tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-195514022010-05-08T09:27:40.198-04:00The Truth As I See ItPolitics, religion, art, culture -- and the cold, unvarnished truth.The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.comBlogger221125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-85765500979568383682010-04-18T15:08:00.005-04:002010-04-18T15:15:03.207-04:00April, Come She Will<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor<br />Miscellaneous Notes from The Month of Lions to Lambs<br /><br />Woods, 0; Ali, 1<br /><br />“Today’s sports stars? Maybe they have it too easy, maybe the world isn’t tough enough, and they don’t think there’s much they need to do. Tiger Woods, of famously mixed ethnic heritage, is happy to play at the Masters and ignore the protests that the private, all-male golf club should change its policies and admit women – but does not seem to have the courage to say what he presumably believes: that because the club is private it is under no legal obligation to admit women, and that is OK with him. (Nor has there been any acknowledgment on his part that these were the same arguments used to restrict access to the club by someone like him, i.e., someone who was not white.)”<br /><br />The above quote is from <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/Archive/2003/2003_08_17.html">an essay I wrote back in 2003</a>, about the impoverished state of contemporary sports starts -- impoverished in the sense that they seem to have no broader soul, no devotion to using their fame or wealth to support the greater common good. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali">Muhammad Ali</a> was and is one of my greatest heroes precisely because he understood that his visibility as an athlete gave him a platform—and he felt compelled to use it, even if it meant that sometimes his comments affected his career.<br /><br />Seven years later, the situation is only more depressing. Tiger Woods was back playing in the Masters again. At a club that still doesn't accept women. After himself being revealed as some kind of sex-crazed misogynist who - still! despite the scratches on his squeaky clean image! - has not shown any inclination to get involved in helping the world in any way. Instead, it's just about when he can be rehabilitated enough to have his next Nike commercial taken seriously. <a href="http://bit.ly/cw7Eru">And thanks, Jimmy Kimmel, for driving the point home</a>.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div> <br />Does This Rule Really Hold Any More?<br /><br />I was having dinner recently, at a casual place on the Upper West Side - by myself, prepping for a board meeting. Two young women, a good decade younger, sat down at the table next to me. Tightly squeezed in, and me without a conversation partner, eavesdropping was inevitable. Both are in grad school, one uptown and one downtown. Uptowner is good looking, the kind you figure is an A student, a TA, and has a steady boyfriend. Downtowner is less so, and no wonder: she says, over and over by way of explaining why she's been out of touch, “My life is so boring.”<br /><br />Downtowner is doing film studies. Then she says “I'm writing a lot of movie reviews.” Uptowner smiles. “For free,” says Downtowner. “But you know, I figure if I keep doing it, I can raise my profile enough that someone will hire me eventually.”<br /><br />Uptowner looks skeptical, and keeps her face focused on her plate of hummus with fava beans.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div> <br />Best Part of My Week<br /><br />Unless you've been living under a rock, it would be hard to miss the months worth of breaking news about the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, and the ham-handed way in which said Church has addressed the problem. (See Maureen Dowd for two <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/opinion/31dowd.html">good</a> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/opinion/07dowd.html">summaries</a>.)<br /><br />My friend, the writer and <a href="http://killingthebuddha.com/category/ktblog/the-communicant/">blogger</a> Mary K. Valle, has also been writing about the Church and its (shall we say) challenges, and recently coined the term "Pontifigate" to describe the situation. It's a brilliant construction on three levels -- and such creativity needs to be widely shared and respected.<br /><br />Who better to provide a de facto endorsement than noted Expert John Hodgman? We <a href="http://bit.ly/cAJViN">succeeded</a>. Mary has <a href="http://bit.ly/9d4XqY">a recap of the whole thing</a> here.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div> <br />Blogger Rolls Over, Plays Dead<br /><br />Blogger, the Google-owned blogging interface I have been using the last few years to manage my two websites (do I have to call them blogs?), is <a href="http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/">giving up on "FTP" publishing as of May 1<sup>st</sup></a>. Whether you know what FTP is or not, the short version of this is that: it's a bloody pain in the ass, and would mean that continue using Blogger, I have to switch all my content to Google's servers. I like Google, generally speaking, but there are a variety of reasons why I don't want to hand over my content to their servers, not the least of which is the near-impossibility of getting an actual Googler on the phone whenever problems arise. I like my web hosting company, <a href="http://www.mia.net/">mia.net</a>; I like their personal service and their attentiveness and the fact that I actually know they're real people. If Google had offered an option to pay for FTP functionality, I might have taken it. They didn't, so I can't.<br /><br />All of which means: it's quite likely that my writing may slow down even further over the next few weeks, while I work with mia.net to figure out an alternative, easy-to-use blog publishing tool. Bear with me. I hope to be back to Pontifigating soonest.<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-8576550097956838368?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-85441931624542658382010-03-13T22:53:00.002-05:002010-03-13T22:57:07.283-05:00Libertarian Social Democrat<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">This </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.gocomics.com/bensargent/2010/03/04">recent political cartoon</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> is a nutshell description of how and why I find myself drawn towards two conflicting approaches to government and governance these days. The Democratic and Republican parties are </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124575768">corrupt</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">, cynical, and out of touch in equal measure, and it seems increasingly clear to me that this pathetic gridlock is unlikely to change for the better in the 2010 or even 2012 elections. The parties are too entrenched, the politicians too self-serving, and problems too vast. Here, then, are my two opposing perspectives on what must be done.</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">“</span><b style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Option A”</b><span style="font-weight: normal; font-family: trebuchet ms;">: I call this approach the “</span><b style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Double-down on Obama, and embrace the hardcore, European-style Social Democrat approach of which the president’s critics are so afraid.”</b><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> To anyone willing to listen, I am happy complain about the impact of current tax law on my household finances—not to mention the lack of affordable health insurance, the challenge of finding good public (i.e., free) schools in New York City, or the likelihood that </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/Archive/2005/2005_01_16.html">Social Security</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> will not be solvent should I ever need it. Nonetheless, I cannot help but wonder whether our society would be better off if we imposed the type of pervasive, all-encompassing “</span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model">Nordic model</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">” tax regime common in places like Denmark or </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden#Public_policy">Sweden</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">. There, national income tax rates are upwards of 32% across the board, and there is a significant Value Added Tax on most purchases, a tax that typically rises for luxury goods. This hefty source of government revenue makes possible a generous network of social services, while also providing a slight leveling-out of wealth: the super-rich are slightly less so, while the poor can lead more stable lives with better government support where needed.</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">It isn't that I have a great need for more taxes, but the neither-here-nor-there nature of the current US tax plan is not working. The US Treasury, along with state government taxes, brings in enough revenue to sustain programs like Medicare and Social Security in the very near term—while much else has to be paid for with debt that will come due later. This tax revenue will diminish as Baby Boomers retire and government expenditures go up, making our future choices about programs and services even more complicated, and the population available to pay for them more diminished. As much as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are a drain on our resources, this situation—the demographic shift and its associated costs—existed before we went to war.</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">It is this absurd scenario that leads me to ponder the possibilities of giving the government 20% more money, in order to get better services out to a wider portion of the population while investing in and stabilizing some of the long-term programs that might otherwise run out of funding. Hell, </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-february-22-2010/rage-within-the-machine---progressivism">witness Glenn Beck</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> extolling the virtues of his local (taxpayer-subsidized) public library, and you can see all over again what could be accomplished with even more resources for these and other programs.</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Not to mention that the more I have to listen to the self-serving, completely absurd Republican rationales for why national health care is effectively subsidizing the sick at the cost of the healthy, the more I think the “Nordic model”—heck, even the British model—is appealing. After all, this cross-subsidizing of resources and needs is one of the foundation stones of modern, Western civilization: taxpayers pay for police and fire services, even if most people never have their homes burgled or catch fire. Taxpayers pay for roads throughout their community, city, or state, even if the roads they drive on 90% of the time are the same 25 miles from home to school to work and back again. It takes a lunatic (like Glenn Beck) to think that eliminating (let’s say) the federal government, or even just federal income tax, would change this dynamic for the better. It would not diminish our needs, only the resources to address them.</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">And yet... there is my </span><b style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">“Option B”</b><span style="font-weight: normal; font-family: trebuchet ms;">: This one is summarized as “</span><b style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Learn from the Tea Baggers and the Libertarians—not to mention the founders of our nation, who revolted against an oppressive, self-serving regime</b><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">.” Putting the </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/steve-king-to-conservatives-implode-irs-offices.php">terrorism-endorsing</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> elements of the Tea Baggers, faux-Tea Baggers, and their GOP friends aside, it seems fairly clear that our governments actually </span><i style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">are</i><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> failing. From New York in the east to California in the west, the mixture of budget deficits, political gridlock, corruption, and pre-determined spending needs are making effective representative government harder and harder to find. (I know: </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/23/mitch-daniels-shoots-down_n_473154.html">Indiana is in great shape</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">. </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://thinkprogress.org/2010/03/04/sovereign-citizens/">Sorta</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">.)</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The thing is that the federal, state, and even New York City taxes I pay take a significant portion of my income—while the scope and quality of the services I receive in return continue to diminish, and the </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61N6HL20100225">additional costs grow, too</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">. At the same time, the sectors in which the federal government has been extremely focused for the last two years—such as banking and global finance—have become even more adept at taking advantage of a taxpayer-funded opportunity to soak the poor and middle-classes in favor of the already rich. Locally, one starts to wonder why Mayor Bloomberg’s city government can find the wherewithal to </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://reason.com/blog/2010/03/04/recently-at-reasontv-billionai">condemn private property in favor of billionaire developers</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> when there are more basic needs left undone and while so many of the goals </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2007/04/reconsidering-bloomberg.html">outlined in Bloomberg's PlaNYC</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> remain unaccomplished. And meanwhile the optimistic, principled, values-driven “Yes, we can” president we elected seems to be either overwhelmed by actually having to govern or overwhelmed by the scope of the problems left him by the corrupt, sadistic, and politically twisted administration of Bush and Cheney. Heck, you know things are in bad shape when the ACLU is offering up a </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-new-york-times-ad-today-calls-president-obama-not-back-down-911-civilian-tria">comparison between Obama and Bush</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">!