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“Live Blogging From the Academy Awards!”

March 7, 2010

Star

I start to type up a blog about Barack Obama tonight, when lo and behold! I realize that the Academy Awards are on.

I don’t really go to many movies.  I have a hard time with violence.   I can only manage most modern movies if I can persuade someone who’s already seen the movie to go a second time and let me hide my eyes in their shoulder until they tell me it’s okay to look again.

And, then, well, there’s the busy-ness factor.   There are just so many other things to do these days.    You can, for example, live hooked up to a computer.

Not seeing many movies  limits my interest in the Academy Awards.  But I watch some of the show simply for the nostalgia factor.  It’s a show that my parents let me stay up for as a child.  My mom loved movies, loved Hollywood;  memories of seeing favorite movies were some of her happiest.

As the Oscars played, I’d sit near her feet on  our living room rug while she went on and on about how old or young somebody looked.  (Actually, usually what she talked about was how old someone was and how young they looked.)  My dad usually stretched out on a further place in the rug and snored.

So far (and I, thankfully, missed the beginning) this seems to be kind of a boring Academy Award show.  I like Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, but the show seems stripped down, less sillily glitzy.

Costumes are boring; dresses predictable (no one’s wearing a swan!)   Many of the stars are amazingly poor at reading from teleprompters.  (In the old days, when the presenters read from index cards, there was at least the interest of seeing them holding the cards far or close to their eyes, fanning themselves when they gave up on getting the words out, and then, of course, the occasional wonder of reading glasses stuck briefly on the bridge of some celebrated nose.)

Secondly, there is a huge number of commercials (and these are not Super Bowl commercials.)  Many of the little films and clips on the show itself seem like commercials.  It’s as if the Academy is desperately trying to sell us on how important it and its products are.

So the awards go on.  There’s some interest in seeing how weirdly big earrings can be; how whittled down actresses can get themselves.

Then too, there  is the contagious emotion of some award recipients.  It’s very hard not to be moved by Monique and the winners from Precious, and also those from The Hurt Locker, relative newcomers to the glittery scene.

One guy has just said that what he likes about short films is that they are short.  Unfortunately, that’s not one of the sterling qualities of the Academy Awards Show.

Still, I’ll give it a little longer.  (Like so many of those recipients, in honor of my mom.)

UPDATE at end of Oscars:  I lasted through it!  So glad Hollywood came through for The Hurt Locker and not Avatar.  (I tend to go for the ex-wife.  And Cameron was hard enough to stomach even from his seat.)

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Magical Thinking, Cake, Tea Parties

February 28, 2010

Magical Cake

I’m all for certain types of magical thinking.

I’m completely sold, for instance, on the idea that food eaten standing in front of an open refrigerator has no calories.   Just like the slivers of cake that are eaten as part of straightening the cuts made by other people’s pieces;  these are purely aesthetic slivers, consumed in the name of maintaining order;  they cannot possibly go to your waistline.

But some kinds of magical thinking are too much even for me to swallow, such as the ideas that (i) the United States would thrive with a government that had no taxing authority or system for monetary regulation (sorry to change gears so abruptly);  (ii) the United States could support its army without a taxing authority;  (iii) a government with no central taxing authority could provide services to, among others, senior citizens and the disabled;, (iv) that, if government stopped providing such services, private charities would fill the gap;  (v) that, in the absence of governmental regulatory agencies, business would protect the environment,  the consumer, and ensure food and product safety.

Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was nice? (This notion doesn’t even work out in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, a magically-thought-up world that exists on the back of a turtle supported by four elephants.)

Government is very far from perfect; it can be arbitrary, unreasonable, officious, corrupt.  (Just like a lot of big companies.)  But, as poorly as some rules and agencies function, it’s important to keep in mind that they came into being to fill specific needs;  virtually all of these needs were historical, many ongoing.

