Notes on Turning 45

It is almost embarrassing to imagine that turning 45 means little in Western nations with readily available and often affordable plastic surgery, Botox, hair dye, liposuction and personal trainers that can peel away 10 years or more from the face and body. To me, it's sort of akin to air travel. Until the 1970s, most middle class people drove to fairly local vacation destinations. Air travel was simply too expensive to consider unless you were wealthy. Today, middle class Americans with average jobs and incomes can afford a ticket to most international destinations.


I am not immune to the impulse to pay someone to make me look younger and healthier than I truly am, but I wonder if that's the right direction. Advancing age - and all that goes with it -can be frightening. On the other hand, growing older is also an opportunity to replace what is visible with what lies beneath. I am a much better person today than I was at 25 or 35. I am nicer to people I have never met than I ever was when I was a younger guy. I am more charitable, friendlier, patient and fair. When you can't rely on your youth or looks to help get you where you want to be, you sometimes have to change other things about yourself. Those changes can be really terrific to see in yourself and can make you a more valuable human being than you ever thought you could be.

I don't want to put plastic surgeons out of business but I sometimes wonder if aging gracefully actually requires that we let our physical selves remain untouched while we work on being better people - more dignified, more understanding, more careful -than we were when we reached our twenties. Isn't that just as attractive as a quick nip/tuck? Doesn't it signal that it's okay to grow older and wiser and display it so others will know and judge us by our actions rather than our presumptive chronological ages?


I'm a little torn about this. I could run out tomorrow and within a few months I could look 28 again. I admit that I liked looking 28 when I was 28. I was never going to be mistaken for a catalogue model or film actor but I felt very comfortable in my own skin. I'll also admit that I met my partner when I was 28. All he knew was that I was a law student and how old I was. I'd be lying if I said that he picked up the phone a day or two later and asked me out on a date because he thought I was smart. He had no idea about my politics, my intellect or my pedigree. I guess it was a "first things first" sort of thing. It's hardly a novel approach. I love my partner but he is about as shallow as any straight or gay male when it comes to the object of his affection. Let's face it. He called me because he thought I was good looking. I'm glad he thought so because I am glad we ended up together.

A distant friend of my cousin's on Facebook saw a current picture of me and commented to my cousin that I looked exactly the same as I did 20 years ago. (The picture must have been out of focus.) I know it was meant as a compliment but I'm not sure that having a 45 year old brain with 45 years of life experience should be hidden away by a surgeon. I sometimes actually look forward to having my hair turn completely white (okay, have me committed to a psychiatric ward) and to have people around me that celebrate whatever wisdom I might have picked up along the way. That's easy to say if you are already in a long-term relationship but for those who are not, I understand that the choices must be pretty difficult to make, especially for women who get far fewer free passes than men do when it comes to physical beauty.


No matter which way we choose to go, I generally respect both directions. (That, by the way, comes from being less judgmental as I have grown older.) Know yourself and what you need to get up in the morning and feel good about yourself. Whichever choice we make is valid as long as we all understand that the human quest for eternal youth is as old as humanity and now that jury deliberations are over, the verdict is in: that there is no such thing as eternal youth. Given that most of us are granted 80 or 90 years on the planet, make them count. If you have limited resources (as most of us do) it's much more interesting to travel and learn more about the world than it is to gaze at yourself in a mirror and sit in your living room waiting for someone to tell you how great you look.

If you go in for the full Monty, be gentle with those of us who don't. If you don't go in for the full Monty, don't automatically think you are superior for it.

Tiger Woods and the Price of Fame

There must be funeral-quality crying at major advertising agencies, corporate product meetings and TV networks following Tiger Woods's announcement that he would be leaving professional golf "indefinitely".

No one seems to know yet what "indefinitely" means but I'll guess that it's at least two years. Reporters tell us it was the result of an ultimatum from his wife after all of the Bimbo Eruptions. (Sorry, I love that expression even if it did come from Mary Matalin referring to Bill Clinton in 1992). Perhaps the number of days, weeks or months is directly tied to the number of bimbos. Not to denigrate women I don't know or will never meet but they knew the guy was married, super-famous and even if you make a living as what my most lefty friends would call being a "sex worker", they bear some responsibility for being indiscreet. After all, isn't that part of what you are paying for when you hire someone to let you screw them?

I admit that I was initially very surprised that Mr. Woods couldn't keep his sexual urges limited to his wife. After all, she is beautiful and they have adorable kids and, let's face it, lots of money. It's what most amateur duffers on golf courses dream about.

I hope he is not too harshly judged or punished for his indiscretions, not because I think his reported conduct wasn't morally obtuse but because despite his actions off the course, he is a great talent, never promised he was anything but human, didn't kill anyone and appears very humbled by the whole situation. I agree with folks who say that he is not entitled to the privacy that would normally be accorded to an average guy who did the same thing but it's difficult for me to believe that someone who got so famous and so rich at such an early age learned very much about dating or marriage. You can blame his parents but where does that get you? Before he turned 20, Tiger was the equivalent of an ATM for car companies, golf club manufacturers and media outlets, among others. He is still an ATM only it's now a different group with the PIN number - tabloid newspapers and talk show hosts and they're not going to pay him a cent in return.

I read reports that African-American folks aren't leaping in to help because he told Oprah (and/or others) that he wasn't really black because of his Thai ancestry. (Whether you adopt the "one drop" rule or accurately refer to him as bi-racial or multi-racial, he is perceived as black by most people - at least caucasians.) Even Al Sharpton wouldn't comment, even though I have never heard of Al Sharpton refraining from commenting on any subject.

The number one thing that makes me sad is its potential effect on young minority kids who saw Tiger Woods break racial and ethnic barriers to dominate a sport that had been, with few exceptions, a WASP sport. Any of those kids who aspire to taking a job at a major corporation ought to learn to play golf and understand its rules. Lots of business is conducted on golf courses and being unable to play leaves the aspiring corporate titan at a disadvantage. Tiger surely had to know that he was a role model for many young kids. He let them down, too. I hope that Barack Obama's ascension to the leader of the free world is enough to get some of these kids past their disappointment. Keep golfing.

The Williams sisters have a few things in common with Woods. Their fathers pushed them and nurtured their natural ability and must have told them a million times that they were just as good or better than anyone else in professional tennis. They, too, dominated (and continue to dominate) their sport. They, too, became role models. Other than Serena Williams's recent melt-down with an umpire, you really don't hear much about their behavior on or off the court. They, too, have lined up lots of endorsement contracts and are starting businesses of their own so when they fade as tennis stars, they'll have other skills and other interests to keep them occupied and wealthy.

Mr. Woods has a problem with the concept of marital fidelity in his personal life. His decision to take a break from professional golf is a sign that he wants to try to repair his marriage more than he wants to win more tournaments. That's a perfectly rational choice and sounds very adult to me. We should wish him luck and a happy life. Maybe that's another lesson to young people. When adults screw up, they have good and bad choices to make. Mr. Woods's decision was probably a good choice and one that young kids can look to when they become adults and inevitably screw up (not necessarily by being unfaithful to a spouse).

Now I have to figure out a way to stay awake during televised golf tournaments if I watch them at all.

12/13/2009 - Footnote: I guess I correctly predicted the loss of endorsements. Major NY publications are reporting that three corporations have dumped Tiger Woods. He had to have known that would happen but like so many others, he didn't think his marital indiscretions would ever be exposed. None of these guys ever think they're going to get caught or maybe they want to be caught as a cry for help. There's a don't-cry-for-me-Argentina in there somewhere. I wish him well and although I never bought a Buick Rendezvous (how delicious an irony that campaign was given the name of the vehicle) I am sure that many people bought many a golf club on his recommendation. Sad stuff but not so sad that he can't come back. Don't forget his philanthropy. It was and I assume still is very significant.

Finding the Masterminds of Terrorism

As our government knew in the early aftermath of September 11th, the terrorist leadership that trained and funded the hijackers who killed thousands of people were holed up along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's almost difficult to remember, but that is where we went first. We had the support and the sympathy of nearly every civilized nation to send troops to Afghanistan. Ordinary Iranians, Iraqis and others in the Muslim world were sympathetic and expressed their own fears that the worst terrorists would not stop their efforts in the U.S. or Western Europe. They knew that bin Laden and Company didn't just want to punish the United States. They wanted power and dominion over the entire Middle East, especially its wealth and military apparatus. They wanted Israel vaporized and to make sure that women across the Middle East were denied education and forced to accept an invented, warped interpretation of Islamic Law.

We all know what happened next. We made a half-hearted attempt in Afghanistan and blew our wad on Iraq because of a range of stupid assumptions, lies and a personal vendetta from President Bush. We squandered the good will of Middle East citizens and watched as young men and some women put their money on bin Laden as the ultimate victor. That train already left the station and it's almost a waste of time to wring our hands over it any longer.

The Obama Administration understood what most people across the world understood years ago. Afghanistan was the problem and if we failed there, Pakistan would become destabilized, India would begin to think more seriously about challenging Pakistan for long-disputed border land and finding and eliminating the worst terrorists would get lost in the sauce. More than 8 years later, we're back to discussing how many troops we really need and for how long in Afghanistan. The Taliban has been a well-understood military junta for years. It is patient, tenacious and is not afraid of tanks and bombs. The Soviets burned their hands on that stove 30 years ago, thinking that their military superiority would make annexing Afghanistan a cake-walk. They found out from personal experience that the terrain is difficult and that the Afghani people were at the point where they would pledge allegiance to anyone who decided not to kill them or take away their livelihood.