</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">No matter how noble the intentions or potentially good the outcomes of any new government initiative, skepticism and cynicism are easy to come by. Just look, for instance, at the convoluted health care bills that have passed both chambers of Congress: it’s easy to say that not every plan for reform is a good one—based on the impact of these two proposals in terms of taxes, costs, and access to medical care. Perhaps more government involvement in health care is not the benefit for which many of us were hoping, relative to a desire for lowered insurance premiums. Yet simple initiatives like the one </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-alan-grayson/hr-4789-the-public-option_b_496977.html">proposed by Representative Alan Grayson</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">, to allow people to buy into Medicare directly, probably have little hope of success.</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Power corrupts, and government offices seem to fuel this even more than the power that comes from wealth and prestige. Given that, it seems like the the best way to tackle our present problems is not through greater and more vigorous government engagement. Instead, we need vigorous government disengagement—a winnowing and pulling back, especially at the Federal level—combined with a steep reduction in our Federal tax burden.</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Ultimately, this should be combined with a series of national “conversations” about some of the key issues we face as a nation and state by state. From </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2009/11/healthy-guns.html">guns</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> to, well, </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2009/09/health-care-5770.html">health care</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">, we don’t know what we want. Our politicians, and the parties that support them, are too scared to help—too scared to move away from the ease of lobbyist-driven corruption, lest they make an unpopular move and wind up out of office and out of power. The platform of domestic policy goals I </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2007/08/domestic-platform-2008.html">outlined in August 2007</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> remains as relevant now as it was then. The question is: who is going to help us get there—or when and how will we help ourselves?</span> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-8544193162454265838?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-3510608433185299742010-01-17T21:47:00.006-05:002010-01-17T22:00:27.796-05:00LinkedIn & Other Failures<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Let me be bold: </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.resnicowschroeder.com/aboutUs.asp?P=2">we are hiring</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">. How’s that for an opening declaration amidst a sometimes gloomy, recession-bound America?</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Yet we plan only to hire the best, most qualified people. This statement, ordinarily unnecessary, is apparently demanded by the present circumstances, particularly the weak comprehension of the job application process amongst those currently seeking employment. Here is a brief catalog of some recent failures by applicants</span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">:</span> </div><ul style="font-family: trebuchet ms; text-align: justify;"><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A consistent mis-attribution of my gender. “Dear Ms. Freudenheim” is not offensive, merely wrong. Among applicants who bothered to use such a formal salutation, 95% missed this one. Oops. To be clear: the issue is not my taking offense, but rather that it indicates you have not spent much time with the firm’s website or my <a href="http://www.resnicowschroeder.com/aboutUs.asp?P=1&id=64">bio</a>.</p> </li></ul><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><ul style="font-family: trebuchet ms; text-align: justify;"><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In our casual day and age, many people skipped a formal salutation altogether, going with a simple “Dear Hiring Manager.” Well, fine … <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2008/09/jobs-top-5.html">but not really</a>.</p> </li></ul><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><ul style="font-family: trebuchet ms; text-align: justify;"><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Many applicants noted talents with social networking systems like Facebook and Twitter: it was rather faddishly mentioned in many cover letters, in addition to being listed as a “skill” on resumes. This is like saying you know how to use a fax machine. Time to point out the obvious: these systems are tools, means to conveying a message but not capable of developing the message itself. From a communications perspective, if there is a skill here, it will be in knowing what to say and when. (Back <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/Archive/2003/2003_11_08.html">in 2003</a>, I noted some other fake “skills” people listed.)</p> </li></ul><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><ul style="font-family: trebuchet ms; text-align: justify;"><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If you want to address your “core skills”—whatever they are—it is better if you emphasize those that are most relevant to a particular job. Recent applicants have highlighted skills as a LAN administrator, an ad buyer, an “M&A” specialist, and a certified mortician (yes, really). Of those four, only one is even close to relevant.</p> </li></ul><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><ul style="font-family: trebuchet ms; text-align: justify;"><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Words like “proven” or phrases “demonstrated success” are instant red flags. We want people who know what it means to be successful, but the applicants who toss these words around usually aren’t. One applicant—with not a single full-time job experience to her credit—noted that she is “comfortable in a leadership role.” Listen up: if you're just a few years out of college, have accomplished a few internships and your first full-time job, then writing of a “proven track record” (or some such nonsense) is a signal ... and not a good one.</p> </li></ul><div style="text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">In all of this, however, I want to vent some particular frustration at </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.linkedin.com/">LinkedIn.com</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">. If you’re not familiar with it, LinkedIn </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://press.linkedin.com/about">describes itself as</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> “an interconnected network of experienced professionals from around the world, representing 170 industries and 200 countries. You can find, be introduced to, and collaborate with qualified professionals that you need to work with to accomplish your goals.” For more information about the site and its goals, you can also read this recent feature piece from </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704905704574622191027266548.html"><i>The Wall Street Journal</i></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">In an effort to broaden the pool of candidates from which we typically draw, we posted our job listing to LinkedIn, along with our other, regular sources. The </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=815850">job listing at LinkedIn</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> makes clear that we are looking for people whose background and skills combines both communications (public relations) and the arts. This is not a whimsical combination drawn up for the amusement of job seekers</span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;">—</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">it is essential to our business, which is communications in the arts.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Yet a paltry 5% of applicants managed to mention both sets of qualifications in their cover letters; an even smaller 2% have resumes that </span><i style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">actually</i><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> reflect this combination of work experiences. Why are the other 98% wasting their time and mine? A friend suggested that I should be happy: this self-winnowing pool of candidates makes it easier to focus on the relevant folks. <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >That’s true</span></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:Times New Roman,serif;" >—</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:Times New Roman;" >but it would be nice to have a broader pool of relevant folks on whom to lavish some attention and possibly to hire!</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:Times New Roman;" > </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:Times New Roman;" >For any job listings site, including LinkedIn’s own, the software is only as good as the humans who develop it. So here’s an idea: </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >let employers put in a list of keywords</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:Times New Roman,serif;" >—</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >kept hidden from job-seekers</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:Times New Roman,serif;" >—</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">w</span>ithout some combination of which applications will not be forwarded. This process could be weighted, so that two words in a cover note might count as one word listed in someone’s resume, reflecting a ranking of interest versus experience. This would screen out the people who use the ease of push-button application processes to dump resumes on employers who will never hire them (like the paralegals or accountants who have no skills or interests that match our needs), and prioritize the “account executive’ who mentions the arts over the one who does not. Applicants might learn something too: if not every application is even accepted for review, they might have to start paying closer attention to the jobs in which they are interested.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Sadly, most of what I have written here is not new: see previous postings from </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2008/09/jobs-top-5.html">2008</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2007/07/age-duty.html">2007</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2006/06/jobbing-it-stories.html">2006</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/Archive/2005/2005_08_28.html">2005</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/Archive/2004/2004_06_20.html">2004</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/Archive/2003/2003_11_08.html">2003</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, and </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/Archive/2002/2002_06_16.html">2002</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">. It isn’t as if I have made a secret of the failures of past applicants, in order to aid future ones. To little effect, it seems.</span> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-351060843318529974?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-41345470312039068242010-01-02T20:00:00.006-05:002010-01-02T20:26:57.400-05:00On the Reality of God<div style="text-align: justify;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Initially, I found John Avant's book </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.librarything.com/work/7993694"><i>If God Were Real</i></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> to be … terrible. A brief catalog of complaints: The language is sometimes repetitive and unsophisticated, and initially the ideas seemed similarly simplistic and unevolved. The introduction to the book—a story about the capacity for love and desire for a father figure in a much-abused little girl—seemed to be there solely to condition the reader, to manipulate emotions in order to preclude rational judgment. The inclusion of a long statement from the author's (adult) daughter, about her experiences as a committed Christian in the New York theater scene, felt naïve.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Then there's the devotion to god—or, more accurately for Reverend Avant, Jesus—that continued to present problems for me. I’m not a Christian, or even a Jew for Jesus; while I respect many of the principles Jesus espoused, I have never been able to get over the intellectual hurdle of the whole “son-of-god-in-man is god who died for our sins” construct. (Yes, yes, I know: it’s about faith.) To be fair, it must also be noted that I am clearly not Avant’s intended audience. This is a book written for Christians, so Avant's repetitive refrain that “we should all love Jesus” is, I can only assume, more appealing to a Christian audience.