Friday, May 30, 2008
a blog within a blog within a blog
Again, someone - or a couple someones, more accurately - says exactly what I'm thinking far better than I could say it myself. Bonus: political analysis through sports metaphors!
Thursday, May 22, 2008
in the meantime
Many people have heard by now of Senator Edward Kennedy's malignant brain tumor (if you want to know more about the actual science of it, check out this article from the Dana Foundation, where my brother is managing editor) and imminent retirement.
Coverage of this story has inadvertently illustrated a couple of things about our current cultural moment that make me sad for reasons that have nothing to do with my sympathy for those who must deal with their own or a loved one's terminal illness.
First, I've seen grave predictions from medical professionals and others that, basically, Senator Kennedy's time on Earth is now limited. NEWS FLASH: He's going to die.
But you and I? Clearly we are going to live forever.
Many cultures have reached an equilibrium on this point that continues to elude mainstream U.S. culture - they understand death as a natural and inevitable part of life. Of course it's never easy for anyone to lose a loved one, much less watch them endure the pain and suffering prolonged illness may bring. But they don't add to that misery the shock and disbelief that seem to be a part of our culture's usual reactions to news of illness and death. Not everyone in the world approaches life with the assumption that we've all been granted the inalienable right to a particular idea of physical and mental normalcy for an infinite number of years.
(Of course, not every single U.S. American makes that assumption either. Please understand that I'm generalizing here).
How might you live your life differently if you really believed you and the people you love will die, maybe soon? And if everyone who is relatively healthy thought of themselves as, to quote someone who came to my organization last year to discuss working with students with disabilities, "temporarily abled" instead of "normal"?
...
I'm tempted to leave it at that, instead of jumping topics to the other thing in the media coverage of Kennedy's illness that's bugging me... but I found it kind of depressingly fascinating, and this is my blog after all, so I get to write about what I'm thinking about. Which as you may have inferred is pretty much all over the map most of the time. So...
This line in the Washington Post story today caught my eye: "The Senate opened debate on paying for another year of the Iraq war without the Massachusetts Democrat's customary roar of outrage."
I read that sentence as: We are so bored with and uninterested in the political process and especially with the war in Iraq that we may as well add debates about it to Robert's Rules of Order. "As the subject is opened to debate it shall be necessary, first, that the Senator from Massachusetts shall offer a roar of outrage.
"Second, that the issue be meagerly debated before members proceed to their respective offices to offer meaningless 10-second sound bites to assorted media; and third, that funding be approved lest members of the assembly be forced to actually face and put a stop to the unending violence and meaningless destruction. Members of the assembly shall repeat the above steps as needed one or multiple times per year/decade/century."
(Hey look, these two topics are actually quite connected. I actually wasn't thinking of it that way when I started to write this. Which is why I like writing a blog.)
We will all die someday. That doesn't mean we should ever let ourselves be comfortable with the taking of lives, no matter how far away or impoverished or militantly Islamic they are. Wendell Berry said that "to treat life as anything less than precious is to give up on it." I'm pretty sure that he wasn't talking about just his or yours or mine.
Coverage of this story has inadvertently illustrated a couple of things about our current cultural moment that make me sad for reasons that have nothing to do with my sympathy for those who must deal with their own or a loved one's terminal illness.
First, I've seen grave predictions from medical professionals and others that, basically, Senator Kennedy's time on Earth is now limited. NEWS FLASH: He's going to die.
But you and I? Clearly we are going to live forever.
Many cultures have reached an equilibrium on this point that continues to elude mainstream U.S. culture - they understand death as a natural and inevitable part of life. Of course it's never easy for anyone to lose a loved one, much less watch them endure the pain and suffering prolonged illness may bring. But they don't add to that misery the shock and disbelief that seem to be a part of our culture's usual reactions to news of illness and death. Not everyone in the world approaches life with the assumption that we've all been granted the inalienable right to a particular idea of physical and mental normalcy for an infinite number of years.
(Of course, not every single U.S. American makes that assumption either. Please understand that I'm generalizing here).
How might you live your life differently if you really believed you and the people you love will die, maybe soon? And if everyone who is relatively healthy thought of themselves as, to quote someone who came to my organization last year to discuss working with students with disabilities, "temporarily abled" instead of "normal"?
...
I'm tempted to leave it at that, instead of jumping topics to the other thing in the media coverage of Kennedy's illness that's bugging me... but I found it kind of depressingly fascinating, and this is my blog after all, so I get to write about what I'm thinking about. Which as you may have inferred is pretty much all over the map most of the time. So...
This line in the Washington Post story today caught my eye: "The Senate opened debate on paying for another year of the Iraq war without the Massachusetts Democrat's customary roar of outrage."
I read that sentence as: We are so bored with and uninterested in the political process and especially with the war in Iraq that we may as well add debates about it to Robert's Rules of Order. "As the subject is opened to debate it shall be necessary, first, that the Senator from Massachusetts shall offer a roar of outrage.
