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.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Why Should We Care About Diversity on the Supreme Court?
Nearly every President in modern times has had a chance to nominate a Supreme Court Justice. FDR famously (or infamously) attempted to add seats to the Court and pack it with a majority of liberal justices that would permit the Roosevelt administration to push through regulatory legislation to curb abuses in the securities industry, give employees the right to organize unions, spend money to create government jobs, etc. The public outcry was loud, it never happened, but it had its effect. Much of his agenda made it past the Court and it changed the power structure of the nation toward a much more muscular federal role in our lives.
Successors to Roosevelt well understood the importance of Supreme Court appointments. (An old but excellent book - Alan Drury's Advise and Consent - written in the 1950s) described the process in detail.)
It does not surprise me to hear Senators (the ones who are supposed to give the advice and consent) drone on about how important it is for nominees to erase their entire life histories from their memories and to decide cases based on their understanding of the law, precedent and the facts of the cases that come before them. It sounds almost Orwellian.
Sandra Day O'Connor was a top law student (I believe she went to Stanford) who after graduation could not get a job at a white shoe law firm unless she was willing to be a secretary. She turned to public employment to get where she wanted to go. She was a reliable Republican and was nominated by Ronald Reagan, hardly a liberal. When she joined the Court in the early 80s, the left was concerned that she was a lightweight that would rubber stamp the views of more conservative justices. Many conservatives thought it was a master stroke by Reagan - adding diversity without adding real diversity.
We know that justices don't erase their memories. O'Connor is credited with creating an "intermediate" level of scrutiny when reviewing cases of gender based discrimination. In her view, now well established in Supreme Court jurisprudence, the "strict scrutiny" applied to racial discrimination cases was born out of the nation's history of slavery and the promise of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. But the history of gender discrimination, in her view, did not deserve "strict scrutiny" nor was it the same as a garden variety discrimination case that deserved to be analyzed at the lowest level of scrutiny - essentially a "rational basis" test. Does anyone really think that her role in fashioning that kind of compromise had nothing to do with her personal experience or that at least some of her colleagues appreciated her unique perspective? Does anyone think that the life experiences of the male justices on the Court don't factor into published decisions?
The only extremists left on the Court are the men who believe that attempting to divine the "original intent of the framers" of the Constitution is the only truly legitimate way to decide cases. I'm not the smartest guy in the room in most cases, but it strikes me as a little bit extreme to think that the framers could have predicted the explosion of technology, immigration or the scars left by slavery that they conveniently (for them) chose to leave in place. To me, the truth is that "original intent" is a fig leaf for applying 18th century notions of a civil society to a 21st century problem. Progressives view the Constitution as a living document, and was made so deliberately because the framers were smart enough to know that they could not possibly predict the nation's growth pattern and what the issues would be hundreds of years later. Moderates find ways to look at both theories of interpretation.
During the last election cycle, when people had reservations about changing their allegiance from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama, many people simply said, "two words; Supreme Court." That might have been an overstatement of the importance of the Court's decisions in the daily lives of average Americans but on certain issues - reproductive freedom, race and gender discrimination and the federal government's power to do something it has never done - passing legislation that attempts to trump the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution to fail to recognize the legitimacy of same sex marriages performed in a state that permits such marriages, it's a big deal. VP Joe Biden calls many of these "kitchen table" issues.
We need more Justices who were brilliant law students, served admirably on lower courts and watched their parents struggle with medical and other bills at their kitchen tables. Nominees' public statements about their judicial philosophy are fair game. So are some of their memberships in professional societies that have unmistakable views on the power of the judiciary, particularly when the nominee was in a leadership role. I believe, though, that it is a not-so-subtle way of discriminating to presume that a nominee is unsuitable because they were bootstrappers who were once poor and will therefore reflexively bend the Constitution to legislate from the bench. If that were the standard, Clarence Thomas should never have been confirmed.