</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">However, my view of Avant and his book began to change, and rapidly, as I got further in. After the first chapter, Avant writes as a strong, passionate individual with a very definite, out-of-the-mainstream perspective on “organized” religion. He frames very clearly his objections to the contemporary "church" of Christianity: not the religion itself, but the ways in which it is interpreted and applied by the institutions that wave the banner most loudly. (</span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://killingthebuddha.com/ktblog/chuck-colson-talks-turkey/">This short poem</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, by a friend, gets the sentiment just right.) This is where the book is most successful, in aggressively engaging with the way that religious institutions often become more focused on themselves than on the values they espouse. While I will never share his passion for Jesus, I came to respect his faith and his logic.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Avant calls for a new “Jesus Movement,” his preferred term in place of Christianity. He writes: “Can we see a new Jesus Movement in America? Probably not in traditional, institutionalized Christianity as I have described it. It’s too absorbed in guarding its turf and protecting its turf lords. Institutions tend to protect themselves at all costs, and I see no sign that the institution of Christianity will move toward Jesus.” (Page 54)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">This is the meat of Avant's argument. He carefully builds this out, exploring a range of issues, from how modern American Christianity deals with drugs addicts (there’s a chapter titled “If God Were Real … the Church Would Be Full of Addicts”), to the risk-averse nature of churches and communities and a sense of expectation of using religion as a means of achieving prosperity (there’s another chapter, titled “If God Were Real … You Would Be Really, Really Rich”). (For more on the concept of the prosperity gospel, see </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/rosin-prosperity-gospel">these</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/mcardle-ramsey-debt">two</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> articles from the December 2009 issue of </span><i style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The Atlantic</i><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">.) His section on the absurdity of Christian attacks on J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series is sharp and insightful.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">All this reminded me of my own feelings about much of contemporary (American) Judaism, where the importance of institutions—and institutionalized beliefs and perspectives—sometimes feels like it has overtaken the importance of the values at the heart of Judaism. Everything from the “Yom Kippur appeal” fundraising tactic to the </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2007/05/non-proliferating-identity.html">American Jewish fetishization of Israel</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> is driven as much by a commitment to the status quo as anything else. Rare is the organization (religious or otherwise, to be sure) that boldly embraces downsizing in the face of diminished resources or audiences. Instead, </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2009/06/american-jewish-rage.html">external problems are blamed</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, and used as foils to generate support. (Surely it isn’t simply that some young Jews find modern Judaism less-than-compelling, perhaps because of the relentless focus on the trifecta of the </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2008/08/if-norman-finkelstein.html">Holocaust</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2006/07/lets-have-parade.html">Israel</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, and intermarriage to which we have been treated for the last five decades.)</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Now, like the rest of us, Avant is not free from certain contradictions. He criticizes organized Christianity’s focus on political hatred as a distraction from Jesus’s call to love everyone … and then makes some rather strong statements against homosexuality and gay marriage. Oh, well.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">But, as someone famous once said, let (s)he who is without sin cast the first stone. Overall, Avant has written a strong book, one worth reading for contemporary Christians or others interested in the role and ongoing development of the largest religious denomination in the United States. Avant even includes a section on atheism towards the end of the book—a book littered with quotes from atheist or questioning friends and commentators—that again represents the value of an open mind, and is evidence if needed that a believing individual can co-exist with a non-believing one, without necessarily feeling threatened. The subtitle is “A Journey into a Faith That Matters” and it’s Avant's ongoing journey. I wish him well.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">FCC idiotic disclosure notice: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, via <a href="http://www.librarything.com/">LibraryThing</a>, as part of its Early Reviewers program.</span><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-4134547031203906824?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-75133901783630072292009-12-13T22:37:00.003-05:002009-12-13T22:45:27.431-05:00Inculcate, Not Indoctrinate<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor<br /><br />Here's one possible definition of parenting: a process of imparting knowledge and values, from parent to child, culminating in a point of departure from which the child will make decisions for his/herself<span style="font-family: courier new;">—</span>hopefully informed by what the parents have taught, but with a folding in of the child’s own experiences. I think my parents approached parenting this way. And although I certainly couldn’t have articulated it as clearly before becoming a parent myself, it is generally the process I try to follow, too.<br /> <br />A few weeks ago, sitting in children's services at synagogue with my daughter, all of this flew at me in a completely different way. I was watching my child learn (and mimic) the behaviors of others, learn the songs and memorize the prayers, and<span style="font-family: courier new;">—</span>yearningly<span style="font-family: courier new;">—</span>try to grasp the concept of being Jewish. She sat in front of me in a navy blue dress and her “synagogue shoes,” legs crossed on the floor, following along with the flow of the service, and eagerly awaiting the chance to go up front at the end of the "grown-up" services to join other kids in singing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adon_Olam">Adon Olam</a>.<br /> <br />It made me acutely aware of the fine line that exists between inculcating and indoctrinating, and how easy it must be to cross that line.<br /> <br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div> <br />I come by my Jewishness honestly, and where Jewish education was concerned, my parents (particularly my father) followed the same model as with most other things. As a result, my level of observance has evolved and changed over the years, from a foundation established long ago. Adulthood, marriage, <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2007/09/elul-thoughts.html">children</a><span style="font-family: courier new;">—</span>all play a part in this ongoing process, and I think this is all to the good. Indeed, I cannot imagine having a genuinely static set of beliefs or observances (in religion or much else) because that would inhibit true intellect from playing the appropriate role in my life. I believe firmly in the importance of doubt, and doubt often leads to change.<br /> <br />I want similar things for my children as my parents surely want(ed) for me. I want them to find their place in the world, to contribute meaningfully, to be “good citizens,” and to see happiness as something to be pursued (not as a <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/Archive/2000_12_24.html">right to instant gratification</a>). I also want them to know and love Judaism, as I do. I want them to learn from it, to find meaning in its traditions and guidance from its values and teachings, and to engage with it as a framework for helping their growth into intelligent and insightful people.<br /> <br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div> <br />Which brings me back to that scene in services with my daughter, and the distinction between teaching and indoctrinating. With inculcating comes an acceptance that the outcome cannot be controlled<span style="font-family: courier new;">—</span>but to my mind, this makes it more likely that the outcomes will be better and more evenly and effectively distributed. I am fairly sure my parents do not approve of every decision I have ever made, but hopefully even those decisions they did not understand were acceptable because they were mine.<br /> <br />Indoctrination, on the other hand, may achieve the near-term desired result<span style="font-family: courier new;">—</span>obedience to a particular cause or way of life<span style="font-family: courier new;">—</span>but it will make any divergence of views a schism rather than a mere difference of opinion. Nor is this an issue limited to religion, formally defined: almost any set of opinions or values can acquire the characteristics of religious doctrine, and the heavy handedness that “doctrine” implies.<br /> <br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">No question, I am aiming to teach, and not just in religious matters; watching my daughter, I hope I am pursuing all this properly. She’s still young; there are many questions to come, </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">far more than she is capable of asking now, at 2.5 years of age. But it is easy to see</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">—and </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">terrifyingly easy to understand</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">—</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">how some communities and societies have functioned over the years, replacing inculcation with indoctrination, and not to anyone’s betterment, individually or collectively. That’s not why I take her to services. I want her to learn, to question, to think, to embrace and to reject. To love, to live righteously but not self-righteously, and to let others live, too. That’s what I’m aiming to teach, and hopefully that’s the path we are on.</span> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-7513390178363007229?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-17042192092331726922009-11-15T11:37:00.003-05:002009-11-15T11:41:30.814-05:00Healthy Guns<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor<br /> <br />In September, a Federal court in New Mexico ruled that the police search of a man carrying an unconcealed (holstered) gun into a movie theater was illegal, a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights under the Constitution. The police search was apparently predicated on a call by the owner of the theater, after seeing the man enter; the police searched and then released him, though they made him leave his gun in his car.<br /> <br />I heard about this case through a posting on <i>Reason</i>’s blog (<a href="http://reason.com/blog/2009/09/16/court-victory-against-police-i">here</a>), which also quoted a news item in the <i>Wisconsin Gun Rights Examiner </i>(<a href="http://www.examiner.com/x-5103-Wisconsin-Gun-Rights-Examiner%7Ey2009m9d10-Federal-court-decision-on-open-carry">here</a>) that said: “The court also found that merely being armed does not automatically make a person armed <i>and dangerous</i>, which would be necessary to justify a limited protective search (Terry stop) that justify officers disarming an individual.”<br /> <br />A few weeks after I saw that item, there was a big story in the <i>New York Times</i> (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/education/12discipline.html?ref=education">here</a>) about a young boy—a first-grader—who was suing to overturn his suspension from school for having brought his Boy Scout-approved camping utensil (combination fork, spoon, and knife) to school. The boy violated a school district rule that prohibits dangerous weapons, for which the knife portion of the tool apparently qualifies.<br /> <br />In the latter case, the school administrator in the case had been steadfast in saying he is only applying the rules, equally and without discrimination. In the former case, the man in New Mexico was free to carry his gun because there is no state law prohibiting the carrying of an unconcealed firearm nor, it seems, did this particular theater have its own sign prohibiting guns.<br /> <br />Then there are the people who brought guns to various events with President Barack Obama over the summer, from handguns to assault weapons. Also armed but presumed not <i>dangerous</i>, despite the fact that their very appearance at Obama’s rallies was anger-induced. Of course, what might be anger-inducing here is the heavy irony of the Obama administration permitting gun-toting protesters … following eight years of a Bush administration that sought to squash and make invisible all protesting. Never mind the inconceivability of the Bush-era Secret Service ever having allowed gun-toting citizens within a mile of a rally for the president or his vice president!