So, how many soldiers will it take to find these sub-human despots in the caves along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, help rebuild what has been physically destroyed and leave the place physically and politically cleaner than when they arrived? How long will it take? We are at least beginning to understand what the Obama Administration believes is necessary. It doesn't sound irrational to add 30-50,000 troops in addition to troops from other nations. I lack military expertise and am therefore in the same position as most Americans. I'm stuck with trusting the administration, its intelligence apparatus and its stated resolve to find these characters as quickly as possible. Every day we don't find them encourages a new generation of terrorists to believe that they, too, can destroy their own nation and ours and do so with impunity. We are fast approaching a time when a whole generation of young Middle Eastern people will have no memory of anything but the destruction of war and will begin to consider it a normal state of affairs. That is the long-term danger. Once that happens, finding the current leadership and bringing them to justice or outright killing them will be widely applauded by some but won't immediately fix the problem of younger people learning more so they can fill in for the captured, jailed or dead elders.

As most of us know, it took a generation to normalize relations with a unified Vietnam. Like China, their claim to be a communist nation is mostly chatter at this point, at least as far as economic theory is concerned. The overwhelming majority of Vietnamese are not old enough to remember what happened in Indo-China and are now seeking to improve their lives by trading with the United States and the rest of developed nations.

We might end up having to wait that long for reconciliation with the Middle East and then only after we leave. Get ready for a long slog. I support the administration's efforts but neither the terrorists nor Americans are stupid enough to believe that it won't take very long to fix a problem that began long before the planes were hijacked.

Senator Savino and Marriage Equality

Roman Catholic: Check
Straight Woman: Check
Relatively conservative district: Check
Visionary view on marriage equality: Check

Savino's views are so close to my own on this issue, I can imagine myself making her recent speech on the floor of the New York State Senate. Her courage is undeniable.

Marriage equality will eventually be almost universally accepted under the law. It will take years but it will happen. Every civil rights struggle in modern history had a Senator Savino (and many more like her) and also had opponents. In 25 years, when the dust settles, Senator Savino can say that she was on the right side of the issue when it wasn't easy. Today's opponents will not be able to claim that. Indeed, with few exceptions, the expansion of civil rights has always been made difficult and often delayed by legislators who ended up apologizing many years later for not having the courage to cast a vote in favor of eliminating discrimination in all its forms. Few pay much attention to those kinds of apologies. The people we eventually honor are those who stuck their necks out when it was hard and politically risky. Senator Savino will be honored. Many of her colleagues in the State Senate will not. She will sleep well at night knowing that she did the right thing when it mattered the most. I hope that the ones who did nothing or were in opposition realize that they weren't really leaders and that their "principled" positions will be thrown into a dumpster along with "separate but equal", "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue", or told women that they couldn't vote or that it was okay to force black citizens to sit at the back of a bus or drink from a different water fountain.

Some of us take these rights for granted. A great deal of blood was shed, a great many elections lost and many professional reputations were damaged or destroyed for having a vision of equality that was ahead of societal pressure to maintain an ugly status quo. These people turn out to be heroes, sometimes while they were still alive and many more long after they died.

When will we all learn a lesson or two from history? Senator Savino has already done it.

Thanksgiving

Most of my good friends know that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, at least theoretically. It is devoid of most rules, is not exclusive to any religion and there is no gift pressure beyond bringing a pie or a bottle of wine. I choose to ignore some history, though.

American Indians are probably not big fans because Thanksgiving is so closely associated with Pilgrims from the Mayflower and other Northern European refugees from a couple of other later boats. As most of us probably knew once and forgot in the meantime, the Mayflower almost didn't make it to the still waters of Cape Cod Bay. It straddled the shoreline of what is now the Cape Cod National Seashore and - had it attempted to go farther South and onto to what is now New York, it would have hit such rough seas that it would likely have either sunk at sea or been destroyed as it attempt to get close to land. After making landfall in what is now Provincetown, Massachusetts, the remaining Mayflower Pilgrims were in desperate need of food, fresh water and a warm, dry place to sleep. Before settling in Plymouth, they uncovered a stash of corn at what is now Corn Hill, MA on the outer Cape. They debated briefly and then stole it. They didn't consider the Cape terribly hospitable for growing crops (they were right) so they moved across the bay, but not before running into some local Indians (at what is now called First Encounter Beach).

Plymouth didn't turn out to be the best deep water port. They eventually figured out that Boston was much better but had mostly been claimed by the time the first pilgrims realized the difference. American Indians, through alliances among tribes and with various pilgrim groups, did attempt to live peacefully and respect each other's "space", as we say today. They broke bread together, did some limited trading but nothing suggests that there was ever a big picnic table with a perfectly browned turkey, etc., with Indians and Pilgrims happily chatting over who had a better pie crust. The Indians felt threatened. The Pilgrims felt threatened, too. Then the wars came, alliances were shifted or shattered and the Pilgrims through luck, better technology and loss of life began the process of taking over New England.

I only say this because when we complain too much about American Indian tribes that establish casinos near our homes, I think it's important to understand that several hundred years ago, Europeans - mostly puritan Christians - took away so much land that it left the American Indian population practically decimated within 50 years of the first landing. I have no real interest in gambling but did go to Foxwoods in Connecticut to see what the Pequots had done to earn millions each year in gaming revenue. Much of it is cheesy but some of the revenue has gone toward preserving the spoken history of the tribe and establishing educational funding for every member of the tribe. My hope for them is that they can find a way to celebrate their own kind of Thanksgiving despite the long history of struggle and strife.

The Pledge of Allegiance

Jump to this site when you have a minute: http://www.parentdish.com/2009/11/13/student-braves-controversy-refuses-to-recite-pledge/7#comments. A gutsy 10 year old sat out the Pledge because he didn't believe its promise included lesbian and gay folks. In the accompanying commentary, there is a shit storm of protest from supposed grown-ups, some of whom advocate hurting the little boy.

His substitute teacher told him that she knew his parents and would have to report the incident to the principal. His response? "With all due respect, go jump off a bridge."

AOL must love these kinds of stories because they are sticky - i.e., that it keeps lots of right wing nuts on its site spewing hateful responses to what they have read, including advocating various sorts of punishments for the kid, including violence. There are some rational voices among the majority of malicious attacks, but they get drowned out.

I wonder what they would say if the kid's justification was that he believed that unborn fetuses were denied liberty and justice. He would likely be heralded by the same people seeking to lynch him. I certainly don't condone telling a teacher to jump off a bridge. On the other hand, who is doing the teaching here? It seems to me that this young guy was giving a lesson in civics and the teacher was uninformed about established constitutional law. I don't expect that teachers need to be constitutional scholars in order to command some respect in the classroom but should have enough savvy to handle the situation with more grace than she apparently did.

I reflexively said the Pledge each day for 12 years. At least half the class didn't know the word "indivisible" - a fairly important concept considering the American Civil War - and instead said "invisible". I never recall a teacher correcting the students or explaining the difference. So much for the real importance of the substance of the Pledge. Its real practical importance is to establish order, ritual and aid in classroom management in the early part of the day.

We are clearly a freer nation than the vast majority of others, but the freedom has to mean something beyond the recitation. As a gay man, my constitutional rights are more limited than they are for straight folks. I don't expect a 10 year old to fight for me. I can handle that myself.

Leave this kid alone. I have heard far too much garbage about how parents - not schools - are supposed to teach values to hear advocates of that approach attack parents whose message on values differ from theirs. We can't have it both ways. If the school forces the kid to recite the Pledge, it's teaching values which, in this case, is the value of intolerance for dissent. If that's okay with you, don't complain when the same school gives a lesson in values that differs from your own. If you think the kid is too young to understand the Pledge, its history and meaning, why are we asking him to recite it at all?

Numbers

When the NY Times began to add same-sex couples to their reporting of weddings (or other similar ceremonies), one of things that struck me was the difference between the pedigree information of straight couples vs. those of lesbian and gay couples. It seemed, even to me, a little odd that two guys or two women with unremarkable jobs or educational backgrounds or parental achievements made it past the editors. I realize that there is a great deal of elitism out there - sometimes epitomized by the NY Times in years past - but the Times is read nationally and internationally so I tend to forgive it when it looks like it's pandering to elite straight couples and not-so-elite same sex couples. I have noticed that the Times is beginning to apply the same standards to both groups.

It may be entirely frivolous to even notice these kinds of things but it is meaningful to me. Our close friends - two doctors who had been together for 22 years before their marriage in Massachusetts - took the time to go through the process of noting their marriage in the Times. I thought it was important because younger same-sex couples or someone who is gay but isolated in a non-coastal community could see that many of us live very similar lives to straight couples.

I am certainly not advocating that same-sex couples go out of their way to copy their straight friends' relationships, even if it were possible to do so. I am, however, advocating that more of us pull back the curtains and fight for the right to have every option that everyone else has. We live in a civil society based on laws that are sometimes unconstitutional. Religious conservatives will continue to block or chip away at what I and many others consider to be universal civil rights. The struggle for full equality is a team effort and some of us will lose a job, a friend or a family member's acceptance when we stand up to be counted. I was lucky to have had no real problems in the aftermath of my coming out experience. Maybe I just thought that whatever risk there might have been was outweighed by the possibility that one more name on the list would help move things along a little bit. On a more personal level, it can be very freeing all by itself.