Successors to Roosevelt well understood the importance of Supreme Court appointments. (An old but excellent book - Alan Drury's Advise and Consent - written in the 1950s) described the process in detail.)
It does not surprise me to hear Senators (the ones who are supposed to give the advice and consent) drone on about how important it is for nominees to erase their entire life histories from their memories and to decide cases based on their understanding of the law, precedent and the facts of the cases that come before them. It sounds almost Orwellian.
Sandra Day O'Connor was a top law student (I believe she went to Stanford) who after graduation could not get a job at a white shoe law firm unless she was willing to be a secretary. She turned to public employment to get where she wanted to go. She was a reliable Republican and was nominated by Ronald Reagan, hardly a liberal. When she joined the Court in the early 80s, the left was concerned that she was a lightweight that would rubber stamp the views of more conservative justices. Many conservatives thought it was a master stroke by Reagan - adding diversity without adding real diversity.
We know that justices don't erase their memories. O'Connor is credited with creating an "intermediate" level of scrutiny when reviewing cases of gender based discrimination. In her view, now well established in Supreme Court jurisprudence, the "strict scrutiny" applied to racial discrimination cases was born out of the nation's history of slavery and the promise of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. But the history of gender discrimination, in her view, did not deserve "strict scrutiny" nor was it the same as a garden variety discrimination case that deserved to be analyzed at the lowest level of scrutiny - essentially a "rational basis" test. Does anyone really think that her role in fashioning that kind of compromise had nothing to do with her personal experience or that at least some of her colleagues appreciated her unique perspective? Does anyone think that the life experiences of the male justices on the Court don't factor into published decisions?
The only extremists left on the Court are the men who believe that attempting to divine the "original intent of the framers" of the Constitution is the only truly legitimate way to decide cases. I'm not the smartest guy in the room in most cases, but it strikes me as a little bit extreme to think that the framers could have predicted the explosion of technology, immigration or the scars left by slavery that they conveniently (for them) chose to leave in place. To me, the truth is that "original intent" is a fig leaf for applying 18th century notions of a civil society to a 21st century problem. Progressives view the Constitution as a living document, and was made so deliberately because the framers were smart enough to know that they could not possibly predict the nation's growth pattern and what the issues would be hundreds of years later. Moderates find ways to look at both theories of interpretation.
During the last election cycle, when people had reservations about changing their allegiance from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama, many people simply said, "two words; Supreme Court." That might have been an overstatement of the importance of the Court's decisions in the daily lives of average Americans but on certain issues - reproductive freedom, race and gender discrimination and the federal government's power to do something it has never done - passing legislation that attempts to trump the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution to fail to recognize the legitimacy of same sex marriages performed in a state that permits such marriages, it's a big deal. VP Joe Biden calls many of these "kitchen table" issues.
We need more Justices who were brilliant law students, served admirably on lower courts and watched their parents struggle with medical and other bills at their kitchen tables. Nominees' public statements about their judicial philosophy are fair game. So are some of their memberships in professional societies that have unmistakable views on the power of the judiciary, particularly when the nominee was in a leadership role. I believe, though, that it is a not-so-subtle way of discriminating to presume that a nominee is unsuitable because they were bootstrappers who were once poor and will therefore reflexively bend the Constitution to legislate from the bench. If that were the standard, Clarence Thomas should never have been confirmed.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Moderation
It's been a long time since I tried to figure out how my views square with liberal, progressive, conservative or radical (right or left) viewpoints that are all over the Internet or in print. I never liked labels, anyway. They seem at once reductionist and are too often misinterpreted.
One of the reasons that I am so comfortable with Barack Obama's victory is that I think he struggles with the same questions that I try to confront.
As I get a little older and, with any luck, a little wiser, I find myself thinking about so many issues that divide us and wonder why there are not more people who leave room for some disagreement without taking those disagreements personally and finding common ground.