<br /> <br />And here is where it once again all converges for me: as a nation and a society we have completely failed to sort through and address what you might call “first principles” on the issue of whether anyone can be legally “armed,” and if so, with what weapons and for what purpose.<br /> <br />Yes, we have the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1789, and which proposes to give citizens the rights to “bear arms.” Even accepting the traditional, NRA-style interpretation of that Amendment, we must acknowledge that <i><b>it dates to 1789</b></i>. And we must therefore remind ourselves of the many other elements of the Constitution that have changed or been reinterpreted in the two centuries since, to adapt to new situations and understandings, as the world has changed. The idea that the Second Amendment is sacrosanct, untouchable, and not open to (re)interpretation is absurd.<br /> <br />While people are (in some states) allowed to bring their guns wherever they go, without significant oversight, weapons training, or lessons in good citizenship … other states, and often the same ones, have absurdist rules religiously obeyed that would suspend a kid from school for an “offense” that is itself so offensive as to be lacking in logic. He’s a 6 year old: why not have the teacher take the pen knife away for a day and give it back to him when he goes home? Heck, it is probably a lot easier to disarm a 6 year old than it is an adult with a strong psycho-emotional attachment to his hip-holstered Glock.<br /> <br />All of these things just remind me of the grander failure of our political and legal structures in the face of broad societal changes. At every level, our politicians—our new, Messianic president included—are too much in the thrall of people whose bought-and-paid-for views take precedence over a more fundamental understanding of the value of their citizenship, or the needs and rights of the rest of us, as individuals and members of different communities.<br /> <br />Back in March, I wrote about <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2009/03/wheres-my-gun.html">another tragic gun violence situation</a> as representative of the degree to which our society’s approach to this and related problems is out of whack. The premise, and the problem, remains the same: our police and other law enforcement officers can only address the symptoms of such illnesses. They do not have the right to address the underlying causes. That responsibility belongs to us, the citizenry.<br /> <br />What we need is, in effect, another Constitutional convention. We need an opportunity to evaluate and address some of the broad thematic changes in our society over the last few centuries, and then develop a new set of principles—carefully evolved from our current Constitution—that help shape the direction of this country for another 220 years. From guns to nationwide healthcare to “net neutrality,” our communities and our country look radically different than they did several centuries ago. Attempting to “fix” many of our problems without first agreeing to the principles that should guide us will, instead, only lead us further astray. Don’t believe me? Just ask yourself whether you think a “public option” in health insurance is a good idea or not, then check with your neighbor, and then read the news.<br /> <br />We are boxed in, trapped, for a cage match we didn’t anticipate or ask for—and a good portion of the population will be coming to this fight armed and, quite possibly, <i>dangerous</i>. Be sure to bring your combination camping utensil. </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-1704219209233172692?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-52849306282523306172009-09-30T10:52:00.003-04:002009-09-30T11:02:48.896-04:00Health Care 5770<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor<br /><br />As part of our Yom Kippur service this year, I gave a brief introduction to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unetaneh_Tokef">Unetaneh Tokef</a> (much as I did <a href="http://www.sascha.com/2008/10/unetaneh-tokef.html">last year</a>). My theme this year was rather different: health care, health insurance, and reconsidering our collective, communal health in the context of thinking about another year of life. The text follows below.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div> <br />Here is a line from a song some of you may know. Kris Kristofferson wrote it, and Janis Joplin made it famous: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” The punchline to the joke I haven’t yet told you is that “Freedom” is also the word that Oxford Health Plans gave to our HMO program, and it’s true: there isn’t much left to lose.<br /><br />Now having said that, let me also say quickly that I feel fortunate to have health insurance in the first place, restrictions and all. Even just the costs associated with my wife’s giving birth to a healthy baby 10 days ago would be difficult to imagine without insurance.<br /><br />So as the debate about health insurance rages on around us, this holiday seems an appropriate one during which to reflect briefly on the subject of health in the context of these days of awe that are now coming to a close. The Unetaneh Tokef reminds us that God records and seals, counts and measures, and remembers even what we have forgotten. On Rosh Hashanah it will be written, and on Yom Kippur it will be sealed: whether we will live for another year.<br />While we place much emphasis during this time on evaluating ourselves and our lives, the mitzvot performed and those left undone, what of the health of our bodies, and the steps we take—or fail to take—to ensure our physical health, year to year? Because we do have an obligation to ensure our health, our physical well-being alongside our spiritual one.<br /><br />In "<a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/1124054">The Guide of the Perplexed</a>," the 12th century scholar <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maimonides">Maimonides</a>—who was also a physician—addressed the issue with a clear call to action, saying that we should undertake “bodily exercise, which [is] necessary for the preservation of health according to the prescription of those who know the art of medicine... Those who accomplish acts of exercising their body in the wish to be healthy, engaging in ball games, wrestling, boxing and suspension of breathing . . . are in the opinion of the ignorant engaged in frivolous actions, whereas they are not frivolous according to the Sages."<br /><br />In addition to thinking about ourselves, we should also consider how our Jewishly derived sense of social responsibility relates to caring for others—in terms of their health care. As a community, we already engage in many acts of tzedaka and tikkun olam, striving to heal the world. And many of us do so, around issues of medicine or care for the elderly, along with helping to sustain the homeless shelter here at the synagogue or contributing in other ways.<br />But perhaps we need to articulate a stronger and clearer Jewish perspective on the issue of health care more broadly. The questions we might ask ourselves are simple: shouldn’t the opportunity for medical care be as basic as access to food and shelter? And isn’t the health of our community something to approach as more than just a metaphor?<br /><br />Within the long scope of Jewish history, the idea of “insurance” is a relatively new one. But that hardly makes it unworthy of consideration. Now, I am not here to talk politics, or to endorse a specific piece of legislation. I only want to say that as we think about this day, this very moment, we should consider the concept of our lives being weighed and measured, written and sealed, as more than metaphorical. Our physical health, and the health of those around us, will also affect our future.<br /><br />While it is uncomfortable to think about, we all know that some of us may not live to see the next day, or the next year. But Judaism grants us great power over our own lives, through both word and deed. Perhaps in the coming year our collective words and deeds can help create an environment in which fewer people die needlessly—one in which we as a community look for ways to embrace and expand our sense of what it means to care for others, even for those we do not know and will never meet, and yet who are no less deserving of decent treatment and the opportunity of prolonged life.<br /><br />G'mar chatima tova—may you be inscribed in the book of life.<br /><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="post-title"></h3><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-5284930628252330617?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-61002112464975842612009-08-16T16:35:00.000-04:002009-08-16T16:28:23.432-04:00Climbing The Mountain<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">I bought my copy of Wallace Stegner’s <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/18196/book/7185448"><i>The Big Rock Candy Mountain</i></a> on a trip to Denver in 2006, where I stopped at that great bookstore <a href="http://www.tatteredcover.com/">The Tattered Cover</a> during a few minutes of down time. I like Stegner, and there I was in the Rockies, and the book jumped out at me, and then it sat on my shelf until last year. About a year after that, I’ve finished reading it</span><span style="font-size:100%;">—</span><span style="font-size:100%;">having consumed many, many other books in between. That sounds promising, doesn’t it?</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">Actually, it is. I am here to report that </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>The Big Rock Candy Mountain</i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> was well worth both the wait and the effort. A semi-autobiographical novel about the Mason family’s challenging existence in the first three decades of the 20</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> century, the story is more layered and expansive than other of Stegner’s works</span><span style="font-size:100%;">—</span><span style="font-size:100%;">such as </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/20014/book/7988585"><i>Crossing to Safety</i></a></span><span style="font-size:100%;">, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">a book that is <a href="http://www.sascha.com/2008/10/leaves-turn-to-brown.html">very dear</a> to my heart</span><span style="font-size:100%;">—and less angry than the Pulitzer-winning </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/16878"><i>Angle of Repose</i></a></span><span style="font-size:100%;">. Both of those books are the work of a more mature author; </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>The Big Rock Candy Mountain</i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> was published in 1943, when Stegner was just 34 (and it wasn’t even his first book).</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">This is also a multi-generational story, with the kind of hardship and long journeys that I usually associate with the great Russian novels of the 19</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> century. Harry “Bo” Mason begins as the escapist son and ends as the repressive and alienating father, and throughout there are pockets of stability and (very minor) wealth punctuating the Mason family’s life. There is a devoted if tortured wife, and two sons working to figure out their own lives in the middle of the messes created (over and over again) by a rum-running father. Mostly, however, there is poverty—and trouble.</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">Amidst all that, there are three things that make this a beautiful book. The first is the role that the American west plays in the story, as a series of secondary actors reaching from the plains of the north to the mountains and then desert further south. The Masons cover terrain from Minnesota to Washington, and from Salt Lake City to Reno. The environment can be brutal and barren, or placid and blue-green like the Mason’s house on Lake Tahoe, but it always needs to be respected for its inherent strength and character. Even the descriptions of winters along the Canadian / American border in the early part of the century—when cars were still a real novelty—are thrilling.</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">The second element is the complicated way in which Stegner has bound together a story of great sadness with that of an inherent American optimism. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>The Big Rock Candy Mountain</i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> clearly owes a small debt to Steinbeck’s </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>Grapes of Wrath</i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> (1939). But where Steinbeck used his Joad family to argue a particularly pro-union, pro-worker perspective on Depression-era America, Stegner’s Mason family is focused on a very internalized sense of self-reliance. Bo Mason is a muscular man even in old age, a former skeet shooting champion, who sees in the world challenges to overcome through sheer force of will. But this isn’t some Ayn Rand-ian caricature; Bo is the kind of all-American man one can relate to precisely because he struggles with his feelings, instead of simply rejecting them. He considers himself the bearer of bad luck, someone who needs to keep looking for his lucky break</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;">—</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;">and as much as he might blame others for his problems, this comes only in the narrowest sense of bad people doing malicious things. Mason’s America is a land of great opportunity, if only he can figure out a way to take advantage of it.