"Second, that the issue be meagerly debated before members proceed to their respective offices to offer meaningless 10-second sound bites to assorted media; and third, that funding be approved lest members of the assembly be forced to actually face and put a stop to the unending violence and meaningless destruction. Members of the assembly shall repeat the above steps as needed one or multiple times per year/decade/century."
(Hey look, these two topics are actually quite connected. I actually wasn't thinking of it that way when I started to write this. Which is why I like writing a blog.)
We will all die someday. That doesn't mean we should ever let ourselves be comfortable with the taking of lives, no matter how far away or impoverished or militantly Islamic they are. Wendell Berry said that "to treat life as anything less than precious is to give up on it." I'm pretty sure that he wasn't talking about just his or yours or mine.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Friday, May 16, 2008
friday link day
Cool story in the NYT today about an Olympic hopeful turning the meanings of "disabled" and "able-bodied" just a little bit upside-down.
I just wish I could get excited about the Olympics at all, given the many controversies we seem to so easily forget in the face of a natural disaster. I'm not minimizing the earthquake; I just think the quake doesn't warrant total forgiveness or forgetfulness of everything else.
On the bright side, I'm looking forward to the Olympics being on the other side of the world again, such that I will be able to know results before watching (um, on my hypothetical TV) the competitions themselves. I get very nervous for the competitors, regardless of any attachment I may (but probably don't) have to their winning or losing. The whole results-in-advance thing proved very comforting in 2004 with the Athens Olympics. Yes, that is ridiculous. Welcome to my world.
At least my brother - the brain research editor - has given me some cool suggestions for insight as to why.
I just wish I could get excited about the Olympics at all, given the many controversies we seem to so easily forget in the face of a natural disaster. I'm not minimizing the earthquake; I just think the quake doesn't warrant total forgiveness or forgetfulness of everything else.
On the bright side, I'm looking forward to the Olympics being on the other side of the world again, such that I will be able to know results before watching (um, on my hypothetical TV) the competitions themselves. I get very nervous for the competitors, regardless of any attachment I may (but probably don't) have to their winning or losing. The whole results-in-advance thing proved very comforting in 2004 with the Athens Olympics. Yes, that is ridiculous. Welcome to my world.
At least my brother - the brain research editor - has given me some cool suggestions for insight as to why.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
happily ever after, except for government discrimination
There is no end to the discrimination and misery inflicted on immigrants, both documented and undocumented, in this country today, a few of which I have written about previously. There is even no end to the information available about it, if we keep our eyes just a little bit open.
For example, the Washington Post just ran a great series about (the lack of) health care for detained immigrants, including the revelation that we* regularly inject people against their will with mind-altering drugs so that they won't fight back during deportation.
As an excellent editorial in today's NY Times comments, "this practice violates every imaginable standard of decency, not to mention a few international laws and treaties."
On a more mundane but no less significant note, as the NYT editorial focuses on, anyone without a Social Security Number or anyone married to (and filing jointly with) someone without a SSN will not receive an economic stimulus check from the IRS. What?
Contrary to popular belief, it's not true that if you don't have an SSN you don't pay taxes. Most immigrants, and certainly all documented immigrants, pay just as much income tax as lifelong citizens of this country. If they don't have an SSN, they have an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number or - in the case of some undocumented workers - they may be using a fake SSN, in which case taxes are still taken out of their paycheck just as they would be for anyone else.
Moreover, I'm sorry, but we're now discriminating against anyone who makes the grave mistake of being married to a non-citizen??? Besides being a totally absurd government-mandated disadvantage for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of average U.S. American citizens, this policy means that any U.S. citizen - such as U.S. military personnel on active duty - living in a foreign country who is married to a foreigner won't get a tax rebate. Thanks so much for your service to your country.
As the Times editorial states, this policy is bad in any number of ways, not least because "the checks are not rewards for good behavior; they are taxes returned as a means to an end." Restricting eligibility for receiving tax rebates just depresses the economic stimulation that the checks are designed to spur. It seems only to accomplish the racist goals of anti-immigrant hardliners... not to mention realize the perhaps unintended consequences of those goals such as labor shortages and the destruction of our international academic and scientific reputation.
Of course, just to turn everything on its head, the truth may well be that the fewer stimulus checks get cashed, the better. I guess we should all go thank someone who doesn't have a Social Security Number, and think twice about cashing our own checks.
*yes, WE. Do you pay taxes? Do you have the right to vote? Then don't pretend you have nothing to do with it.
p.s. On a COMPLETELY different note, there's a heartwrenching story in the NY Times today about the combined effects of China's recent earthquake and its one child policy. I hadn't thought about that. :(
For example, the Washington Post just ran a great series about (the lack of) health care for detained immigrants, including the revelation that we* regularly inject people against their will with mind-altering drugs so that they won't fight back during deportation.
As an excellent editorial in today's NY Times comments, "this practice violates every imaginable standard of decency, not to mention a few international laws and treaties."
On a more mundane but no less significant note, as the NYT editorial focuses on, anyone without a Social Security Number or anyone married to (and filing jointly with) someone without a SSN will not receive an economic stimulus check from the IRS. What?