If you read most of my posts, it's fairly clear that I could be categorized as an unrepentant liberal guy who has nothing better to do than force my views down someone else's throat. That has never been my intention. I cannot think of too many issues where there is not a shady spot where everyone could just cool down and listen to another point of view that fell within the range of where I stand. Pick any topic: Iraq, same-sex marriage, global warming, world trade and so many others.
When you read any of my posts and think I'm nuts, I hope you will tell me why. The Internet changes all the rules because you can weigh in on anything in two minutes and feel like you have said your peace. That is the kind of democracy that I love. I learn a lot from those responses, whether they appear here or on my Facebook page, and I have actually changed some of my views as a result.
We don't need celebrities or elected officials to tell us what to think. In the kind of democracy that I think about, ordinary people can take care of that themselves and, at the right time, vote your conscience.
One of the reasons that I am so comfortable with Barack Obama's victory is that I think he struggles with the same questions that I try to confront.
As I get a little older and, with any luck, a little wiser, I find myself thinking about so many issues that divide us and wonder why there are not more people who leave room for some disagreement without taking those disagreements personally and finding common ground.
If you read most of my posts, it's fairly clear that I could be categorized as an unrepentant liberal guy who has nothing better to do than force my views down someone else's throat. That has never been my intention. I cannot think of too many issues where there is not a shady spot where everyone could just cool down and listen to another point of view that fell within the range of where I stand. Pick any topic: Iraq, same-sex marriage, global warming, world trade and so many others.
When you read any of my posts and think I'm nuts, I hope you will tell me why. The Internet changes all the rules because you can weigh in on anything in two minutes and feel like you have said your peace. That is the kind of democracy that I love. I learn a lot from those responses, whether they appear here or on my Facebook page, and I have actually changed some of my views as a result.
We don't need celebrities or elected officials to tell us what to think. In the kind of democracy that I think about, ordinary people can take care of that themselves and, at the right time, vote your conscience.
Friday, July 10, 2009
One more bit of back-to-basics
A private club that had taken money from a summer camp to allow a bunch of African-American kids the use of the club's pool and then humiliate that same group is one of the most disgusting displays of racism I have heard of. The perpetrators of what I consider to be an assault should immediately and sincrely apologize for being such ugly racists.
I'm not a vindictive person but the club staff or members that promoted or permitted that kind of humiliation to occur should be exposed to a tailor-made public humiliation that really hits home in their own (obviously little) world. Wealth can sometimes protect people from being held accountable for abusing children in the way they did it, but I am hoping that the thinking people of the club kick them out. After all, who would want to associate themselves with that kind of trash?
I feel very sorry for the parents/caregivers of those kids who will likely have to explain that despite the election of a black President, it has not ended the civil rights movement and all of the work that entails.
The white parents have an even harder job - to tell their kids what happened and that it was wrong and if they had anything to do with it, that they are profoundly sorry. If they are unable to do that and their children end up carrying around that kind of racist bile, they will surely have more limited opportunities in the workplace and elsewhere.
More than 10 years ago, there was a suggestion that my sister's high school should be named for Harriet Tubman, who settled in her retirement in my hometown. She settled there, as I understand it, because the community and surrounding towns were at the forefront of the civil rights movement, including the women's suffrage movement and her decision to live there gave her some comfort that she could live out the rest of her days among people who understood the corrosive effect of racism. Over 100 years later, the town apparently had forgotten its past and summarily dismissed the idea. Those decisionmakers can say whatever they want about their failure to barely entertain the idea.
I said then (I couldn't believe that the local newspaper published my letter to the editor) that such a public outcry over something as seemingly innocuous as naming a school would probably lead lots of students to believe that it was okay to be racists. I'm a pretty practical person and if memory serves, the primary theme of my letter was concern for the students who were as racist as their parents. I predicted that they would be excluded from some of the best schools and workplaces in the country and would be socially ostracized if they decided that they wanted to live in any major metropolitan area. Unless you have dynastic wealth and can wall yourself off from the reality around you, there are few places to hide.