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The third aspect of the book that makes it so beautiful is its evolution into a bildungsroman in the final third, as the author’s character</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;">—</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Bo’s younger son, Bruce</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;">—</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> grows up and away, and over time becomes the family’s only surviving member. Anyone who has ever had a <a href="http://www.sascha.com/2008/05/rip-elinor.html">close relative</a> with whom they have had a <a href="http://www.sascha.com/2008/10/unetaneh-tokef.html">challenging relationship</a> can probably relate to Bruce, who never quite came to terms with either the hate or the love he felt for his father.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;">In her </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>New York Times</i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> <a href="http://bit.ly/WSlM0">review of </a></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://bit.ly/WSlM0"><i>Crossing to Safety</i></a></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> in 1987, Doris Grumbach wrote “Clearly Mr. Stegner has not gone unnoticed. But neither is he a household name, as he deserves to be.” She was right. </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>The Big Rock Candy Mountain</i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> is not summer beach reading, but it is the kind of book to embrace on a quiet winter night by a fireplace, and with a comfortable chair and a tumbler of scotch it will yield rich rewards.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;"></span></span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-6100211246497584261?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-81866347900784983562009-08-05T23:13:00.002-04:002009-08-05T23:16:50.296-04:00Au Naturel<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Out of some kind of basic (theoretical) common sense, I live in a household that tries to purchase organic fruits and vegetables when possible. We're not rigid about it, but we try</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >—</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >particularly for those nutrient-rich (e.g., <a href="http://life.familyeducation.com/slideshow/health-and-safety/57915.html?page=12&detoured=1">spinach</a>) or skinless (e.g., <a href="http://life.familyeducation.com/slideshow/health-and-safety/57915.html?page=8&detoured=1">strawberries</a>) foods where pesticide exposure is known to be worst.</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >We also belong to a "<a href="http://www.localharvest.org/csa/">Community Supported Agriculture</a>" (CSA) food co-op, that delivers fresh fruits, vegetables, and eggs to a drop-off location once a week, where we (walk to) pick it up. While not every CSA is by definition delivering "organic" produce, ours does. So three benefits for the price of one: support for local farmers; support for a process that delivers locally farmed produce direct to consumers; and support for organic agriculture. This is (again, theoretically) better for our bodies, but also for our environment: reducing the amount of pesticides and other kinds of run-off in the ground and water, and hopefully good for the CO2 issues by delivering the food with reasonable efficiency.</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Not to mention that I've read my <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/504173/book/30963363">Michael Pollan</a>, and my this and my that. I'm on board with the program: industrial farming is helping to kill our planet and I should be mad about it. I <i>am</i> mad about it. Which is why I am bemused to find myself this evening mad about something else, and questioning two distinct assumptions of this whole sustainable food model.</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >The first assumption concerns the “it’s good for the environment” argument, because our delivery tonight included a bush of basil—beautiful, red-colored basil with great flavor and lots of fresh, tender leaves.</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >And tons of dirt. Normally, the veggies from the CSA require some extra scrubbing relative to what I might purchase at a Fairway or Costco; even organic produce from these stores is “industrial,” in the sense that it comes from large farms and distributors who wash and package the food for sale. But tonight’s basil included obscene amounts of dirt, enough dirt that it probably took two gallons of water to get the basil really clean (as in, rinsing cleanly).</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >This has me asking: is this actually environmentally friendly—or sustainable? I washed the basil in my sink, with tap water and a salad spinner, having stripped off the roots. Commercial packagers probably have special machines that maximize the efficiency of the water-washing process; or at least, one hopes they do. Surely I could have done all sorts of other, better-for-the-environment things with those two gallons of water than wash this basil. Surely the CSA farmers could have done a better job knocking more of the dirt off the basil before throwing it on the truck to bring to me.</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >And surely someone, somewhere has done some kind of actual, factual, non-partisan quantitative analysis of this issue, to determine whether this whole food model makes sense. But if it’s out there, I can’t find it.</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >This leads to the second issue: in addition to the water, it also took time and other kinds of energy, energy to keep the lights on, to pump the water, to dispose of the dirt, etc. Now, I’m no slouch in the kitchen or around the house, and food is important to me; it’s worth time and energy. But this isn’t about a cost-benefit analysis for my time. This is about whether one reason it’s hard to analyze the environmental efficacy of this food model is because so much of the energy—human and other—has been transferred from the food producer (read: farmer) to the consumer. It must be easier to measure the CO2 emissions of a farm truck, or the more regular input and output of energy, water, etc., at a single farm, than it is to track the energy usage and environmental impact of hundreds of thousands of households around the country that are essentially completing part of the food chain process that many consumers have skip entirely by buying from large farms.</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >It would be great if the organic and sustainable food movements could do some better analysis of this whole situation. Now my basil is clean. But my conscience?</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><br /></div> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-8186634790078498356?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-11012008300094233812009-08-02T21:52:00.003-04:002009-08-02T22:01:47.241-04:00Preoccupations<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br />Offering up a typical defense of Israel—and a critique of any American policy itself critical of Israel—Elliott Abrams’ essay in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (“<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204619004574320532174317294.html">Why Israel is Nervous</a>,” 1 August 2009) reinforces a number of the absurdities that already dangerously infect and affect American foreign policy in the Middle East. His op-ed is cleverly framed in the guise of an exploration of the tense spots between America and Israel, when it seems quite obvious that more tension—and greater emotional distance—might encourage Israel towards a more rapid and peaceful resolution of its neighborhood issues.<br /><br /></span> <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Abrams’ tries to minimize the cancerous impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: since “the theory is that every problem in the Middle East is related to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute” is evidently false, he suggests, the implication is that the Israeli-Palestinian is not much of a geopolitical issue at all. Nor is the expansion of settlements in the occupied territory of the West Bank a problem: “Additional construction in settlements does not harm Palestinians, who in fact get most of the construction jobs,” he writes, ludicrously. Abrams also reinforces the grandiosity of the self-appointed, self-perpetuating mythologists of the <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2009/07/thanks-to.html">Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations</a> and the Anti-Defamation League</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >—</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >two groups who purport to represent American-Jewish perspectives on all things <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2006/07/lets-have-parade.html">Jewish-or-Israel</a>, but whose <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2007/05/non-proliferating-identity.html">do-or-die Zionism</a> and <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2009/06/american-jewish-rage.html">reflexive tilting at anti-Semitic windmills</a> clouds their thinking and their professional activities.</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Worst of all, however, is Abrams fear-mongering reinforcement of the world-or-Israel-ending dangers of a nuclear Iran. Subtly framed as Israel’s concern as much as that of the United States, the idea that we should prevent those crazy mullahs from getting “the Bomb” is clear. In fairness to Abrams, that fear is <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&ned=us&cf=all&ncl=dtQezFLoV4f9deMtWpzB2M1bV3IhM">everywhere in the news media</a> these days</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >—</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >though it takes its highest and most manic form in any discussions around Israel.</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >The Iranian regime, with its repressive clerics and its increasingly fragile theocratic mock-democracy, leaves much to be desired. However, all of the saber-rattling about Iranian nuclear activity seems like counter-productive noise and, even worse, a distraction from bigger and more genuine US foreign policy concerns. (Worried about a nuclear madman? Find your man in North Korea, not Iran.) I wrote about this <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2008/05/it-wont-happen.html">back in May 2008</a>; at the time, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were battling it out for the Democratic presidential nomination, with Senator John “Bomb, Bomb Iran” McCain trying to outflank them on the right. Back then, Clinton made the absurd claim that the United States would “obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel. It was absurd then and it remains so now. An attack on Israel</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >—</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >frankly, any significant attack on Israel by any independent nation-state, rather than just bands of terrorists</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >—</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >would deeply challenge US-Israel relations. We might suddenly discover the weakness of this bilateral bond, and I doubt the results would please my AIPAC-loving co-religionists or their Christian Zionist “friends.”</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Iran has given little evidence of genuine stupidity, let alone suicidal tendencies, since the revolution of 1979. Yes, it has engaged in a dangerous, deeply unsettling kind of geopolitics, and sought to undermine the stability of neighboring states by supporting (financially and militarily) terrorists and militias in those areas. But what evidence is there that this is a nation bent on suicide? Where is there a hint that the clerics in charge believe themselves to be protected, encased in a bullet-proof Allah-bubble, such that they could withstand any retaliatory nuclear attack(s)?</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >There is no such evidence. Even if Iran was willing to gamble that the United States would let Israel go it alone in such a situation, the Israeli response would itself be devastating. It would kill thousands, perhaps millions if nuclear in nature. Nor is there much of an indication that Iran would be willing to provide some group of terrorists with nuclear material for a “dirty bomb”; surely they have done so already. The reasons are of a piece with the same set of issues: an Iranian-sponsored nuclear or semi-nuclear attack, on Israel or anyone else, would be viewed as an Iranian attack. The outcome would be the same: death in Iran on a massive scale.</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >I have no desire for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons; in fact, I would be deeply pleased if Iran did not, because I think nuclear proliferation is, in general, a bad idea. It’s just that I also do not see a nuclear-armed Iran is the bogeyman that seems to consume so much oxygen and intellectual clarity among both Israelis and American Zionists. Instead, I think that the relentless focus on this issue</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >—</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >and particularly on this issue through an Israeli and Zionist lens</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >—</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >is damaging to bigger and more important American foreign policy goals, from the messes in Iraq and Afghanistan to our complicated relationships with Arab countries throughout the Middle East, to dealing with the more dangerous nuclear issues in North Korea (madman) and Pakistan (weak government, problematic, semi-independent military).