Contrary to popular belief, it's not true that if you don't have an SSN you don't pay taxes. Most immigrants, and certainly all documented immigrants, pay just as much income tax as lifelong citizens of this country. If they don't have an SSN, they have an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number or - in the case of some undocumented workers - they may be using a fake SSN, in which case taxes are still taken out of their paycheck just as they would be for anyone else.
Moreover, I'm sorry, but we're now discriminating against anyone who makes the grave mistake of being married to a non-citizen??? Besides being a totally absurd government-mandated disadvantage for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of average U.S. American citizens, this policy means that any U.S. citizen - such as U.S. military personnel on active duty - living in a foreign country who is married to a foreigner won't get a tax rebate. Thanks so much for your service to your country.
As the Times editorial states, this policy is bad in any number of ways, not least because "the checks are not rewards for good behavior; they are taxes returned as a means to an end." Restricting eligibility for receiving tax rebates just depresses the economic stimulation that the checks are designed to spur. It seems only to accomplish the racist goals of anti-immigrant hardliners... not to mention realize the perhaps unintended consequences of those goals such as labor shortages and the destruction of our international academic and scientific reputation.
Of course, just to turn everything on its head, the truth may well be that the fewer stimulus checks get cashed, the better. I guess we should all go thank someone who doesn't have a Social Security Number, and think twice about cashing our own checks.
*yes, WE. Do you pay taxes? Do you have the right to vote? Then don't pretend you have nothing to do with it.
p.s. On a COMPLETELY different note, there's a heartwrenching story in the NY Times today about the combined effects of China's recent earthquake and its one child policy. I hadn't thought about that. :(
Monday, May 5, 2008
another one. well, two.
Elizabeth Edwards has a great op-ed in the NY Times today. I remain convinced that John Edwards was maybe our best option this time around. Did you hear anyone else actually talking about poverty? Certainly you don't anymore. Mrs. Edwards is right; shame on the media and - she doesn't say this but I will - shame on all of us. Does demand or supply come first when it comes to the "news" we consume? I'm not sure there's a real correct answer to that question; either way it's depressing.
Also, Thomas Friedman did it again. Twice in a week! I might have to think about forgiving the guy for The Lexus and the Olive Crap.
Also, Thomas Friedman did it again. Twice in a week! I might have to think about forgiving the guy for The Lexus and the Olive Crap.
Friday, May 2, 2008
this i believe
Maybe this is the cheater's way to blog, just posting links to other things that I find provocative and interesting. And maybe I think there's too much good stuff out there to sift through, and I hope that by posting these links I'm helping you just a teeny bit to muddle through the internet's constant threat of information overload and actually find and read some informative stuff. Maybe both. Anyway, I like it when far better writers than I are able to articulate exactly how I'm feeling. For example, I wish I could have written this, because boy do I believe it:
"For many of us, feminism is not separate from the struggle against violence, war, racism and economic injustice. Gender hierarchy and race hierarchy are not separate and parallel dynamics. The empowerment of women is contingent upon all these things. Despite the fact that we know that identity does not equal politics--especially an antiwar, social equity and global justice politics--we are led to believe that having a woman in power is the penultimate accomplishment. And even when the "either/or" [as in, either you're with us... and believe a woman - any woman - should be President or you're against us] feminists back off this claim in general, we are told, it is true in the case of the particular, Hillary Clinton. Experience and judgment go hand in hand, we are told, but one has to wonder how is it that so many ordinary citizens who were outside the beltway instinctively sensed what would come with the war, but the female candidate running for President did not?"
For us, the choice at hand is actually quite simple. It is not about the woman candidate vs. the Black male candidate. It is about the candidate who works to dismantle the bomb, rather than drop it; the candidate who works to abolish the old paradigm of power, rather than covet and rise to its highest point; the candidate who seeks solutions and dialogue rather than retaliation and punishment."
"For many of us, feminism is not separate from the struggle against violence, war, racism and economic injustice. Gender hierarchy and race hierarchy are not separate and parallel dynamics. The empowerment of women is contingent upon all these things. Despite the fact that we know that identity does not equal politics--especially an antiwar, social equity and global justice politics--we are led to believe that having a woman in power is the penultimate accomplishment. And even when the "either/or" [as in, either you're with us... and believe a woman - any woman - should be President or you're against us] feminists back off this claim in general, we are told, it is true in the case of the particular, Hillary Clinton. Experience and judgment go hand in hand, we are told, but one has to wonder how is it that so many ordinary citizens who were outside the beltway instinctively sensed what would come with the war, but the female candidate running for President did not?"
For us, the choice at hand is actually quite simple. It is not about the woman candidate vs. the Black male candidate. It is about the candidate who works to dismantle the bomb, rather than drop it; the candidate who works to abolish the old paradigm of power, rather than covet and rise to its highest point; the candidate who seeks solutions and dialogue rather than retaliation and punishment."
Thursday, May 1, 2008
for the record
Though Thomas Friedman has written some things over the years that made me want to throw up, he wrote something this week that made me want to hug the man and then arrange numerous well-attended speaking engagements for him.
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