However, some of the Tea Party persuasion seem believe in a kind of creationism.   (I’m not talking Genesis here.)  They see rules and agencies as products of spontaneous generation, like Athena sprouting from Zeus’s head ( in this case it’s the governmental many-headed hydra.)    In this world view (which fails to take either history or reality into account),  the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency were formed not because of unclean food, water, air, but because some bureaucrat woke up one morning determined to ruin some decent person’s day.  (Does anyone remember The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair?)

(It’s interesting to note that both the EPA and the Pure Food and Drug Act, were established under Republican administrations, Richard Nixon, in 1970, and Teddy Roosevelt , in 1906.)

The Tea Party belief system is further skewed by conspiracy theories (weird magical thing);  the claim, for example, that global warming is a hoax, the product of a worldwide cabal of scientists desperate to take away Americans’  SUVs, air conditioning,  automatic lawn watering systems.  What is never explained however is (i) how disputatious scientistscould form such a secret cabal, and (ii) why they would want to.  Are they all just sourpusses?  Have they invested heavily in wind?  Is it a push for more government grants?

I, for one, can’t understand all these connections.

All I know is that there’s a cake in my kitchen which was cut in a way that could really use some calorie-free straightening.

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Plié While You Read This (Exercise At The Office)

February 24, 2010

Elephant Plié at Desk

Stand Up While You Read This! is the title of an alarming (if not completely surprising) article by Olivia Judson in this week’s New York Times. Judson discusses new studies that show that sitting for long periods every day contributes to obesity (and a bunch of attendant illnesses) not only because sitting, such a passive activity, doesn’t burn many calories but because it actively changes the body’s metabolism.

What’s worse is that many of the negative aspects of sitting are not countered by regular exercise;  one hour of exercise just can’t do battle against hours of lumpishness.

The trick apparently is to break up those lumpy hours, to stand up more–while on the phone, while on the computer.  Standing up at the computer seems at bit hard to me, but some people advocate standing desks with slow moving treadmills beneath them;  others exchange office chairs for those big bright blue therapy balls.   (Oh yes!  I can see sitting on a therapy ball going over very well at my office!)

I don’t think my employer would pay for a slow treadmill either.  (Generally, employers, outside of factories, only go for metaphorical treadmills.)

So what is a worker with a sedentary job (let’s say, in an office) to do?    Some suggestions:

1.  Plié.  You know, deep knee bends, like a ballet dancer.   During those phone calls that you remember to stand up for.  But also, while washing your hands at the lavatory sink, while waiting for the copy machine or coffee machine or elevator.  While in the elevator. It’s low-tech, stationary, and, if you don’t add in arm gestures and are not wearing a short skirt, may not even be very noticeable.  (You may want to stick to demi-pliés and not the full bore ones.)

2.  Continuing in the dance mode, sashay!  Sashaying is a slightly twisting, slightly waltzy, sidestep, with arms extended. Sashaying will get your blood flowing, make you feel terrific (an aura of Fred Astaire almost instantly descends), and also get you to your destination faster.  While it is, theoretically, a graceful maneuver, you may want to save it for those moments when alone in office corridors, or for the stretches of space between open doors.   If you don’t have enough rhythm for a good sashay, pretend you work for the Ministry of Silly Walks.

3.  Take advantage of whatever privacy finds your way.  You have a moment in the Ladies’ Room—try to squeeze in twenty jumping jacks.  (Your heart will not only race from the exercise but from the fear of discovery.)

4.  Make your chair your friend rather than enemy.  Squat.  (Be careful if your chair has wheels.)  I haven’t seen any studies on this, but squatting’s got to be better than sitting.  (Non-obese people squat all over the world.)  Admittedly, squatting is a bit hard on knees that have been doing a lot of pliés.

If you can’t squat, try sitting cross-legged.  (How many obese meditators have you seen?)

Use your armrests for dips.   Try to keep the weight balanced so your chair doesn’t fall over.   (Work on curls while picking up the chair.)

5.  Use your arms too, extend, wiggle. Yes, it’s a little distracting to do arm exercises while talking on the phone or while looking at a computer screen, but it’s a lot less distracting than talking on the phone WHILE looking at a computer screen.  (You know those long distracted silences.  Sometimes they are even your long distracted silences.)