In the roughly 20 years that have passed since then, it is clearer than ever to me that the most important way to achieve equality is to have as many people as possible demand it. There is a reason that activists are accused of inflating the number of marchers that appear in D.C. and that the government is accused of minimizing those numbers. There would be no argument if both sides did not believe that numbers matter. Who among us can say that the civil rights movement to end racial and ethnic discrimination would have been as effective if there were not millions of people publicly demanding it? Dr. Martin Luther King understood this very well. A beautifully delivered speech is impressive but King's 1963 speech was delivered on television with powerful images of many hundreds of thousands of supporters. The Kennedy administration was undoubtedly moved by the speech but what it really looked for was how much support it would have to begin drafting the law that became the 1964 Civil Rights Act. We can't deny that democratic institutions are swayed by numbers and the laws under which we live originally come from voters who put men and women in positions of power to pass new ones or change old ones. The Obama administration is no different. It knows that their success in support of us depends to a large extent on our open support of them, including support on issues that do not touch us in the same way as basic civil rights do.

If you haven't already, speak up. It often works.

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

Congratulations to President Obama on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. It was a great idea but the timing was not so helpful to President Obama or the United States.

I hope that people try to remember that in the last 9 months President Obama's international travel schedule, his speeches and the work being done by his surrogates - especially Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton - represent a renewal of the notion that in order claim being the leader of the free world we must promote diplomacy, attempt to find common ground, nurture relationships among nations and not simply stand in front of a military arsenal as our sole source of power. Preventing war is sometimes more difficult than waging one. There are too many nuclear powers out there to believe that military strength alone can win the day.

I already believed that President Obama could be a strong contender for the Prize during his presidency but awarding it to him this early opens the door for Republicans and Obama haters to minimize the value of the Prize. This is one topic where there are plenty of rational reasons to engage in some debate about what the Prize means, who deserves it and why we should care.

Woodrow Wilson won the Prize in 1919 not because he joined allies to fight WWI. He won it because he spent countless hours attempting to establish the League of Nations - the doomed precursor to the United Nations. He ultimately failed in that endeavor but those who bestowed the honor did so not because he won the war (he had plenty of help from other nations to do that) but because he made a huge effort to prevent future wars through the development of solid relationships and dialogue among nations. He spent months in France in the aftermath of that war to establish principles on which all free nations could agree. He got bogged down when some of those nations could not give up the idea that Germany had to be forced to pay reparations that bankrupted the country. Germany's humiliation had a role in the emergence of National Socialism. As Germans used wheelbarrows full of currency in order to buy bread during the 1920s, they permitted the emergence of Adolph Hitler to tell them what they wanted to hear. The winning allies in WWI not only got reparations. They also changed borders, cut off ethnic groups from each other and got their revenge. It took fewer than 20 years for Axis powers to build up a new arsenal of weapons and exploit the frustration and fears of their citizens to justify another World War.

At the conclusion of WWII, Wilson's vision became much more attractive to the victors. Instead of demanding reparations from Axis powers, the Roosevelt and Truman administrations hatched the Marshall Plan to help rebuild the vanquished nations. We stopped being stupid for a minute and realized that we would be better off paying billions to rebuild so we could actually trade with some of these countries and, at the same time, deprive the Soviet Union of establishing dominion over Western Europe. Had we decided to ignore the lessons of the aftermath of WWI and leave Europe in ruins, I believe we would all be speaking Russian today - and not by choice.

Obama understands this history. His predecessor apparently did not. If you don't think President Obama deserves the Prize (at least now), then we must look to history. Wilson's Prize came after a spectacular failure but he made the effort and was later proved to be right about what he hoped to accomplish. If Obama's Prize is inappropriate, so was Wilson's.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue and, apparently, Don't Think

The Obama administration has announced that it will review and attempt to overturn the 1993 'don't ask, don't tell' law that keeps openly gay people out of the military. They claim that they will do it at 'the right time'. I hope the 'right time' is soon.

To me, there are two primary reasons to take another look at this law. The first is that it doesn't work the way it was promised. There were supposed to be no witch hunts and that gay soldiers who kept their mouths shut about their sexuality were free to serve and die for their country. (The law was initially explained as "dont ask, don't tell, don't pursue" - meaning that the military was not supposed to conduct investigations into soldiers' lives who were thought to be gay but never said anything or did anything to violate the law.) Many of those who lived up to their end of the bargain were discharged because they were unlawfully pursued because they were perceived to be gay.

The second reason is that it has been reported many times that many of the military's best language interpreters happened to be gay and many were discharged during what is perhaps the most critical time given the terrorist threats against our country.

If your argument against changing the law is that President Obama is not keeping his eye on the ball, you have it wrong. Keeping his eye on the ball absolutely includes paying attention to the effect of this law. If your argument is that gay men and lesbians are more sexually predatory than straight men and straight women, at least take the time to show us some numbers. If your 20 year old son is in the same barracks as a gay soldier and can't handle someone who expresses an unwanted interest in him, how in the world do you expect him to come out of the Middle East alive or uninjured?

The soldiers discharged under this unworkable policy have not been charged with any crime. They have been discharged for being who they are.

Would it change your mind if an interpreter who happened to be a gay soldier was able to warn us in time of another 9/11 plot that was ultimately thwarted because of his or her hard work, skills and intellect? How do you know it hasn't already happened? Do you have a direct line to the Pentagon?

If you have a religious belief that homosexuality is sinful or that sexual acts that gays and lesbians engage in are sinful, please take an inventory of your own sins. Confess and seek absolution for your own transgressions, pray for us if you want to, but please don't pretend that you are living a more biblically-correct life than the rest of us. As far as I know, there is no point system in the Bible or whatever religious text you read that makes one person better than another in the eyes of God. To me true believers are humble and rarely speak about their beliefs outside of their churches, synagogues or temples unless it is to actually help another person. I don't trust people who wave bibles at me. All it shows me is vanity and a possible superiority complex that should keep some psychologist busy speaking with them for years to come.

Is it time to rethink how we deal with unemployment?

It is probably too early to determine whether the current federal stimulus money that has been appropriated to save the banking and auto manufacturing industries will have its intended effect. Most economists predict that even if the stimulus money is effective, the unemployment rate will either remain where it is or even increase for a period of time because adding employees lags behind improvement in business conditions.

Without throwing a monkey wrench into the ambitious legislative agenda being pushed by the White House, I believe it is time to think ahead, on the theory that the U.S. will experience more cycles of growth and recession and the unemployment increases that accompany those cycles. It is even more critical if this latest recovery will be legitimately characterized as a "jobless recovery". The current system is nearly a century old, born out of the New Deal in the 1930s and has not been significantly changed since then. The nation's needs at that time are different from today's needs. For the most part, the jobs are different. As jobs became more complex, we have necessarily credentialized a large part of the labor market. Let's not forget that a person in the 1930s without more than a high school diploma was considered qualified to get a responsible banking job (if one existed), get promoted and have a lifetime career. Barack Obama's grandmother was one of them. Of course, that's very different from today's reality.

Over the last decades, federal and state governments have tried to blunt the impact of many of the problems associated with unacceptably high unemployment, including COBRA options, training programs, government-sponsored public works and numerous other strands of an improved safety net.

I still recall very vividly the conversation I had my with my high school guidance counselor over 25 years ago, when he realized that I had included in my academic schedule an auto mechanic's class that I wanted to take. Whether he had the authority to do so I'll never know, but he forced me to take another "academic" elective to replace the trade-based class. He bluntly told me that it would be a waste of my time and would not be viewed favorably by the best universities that he assumed would accept me. My motive, by the way, was not to become an auto mechanic. I just wanted to be able to do basic work on my old car and thought it was a good idea to have a skill other than writing a good essay. If I was told that I was barred from the class because it was already full with students who intended to pursue a career in that area, I would have backed away and probably forgotten about it. In my counselor's defense, I was accepted at Cornell University as he expected and went on to law school. I admit that I was offended that he seemed to assign little value to BOCES programs.

In New York State the Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) has for decades offered trade-school education for high school students who are not college-bound. The reality is that a huge part of the 18 year old population is either not college-bound or will never finish a degree program. They are locked out of many jobs but not all of them, particularly skilled trade jobs provided they get those skills during high school. BOCES and institutions like it around the country, in my view, are extremely important. People like me own cars that need repair from time to time. We need welders, nurses' aides, and many other service providers that are immune from having their jobs shipped overseas but don't require 4 year (or sometimes even 2 year) college degrees.

Others have written about the value of community colleges and suggest that those colleges offer more skilled-trade coursework. In theory, that makes sense. The problem is not that community colleges are incapable of enhancing or creating those kinds of courses of study. The problem is the lack of funds to establish or improve those courses and the lack of funds of potential students that would benefit from those offerings. Community college appears pretty cheap to many people but for some potential students, they don't have the money to enroll and even if financial aid made it possible, they often must work full-time jobs as soon as they receive their high school diplomas, either to become independent of their parents or to assist their families in meeting their financial obligations. [After I initially posted this piece, the NY Times reported on the exact same dilemma faced by college students. Jump to this link if you're interested: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/education/10graduate.html?ref=us

Obviously, many skilled trade jobs include a required apprenticeship to achieve journeyman status and may not have to attend much traditional classroom instruction in order to develop the skills necessary to get real jobs. Some employers will do all of their own training but many will pay a "trainee rate" in the meantime. That doesn't necessarily work for a kid who needs more than that for transportation, food and housing.