</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >We should be working on encouraging the proud nation of Iran to embrace the democratic ideals it once espoused, acknowledging that even the “Reformist” candidates in Iran support their nation’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. Because better a nuclear-armed Iranian democracy, as an active, engaged, and responsible participant in global affairs, than either a bombed-out shell or a theocracy hell-bent on continued destabilization</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >—</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >of Muslim and non-Muslim states alike</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >—</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >through its support of terrorists.</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-1101200830009423381?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-77637539273840476452009-07-20T22:37:00.002-04:002009-07-20T22:39:23.608-04:00Internet Pricing<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor<br /> <br />I’m no <a href="http://www.pricingforprofit.com/pricing-strategy-blog/">pricing expert</a>, but it seems to me that the world is waiting for someone to come up with a better internet retail model. At the moment, internet access in the average “coffee shop” seems to work in one of two ways: the high-priced service model, as at <a href="http://www.starbucks.com/">Starbucks</a>, or the free-and-open model, as with chains like <a href="http://www.getcosi.com/">Così</a> and other places, including many independent stores. As much as I appreciate free internet, neither model makes much sense. In fact, the free access approach isn’t even necessarily beneficial as a patron, since it can change customer behavior for the worse.<br /> <br />On the pay-for-use side, the Starbucks model is expensive, especially if you need just enough internet time to accomplish something meaningful, and not so much that it's a day’s investment. Starbucks has contracted the service out at AT&T, which in turn has an aggressive pricing model. I suppose they charge what the market can bear, but in all likelihood this just pushes users towards mobile devices that either have free access because of an existing corporate relationship (as with the iPhone at Starbucks, through AT&T) or use external systems (like the BlackBerry). And this is all fine and well—as long as a mobile device will do what you need at that moment.<br /> <br />On the other hand, the free-at-Così approach represents a lost opportunity. Customers can order a $3 coffee and stay for three or four hours, long after the coffee is gone but while the free internet is still working. Indeed, I have spent a fair amount of time at a nearby Così this summer [side note: get espresso drinks, avoid the brewed coffee] and have observed this behavior first hand. Moreover, at my local Così, the space is big enough that I have seen people eating food from other restaurants, unnoticed by staff, while using the internet. Hmm.<br /> <br />It would make a lot more sense to find the middle-ground of these two approaches: purchase-driven, time-based “token” access. Here’s how this would work: buy anything the store sells, get free internet access for up to an hour; your access code would be printed on your receipt. Want another hour? Buy something else: a cookie, another coffee, maybe even lunch; get another receipt and another hour of access. This would entail a logical recognition that coffee shops are not in the internet business, they are in the food-and-hospitality business. Providing internet access makes good sense from a hospitality perspective, so use it hospitably: as an incentive to food and beverage sales while also avoiding a world full of freeloaders. Moreover, stores could tweak this process during peak hours (like lunchtime), to reduce the available internet duration to a half-hour. That would encourage the hangers-on to hang-on for a reason, while making room for paying customers when someone is just mooching internet service.<br /> <br />Starbucks has sort-of moved to a better, scaled model, <a href="http://www.starbucks.com/retail/wireless.asp">via it’s reward card</a>, providing two hours of access per day if you make one purchase per month. There’s another trade-off in here, in the form of all the info you give to Starbucks via the card. But Starbucks also seems to have missed the point: by limiting the customer’s internet access, they’re just driving revenue to AT&T, while doing nothing to incentivize onsite purchases from Starbucks itself—because additional purchases won’t increase the amount of free internet time.<br /> <br />I’d be just as happy avoiding chain stores, but many of my local spots (like <a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/georgias-bake-shop-new-york">Georgia’s</a>) don’t offer internet access at all, perhaps because they are concerned about the costs, or the perception that there’s not much benefit in having a bunch of freeloading internet users around. It’s a shame. Seems to me local cafe culture could really benefit from an overhaul in the pricing models, which would be good for business and good for the customer, too.<br /> <br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-7763753927384047645?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-91813590436898669612009-07-14T07:56:00.004-04:002009-07-14T13:01:54.160-04:00Thanks to...<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">...the ever-depressing Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/Archive/2001/2001_02_04.html">Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations</a>. If <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/obama-moves-to-assuage-jewish-leaders/?hp">this report from the <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span></a> is accurate, Hoenlein continues to represent the rear-guard of thinking on Middle Eastern and Israeli issues, while continuing to reinforce the fiction that he and his organization are actually representative of the broad perspective of American Jews.<br /><br />Let me just say, once again - and as if it isn't obvious from what I've written in this space over the last 9 years - that the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations does not represent me. Its title notwithstanding, these are self-appointed grandees, coming from organizations whose <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2006/11/ugliness-behind-curtain.html">interests and attitudes</a> are usually far from mine, on issues ranging from <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2009/01/all-we-are-saying.html">Israel</a> to <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2006/07/lets-have-parade.html">Israel-and-New York</a> to <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2009/06/american-jewish-rage.html">anti-Semitism</a>.<br /><br />So, despite what I <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2007/03/dear-senator-obama.html">wrote about then-Senator Obama</a> back in 2007, when he gave a speech to APIAC: if his attitude, reasoning, and words as reported by the <span style="font-style: italic;">Times</span> are true, then there may be hope for a successful Israeli-Palestinian peace process after all.<br /><br />And kudos to <a href="http://www.jstreet.org/campaigns/just-met-with-president-obama">J Street and its executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami</a>, for becoming enough of a powerhouse countervailing force to get a seat at the table during these discussions. That speaks as much to the change within the American Jewish community (and the fading of an older, long-entrenched generation) as it does about the openness of the Obama administration.<br /><br /></div><span style="background: gray none repeat scroll 0% 0%; overflow: auto ! important; position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 5px; height: 100%; z-index: 10000000; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous; opacity: 0; font-weight: bold ! important; font-size: medium ! important; font-style: normal ! important;" id="hwContLayer"></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-9181359043689866961?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-78218704132907473882009-07-09T23:13:00.003-04:002009-07-09T23:17:51.668-04:00Newsweek vs.<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor<br /><br />In the July/August 2009 issue of <i>The Atlantic</i>, Michael Hirshorn presents a compelling analysis (“<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/news-magazines">The Newsweekly’s Last Stand</a>”) of why a weekly magazine like <i>The Economist</i> is succeeding just as others, notably <i>Newsweek</i>, face increasing difficulties. His essential argument—that <i>The Economist</i> offers a glimpse of the broader world, consistently every week, and that in doing so has defined a niche that the other magazines do not have—rings generally true. Indeed, one reason why I remain a dedicated subscriber is precisely because of <i>The Economist</i>’s wide scope.<br /> <br />However, Hirshorn overlooked another big reason why some folks (like me) appreciate <i>The Economist</i>: intellectual and reportorial honesty. Not objectivity, but honesty. A couple of years ago, CNN news anchor <a href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-october-27-2008/campbell-brown">Campbell Brown was on <i>The Daily Show</i></a>. At one point during the interview, Brown commented to Stewart on one of the problematic aspects of American journalism, noting that a reporter should be able to take two contradictory comments and then report on what s/he sees as the one most connected to reality. But (as she noted) most American news outlets don’t practice journalism in that mold. In addition to the (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/04/business/media/04post.html?_r=1">theoretical</a>) firewall between the publisher and the editors and reporters, American news media have long held that the editorial opinion of a news outlet should be expressed primarily through editorials, or through the voices of those labeled “critics.” The actual perspective in any reporting function is intended to be weak-to-non-existent. News should be “objective,” but not expressly honest. So, in Brown’s example, confirming that it is raining—when someone tells you it isn’t—falls out of normal journalistic scope.<br /> <br />The problem, for me anyway, is that such objectivity cannot exist; instead what happens is an adoption of perspective through subtler and more damaging means, even if inadvertent. News media become identified with one side of the political spectrum or the other, inevitably, and based upon inferences drawn from things like words used (e.g., “terrorist” vs. “freedom fighter”), how information is presented (since context can make a fact seem less factual), or the identities and perspectives of sources interviewed for stories. Where editors seem to consider this “objective”—letting the news outlet be, in effect, an amanuensis for the information coming from different sources—it is impossible to make such information work in a way that doesn’t do a disservice to the underlying news, or to the news consumer. It is a problem as much with television and radio news as with newspapers and news weeklies. </div><p style="text-align: center; font-family: trebuchet ms;">***</p><div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">Such is the environment in which I read <i>The Economist</i>’s story about drug policy (“<a href="http://www.economist.com/world/americas/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13905530">At last, a debate</a>”) in the 25 June 2009 issue, which struck me as the perfect example to illustrate the opposite of this hidden American journalistic perspective. The article says (in part): “But he also implies that proponents of drug legalisation—who include <i>The Economist</i>—are really seeking fresh sources of tax revenue to rescue failed banks. (No, Mr Costa, to pay for drug treatment and education.) Grotesquely, he equates legalising drugs and human trafficking. (Drugs primarily harm the user whereas trafficking harms others.) He claims legalisation would “unleash a drug epidemic in the developing world”. (That is what prohibition is achieving, because the criminal gangs it generates in developing countries have started supplying their local markets.) He smears his critics as “pro-drug” (as absurd as suggesting he is “pro-crime”). This kind of hysteria smacks of an organisation that is not just losing an unwinnable war but losing the argument.”<br /> <br />Thus, in the article it is clear that <i>The Economist</i> has a perspective on the issue (it is for legalization); that it believes it has thought through the ramifications of this perspective; and that it sees a particular kind of weakness in how one international organization has been managing and responding to the issue. Just as importantly: as a reader, one understands the intellectual terrain in which such reporting takes place. This piece was also related to a story about <a href="rticle,%20http://www.economist.com/world/americas/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13905518">coca eradication and the cocaine trade in South America</a>, and here too the direct approach holds: as (for example) the writer notes that programs to spray coca to eliminate it have a negative effect on Colombian’s ability to grow food, too. These aren’t editorials, or bylined critiques of drug policy issues; this is normal reporting.<br /> <br />Often, the way this plays out in <i>The Economist</i> is on a very small, simple scale: the use of direct language that addresses the implications of the information just delivered. No attempt is made to hide the impact of the absurd inflation rate in Zimbabwe; a reference to it is likely to speak directly either to its mathematical absurdity or its impact on average people. A story about global warming takes for granted the value of environmental conservation—which means that individual stories about everything from policy discussions to new scientific discoveries can be understood as coming from a specific perspective. And so on.