The great thing about all these techniques is that they will burn calories, reduce your chances of sitter’s metabolism, and also, by raising your silliness level, give a lift to both energy and spirits.  Your co-workers, at least, should have a good laugh.

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Further To….

February 20, 2010

One of the good and bad features of a daily blog (especially for a blogger with a daily job) is that it requires the blogger to get posts out quickly, sometimes before an issue is very well understood.  (Sorry!)  In such cases. the post is really a reaction (perhaps premature) to an issue, rather than any kind of cogent analysis.  Sometimes the post doesn’t even reflect the blogger’s longer-term, or considered, reaction to an issue,  but, at best, is simply a snapshot of the moments in which it was written.

Here is further information about the topics of two recent posting:   the first relates to The Line Between Satire and Sneer (illustrated by the teapot surrounded by UFOs), which expressed my wish that the TV show Family Guy hadn’t joked about  the mother of a character with Down’s Syndrome being the former governor of Alaska.    Palin and her daughter Bristol interpreted the program as a cruel jab at Palin’s son Trig (with Down’s Syndrome).  An article in today’s New York Times describes the reaction to Palin’s outrage of the actress,  Andrea Fay Friedman, who did the voice-over for the Down’s Syndrome character and who herself has Down’s Syndrome.  Ms. Friedman accuses Sarah Palin of not having a sense of humor, and of misunderstanding the episode, which presents the Down’s Syndrome character as an obnoxious but strong figure:   “I’m like ‘I’m not Trig. This is my life, ” Ms. Friedman said in a telephone interview with the Times, “I was making fun of Sarah Palin, but not her son.”

I still don’t like Family Guy.  (It’s the crassness.)  And I still wish that the show had not given Palin further “mileage”.  But the article, which gives more information about both the episode and Ms. Friedman,  certainly clarifies another perspective.

The second story which is subject to increasing illumination as the days go by is about Joe Stack, the man who ran a plane into the Austin, Texas IRS building (and whose disgruntlement with the IRS apparently began when the IRS refused to give him a tax exemption as a church.)   Gail Collins has a great article today, The Wages of Rages, about Stack, but also various lame-brained attempts of Republican politicians to expropriate Tea Party rage for political capital.   Yes, she manages to include a reference to Mitt Romney tying his dog to the roof of his car.

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Blowing His Stack

February 18, 2010

It’s very hard to know what to make of Joe Stack, the apparent pilot of the plane that crashed into an Austin, Texas IRS office today.

My first reaction was that this is what you (we) get when it becomes popular to demonize the U.S. tax system, to talk about revolution and seccession, and to push diabolical conspiracy theories.  But Stack doesn’t seem to exactly fit into a Tea Party profile (whatever that is.)   For one thing, he comes across as extremely anti-capitalist.  For another, though he specifically targets the IRS, his enemies are too diversified to represent a particular partisan viewpoint.

All that’s really clear from the internet letter Stack posted before his plane crash is that he was very very angry—angry that corrupt and self-defeating institutions (he names GM in particular) are bailed out while he seems to get financially hit again and again.  Angry that all kinds of people and things present obstacles to him and his retirement plan–GW Bush,  Arthur Andersen, Patrick Moynihan, sleazy accountants, tax lawyers, specific inequities in the tax code, the closing of bases in Southern California in the 1990’s, difficulties with air travel after 9/11, low pay rates in Texas, the FAA, drug companies and insurance companies, the Catholic Church, fat cats in general.

Because Stack’s’ attack was against the IRS, some people have already expressed sympathy for him (while acknowledging the horror perpetrated on his victims.)     He’s clearly someone that was pressed beyond his breaking point; reading about someone who is under such internal (and possibly external) pressure invokes a certain sympathy (in addition to a whole bunch of fear.)

But the sympathy (or at least any sympathy that I feel) ends with the bloodletting:  “violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer,” Stack writes.