There must be more creative ways of giving skill-development opportunities to high school kids while they are in high school. I am sure that some high schools do a pretty good job with the resources they have but many lack the funds to provide those opportunities.

How should we deal with this? If we ignore a race to the bottom, there will be millions more kids who throughout adulthood get stuck in minimum wage jobs. If that is acceptable to you, congratulations. You don't need to do a thing, but we all should remember that these kids and their employers will be paying much less in payroll taxes that keep Social Security and Medicare intact. Scrambling for work or living on the economic edge in general doesn't leave much time for political awareness or participation. To me, that makes participation in a democracy a privilege, not a right. I would hate to think that few people care about that. I am not a conspiracy theorist but there are plenty of people who believe that we consciously stack the deck against these kids because we're afraid that the pool of potential fast-food employees will shrink and it will end up costing us more for a Big Mac. If that's true, it's a tragedy.

Second Acts (for non-politicians)

Whoever it was that said that there are no second acts in politics was generally correct (think Spiro Agnew, Ed Meese, etc.). What about the rest of us, particularly after losing a spouse through death or divorce? Obviously, divorce is easier because at least you can turn some of the anger into energy and find another person that suits you better. Death is harder, especially when the survivor is older and female and loved her deceased husband. There are fewer widowed older men out there than there are women and, at least for their generation, those men were trained to expect women to cook, clean and generally take care of most domestic responsibilities that didn't involve power tools.

But what about women between 55 and 75? Men their age - if they want a second act - seem to have no full-length mirror in their house but are looking for 30ish women who are a size 4 and started botox injections when they were in kindergarten. If they have a few bucks in the bank, they might actually get Malibu Barbie to spend some time with them.

Women tend to be more realistic and want companionship with someone who remembers where they were when JFK was killed, can stay up past 8:00 p.m., speak in complete sentences and don't take their dentures out in a restaurant, but don't care very much about whether the guy can still get into a 40 Regular suit or can read and interpret poetry. Unless living in a large city, even women who have managed to make it to late middle age/early old age as a size 10 and who continue to keep themselves looking younger than their true age are told to go to grief counseling or church-sponsored events to meet potential companions or even future husbands. Those who white-knuckle it and attend those events are probably greeted by a dozen other women of various sizes and shapes and two men, one hooked to an oxygen tank and the other wondering when Malibu Barbie will show up. Instead of getting a follow-up call from a guy, they'll get a call from a woman in the group who wants them to do whatever one does to become a "born again" Christian, notwithstanding their current religion. It doesn't sound like much fun to me.

This is patently unfair. There must be another dignified way for well-educated, good looking older women to have a second act even if they live in a smaller community and aren't interested in moving, don't want to change their religious affiliation and don't want to spend all of their time feeding a grown man once they find one. Internet matchmaking sites don't qualify. Anyone who has any constructive ideas on this topic is welcome to comment. In the meantime, I hope that all women in that boat don't give up. Not everyone is going to have a Diane Keaton/Jack Nicholson moment but you never know until you try.

A Wedding

I don't expect everyone to understand how important it was to be in Massachussetts to see good friends who had spent 22 years together get married over the weekend but, for me, it was magic. I remember marching around for many years in the 1990s (much more than I do today) which also included speaking out publicly before school boards and anyone else who would listen and support the idea that civil rights don't stop at a particular group of people. They belong - or should belong - to all of us.

I know the biases that many people cling to that get in the way of their better selves and their better judgment. (I'm sure I have plenty of my own on a wide variety of issues.) When it comes to opposition to same sex marriage, I am convinced that - at its root - is a range of misconceptions of how many of us live and what we really want.

I am already in a loving, 16+ year monogamous relationship. I don't need a legally recognized marriage to keep me from behaving any differently. I don't need wedding gifts. (Cards are nice, though.) I don't need a cake with two little plastic guys on top of it. I don't need my church to sanction the marriage. All I want is the same choices that you take for granted.

Years ago, I was asked by someone (I wish I could remember who but it doesn't matter) why I would ever want to "copy" what opposite sex couples have, particularly when 50% of marriages end in divorce. My general reply back then was that I had no interest in "copying" anyone. I was also asked if I would run out and get married as soon as it was available to me. I recall saying something along the lines of "no, but I wouldn't drag my feet for very long if my partner and I decided together it was what we wanted."

Back to the bias part. There are still a lot of straight guys (and a few women) who simply cannot get past the sex part because they believe that one person must be 'submissive' and believe that real men are never submissive or do anything that seems submissive. I'm sorry to tell you that if you have ever done anything off your wife's Honey Do List, you have been submissive. When I go to weddings between straight couples, I do not imagine what they are going to do on their wedding night. As far as I know, marriage does not come with a brochure with rules on how to be intimate. If it matters that much to you, consult your religious leader. I already know the answer that I would get.

In my humble opinion, you should all be honored that what you have is valued by those who cannot do what you can so easily decide to do. If the couple down the street gets divorced, I hope you don't sit at your kitchen table and say, "honey, the Smiths just cheapened our marriage. Maybe we need to get divorced, too." If the Smiths are gay and unmarried and decide to part ways, I hope you don't breathe a sigh of relief and say "thank goodness they weren't married. Otherwise our marriage would have been damaged."

I am pretty convinced that those conversations don't happen. Opponents of same-sex marriage think that they are protecting the institution of marriage, not their own. The "institution" of modern marriage as we understand it today is relatively new. In the 19th century and for a couple hundred years before that, single, unmarried women were largely doomed to poverty, even if they could own property in their own names. Back then, married women traded their independence (if you could call it that) for financial security and in the process literally became the property of their husbands and could no longer own anything in their own right. The term "rule of thumb" grew out of Western European common law that held that a husband had every legal right to beat his wife with a stick no larger than his thumb. Marriage between straight couples has obviously changed.

When I am feeling angry about this issue - pretty rarely but less rarely than 10 years ago - I actually value my own unsanctified 16 years as being superior in some important ways to a modern marriage. Along with marriage comes an expectation that the community around you should help to support your union. I have the support of family and friends even without marriage but we lack the support of our laws which are mostly designed to keep married people married.

Having none of that on my end and still having a relationship longer than almost all of our straight friends sometimes makes me feel superior to you. What would you do if you forgot your papers that permitted you to see your partner in the hospital? What would you do if your partner died and perfect strangers that happened to be related to your partner could decide how and where to bury your partner, enter your home and take things from it without your consent? I could face that someday, but it doesn't mean that I would or could walk away from my relationship to spare myself that kind of humiliation. I get fewer rights and much of what my partner and I have done has been on our own, without the kind of support you get. That is when I think (rightly or wrongly) that I'm tougher than you are and that the love I have for my partner is stronger because it has to be.

I remember being asked many years ago if there were a medical breakthrough that would make me straight, would I take advantage of it. I said "no". I still say "no". I am no less a person than anyone else. I am, despite what I have already said, no better, either. I would rather spend some time persuading others that I and people like me pose no threat to your religiously-based, state-recognized marriages. Jane Austen novels were never really my thing, but I have read all of them anyway to make sure that my mom thought I was well-read (go ahead, make a joke that I am a mama's boy - guilty as charged) and have seen the film versions. If I want to marry Mr. Darcy (why are they are always called Mr. Darcy?), and you weren't there to see it, how on Earth could it matter to you? It cannot be true that your devotion to your wife or husband is diminished one iota because of a choice I might make. If I am wrong, please tell me why.

Health Care Hypocrisy

Okay. Let's get this straight. When Hillary Clinton took on the project of getting universal health care to Americans in 1993-1994, she didn't include Congress in a way that was viewed as meaningful. (It happened to be my only criticism of her because it became an excuse to block reform and I thought she should know better.) Congress was livid. After all, how could an uppity Wellesley/Yale girl assemble a team with a representative of every interest group and come up with something that could have at least been a launching off point to reform?


The Obama administration has now elevated the issue again and has attempted to include everyone in its deliberations. Now, some critics are saying that we can't resolve the issue because too many people, including those in Congress, make it impossible to agree on anything that would pass.


Which is it? Do we want everyone to weigh in or only "experts"? Do they need to meet in an open tent on the White House lawn so it won't appear that the deliberations are "secret"? Frankly, I don't care. But to those involved with the issue now and who are bent on blocking any kind of reform, please don't ever tell us again that Hillary's approach to the problem lacked political savvy. Tell us the truth which, it appears, is that there were never enough elected representatives then or now who wanted any meaningful reform at all and will go as far as lying about the administration's outlines of a plan in order to kill any bill that comes before them.


I withdraw my criticism of Hillary on this issue. No matter which route she chose, she was going to lose. How depressing is that?

Joe the Heckler

Rep. Joseph Wilson has already apologized for his adolescent rant during President Obama's recent health care speech to a joint session of Congress. Apparently, the House is considering some sort of punishment for the outburst. It's not a great idea. At its best, such a move is a distraction when we can't afford any more distractions. At its worst, a "punishment" risks making Rep. Wilson a folk hero to people who will do anything to stop health care reform.