I'm not a vindictive person but the club staff or members that promoted or permitted that kind of humiliation to occur should be exposed to a tailor-made public humiliation that really hits home in their own (obviously little) world. Wealth can sometimes protect people from being held accountable for abusing children in the way they did it, but I am hoping that the thinking people of the club kick them out. After all, who would want to associate themselves with that kind of trash?
I feel very sorry for the parents/caregivers of those kids who will likely have to explain that despite the election of a black President, it has not ended the civil rights movement and all of the work that entails.
The white parents have an even harder job - to tell their kids what happened and that it was wrong and if they had anything to do with it, that they are profoundly sorry. If they are unable to do that and their children end up carrying around that kind of racist bile, they will surely have more limited opportunities in the workplace and elsewhere.
More than 10 years ago, there was a suggestion that my sister's high school should be named for Harriet Tubman, who settled in her retirement in my hometown. She settled there, as I understand it, because the community and surrounding towns were at the forefront of the civil rights movement, including the women's suffrage movement and her decision to live there gave her some comfort that she could live out the rest of her days among people who understood the corrosive effect of racism. Over 100 years later, the town apparently had forgotten its past and summarily dismissed the idea. Those decisionmakers can say whatever they want about their failure to barely entertain the idea.
I said then (I couldn't believe that the local newspaper published my letter to the editor) that such a public outcry over something as seemingly innocuous as naming a school would probably lead lots of students to believe that it was okay to be racists. I'm a pretty practical person and if memory serves, the primary theme of my letter was concern for the students who were as racist as their parents. I predicted that they would be excluded from some of the best schools and workplaces in the country and would be socially ostracized if they decided that they wanted to live in any major metropolitan area. Unless you have dynastic wealth and can wall yourself off from the reality around you, there are few places to hide.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Back to Basics in a Bad Economy
I am not a parent but I have lots of friends and relatives who are. They differ in their approaches to parenting (at least based on my own observations) and their children all have unique gifts, some more traditionally impressive, some not. Some think corporal punishment is okay but they never hit their kids. Some prefer "naughty steps" when their kids act up inappropriately and might, in frustration, give their kids a whack on the behind. Some are more permissive than others. Some are conservative; some are liberal in their politics. Some are wealthy; some struggle every day to pay their bills on time. All are doing the best they can, at least as far as I can tell.
I just walked my sister down the aisle (a stand-in for my deceased stepfather, one of the nicest guys and best parents on the planet) and looked at the crowd at the reception. Few children were there but I still know the kids. The successful ones of my generation share a few traits that I believe are essential.
No matter what ambitions you have for your kids, it usually includes an independent life with a good job and lots of friends and opportunities to learn and grow as people.
This is a long introduction from a person who has participated in the hiring of scores of people. In a tough economy, hiring managers have more choices among candidates. You may disagree with everything I am about to say or dismiss my comments as coming from a guy who has never been a parent, but I think that there a few things any parent can do to make their kids stand-outs wherever they go.
1. Teach them to speak standard English (and Spanish if you can). There is nothing worse than going through an interview with a person who can't verbally communicate. The only thing worse than that is a candidate who thinks I need to hear the F-bomb in an interview. Trust me. It happens more than you think it does.
2. Make sure that they can write cohesively and to adjust their writing style to the particular audience that will read it. You probably have no idea how many lawyers pass a bar exam and can barely put together a cover letter. They will thank you later because their resumes won't be tossed in the shredder. Teach them how to write a proper thank you note and to do so in their own hand with paper and envelopes. It's a lost art that hiring managers love.
3. Teach them proper table manners even if you don't care about them at home. If your kid wants a white-collar job, chances are they will have to attend luncheons, dinner parties and other events. Things like licking your knife, buttering an entire slab of bread and devouring it like it was a pizza, or making negative comments about the menu may be okay at home but their bosses won't send them to meetings on their own, no matter how smart they are. The job won't last long at that point. Also, the admonition to clean one's plate may apply at home but your kid will get noticed for the wrong reason at a client lunch. Getting into the habit of reading modern novels (they should already know the classic ones) gives a potential or new hire something to talk about socially without offending anyone.