<br /> <br />No American media outlet can turn itself into a version of <i>The Economist</i> until it is willing to see that even reporting must speak truth to power and to readers—and do so directly, not obliquely and not “objectively.” The growth of published opinion pieces, in one form or another (in print, online, or as a mainstay of cable news), mirrors the exponential rise of “user-generated” content, most of it highly opinionated, through a range of sites and blogs (like this one). Indeed, news outlets like <i>Newsweek</i> are increasingly relying on their own blogs as a means of providing faster content than a print edition can deliver, and with a specific slant, as in <a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2009/05/14/no-more-war-on-drugs.aspx">this piece about drug policy issues</a>. Still, what is missing from all of these is the combination of the essential elements that makes <i>The Economist</i> work: on the ground reporting mixed with interpretation of the report, delivered in direct and unambiguous language. Say what you mean, and know why you mean it—because with that as a motto, it’s much harder to go wrong than just including “all the news that’s fit to print.”</p><div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </div><p style="text-align: center; font-family: trebuchet ms;">***</p><div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">An ironic coda to all this: as I was researching this piece and combing through <i>Newsweek</i>’s web site, one advertisement in particular kept catching my attention: subscription ads for <i>The Economist</i>.<br /> <br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-7821870413290747388?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-31802114104477433952009-06-27T22:23:00.001-04:002009-06-27T22:25:32.790-04:00Tlooth-some<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor<br /><br />His Wikipedia entry makes a comparative reference to Thomas Pynchon. The back of the book says “He is like Pynchon, Barth, and William Gaddis.” But <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Mathews">Harry Mathews</a> is no Pynchon, nor a Barth or Gaddis for that matter.<br /><br />It was back in late-April that I heard Mathews’ short story <span style="font-style: italic;">Country Cooking from Central France: Roast Boned Rolled Stuffed Shoulder of Lamb (Farce Double)</span> read on the Symphony Space program “Selected Shorts” (and <a href="http://podcastdownload.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/4787204/510202/15719932/NPR_15719932.mp3">available as an MP3 here</a>; I highly recommend it). I had never heard of him, and after digging up his biography online, I was both comforted in my ignorance and surprised, given the odd pathways of literature that I have followed, not to have found him earlier. I bought three of Mathews’ books, and have just finished <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/156743/book/45000909"><span style="font-style: italic;">Tlooth</span></a>, his second novel, originally published in 1966 and (in the case of my copy) republished in 1998 by Illinois State University’s Dalkey Archive press. And off we go...<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div> <br />“Fully dressed, Dominique had worn sixteen garments and ornaments. She shed four of them on the first day, three on each of the next four days, and at the end she danced naked, shielded only by her hands and hair. Every piece of her jewelry and clothing had been fastened with an inextricable knot, from which one or several tassels hung. The dancer’s enchantment worked yeastily through her audience while for hours she slowly tried, with shakings and suave caresses, to pamper loose one cluster of dangling strands. When the voluptuous ferment became unbearable, the girl, turning away with a mild complicit shrug, would draw from a scabbard fixed upright near her a wicked blue scimitar, and slice the knot. The sword, always visible to the crowd, gathered terrific significance as the moment of its use approached; and each severing of trivial cords fell on the tormented mass like a scourge, exciting hysterical shrieks, fits, faints, onsets of importance, confessions of speakable crimes, miraculous cures, numberless psychic and physical traumata, and the exchange (settled by the unpredictable time of the event) of millions of francs among the slightly cooler-headed gambling element.” (Pages 151-152)<br /><br />This might be one of the most inspired, enervating paragraphs I have read in a long time, alive with words not often found in fiction (“yeastily”! “traumata”!), combined with a description of a series of acts of such improbability that it still comes as a surprise to learn in the next paragraph that Dominique the stripper has died on the sixth day of her marathon dance session. One has a sense of Dominique as trapped by these knots she cannot remove, and yet empowered to remove them; she is performing, voluptuously, but also bored, as the shrug suggests This Moroccan stripper’s is, on the one hand, considered so tangential that it is entirely parenthetical. On the other hand, Mathews’ frames her death as of such magnitude that “she was proposed to Rome for canonization.” It hadn’t once occurred to me she might be a Catholic.<br /><br />If Mathews owes a debt to anyone, it is Georges Bataille and his <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/10131/book/4105010"><span style="font-style: italic;">Story of the Eye</span></a>. <span style="font-style: italic;">Tlooth</span> is less aggressive (if no less violent) but just as manic in its appetites, and just as absurd in its approach to the same. A long section—at least, long in the context of this story—in the middle of Mathews’ novel is itself another fiction, a living walkthrough of a movie script, highly pornographic, that the narrator has been hired to write. I call it a “living walkthrough” because, as the reader, you lose your own sense of whether you’re reading the script that Mathews’ protagonist has written, or if that same protagonist is now actually in the story.<br /><br />We get references to how the camera should pan in one direction or the other. We get a mixture of highly specific, scene-setting detail—from clothing to the use of Wedgwood china to the acts being performed and in which locations—and at the same time a glib skipping over of any kind of context that might help the reader establish a genuine point of reference. It doesn’t really matter. And still, at the end of the whole section, after so much absurdist human interaction, it comes as a surprise to find the script completely dismissed by the crazy Count who commissioned it: “It’s interesting. But where is the character development? In the last scene we do not really know anything more about Sister Agnes than we did in the first.” (Page 136)<br /><br />Indeed, we do not learn much at all about Sister Agnes. The character development is ours, the readers’. We learn something of ourselves from <span style="font-style: italic;">Tlooth</span>, as we do from most difficult (and may I here use the word surrealist?) works. Yes, we learn about ourselves and our ability or willingness to read through challenging literature. More importantly, I think, are what novels like this teach us about our sense of self: whether, in wading through complicated, deeply layered and hidden ideas, we find things at which to smile or laugh, and whether we can see in small, absurdist details, analogies to how most of us also fixate on the little bits of errata in our daily lives. We just don’t normally see such things as particularly absurd—but perhaps we should. We might be happier that way, and more alive.<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-3180211410447743395?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-62752094017109468342009-06-12T06:55:00.000-04:002009-06-12T06:55:00.532-04:00American Jewish Rage<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor<br /><br />I recently had the odd experience of being accused (somewhat indirectly) of having a “pathological absence of rage.”<br /><br />As part of an evening of study for the holiday <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavuot">Shavuot</a>, I found myself among a small group of people listening to a dialogue-cum-diatribe by two American Jews, under the title “The Denial of Hatred and The Hatred of Denial.” The two speakers (whose names I feel no need to reveal here) were addressing what turned into a conflated and conflicted bunch of points. They tried to include some “facts,” such as the claim that anti-Semitism is at its highest point since the World War II era, an unprovable assertion that they tied to a Pew study. They both seemed to believe that American Jews (as exemplified by those of Manhattan’s Upper West Side) are deluded in not seeing or believing the imminent threat of anti-Semitism. They refute any notion that anti-Semitism might be rooted in anything other than the utterly irrational, in no way a response to (perceived) actions by Jews themselves. And at the same time, they suggested that too many Jews walk around fearful of expressing their Jewishness—a ludicrous claim in general, and certainly in New York City!<br /><br />First, on the so-called fact of the scope of worldwide anti-Semitism: the presenters quoted a study by the Pew Research Center to bolster their claim that anti-Semitism is at its highest point since the holocaust. They were presumably referring to a 2008 study by Pew Research Center that showed that anti-Semitism was on the rise, in some cases strongly (see “<a href="http://nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=20124">Xenophobia on the Continent</a>,” by Andrew Kohut and Richard Wike). Without ignoring the impact of those findings, there is still nothing to support the presenters’ hyperbolic claims, or the implicit sense that Jews everywhere should be on alert. As Kohut and Wike wrote in their article: “While there has been a rise in anti-Semitic opinion in Europe, the percentages holding negative opinions toward Jews in most countries studied remain relatively small.” Moreover, the data collected and presented by Pew explicitly draws connections between anti-Semitism and perceptions about Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians, as well as about the role and (perceived) power of Jews in America.<br /><br />The speakers also revealed what I would call (to use their own terms) a pathological naivete: a denial of the obvious fact that powerful (or perceived powerful) minority groups have always been targets of one kind or another (e.g., Tutsis in Rwanda, or the Ismaili Shia in many Sunni Muslim countries). Similarly, small states with (again, perceived) out-sized power have also been targets, particularly when they have engaged in the kinds of conflict with their neighbors that trigger reflexive feelings about minority populations and their political or social agendas.<br /><br />Let me be clear: I am not making excuses for anti-Semitism. But I also believe it’s irrational to think that a minority group that makes up 2-4% of the total United States population, yet controls wealth equal to three or four times those numbers, and which has very, very prominent group members represented in high places in government, finance, etc., isn’t going to face some animosity. Nor am I the only one who thinks this is the case, or that this is a reality that Jews must confront. To go back to additional Pew-funded research, in 2006 the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life <a href="http://pewforum.org/events/index.php?EventID=111">co-sponsored a talk with Josef Joffe</a>, author of “Überpower: The Imperial Temptation of America,” on anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. While rejecting what he describes as “the perception that Jews have ‘conquered’ America and have the most powerful country in the world at their beck and call,” Joffe nonetheless goes on to say “that Jews and Americans have always acted as forces of rampant change that has [sic] rolled over ancient traditions and dispensations and thus threatened traditional status and power structures. If you represent the forces of an anonymous market, you are bound to anger those players who profit from privilege and entrenched position.” In other words: <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">duh</span>. Without making excuses for a kind of murderous, irrationally rooted anti-Semitism, one must nonetheless accept the reality that one’s actions in the world have consequences. Jews, whether in America or Israel, aren’t exempt from this construct any more than anyone else.<br /><br />Yet none of this makes me fearful. Politically engaged and morally concerned, and desirous of living righteously (and not just to and towards Jews)? Yes. But <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">fearful</span>? No. The presenters’ argument that American Jews are too afraid of being publicly Jewish ran smack into their argument that there is this massive tsunami of hatred coming to get us and that we should, essentially, be afraid to be publicly Jewish. And that, for me, is where it all fell apart: the idea that I suffer from a “pathological absence of rage” about the existence of anti-Semitism, that I should get over my denial, and that in overcoming my denial I will be free—finally free to be afraid.