Here’s where I question the influence of our culture.  The guy was clearly mad—and perhaps not just in the sense of angry.  But the fact is that we have a ‘tit-for-tat’ culture, a culture which seems to admire, or at least, accept, vigilantism.  It’s a culture that espouses hitting back, standing up for one’s self with a gun (or some kind of weapon); it is not a “turn-the-other-cheek” kind of culture, not even among much of the Christian right.

Stack complains about “taxation without representation,” but what this seems to refer to is not that he did not get a chance to voice his views, but that his views did not carry the day, that, in other words, he didn’t win.  (Does this sound familiar?)

I’ll stop right here.  Who knows yet what was really going on with the guy?   Craziness all around;  unhappiness all around.

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Fear and Loathing on the Number 4 (The NYC Subway Not Much Of A Tea Party)

February 17, 2010

Boy on Number 4 Train

“The people here are f—ing animals,” said the slightly hard-faced young woman to her ten or eleven year old son as they scooted onto my express.

The train was full, but not jammed; there was space not only to breathe, but even to move around a bit.  The boy, wide-eyed and buzz-cut (his mom was holding his Yankees cap), stepped towards one of the center poles, reaching in between passengers, to hold on—his mom quickly pulled him back towards the door.

“These people push you,” she said, draping an arm around him, “I’ll push them back.”

At their side, I kept thinking how unfair this was.   Saying that people push on the train is a bit like saying that a bunch of clementines slung into a bag, clothes crushed into a hamper, or lemmings urged into the sea, push. Okay, maybe we and the lemmings do.  Some.  Still, in my experience, most New York City subway riders, especially the ones whose faces are almost grazed by my forearm as I reach for something to hold onto are pretty forbearing.  (A very different f-word.)

I’m kind of a busybody, I guess, in the sense that I pay attention to strangers.  (As noted in my previous posts, I believe in a “ripple effect” of trying to be peaceful, pleasant, on the subway.)  So now I tried to smile discreetly at the boy to reassure him that he wasn’t really surrounded by f—ing animals.

But it was hard to smile at the boy.  First, because I was afraid his mom would slug me;  secondly, because I was worrying about the fact that his mother had thrust him into a spot (by the door) where there was nothing at all to hang onto.   (I envisaged lurches, collisions, a huge altercation.)

But as the train pushed from the station, the mom grabbed him again, folding her arm around his neck.

After a minute or so, as the ride stabilized, she loosened her grip, and the boy turned himself around so that he faced the door itself and leaned right into it.   This worried me even more.  GERMS.   (I’m a mother too.)

Then I realized that he was (probably) not pressing his mouth into the rubberized seam of the door, but into the collar of his jacket. And then, that the little boy was gently but firmly hitting his buzz-cut head against the door itself.  Again and again and again.

He did not look autistic.  (Who knows?)   But he did not look like he had any “organic” type of problem that might lead to headbanging.   He just looked, well, down, as he softly banged his head.

The mother gently put her hand on the back of his head to try to stop him.  When that didn’t work, she put her hand on his forehead to shield the place that was banging.  That didn’t stop him either.

Finally, we got to Union Square where she put her arm around his neck again and told him they had to get out—

“This our stop?”

“No, to let the people get off.”

As they stepped back into the train, there was one emptied seat left, which I pointed out quickly to the woman.  I felt a little guilty as there was a little old lady right behind them, but the old lady probably wouldn’t have swooped down on the seat in time in any case, and the boy, with his mom pushing him, was a pretty good swooper.

The mother nodded at me once her son was situated,  half-smiling for just a moment.  Then she leaned heavily against the center pole, her face tired, stressed.

The incident somehow made me think of the Tea Partyers again.  I don’t think I quite said what I wanted to yesterday in my post about sneering.  And I don’t mean to imply that the woman on the train was a Tea Partyer.  Only that she seemed frustrated and fearful, and I’m guessing (with really no clear evidence) that she doesn’t much like or trust government, and probably not Obama.

A big part of me wanted to say to her:  ‘Hey!  Don’t spout the f-word to your kid.  Don’t teach pushing on the train!  Enough with automatic retribution!’