The truth is a great disinfectant. I would rather that the Obama administration organize volunteers to visit Rep. Wilson's congressional district and work door-to-door on separating fact from myth. That will keep Wilson pretty busy.

Republicans don't need this kind of publicity right now. They're too busy working to change the balance in Congress in the off year election. It certainly doesn't help to have a member of your party look like a badly-mannered clown.

We all need to move on and focus on ideas and the process of reforming health care in a way that people don't die because they don't have access to quality health insurance.

Obama's Message to Young People

While some of you keep your kids home today because the President might deliver a speech directed at non voting age kids, please understand that you are doing your kids a disservice. The message is mainly 'stay in school'. As radical as this concept might be to some people, it hardly warrants the frenzy of those who are afraid of "socialism".

In the early part of the 20th century, completing high school was considered a real honor and generally left many people prepared to get a good job at a decent wage. My maternal grandfather got a bachelor's degree in 1925, almost unheard of among the middle classes at that time. It made it possible for him to remain employed throughout the Great Depression. For women - even wealthy women - high school (and perhaps a brief stint at a "finishing school") was a ticket to a better life. Few women, unless they came from wealthy families, completed an undergraduate degree.

By the end of WWII, jobs were already becoming more complex and the GI Bill permitted hundreds of thousands of men to finish college. Unless they were wealthy, far fewer women (or their parents) saw the utility of completing college, much less graduate school. The three jobs that were considered appropriate for middle class women (unless of course they chose to have children) were secretary, nurse or teacher. Even with that kind of training, until the 1970s, most of the better educated women stayed home to raise their kids, at least until they were in school themselves. In 1960, fewer than 10% of women held a bachelor's degree. Most of them were teachers. Today, women outnumber men in undergraduate colleges and make up nearly 50% of law students. Not only did it permit women more career choices, it gave them the freedom to walk away from bad marriages and still feed their kids.

Let's face it. The world changed. Good manufacturing jobs began to disappear, so much so that by the early 1970s it became increasingly rare to see a one-earner household that was not struggling to make ends meet, especially if they stopped their education at high school graduation. One easy way to find out how important education became is to look at your own community. People who live in the nicest parts of your town are far more likely to have two parents who completed college. Frankly, it's because they are paid better, have more stable jobs and usually enjoy their work more. They may be no smarter than many people who did not go on to college but the fact is, it made a huge difference in their ability to live where they wanted to live and get prepared to give their children a chance to do even better than they did.

Barack Obama's message to young students is the best advice they could possibly receive. I will agree that it is both a practical and political message. It's practical because more education (except, ironically, those with PhDs) usually results in better pay. It's political because there are people who remain convinced that it is a waste of time and money.

Last year, I said a few words at my stepfather's wake. In my remarks, I remembered what he told me and my sister: "Stay in school as long as you can. You won't regret it. The adult world is tough enough as it is." My mother worked her tail off for 35+ years teaching English in a rural high school. She had a few terrible years, as many teachers do, but she stuck with it. Some of her colleagues were astonished that I was permitted to go to Cornell University, a pretty expensive proposition in 1983. I worked for several years after graduation and then completed law school in 1993. My sister, 15 years younger, just started her medical residency in pediatrics. We are not better than anyone else but my parents helped to buy me and my sister the freedom to be anything we wanted to be (except perhaps a pole dancer) and did not try to influence the decisions we made. I once apologized to my parents that we had drained a lot of their resources. My mother said at the time a fractured quote that Jacqueline Kennedy said over 40 years ago. The real quote is that "If you bungle raising your children, nothing else you do makes much of a difference."

If that is Barack Obama's message, he's doing all of us a favor. The next time you speak to a female friend who is stuck in a loveless marriage because she lacks the credentials necessary to take a well-paid job, go ahead and tell her that you think Barack Obama is a socialist. Then tell her to go back to school anyway.

What Happens Next?

If by some miracle the House and Senate can reach a compromise on universal access to health care, what should be next?

The last Democratic administration chose to focus on "welfare" reform as a signature issue - in my mind akin to Nixon going to China - and establish Bill Clinton's bona fides as a moderate. He lost some of his closest friends during that time, chief among them Marian Wright Edelman, the leader of the Children's Defense Fund, an organization that included Hillary Clinton as a board member for many years. That organization, among others, was angry that Clinton's effort demonized disenfranchised women and risked throwing more children into worse poverty than they already experienced. Some consider that legislation a real success because it reduced the number of people receiving benefits and ended up with many former welfare recipients in jobs. The real problem, though, is that the effort did not translate into better relationships with conservatives or other legislative achievements that made real differences in our lives. It's not a slam at Bill Clinton. His administration shares the blame with Congress.


President Obama has similar choices to make. He can tack to the right a bit and perhaps find some common ground on many economic and social issues. He could take a risk - if incumbent Democratic members of Congress will go along with him - to be bolder on public policy questions. I'm not sure I want to go through another off year election where Republicans take back the House or the Senate but if you had a choice, which agenda would you choose?

A Farewell to the Lion of the Senate

There will be millions of words written about the life and work of Edward Moore Kennedy, most of them by people who know far more than I do about his life and career. Senator Kennedy was already in the Senate for three years at the time of my birth so it is difficult for me to imagine it without him there. I was obviously too young to recall with any clarity the tragedies of late 1960s - the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy and the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. I do recall casual discussions among adults around me who said that Ted Kennedy had squandered an opportunity to run for President in 1972, mainly based on his actions on Martha's Vineyard in 1969. Likely because I was mostly surrounded by Democrats who were Roman Catholics, the conversations sounded sad - not angry.

Committing oneself to a public life in politics is an extraordinary act regardless of party affiliation. Many would probably say that Senator Kennedy had no choice given his family history but he never complained publicly about the inevitable loss of privacy. His failed first marriage, his son's bout with cancer, his presumed issues with alcohol and his reputed infidelities kept a great many journalists and media pundits employed. Americans like nothing better than a good scandal, particularly if they dislike the person at the center of it. Perhaps it grows out of the puritan roots of some of the first Old World settlers. Perhaps it is because so many of us can identify on some level with the failings and mistakes of those who choose to lead very public lives. Perhaps it makes some people feel less guilty about their own failings. In a nation where half of marriages end in divorce, it seems to me incredibly hypocritical to judge Ted Kennedy for having gone through one himself.

Whatever the motivation of the authors, I have read scores of hateful messages posted on AOL only hours after Senator Kennedy's death. Ironically, many of them are poorly written, misspelled diatribes from people who lead very private lives and are relieved from the responsibility to publicly apologize for their own failings as human beings. I say "ironic" because Senator Kennedy, among his many interests, was a leading advocate of programs to improve education. Had he won every battle he fought for better education, the commentary might appear more rational and less mean-spirited.

While it is true that dynastic wealth can smooth the way for a budding politician, it also can cause people to become lazy do-nothings. Ted Kennedy took the harder path. Whether you agreed with him on public policy or thought he was too far to the left, he never gave up trying to make the nation more fair and more just.

Jealousy and hatred, with few exceptions, do not make anyone wealthier, smarter, better informed or happier with their lives. Compassionate and thoughtful people generally do better in life. The most compassionate among us may not be the wealthiest, smartest, best informed or happiest but they certainly are far more elegant and careful than most of us. We want them around us in tough times and good times. When Republican Senators say generous things about Senator Kennedy, it proves that public policy differences don't always trump friendship and camraderie.

Mike Bloomberg For Mayor

Like many of you on Facebook, I was invited to join Mike Bloomberg's on-line affinity group. (I don't know how else to describe it.) Some of my more liberal purist friends will cringe a little bit because I usually share their healthy suspicion of people who are asking for a third term they said they didn't want.

Having lived in NYC for nearly 25 years, I can tell you that Mike Bloomberg has done more good things for the city than many of his predecessors, regardless of party affiliation. I don't mean to discount Ed Koch's or David Dinkins's contributions. Had Dinkins won a second term, my opinion about Mike Bloomberg might be a little different, but millions of New Yorkers were treated to two terms of Rudy Guiliani, the only mayor in my memory that did not appear to like many New Yorkers and was downright nasty when anyone disagreed with him. He claimed credit for community policing - a Dinkins era program already underway when Guiliani took office - and spent much of his time playing vindictive games with state and city agencies.

His welfare to work program forced thousands of recipients into dead-end job paths while paying them peanuts. He offered thousands of "Work Experience Program" participants to the NYC Transit Authority to supplement station cleaning but when he demanded that the Authority forgo millions in revenue (from the City) to offer school passes for free transit and was rebuffed, he stopped the payments anyway and then reneged on his promise of providing a meaningful way to move welfare recipients from welfare to work by providing only a fraction of the people he promised. He must have been really angry when he found out that many of those WEP participants actually got full time jobs and a real career path at Transit that paid Transit scale rates of pay. The WEP participants in the NYC program got nothing like that.

I give Mr. Guiliani credit for one thing - an important thing. He was a steady hand during the 9/11 attacks and did help to heal the City for the last several months of his term. Bloomberg inherited that catastrophe and a economic crisis that could well have turned out to be worse than the fiscal crisis during the mid 1970s. He did a remarkable job on both fronts.

I am convinced that Mike Bloomberg actually likes New Yorkers - not just ones that look like him, but even those who disagree with some of his proposals. He generously and publicly gives credit to his staff, perhaps the most talented staff in recent memory. Call them cronies if you want but I'll take Bloomberg's cronies over what we put up with before he held the office.