4. Unless your son or daughter wants a career in politics, few businesses need to hear your kid's take on trickle down economics or other opinions that have nothing to do with the mission of the company.
5. Television dramas notwithstanding, back-biting, gossipy, wise-asses get into lots of trouble. That doesn't mean they should not confront bad people, but it should be done professionally.
6. Teach your kids how to dress for the job they want. If your kid is being considered for a job as a lawyer, dress like one. If they get the job, they should observe how others dress and avoid making a fashion statement. The longer they stay in the job, the more they can play around with the dress code or, even better, if they get enough promotions, they can set the dress code themselves. I once interviewed a prospective candidate that didn't bother to tie his tie or iron his shirt. He either didn't care about the job or prefers after-hours bar crawls to gainful employment.
7. If they have a Facebook or My Space page, make sure that they understand that hiring managers will find it and read it. I guarantee that the person doing the hiring will consider your kid to be a fool if her social networking makes her sound that way.
To me, those are the big ones. Add some more.
I just walked my sister down the aisle (a stand-in for my deceased stepfather, one of the nicest guys and best parents on the planet) and looked at the crowd at the reception. Few children were there but I still know the kids. The successful ones of my generation share a few traits that I believe are essential.
No matter what ambitions you have for your kids, it usually includes an independent life with a good job and lots of friends and opportunities to learn and grow as people.
This is a long introduction from a person who has participated in the hiring of scores of people. In a tough economy, hiring managers have more choices among candidates. You may disagree with everything I am about to say or dismiss my comments as coming from a guy who has never been a parent, but I think that there a few things any parent can do to make their kids stand-outs wherever they go.
1. Teach them to speak standard English (and Spanish if you can). There is nothing worse than going through an interview with a person who can't verbally communicate. The only thing worse than that is a candidate who thinks I need to hear the F-bomb in an interview. Trust me. It happens more than you think it does.
2. Make sure that they can write cohesively and to adjust their writing style to the particular audience that will read it. You probably have no idea how many lawyers pass a bar exam and can barely put together a cover letter. They will thank you later because their resumes won't be tossed in the shredder. Teach them how to write a proper thank you note and to do so in their own hand with paper and envelopes. It's a lost art that hiring managers love.
3. Teach them proper table manners even if you don't care about them at home. If your kid wants a white-collar job, chances are they will have to attend luncheons, dinner parties and other events. Things like licking your knife, buttering an entire slab of bread and devouring it like it was a pizza, or making negative comments about the menu may be okay at home but their bosses won't send them to meetings on their own, no matter how smart they are. The job won't last long at that point. Also, the admonition to clean one's plate may apply at home but your kid will get noticed for the wrong reason at a client lunch. Getting into the habit of reading modern novels (they should already know the classic ones) gives a potential or new hire something to talk about socially without offending anyone.
4. Unless your son or daughter wants a career in politics, few businesses need to hear your kid's take on trickle down economics or other opinions that have nothing to do with the mission of the company.
5. Television dramas notwithstanding, back-biting, gossipy, wise-asses get into lots of trouble. That doesn't mean they should not confront bad people, but it should be done professionally.
6. Teach your kids how to dress for the job they want. If your kid is being considered for a job as a lawyer, dress like one. If they get the job, they should observe how others dress and avoid making a fashion statement. The longer they stay in the job, the more they can play around with the dress code or, even better, if they get enough promotions, they can set the dress code themselves. I once interviewed a prospective candidate that didn't bother to tie his tie or iron his shirt. He either didn't care about the job or prefers after-hours bar crawls to gainful employment.