But I was able to stop myself.  Besides the fact that she really might have hit me, that kind of speech would simply not have been very useful.  As it was, I was lucky enough to be able to help her get a seat for a tired boy.  And to get a smile from her.  And for both of us to feel that strangers in our society could, in fact, have a kind of connection.

I don’t mean to pat myself on the back here.   Just to say that it felt good.

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The Line Between Satire and Sneer–UFO’s and Palin, Tea Partyers and Obama

February 16, 2010

Tea Pot and UFOs

I freely confess that I’m not a Family Guy kind of gal.  I just don’t care for crass.

Even my beloved Robert Pattinson has really turned me off lately with his gross and negative remarks concerning female private parts.   (Better watch out for your constituency, Rob.  You haven’t exactly shown yourself to be Laurence Olivier, after all.)

Because of my dislike of crudity, I haven’t watched the Family Guy clip of the Down’s Syndrome character whose mother is the Governor of Alaska.  I  just wish it hadn’t been aired.   Mainly because I personally think it is wrong and offensive to make jokes at the expense of little children with disabilities.

Secondly (and I’m sorry if I’m being crass here myself), it feeds Palin’s mantle of media martyrdom, consequently diminishing the impact of jokes and criticism justifiably aimed at instances of her hypocrisy and untruth  (that is, meaningful satire.)

How to distinguish between mindless stupid crass jokes and meaningful satire?  I feel a little bit like Stephen Colbert here, who recently tried to use Palin’s calculus for acceptable uses of the word “retard”, distinguishing between what Palin called Rush Limbaugh’s acceptable use of the word as “satire”, and Rahm Emanuel’s unacceptable use (to characterize certain Democrats) .

(Yes, even as I write that, I’m conscious that I’m jumping onto the whole “making fun of Sarah Palin” boat.)

But here’s one of the problems with jumping on to that boat.  There are a lot of frustrated, fearful, angry people in this country who feel that Palin speaks to and for them.

Some of these people, the Tea Partyers, are relatively easy to mock.  They tend not to be “hip”;   they sometimes seem ignorant; some of their views (seccession!) seem pretty outlandish.

I especially cannot understand these people’s take on Obama.  (Some of them view him not only as  a non-U.S. citizen, but terrorist witch doctor).   The people who espouse such views  seem to me like the kind of people who believe in UFOs.  (Particularly UFOs sent into space by the Federal Government.)

But these people are not truly crazy;  they drive cars, hold jobs, pay taxes (reluctantly), raise children, take care of the elderly, work.    But they feel that they/we are in terrible trouble, and they act like people both steaming mad and desperately seeking a cure.  (They make me think of those books that advocate eating nothing but garlic or watermelon.)    The cure they want is to go back to a past that never actually was; to a simplicity that never was.

Making stupid jokes at their expense, sneering at them (and at Palin), is not a good way to quell fears,  ease resentments.

While Obama can be professorial, he is also extremely good at explaining complicated issues in simple, but not reductive, ways.    He needs to use that skill more to remind Americans of how the country arrived at this economic downturn, of why the banking system was saved, of how the Republicans in Congress (and in the White House) both contributed to the current crisis and are now blocking its repair.   He needs to keep it simple, make it direct.

And while hypocrisy may deserve satire, Obama (and his supporters) should avoid the side of the sneer.

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George Washington, Sarah Palin, Cherry Pie and Christian with a capital “C”

February 15, 2010

Washington and Cherry Pie

Presidents’ Day.  In my youth, we had Lincoln’s Birthday on February 12 and Washington’s Birthday on February 22.  I don’t remember specific rituals around Lincoln’s Birthday, but Washington’s was celebrated with cherry pie.

And, of course, big sales.

Now, what we mainly have are the sales.

I could not help thinking of Washington today.  Partly because I still had Sarah Palin’s Tea Party speech on my mind, “American Exceptionalism”, and the attempt (apparently among certain members of the Texas Education Board) to characterize the founding fathers as Christian (with the capital “C” and silent “F” of Fundamentalism).