A third term? Why not? I have a mental list of a few alternatives for the office but I can't say that any of them would be better than what we have right now.

Government Run Programs

If you are like most people, you live in a community that includes a public sector employee. You might have befriended a few. Most go to work each day, arrive on time, work the entire day and return to their families, just like you do. While it is certainly true that people at the top of the public sector food chain make bad decisions, they are constrained (usually) by regulations that emanate from the legislation that created the program. Do you assume that your neighbors are incompetent? Do you assume that they are lazy? If your answers to those questions is "yes", have you ever had a conversation about what they do?

I was a public sector attorney for nearly 13 years. I worked on average a 10 hour day, including quite a few weekend days, took no lunch break and do not consider myself stupid. The agency paid me about half of what I could have made in the private sector to do the same kind of work. My colleagues, in general, worked just as hard. I also spent some time representing public school bus drivers and clerical staff. No one I ever met was lazy or incompetent.

The proposal to create a government-run option (yes, option) to compete with private health insurers has created a firestorm of protests among many different groups. The private health insurance industry is particularly rabid about stopping it. That ought to tell you something. They are afraid that they will have to compete and it will cost them a chunk of their profits that they have grown very accustomed to. Private insurers pay their CEOs and upper management far, far more than federal government scale salaries. Private executives get bonuses just like their contemporaries on Wall Street. They hire administrative types to do the grunt work which often involves telling their insured that the plan doesn't cover the procedure they need or that they have a pre-existing condition that will never be covered. Too many people have a horror story for me to believe that the private sector is so magical in delivering affordable, quality health care.

"Government run" does not always mean poorly run. It does not mean that everyone is asleep at their desks. It does mean that overhead costs are lower and it does mean that private sector insurers will have to hustle to be chosen over a public option. If we really care about getting insurance to everyone - which all by itself should spread risk and lower premiums for everyone in both the private and public sectors - we shouldn't dismiss it because of old prejudices about public employees.

Many of us entirely miss the point, which I have said before: you are already paying for universal "coverage". Forget about taxes for just a minute. Every time a person cannot pay a medical bill without using funds otherwise set aside to pay a mortgage payment, he or she risks foreclosure. Foreclosures that happen near you - in this case "near" could mean a block away or two miles away - chip away at your own house values, most Americans' biggest investment. If that doesn't wake us up, what about the people who do make the mortgage payments and fail to pay the hospital. Let's assume the hospital doesn't force the patient into bankruptcy. Their other option is to cut back on the care they deliver, either through lay-offs or closing practice areas in non-lucrative specialities. If they do force the patient to file for bankruptcy, we're back to vacant houses and all of the ugly things that are happening too often these days.

If you're worried that spendthrift patients who have medical problems and mortgages and no health insurance are the real problem, work to tighten credit markets to limit their ability to sink themselves into a sea of debt. It is silly but true that there were people out there who had more revolving credit than they earned in salary in a year.

The other important thing many of us forget is that WE are the government if we take the time and spend the energy to be involved in decision-making. Casting a vote every time you are asked to do so is a good start but there is so much more to a democracy than casting votes. Maybe we are too busy to do very much but if we all woke up a half hour earlier or went to sleep a half hour later and sent a few well-written email, it would tell our representatives that we are watching what they do much more closely than they think. It will matter when lobbyists come knocking on their door, threatening to fund another candidate if they don't tow the corporate line. At least they will be able to say that no amount of campaign contributions or lobbyist-paid phone banks could overcome the opinion of their constituency. Maybe some would be bold enough to say that out loud at a town hall meeting.

Beyond the Melting Pot

Daniel Patrick Moynihan - before he was a US Senator - wrote Beyond the Melting Pot in the mid 1960s. I'm not sure when the term "melting pot" was invented to explain uniquely American immigration patterns over the past couple of hundred years but Moynihan rejected the idea that immigrant groups soon adopt the culturally majoritarian "American" way (if that even exists).

Instead, he wrote about "cultural pluralism": that immigrants and even their children and grandchildren hold onto parts of the pre-immigration customs and culture, sometimes out of pride, sometimes for other good reasons. His theory goes a long way towards explaining why we have parades celebrating nearly every major ethnic group in New York City. Every group tries to show the rest of us how their subculture (holidays, food, etc.) differs from others and that it is a source of pride to celebrate those differences.

There are times when Moynihan's premise is so obviously correct. My sister's recent marriage to her husband is one off the best examples. Leah's husband was born in the US but he spent a great deal of time in India, his parents' birthplace. Leah's roots on her mother's side go back to pre-revolutionary America and to the turn of the 20th century when her father's Italian great grandparents came here. Courtesy of her mother-in-law, the rehearsal dinner was meant to honor and celebrate Ajay's cultural roots, including traditional dress, regional Indian food and traditions. The wedding itself was mostly Western, but it was pretty clear that Mom loved the henna painting on her hands.

Many of us do this all the time without even thinking about it. We are thrilled to get a gift of stuffed cabbage from our Polish-American friends. Even if we didn't hail from Sicily, we love the food. Even if it's not the "real stuff" Mexican food is very popular across all subcultures. Although I have used food as an example, it's much deeper than that.

Whenever I hear about calls for immigrant "assimilation", I bristle. To me, the truth is that American "culture" encompasses so many traditions that no one can claim a truly specific cultural standard. Americans, for the most part, are very cafeteria-style in their daily lives. It's a gift that very few countries can even comprehend. I think we're pretty lucky.

Health Care Legislation

I guess I am joining the Greek chorus on this issue. Including a government sponsored program in the menu of health insurance choices does not mean that you have to give up coverage you already like or that we will become a socialist country. Even if you believe that we actually should become a socialist country, it would take decades. We are too far away from any European notion of a social safety net.

The misinformation about the Obama administration's vision of modifying (yes, "modifying", not throwing the existing system out with the trash) is even worse than it was when Hillary Clinton attempted to take on the issue in the early 1990s. The scare tactics employed to maintain the status quo are shameful. I wonder how many uninsured people could be insured if the advertising budgets of the naysayers were directed at paying for those benefits.

Most people with some knowledge about the existing system know that far too many people rely on emergency room treatment for common non-emergency maladies, especially when the patients lack health insurance. It's the most expensive way to deliver that kind of treatment and accounts for much of the problem. These patients often cannot afford to pay the bill. Those of us who are employed and have insurance already end up paying for unnecessary ER treatment either through income taxes, being unable to recover money lent when the uninsured file for bankruptcy or through depressed house values when the uninsured cannot make mortgage payments and face foreclosure on their houses.

The fact is that most of our current economic problems are tied together in a knot. Getting health insurance to the millions who don't have it is one of the most important first steps in addressing so many other issues.

I was struck by President Obama's remarks at a recent town hall meeting. He mentioned that we needed to listen to each other which is the whole reason I started this blog in the first place. Obviously, I think he's right.

An Open Letter to Justice Sotomayor

First, congratulations on your nomination and appointment to the United States Supreme Court. You are obviously well aware that you are an important symbol to millions of young women from every racial and ethnic background. Like many others, I think it reaches beyond that. Your ascension to the highest court in the land did not require a promise from you that you would erase your life history or to make any pledge that was not required of your new colleagues.

Many people will wonder whether your judicial style will resemble Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's or whether your tenure on the Court will be marked by the kind of pragmatism of retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Will advocates spend much of their time attempting to argue directly to you as they did to Justice O'Connor and now Justice Anthony Kennedy, assuming that you might be a swing vote on some important issues? I make no assumptions. Based on past Court decisions, there will be occasions where there is unanimity among you and your colleagues. There may be occasions when you lean toward the conservative wing and times when you will agree with and write for a majority of the justices who are viewed as progressive or "liberal".

You come to the Court at a critical time in the nation's history. Issues related to reproductive rights, limits on executive power and the rights of lesbians and gays to enter into civil marriages that are valid in any state no matter where those unions are formed, will all be in front of you. Few "easy" cases will get to you. I applaud your willingness to tackle the difficult ones.

I watched some of the confirmation hearings and read or listened to some of the punditry that accompanied your nomination. Much of it was insulting or ignored your long service as a federal judge. I have already written a post about the importance of a diverse Supreme Court that reflects our society as it really is. The legitimacy of the Court, in my view, depends on it.

As you sit in your chambers, hire law clerks, get to know your colleagues better and settle into your new role, I wish you the best of luck and that you will continue to do what the greatest lawyers do - listen and learn. Please do not forget your roots; most of your colleagues have not done so. I, for one, believe that you will be a star.

Thank you again for your willingess to serve the country in this way.

What We Want

I spent a little time the other day filling in some profile information on my Facebook account. One of the questions asked me about my favorite quotes. I mangled one of the quotes a bit because I didn't remember the exact words that Samuel Gompers, a life long labor activist and founder of the American Federation of Labor, which in the early 1950s merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (hence, the AFL-CIO) used at the turn of the 20th century.

The real quote is: “What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures,”

The labor movement ultimately got some of the things that Gompers championed. For non-history buffs, Gompers at the time was focused on skilled trade workers. Since then, I think Gompers's quote resonates far beyond the constituency he was trying to reach and represent. 100 years later, most people who work in any variety of endeavors (both unionized and non-unionized and every collar color) would agree with the list of wants that he mentioned, some of which were realized.