7. If they have a Facebook or My Space page, make sure that they understand that hiring managers will find it and read it. I guarantee that the person doing the hiring will consider your kid to be a fool if her social networking makes her sound that way.
To me, those are the big ones. Add some more.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Let's Go Ahead and Let Cheney Speak
Anyone who is already on Facebook (most of the free world, it seems) has seen the Tell Dick Cheney to shut up posts by some liberal organization. I forget which one. It doesn't matter for these purposes.
My initial reaction was to agree. His party lost the oval office. He should be gracious and permit the new administration some time to do what it promised, even if he disagrees with the policy choices. There are plenty of other conservative commentators already on the attack and Dick Cheney has enough Halliburton cash to make it clear that he isn't doing this for money.
I suppose he is exceptionally good at raising money from the party's most faithful adherents (now limited to about 20% of the population) because he tells them what they want to hear. I'm beginning to think that we should encourage him to keep talking. If he wants to remain the face (or at least a prominent face) of the party, the Republican Party will delay the inevitable changes it must make to become a truly national party that can persuade a majority of independents to vote for them. I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that most independents didn't think former Vice-President Cheney did a very good job over the last 8 years. If he remains a constant reminder of the Bush Administration and its policies, Obama gets a second term, appoints two or three more justices to the Supreme Court and maybe even strikes a deal to get decent health care to all Americans. That's not such a bad deal. After all, you can turn the channel when he's on television or radio.
Let's not forget Lynne Cheney. I don't agree with her politics, but she is no dummy. She must be thrilled that she no longer has to dumb down her vocabulary when dining with her husband's ex-boss or politely listen to what amounted to hate speech about same-sex couples. I am disappointed that she couldn't use what little power she had to help men and women like her daughter but that was either her decision or one made for her by a 35 year old West Wing guy who told her to keep her mouth shut. If I'm right, that must have been pretty hard to swallow for a PhD who was already worried about her husband's health. It's not a fair comparison, I realize, but if someone told my mother to shut up about sexual orientation discrimination, she'd have frozen a smile on her face, lowered her voice to a near whisper and politely told whomever it was that he wasn't half the man her son and his partner are and to go f--- himself. That would make for great television drama but I'm a realist.
My initial reaction was to agree. His party lost the oval office. He should be gracious and permit the new administration some time to do what it promised, even if he disagrees with the policy choices. There are plenty of other conservative commentators already on the attack and Dick Cheney has enough Halliburton cash to make it clear that he isn't doing this for money.
I suppose he is exceptionally good at raising money from the party's most faithful adherents (now limited to about 20% of the population) because he tells them what they want to hear. I'm beginning to think that we should encourage him to keep talking. If he wants to remain the face (or at least a prominent face) of the party, the Republican Party will delay the inevitable changes it must make to become a truly national party that can persuade a majority of independents to vote for them. I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that most independents didn't think former Vice-President Cheney did a very good job over the last 8 years. If he remains a constant reminder of the Bush Administration and its policies, Obama gets a second term, appoints two or three more justices to the Supreme Court and maybe even strikes a deal to get decent health care to all Americans. That's not such a bad deal. After all, you can turn the channel when he's on television or radio.
Let's not forget Lynne Cheney. I don't agree with her politics, but she is no dummy. She must be thrilled that she no longer has to dumb down her vocabulary when dining with her husband's ex-boss or politely listen to what amounted to hate speech about same-sex couples. I am disappointed that she couldn't use what little power she had to help men and women like her daughter but that was either her decision or one made for her by a 35 year old West Wing guy who told her to keep her mouth shut. If I'm right, that must have been pretty hard to swallow for a PhD who was already worried about her husband's health. It's not a fair comparison, I realize, but if someone told my mother to shut up about sexual orientation discrimination, she'd have frozen a smile on her face, lowered her voice to a near whisper and politely told whomever it was that he wasn't half the man her son and his partner are and to go f--- himself. That would make for great television drama but I'm a realist.
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