children will be judged not by the color of their skin but by their score on a test...which is based on the school they attend...which is based on the color of their skin.
I have a dream that our nation will have enough educated workers to meet our needs without having to actually educate everybody.
And finally, I have a dream that our most disadvantaged children--the little girl coming to school from a homeless shelter, the boy from Mexico just learning our language, the children struggling with autism--I have a dream that these children will just go away because they are very poor investments.
The New York Times reports that Duncan is planning "sweeping change" to the notorious No Child Left Behind law pushed through by George W. Bush.
Like many things in the age of Obama, this sounds great until you keep reading. "Right now, most federal money goes out in formulas, so schools know how much they'll get, and then use it to provide services for poor children," Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, who attended a recent meeting with administration officials, told the Times. "The department thinks that's become too much of an entitlement."
Amen. If you've ever spent time in a school with poor children, the first thing that strikes you is their sense of entitlement: "I don't want to climb five flights of stairs to get to my 7th period class," they whine about the constantly broken elevator. "I have asthma."
As Jennings continued: "[Obama and Duncan] want to upend that scheme by making states and districts pledge to take actions the administration considers reform, before they get the money."
Darn right, kids! You don't get any money from this administration before you change your failing ways. Just ask AIG. Or the Pentagon. Or Joe Biden.
But we all know that children aren't the real villains. Teachers are. The thing that's really insidious about teachers is they're so committed to ruining education that, unlike many school administrators, they devote their whole lives to the field. Well, no more. The heart of the Duncan's plan is to "evaluate teachers based on student test data."
Using test scores to pay and fire teachers is such a good idea that this method should be applied to all professions. Firefighters should be judged according to the percentage of the fire that they put out--tough luck if you were driving the truck. Doctors should be paid based on survival rates, so when EMTs rush a multiple gunshot wound victim into the emergency groom, they'll find everyone out for a coffee break.
The other main element of the new policy is charter schools--lots of them. Teachers don't like charter schools in the same stubborn, unreasoning way that 11-year-olds don't like sweatshops.
But charters have proven teachers wrong on one thing. At least some teachers in their darkest moments have looked at their students and thought that if they could just get rid of that one kid--usually the one running a dice game in the corner of the classroom--the entire class would be better off. But charter schools have shown that you can exclude all those kids, as well as the ones with special learning needs or parents who can't spend 20 hours a week at the school, and still not show improvement over regular schools.
Hopefully, Duncan's education "reforms" will go the way of the health care bill. But don't count on it. The Obama administration might show more backbone taking on teachers and kids than it did with the insurance companies. After all, this is a question of civil rights.
Inspired by Hunter College, MTA Declares Itself “Best Transportation Value”
by Danny Lucia
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) proclaimed itself yesterday “New York’s Best Transportation Value.”
“Studies have conclusively shown that our trains and buses are more affordable than taxis, limousines, and helicopters,” MTA spokesperson Richard Grubnik proudly declared. “Many middle class families can no longer afford a private jet or trans-oceanic hot air balloon due to rising fuel costs. We at the MTA are proud to offer transportation at a lower cost.”
In making this declaration, the Authority, which as been under fire for it’s plans to reduce service and raise fares, was reportedly influenced by Hunter College’s recent designation by the Princeton Review as the #2 “Best Value College.”
According to one unnamed MTA official, “Hunter has been raising its tuition and cutting staff. So some people might say ‘Boo hoo! Poor students won’t be able to stay in school. But Hunter is saying, ‘Look everybody! We’re cheaper than Columbia and NYU!’ That’s f*cking brilliant.”
Other public entities with rising fees and deteriorating services are apparently taking notice. Con Edison is planning a new ad campaign emphasizing its low cost in comparison with creating one’s own electrical grid. Elmhurst Hospital is debating between two new slogans for its emergency room: “Great Value Compared to Fancier Hospitals with their Nurses and Doctors” or “Even if You Die, that’s Still the Second Best Option.”
According to analysts, a key element of the new strategy is avoiding words like “public,” which imply that lower costs are due to taxpayer funds more than managerial brilliance. Hunter president Jennifer Raab demonstrated this technique in a recent interview on Fox Business.
When the host asked how Hunter was able to charge lower tuition than many universities, Raab’s response was not “because we’re a public school, you dumb-ass” but the more delicate “well, we are supported by New York State.”
“That’s very sharp,” notes advertising executive Lance Roachley. “‘Public school’ is a bad brand. It reminds us of those awful places in movies where the white teacher has to come save everyone by making them champions at something quirky and un-ghetto like origami or badminton.”
Added Roachley, “I’ve heard that the college likes to put fliers up all over campus about Hunter’s affordability. To do that in the midst of tuition hikes is a brilliant use of what we in the business call ‘counter-factual narrative.’”
“Of course,” Roachley concluded, “I’ve also heard that Hunter has a well-armed police force. That’s probably a good idea too.”
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) proclaimed itself yesterday “New York’s Best Transportation Value.”
“Studies have conclusively shown that our trains and buses are more affordable than taxis, limousines, and helicopters,” MTA spokesperson Richard Grubnik proudly declared. “Many middle class families can no longer afford a private jet or trans-oceanic hot air balloon due to rising fuel costs. We at the MTA are proud to offer transportation at a lower cost.”
In making this declaration, the Authority, which as been under fire for it’s plans to reduce service and raise fares, was reportedly influenced by Hunter College’s recent designation by the Princeton Review as the #2 “Best Value College.”
According to one unnamed MTA official, “Hunter has been raising its tuition and cutting staff. So some people might say ‘Boo hoo! Poor students won’t be able to stay in school. But Hunter is saying, ‘Look everybody! We’re cheaper than Columbia and NYU!’ That’s f*cking brilliant.”
Other public entities with rising fees and deteriorating services are apparently taking notice. Con Edison is planning a new ad campaign emphasizing its low cost in comparison with creating one’s own electrical grid. Elmhurst Hospital is debating between two new slogans for its emergency room: “Great Value Compared to Fancier Hospitals with their Nurses and Doctors” or “Even if You Die, that’s Still the Second Best Option.”
According to analysts, a key element of the new strategy is avoiding words like “public,” which imply that lower costs are due to taxpayer funds more than managerial brilliance. Hunter president Jennifer Raab demonstrated this technique in a recent interview on Fox Business.
When the host asked how Hunter was able to charge lower tuition than many universities, Raab’s response was not “because we’re a public school, you dumb-ass” but the more delicate “well, we are supported by New York State.”
“That’s very sharp,” notes advertising executive Lance Roachley. “‘Public school’ is a bad brand. It reminds us of those awful places in movies where the white teacher has to come save everyone by making them champions at something quirky and un-ghetto like origami or badminton.”
Added Roachley, “I’ve heard that the college likes to put fliers up all over campus about Hunter’s affordability. To do that in the midst of tuition hikes is a brilliant use of what we in the business call ‘counter-factual narrative.’”
“Of course,” Roachley concluded, “I’ve also heard that Hunter has a well-armed police force. That’s probably a good idea too.”
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