Of course, his list was not exhaustive (perhaps because he could not imagine that a social safety net would be created in the aftermath of the Great Depression when he made his remarks). I am pretty convinced he would support current efforts at health care reform.

I think that he would have been delighted that even (employed) working class people, and especially the middle class, have a better standard of living that grew practically non-stop through 2008. Much of the credit goes to inventions and discoveries that we take for granted today because they are mass marketed and typically become cheaper because of the magic of economies of scale. Time saving kitchen appliances, access to television and radio, the Internet and other things that did not exist when he made his remarks might have surprised him.

I am not suggesting for a minute that it's inherently wrong to want more material things (conspicuously absent from the quote). I would be a hypocrite if I said that. Nevertheless, I do not believe that he would be happy to know that there are people who live in really tough economic times but continue to attempt to acquire things that they don't really need or can't afford.

There are as many different reasons for wanting more material things as there are people who want more. A group of my friends call it "lifestyle creep". As salaries rise, we almost reflexively buy more things. Certainly, the growth of the US economy depends to a large extent on those desires and a willingness to spend down savings or use credit to get the latest and greatest things.

If "lifestyle creep" disappeared, it would probably make recessions worse and longer-lasting and would ultimately change the way businesses market their products. It's happening as I sit here. People are flocking to take advantage of a government-sponsored $4500 to scrap a serviceable but old, energy-inefficient car in favor of a new car that uses less fuel. Let's not fool ourselves. It takes lots of energy to build a new car. People buying cars under this program are probably thrilled and it might go a long way toward saving domestic auto manufacturers, but I don't think that the environment is better off for it. To me, it's a dilemma. I am trying as best I can to repair, reuse, recycle, etc., but I am hardly perfect. I find it easier to deprive myself of things than to hold back on giving gifts to others. I can't say that I need anything at this point but that doesn't mean that I won't go into a store and buy something I don't need.

I hope that Samuel Gompers's vision sticks in my mind, especially when I want to buy another "thing" that is cool but unnecessary to change my quality of life. Save your money for people who have real needs. That should do nothing to hurt the economy; I predict it will make you feel better.

What's Your Name?

At birth most Americans are issued by their parent(s) a First, Middle and Surname. Christian or non-religious folks almost always include a middle name and often choose to confuse their families and others by making a boy a “junior” or bestowing the same honor (at least as to first name) on a little girl. “Where’s John?”, someone bellows at the family reunion. “Junior or Senior?,” someone bellows back. My maternal grandmother – despite her many insecurities - told her daughter that I looked nothing like my legal first name (I was a junior – do you see the danger now?) and announced that my name was David, my middle name. No one was in any mood to piss off a stylish 57 year old woman who could simultaneously cook a perfect pot roast, darn a sock, redecorate the dining room, alter a dress and start a seasonal cutting garden all under the influence of enough Maker’s Mark to kill the average 200 pound man. So, David it was. I wish I had my grandmother around a little longer than I did because she is responsible for the top of my resume looking extremely pompous. I always use a first initial, then David, then my surname.

Of course, for every rule, there are exceptions. Some Jewish friends have no middle name at all. (How do you give a person with only two names personalized Land’s End shirts?) When having children of their own, they endeavor to choose a first name that honors a dead relative, sometimes cheating a bit by telling me that all you really have to do is use the first initial of the dead relative but I bet that wasn’t always considered so kosher. To me, this explains the virtual disappearance of Berthas and Mortimers from the telephone book.

Most of my African-American friends bathe in the freedom of choosing or inventing any name that they want. Most of the girls’ names sound very pretty. They could choose a traditional African first or middle name or go more local and choose Emily. These choices are immune from criticism for a very important reason. Most African Americans never got to choose or retain their surname which often matched their slave master’s. If they want to be a little more creative than the rest of us, they earned it the hard way through their ancestors. I know plenty of African Americans of my generation whose parents went with the flow and called their kids Ann or William. Maybe they liked the names or they might have thought that the civil rights struggle was going to be over soon and thought that buying into the established white cultural norms, even with names, would make it easier for their kids. It’s not over yet.
As for middle names, if yours doesn’t match your maternal or paternal grandmother’s surname or your mother’s maiden surname, you are far less likely to be invited to Old Guard WASPy events near a body of water. The best you’re likely to do is get into a Where’s Waldo picture at a Hamptons party with other upper middle class social climbers like the Housewives of New York on Bravo TV. You may not care about that but I thought I’d mention it so you could get through the overwhelming sense of disappointment this might cause you. If you are weeping at this point, you are missing the point unless your tears are from laughing too hard.

Americans of all socioeconomic strata cannot seem to leave any polysyllabic name alone. It must be shortened or changed. David turns into Dave, Peter into Pete, Patricia into Pat, Edward into Ed, Eddie, Ned, etc. I don’t know whether it’s because it denotes a casual American style, a level of intimacy or familiarity or whether they never liked the name in the first place. For me, I am almost always called David in professional settings. With family and most friends, I am Dave or even Davey. I like all of them so I don’t care. My maternal grandfather always called me Skipper. While it’s true that we fished from a boat together over the years, I was hardly an expert at navigation and my rowing technique left much to be desired. The big exception here is that your European friends (except some Brits who probably started all of this in the first place), will refuse to shorten your name, because, as one friend explained in college, “it’s your name”. When it comes along with an accent, I love the sound of my full name.

This gets tricky because, at least in the US, it again depends to some extent on social class. Those lines have blurred somewhat and have become more about bank accounts than bloodlines in some places. Let’s start at the top with the Muffies (I have known a Muffy and she was very nice and very down to Earth despite her dynastic wealth and lack of any apparent ambition to do anything but buy Lily Pulitzer shifts while in Palm Beach. I don’t think I ever learned her given name. The other example is George W. Bush, whose penchant for nicknaming everyone he ever met deserves a diagnosis in the DSM IV. Medical research will never find a cure for it.

Next stop: the upper middle class. This could involve no nicknaming at all, lest someone think that they are not serious people with serious jobs, serious money and very, very serious children. These are the most tortured people among us; my heart goes out to them. I usually find such people humorless and boring. They desperately want their children to meet and marry Muffies but Muffies are hardwired to know when someone is a social climber and will befriend lots of people anyway but know that their marriage options are somewhat preordained and do not typically include having a father-in-law who owns a chain of carwashes. These tortured souls, if they try to mimic Muffy’s family by nicknaming their kids in a similar way, will be disappointed to learn that Muffy’s kin will still know what you are up to and, without saying a word, will think that the nicknames sound more like ones that Sarah Palin would use as a first name on a birth certificate. They won’t speak about it unless Muffy comes home during college and professes love for one of these guys.

For the poorest white folks, it’s all over the map. They probably don’t spend much time thinking about the social significance of their naming choices. Chalk that up to holding down three part-time jobs that don’t include paid maternity leave. They tend to keep it simple but will sometimes choose names like Farrah or some other name that will sound extremely stupid when the child turns 80.

This is hardly an exhaustive discussion of these phenomena. We’re leaving out NASCAR aficionados who apparently like hyphenated Billy-Bobs, etc. or parents who just say “hey, you – YEAH, YOU – get upstairs and make your bed.” The child’s nickname is You. It seems a little difficult to develop a persona around that.

I wonder how my sister (mostly European descent) and her husband, Indian (the country, not the locals) will decide to name their kids. They could pull off a really interesting mix. I have nothing against Tiffanys but you won’t find them choosing that one. My parents chose my sister’s name – Leah – because they liked it. Some of my Jewish friends jokingly point out that my Protestant/Catholic parents ended up with two kids with Hebrew names and that it explains how I ended up being a lawyer and my sister ended up being a pediatrician, although when queried on this my parents never considered that when playing the name game. As the true hypocrite I am, I often refer to my sister as Lee, my mother’s middle name that came from some distant tendril of surname ancestry.

Why does any of this matter? Maybe it doesn’t matter to you at all. The reason it fascinates me is because people actually do make assumptions about people based on their names. All of the Farrahs born in the late 70s and early 80s will, for many, conjure up an image of a gorgeous blonde but won’t take them very seriously until one of them perfects cold table-top fusion at MIT, even if they have master’s degrees and Mensa-qualifying IQs. It’s wrong to do that but I think it’s true.

The good news is that we elected President Barack Hussein Obama, but only after some nasty people wasted their television punditry moment or spent money on advertisements trying to scare people about the President’s middle name. As shameful as that was, a majority of us didn’t care. That’s progress, especially if it sends a chill up the back of Ann Coulter.

I’ve missed or left out lots of other observations and exceptions to them. Please add freely.

Post-Modern Racism

I like my drama to be expensive, with good actors and with orchestra seats. I particularly like Edward Albee plays because I can identify with some of it. If it’s drama that I haven’t paid for, I cut the actors a little more slack. Being locked out of your house should not be that dramatic.
Most of us have locked ourselves out of our houses before. Sometimes we leave an extra key with a neighbor we like so we don’t have to hire a locksmith or jimmy it ourselves. Most of us would be very, very happy if our neighbors knew us well enough to see something going on across the street that might be a crime and called the police to report it. Most police officers would be delighted to know that it was a false alarm and once they knew that the owner was safely inside, that their job was done.

Why did none of these things happen for Professor Gates or Officer Crowley? Did the individual who called 911 know that Professor Gates and his wife lived there? Did the 911 operator ask who lived there or ask anyone to describe what he looked like? Why did each man react the way that they did?