Even when I was little, the one thing we all knew about George Washington was that whole incident with the cherry tree. We had been told that the story was probably not true, but understood that the point was that Washington himself was true; a good man; that even as a child (like us), he could not lie.  (I thought about him as a kind of American Pinocchio.)

Of course, even the true stories about Washington stress the strength and nobility of his character, noticeable in both his age and youth.  I read today, in connection with thinking of Washington’s character, the precepts Washington copied out at sixteen:  Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation, 110 maxims which are believed to have come from a book published in 1664 in London entitled, The Young Man’s Companion, and which, in turn, were derived from rules developed by French Jesuits in 1595.

The Rules are a detailed compendium of how to show respect and consideration to others, both in matters of literal nit-picking as well as “not-picking-upon.”  Although the rules urge a young man to keep the “celestial fire” of conscience alive, they do not seem to teach how to please a Christian God (there are no biblical references), but how to be a good, honorable, admirable person.

The founding fathers, shaped as they were by the Enlightenment, seem to me to have been big on such precepts, guidelines, universal rules.  One thinks of Ben Franklin, who, in his Poor Richard’s Almanac, published literally hundreds of adages, rules to live by.  While some of Franklin’s adages do mention God (as in “God helps those who help themselves”), and many castigate immorality (especially hypocrisy), the focus is more on prescribing a moral life because it is a key to happiness, contentment, self-fulfillment, societal good:  “Sin is not hurtful because it is forbidden but it is forbidden because it’s hurtful. Nor is a Duty beneficial because it is commanded, but it is commanded, because it’s beneficial.”  (Poor Richard’s Almanac, from 1739.)   In other words, a good life is its own reward, and, more importantly, is a reward.

Thomas Jefferson was particularly interested in theology;  he even wrote specifically about Jesus, but again, his interest seems to focus not so much the specific religious meaning of Jesus, but in Jesus as a sublime paradigm of the ethical life.  (Apparently, Jefferson’s book, published in 1820, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, sets forth Jesus’s ethical pronouncements, while editing out the Virgin birth, the miracle stories, Jesus’s claims to divinity, and the resurrection.)

I really do not know as much about the history of these men as I would like, so forgive me (and comment) if I’m mischaracterizing them.  I’m certainly not trying to make them out as “anti-Christian”, but simply saying that it seems bizarrely reductive, simplistic, and manipulative (i) to argue that the use of the word “God” or “Creator” in our founding political documents aligns the founding fathers with the religious right; (ii) to ignore the historical context of these guys (as heavy readers of both the Bible and Voltaire), and (iii) to treat them as if they were somehow more mainstream versions of Joseph Smith, i.e. specific transmitters of divine will.

Agh!

And yes, it’s possible to be ethical and even christian without the capital “C” or the capital “F”, in the same way that one can honor the American flag without being pro-war.  One can even like cherry pie.

(All rights reserved.)

PS- if you like elephants, as well as watercolors, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson on Amazon.

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Palin on Prosperity – God Help Us.

February 14, 2010

In Chilapa, Mexico

Started out today (Valentine’s Day) intending to write and draw about love and its objects.  With and without elephants.

One object of my love is tea.   My first cup, drunk while reading Frank Rich of the New York Times, unfortunately brought me to ‘tea party’.  And tea party, elephants, Frank Rich, and Valentines (as in who can be as cutesy, hokey, and reductive, as a Hallmark card–sorry, Hallmark!)–brought me to Sarah Palin.

I confess to having a hard time listening to Palin’s Tea Party speech (I had to read the transcript).  There is a teasing artifice that is deeper than the teased hair.   She zings out one-liners which she must know are not true;  she presents herself as  a spokesperson for the “little guy,” while keeping a continual eye on the nontransparent ball of personal enrichment and aggrandizement.

(One of the personally most aggravating inconsistencies is her castigation of government programs while touting herself as the protector of those with special needs.  Who pays for the lifetime care of most people with special needs, Sarah?

Her “solutions” are also one-liners:  on the war against terrorism:  “Bottom line, we win, they lose. We do all that we can to win.”  (Gee, amazing that no one else thought of that.)

One would think that Sarah’s highly-paid exhortations towards an un-fact-based, if strident, agenda would cause her pause, maybe even a little guilt.  But Sarah seems to bypass all those concerns by a pink cloud of religious faith:  as in ‘if we Godly people can only get into power, God will swoop down and save us.’

Palin’s actual words: “you know, we don’t have all the answers as fallible men and women.  So it would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again.”

I don’t doubt Sarah’s faith.  I understand people (including myself)  seeking divine support and guidance in times of trouble and not.

But what’s worrisome is Sarah’s casual equation between the search for divine intervention with safeness, security and prosperity; as if hard, fact-based, complex, boring, analysis, could be bypassed.

Putting aside some of the more philosophical questions–didn’t George W. try that?

Secondly, well, is God really that interested in the the bank bail-out?

Third, Sarah, how can be so sure that you have a better pipeline to God than Obama?   (BTW, didn’t your demi-idol Ronald Reagan consult an astrologer more frequently than a pastor? )  (And isn’t this an awfully lot like the type of things that the Taliban preach?)

Finally, aren’t there a lot of religious, even Christian, people who are not particularly safe, secure or prosperous?   (Don’t, in other words, bad things happen to good people?)

She makes me think about a trip to Mexico a couple of years ago.  Mexico is an extremely religious country;  in the small town where we stayed there were fiestas every week in which the “Cristianos” conquered the “Moros” on the paving stones in front of the local cathedral.  At one fiesta, depicted above, a man dressed in satin swaddling clothes was hung from a cross on the back of a truck.

The Mexicans, in short, are not afraid to show, even to parade, their religiousity.   And yet that country suffers from poverty, unemployment and underemployment, terrible drug violence.   Yes, it’s true that abortion, long illegal there, has very recently had a slightly greater allowance in a few Mexican states.   However, anti-abortion rules are on the rise again  (and Mexico’s economic and social problems long preceded any loosening of abortion laws.)

Sarah, please  explain.



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Deficit of Trust in Government – The Difference Between Coke and Pepsi

February 4, 2010

Continuing to think about the deficit of trust in government.    (See prior post.)

Part of the problem (aside from a pusillanimous, self-interested congress, the unfettered flood of special interest moneys, and periodic out-and-out scandals) is that many people’s day-to-day interactions with governmental institutions have an unpleasant aspect–taxes; speeding tickets; waiting at one of those blinking yellow lights for an endless road repair; the Post Office, which, if not exactly unpleasant, often involves lines, and a high background level of frustration.  (The phrase “going postal” did not arise out of a void.) 

Then too, there’s seeming arbitrariness of government — the perception that some people unfairly get benefits while others are denied. 

Which brings us to the judicial system.   I happen to be someone with faith in the U.S. court and justice system.  I believe that it is (more or less, fundamentally, at least in principal) sound (certainly compared to many other countries.)    But its high costs combined with its power and political underpinnings can make its verdicts both terrifying and burdensome.   When they are eventually delivered.  It tends to have a velocity equivalent to molasses in a snow storm.   (Extremely expensive molasses, a very long snow storm.)   A  friend of mine living in Queens has recently spent over eight months and thousands of dollars in legal bills evicting a tenant who never paid a single dollar’s rent.  

I’m not writing here about judicial reform, or nuisance suits, or even unscrupulous lawyers.  I understand that many landlords perpetrate horrible abuses on tenants.  (I’m a tenant.) 

The point is that these factors engender an instinctive distrust for all government, not simply the difficult parts.

Unlike corporate brands, which people readily differentiate, with clear preferences for either Coke or Pepsi, Burger King or MacDonalds, Toyota (oops!) or Ford, many seem to conflate different levels and types of government–federal and local government (where money has especially undue influence), the  executive, and judicial branches, the state trooper and the FEMA social worker, the random INS or TSA worker and Obama himself. 

It’s a problem that can only be solved by individual effort; all involved (both workers and citizens) genuinely trying to do better.  

I’m not holding my breath.

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