Based on what has been reported (not that that is always accurate anyway), I can’t conclude it was all racism or that it was all the fault of one of them. I’m certain that Professor Gates has seen a fair number of police officers beat the crap out of African American men for exercising or advocating for their civil rights or for no apparent reason at all. I am sure that Officer Crowley realizes that there are African Americans who live in Cambridge and that some of them teach at local universities (in this case the university – Harvard).

From what I know in news accounts, this was a huge failure to really listen. The officer could have looked at the Professor’s ID, turned on one heel, bid the Professor a good night and walked away even if the Professor was surly in the process. Professor Gates could have stopped himself from assuming that every question a white man in uniform asks him is a personal affront that is symbolic of Jim Crow days, especially since he clearly had the intellectual upper hand. Part of listening – not just hearing words but actually listening to them – is to consider their source and the context in which the words are said. Neither man gets a free pass on that obligation.

The arrest was a public humiliation for both men, albeit more humiliating for Professor Gates. It never had to happen. I’m no fool. There are plenty of times that racial profiling is rampant in some communities, so much so that some of my friends are afraid of being picked up by a state trooper for DWB – driving while black. I voted for Barack Obama in the last election. He is smart enough to know that you don’t reflexively call a police officer’s actions “stupid” until you know all the facts or to publicly comment on your friend’s behavior or, in my view, to make the most condescending statement of all: that this particular event was a “teaching moment”, especially when there are plenty of better “teaching moments” that deal with racism. This was the Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s job, not the President’s. Patrick is African American and certainly knows who Professor Gates is. If I am wrong, my President is going to spend more of his time on this issue than any other. Maybe that’s the way it ought to be but if it is, we’ll end up with a brilliant one-term President who lost the independent voters that helped him make history. Too many other issues will go down the toilet and we’ll be right back where we started.

Several years ago, my sister, recently married to an epidemiologist who happens to be Indian, was pulled over on the New York State Thruway in Upstate NY. She was not speeding. She was stopped because she was white and her fiancé was dark skinned. All the officer asked her was if she knew the man sitting next to her and if “she was alright”. She confirmed that she was just fine, thank you very much, and went on – crying through the remainder of the trip at the humiliation her fiancé had just experienced. She was listening to every word the trooper said which translated into “I think you are being carjacked by someone you shouldn’t be with.” (Note: I would have ended up with mug shots if that had happened to me.) That would have made for a better “teaching moment” than the Gates/Crowley encounter. I say that because there can be no debate about what my sister and my brother-in-law experienced. The Gates/Crowley event has a little more nuance (starting with a 911 call that came from what I understand is a stable, relatively crime-free neighborhood. It is far too open to debate about exactly what we should expect from each party.

Barack Obama’s election to the Presidency came after a nearly flawless campaign; one that transcended race in ways that few neo-cons thought was possible. It’s naïve to think that the President won’t and shouldn’t avoid discussing these issues. To me, the President’s instinct came right from the heart. I just wish that in this case he had called his friend Deval Patrick at the Governor’s residence and asked him to get all the facts and handle it appropriately. There is no credible reporter that could have criticized that approach.

Please don’t misunderstand what I am trying to say. 40 years ago this year, a throng of lesbians and gay men had enough of NYPD raids on the places where they gathered. The Stonewall riots set into motion the modern LGBT civil rights movement. In 1992 while in law school, I was asked by a friend to speak to an auditorium full of parents – mostly white but fairly diverse - about the importance of including the children of gay parents in their curriculum, including the book, Heather Has Two Mommies. I gave my speech and was treated respectfully but not warmly, at least until I ended my remarks by telling that them that I was a gay man and had a mother and father just like their students did. In fewer than 5 seconds, I was shouted down, called epithets that I need not repeat here and was threatened with physical harm. Two police officers – one black and one white - grabbed me and hustled me out of the back door. They didn’t arrest me. They told me that they felt the need to walk with me to my car to make sure I wasn’t harmed. The black officer told me “you certainly have some balls, buddy…that was a tough room.” As I sat shaking in my car, I began to understand what I think people like Professor Gates lived through. I didn’t stop and will never stop advocating for full equality for all of us. I wish I remembered the name of the black officer so I could find a way to thank him but I wasn’t in any state of mind to commit it to memory. I didn’t stop my activism although I did make some changes in how I did it. I might not have any credibility as it relates to racism but I do know what discrimination feels like.

Facebook

My Facebook account says that I have 68 "friends". As much as I like and or admire many of the people on the list, most are not "friends" as I define the term. I have never had 68 friends (at least all at once). Some of us kept up with some high school and undergraduate or graduate school friends but I doubt many people would say that their social circle outside of the Internet is as wide as Facebook would have us believe. The nice thing about Facebook is that you can often rekindle an old friendship (at least with a keyboard) and share some photographs and a laugh or two.

My best friend - who is not a Facebook participant - has remained my best friend since 1982. He and I have moved around the country a few times over the years and months sometimes go by before we speak to each other or see each other in person. We've watched each other, sometimes from a long distance, find romantic love, struggle with career dilemmas, celebrate births, mourn those who have died and confide in each other things that we might not even tell his wife or my partner.

My fear about Facebook and other social networking sites is not for me or my best friend. My fear is for kids that cannot remember a time when there was no text messaging, twitter, Facebook, My Space, etc. and will go through their entire lives at arm's length from being a physical part of their communities and will be unable to forge friendships that don't involve technology. No more handwritten thank you cards, no more holiday phone calls or visits and no more amusing stories of how a couple met bumping carts in a supermarket. Maybe I am overstating things a little bit, but I think it would be very sad if those random moments were rendered meaningless unless the person was on your list of "friends". I suppose I sound old and anti-technology. I'm not. I just hope that the high school dance won't be replaced with some Internet forum with some webcam device that lets people dance in the comfort of their own homes without actually being with anyone.

Universal Health Care Access

Do you have health insurance? If you do, does the provider cover most of your needs with affordable co-payments? Can you choose your own doctor or are you limited to a list of "participating physicians"? If you try to choose from among "participating physicians", have you ever been told by one of them that they are no longer accepting new patients? If you are unrestricted in your choice of doctors, have you ever been told that he/she "doesn't accept" your insurance?

I can think of many more questions, but the ones I have posed cover many complaints of insured people, even those with so-called "Cadillac" benefits. Many would say that they have a Cadillac that is practically useless because no one gave them the keys or forgot to mention that the maintenance charges to keep it running outstrip the cost of a new car.

There isn't much dispute among Americans that the health care in this country - at least when you can get it - is frequently on the cutting edge, the best in the world. We have better and more diagnostic equipment, better facilities, the best trained physicians. I have always thought that we like to say these kinds of things because the US is a nation that loves and in some ways, was founded on superlatives. In this fantasy, nobody is ordinary. All children are "gifted", all our workers are "the hardest working", our food choices are the most varied, etc., etc., etc. It's almost as if we are afraid that if we looked at some of our institutions with a more critical eye and found out that there were some significant flaws, that our whole national identity would deflate like those big Christmas lawn ornaments. Who are we if we're not the most free, the smartest and the richest? Are we then just 300+ million people sitting on good topsoil, driving gigantic cars while running out of petroleum? Of course not.

Out of the context of health care as a specific issue, it's important to remember that our addiction to superlatives spreads far beyond a single issue. For example, if everyone is brilliant, then no one is brilliant. "Brilliant" becomes "average". I will never forget the day that I went through orientation as an undergraduate student at Cornell University back in the early 80s. The dean of my college said (in a very nice way), "Welcome to Cornell. Wherever you may have come from, you were probably the valedictorian or something close to that. You were considered "brilliant" by your family and your peers. Look around you at your new classmates. At Cornell, until you do something pretty extraordinary, you are now average. There is nothing wrong with that. I hope it makes you work harder." I walked out of that auditorium feeling absolutely stupid. It wasn't because I thought I was brilliant or that I did not belong there, notwithstanding my sweet parents who unwittingly set me up for disappointment. It was because I thought that it ever really mattered or that there was some objective way of determining who was and who wasn't.

It's not just ordinary Americans who get caught in this nationalist superiority trap. Our clergy practically invented it. Either a religion says through its leaders that it is the only way to salvation or that the US is God's favorite country. I always love hearing that one. One day Texas belongs to Mexico. Before too long it joins the US after we kill enough Mexicans to call it ours. The territory immediately becomes the equivalent of God's newest friend on Facebook. For the truly religious reading this, I apologize for sounding so glib. I don't mean to be disrespectful. I know many thinking, good people who do their best to adhere to the tenets of their respective faiths but only when they are used for good and not as justifications for going to war or killing legislation that would keep uninsured people with stomach aches out of emergency rooms.

By the way, who is Jerry Fallwell to tell us that he is the only guy with a direct speaking relationship to God and that the 9/11 attacks were, in part, God's punishment for tolerating gays and lesbians in the US? I would say the same thing to Muslim clerics who apparently have Mohammed's cell number and know first-hand that the prophet is adamant that Israel must be destroyed, but only after killing a few thousand American civilians and soldiers. As insane as that is, there are clearly people who believe it.

My point is this: if we are unwilling to look carefully at the policies that have brought us to a point where millions of Americans are uninsured, we are stuck in that same trap of perceived superlatives that will permit our elected officials to leave things as they are. I hope we do not let them get away with that.