<br /><br />Lest these two gentlemen be unfairly called out for their views, it is worth noting that they are hardly the only ones to hold this classic mixture of bigoted, fear-mongering views. For example, currently making its way around the internet is <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/obama_holocaust_museum/2009/06/10/223863.html">an offensive screed by Rabbi Dr. Morton H. Pomerantz</a>, the absurd claims of which can be summarized just from the first sentence: “Our new president did not tell a virulent anti-Semite to travel to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington to kill Jews, but he is most certainly creating a climate of hate against us.” That’s a heavy charge—and one that falls flat, because it rests on both the misrepresentation of what President Obama said, and, more importantly, on that classic American Jewish Fundamentalist perspective that there is no such thing as legitimate criticism of Israel. For those with this worldview, President Obama is damned for eternity because he dared to say openly what is so obviously true: that past wrongs against Jews do not excuse current wrongs inflicted by Israelis—and that the forty-plus year Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people must, finally, end.<br /><br />In retrospect, the tipoff that this Shavuot presentation would be problematic might have come at the very beginning, when one speaker began with a second-hand holocaust story, about his mother’s experiences in the camps and after the war. The purpose, clearly, was to engage the audience and provoke an emotional reaction that would bind the listeners to the presenter, credentialize him as an authority, and simultaneously remind us of that greatest of all acts of murderous anti-Semitism. Such tactics tend to work with Jews; we have been well conditioned. But if my description sounds cynical, it is not nearly as bad as the act of the presenter himself, which reminded me of a character from <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2008/08/if-norman-finkelstein.html">Tova Reich’s novel “My Holocaust,”</a> in which she so effectively caricatures the second-generation survivors, whose devotion to the cause of the holocaust has often surpassed that of the survivors themselves.<br /><br />We sat in rapt attention, listening to this compelling story—only to discover yet another Jew sadly abusing the memory of the murdered (and those few who survived), in order to justify the rights and reactions of Jews everywhere at the expense of other humans. To my mind, such “me first” righteousness is counter to the morality, the humanity, that rests at the core of Judaism, and there is no denying that it must be resisted.<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-6275209401710946834?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-86480184415439336092009-05-30T16:20:00.001-04:002009-05-30T16:20:00.285-04:00Our Mortgaged Future<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor<br /><br />An article (“<a href="http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13705353">Recovery begins at home</a>”) from last week’s issue of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Economist</span>, about Shaun Donovan, the new Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) caught my attention—not for the analysis of Donovan’s early assertion of leadership, but because of the statistics included about the continuing problem of home foreclosures. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Economist </span>reports that “foreclosure filings last month increased by 32% over April 2008; one in every 374 housing units received a filing.” The article also noted that HUD “announced that a $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers could be used as down-payment on a mortgage…” and that “it would provide $2 billion in stimulus funds to stabilise neighbourhoods hit by foreclosure.”<br /><br />Reading this article reminded me of how adrift we are in the middle of this vast sea of foreclosed homes, and that we cannot seem to find the dry land beyond the horizon. The collapse of our economy has been spurred on in large part by our collective capacity to over-borrow, and our collective desire to over-inflate the value of our homes. While the cracks in the broader economy are more complicated—the housing asset bubble is only one factor—this problem of over-mortgaged homes with over-inflated values is probably the thing most average people are able to focus on. The housing bubble was aided by the robust market in <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=355">“sub-Prime” mortgages</a>, and part of the problem with these mortgages was their inherent short-termism: banks loved the fees associated with mortgage creation, and the near-term monthly payments, without caring about the long-term impact of the potential failure of the housing market. If the goal was to maximize near-term profits, all of this made sense.<br /><br />But there was always a logical inconsistency in the sub-Prime mortgage market, waiting for someone to notice it: it is difficult to make money over the long-term with loans you can almost guarantee that no one will be able to afford to pay off. If you know the borrower won’t be able to pay up over the life of the loan, then your short-term profits will ultimately be undermined by the long-term collapse. No amount of mortgage insurance will cover this potential deficit. It’s like building the George Washington bridge out of cardboard: it’s only structurally sound until the first rainfall, and coating it in plastic wrap is not long-term protection from the rain.<br /><br />News that HUD is offering a credit to first-time homebuyers is great, but helps none of the people who currently have mortgages with unreasonable interest rates or already face foreclosure proceedings. And $2 billion to “stabilize” neighborhoods is all well and good, but it’s hard to know what impact it will have on affected homeowners. These initiatives are part of what the department is calling its “Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan.” It seems to me that the best way to achieve this would be to encourage mortgage lenders to make loans more affordable, in order to bring stability to the turbulent world of home ownership. All of this led me to ask a different question: is the solution to the failed investment in mortgages ... more investment in mortgages?<br /><br />Here’s how this investment program might work, as a formal process implemented with government backing, and in lieu of the purchasing of “distressed debt” mortgages by external vultures. Instead of foreclosing on a property, or simply refinancing the mortgage on more favorable terms, banks would refinance while also taking an additional equity stake in these homes. The bank’s investment might be 20-25% of the total value of the mortgage. The mortgage interest rates offered by the banks for these new loans would be fixed within a small range corresponding to the Federally set prime rate; some higher rates would be permitted, but only by one or two percentage points. All mortgages would be fixed rate loans on a 15, 20, or 30 year schedule.<br /><br />The payoff (so to speak) of this process would be three-fold:<br /><br />First, it would shift the process of dealing with many of these problem mortgages from a challenge over impending foreclosure back to focus on continued ownership. As with the bursting of many asset bubbles, part of the problem with the collapse of the market is the glut of houses available at reduced prices, which depresses the value of the newly foreclosed assets even further. This is not good for banks looking to recover from the sale of these assets, and it doesn’t help homeowners with legitimate (that is to say, normal) reasons for wanting to sell. Therefore, removing some homes from the market by keeping them owner-occupied would help return some stability to the market.<br /><br />Second, this refinancing structure would reduce the monthly mortgage payments owed by the homeowners, by refinancing at a rate that owner-occupants can actually afford, on a schedule that makes rational economic sense (which most adjustable rate and sub-Prime mortgages do not, except on a short-term basis). What is the bank’s incentive to refinance this way? That leads to the third point...<br /><br />By refinancing at a reasonable rate, banks enable homeowners to invest in their properties—keeping their homes and neighborhoods cleaner and more desirable—while the bank still, even at 6 or 7%, makes money. Well-kept homes in cleaner neighborhoods will likely have better resale values over the long-term.<br /><br />The biggest benefit of this new process will be that it creates a mutual incentive for long-term success, for both the owner-occupant and the bank: the owner's incentive is the opportunity to stay in their house at a monthly payment rate they can afford. The bank will recoup its additional costs over time by taking that addition 20% equity stake, thus giving them 20% of the profit when the home is eventually sold. Since part of the allure of sub-prime mortgages was the higher interest rates being charged, and thus the higher rate of return to those who invested in these mortgages, this equity based approach will also help address the loss of profit that will result from bringing a 14% mortgage interest rate down to 7%.<br /><br />Why should these homeowners accept this 20% reduction of their equity in their own homes? Well, for one thing, this new bank stake would reduce the amount the borrower owes by the same percentage, in effect reassessing the near-term value of the home. Given the inflated market in which many people purchased their homes, such a readjustment might be welcome. But the long-term rationale is even stronger: a 20% reduction in one’s investment is almost always better than a 100% loss of both equity and one’s actual home. For homeowners, choosing between 80% and 0% should not be so hard—and as banks might be starting to learn for themselves, 100% ownership of many, many houses may not be a good investment for their own shareholders.<br /><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-8648018441543933609?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-73346132054947546142009-05-25T22:29:00.005-04:002009-05-31T09:46:53.912-04:00Preventing Obama<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor<br /><br />If I was in the message management business (and I am), and I had a client with terrible, horrible news to release to the world or a potentially disastrous idea to float, well heck: the days before a long, holiday weekend might be perfect. Few people are paying attention to the news as it is; even fewer when focused on sunny weather and beach blanket bingo in the days ahead.<br /><br />However, I do not know whether I would be clever enough (or Machiavellian enough) to coordinate the release of this terrible, horrible news with a speech timed as a counter-point to a speech given by one of my client's biggest critics. Seriously, it's hard to get one’s critics to cooperate! It takes tremendous resources and planning, and a stealthy streak worthy of a come-from-behind presidential candidate.<br /><br />Therefore, it should be no surprise to anyone reading this that the person who released the terrible, horrible news was President Barack Obama, and the clever (or Machiavellian) maneuver was to share the information alongside a critical speech given by former Vice President Dick Cheney.<br /><br />And the news that was released?<br /><br />That President Obama favors a program of "preventive detention," sort of like what repressive, authoritarian, mock-democratic regimes (c.f., China, Egypt, Iran) use to reign in people and perspectives they don't like. Rather than worry about having to try suspects after they have committed a crime, Obama’s proposal would allow for indefinite detention without a trial where evidence is presented that suggests someone was planning a crime. <span style="font-style: italic;">The New York Times</span> ran two articles about this, the first on 21 May (“<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21obama.html?hp">Obama Is Said to Consider Preventive Detention Plan</a>”), the second on 23 May (“<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/us/politics/23detain.html">President’s Detention Plan Tests American Legal Tradition</a>”). There are <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/obamas-preventive-detention-problem-breaking-it-down-522#10796">plenty</a> of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/21/AR2009052104045.html">others</a>, <a href="http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/election/1147">too</a>.<br /><br />Thankfully, I am not alone when I say—loudly and unambiguously—this is bullshit. I will dispense with reciting chapter and verse on why such a “preventive detention” plan is unconstitutional. Senator Russ Feingold has <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/25/735103/-Feingold-calls-Obama-Out-on-Indefinite-Detention,-Sets-Hearings-%28with-poll%29">done this eloquently enough</a> for anyone interested, while underscoring that Congress (or at least one Senator) is watching and intends to stand guard on this issue. Senator Feingold: thank you!<br /><br />What I will say is: this entire episode represents a huge political and philosophical disappointment. First, the point/counter-point construct of the speeches was both an obvious and unnecessary distraction. As president, Obama has his choice of speaking moments; he can only have agreed to this because he believed that the media’s (and public’s) focus on the “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/21/AR2009052103922.html">Thrilla Near the Hilla</a>” (as <span style="font-style: italic;">Washington Post</span> columnist Dana Milbank dubbed it) would distract from the substance of the issues and his articulation of an unsatisfactory policy plan. Otherwise, he would have given his policy address when he knew (as with many others) that it, and he, would be the sole focus of attention.<br /><br />Second, it is disappointing because a politician as smart as Obama, in an environment as politically charged as this one, should know that it is hard to embrace the ideas of one’s opponent without losing credibility—unless you do so (as Bill Clinton did with policy issues like welfare reform and debt reduction) by embracing the political substance, the underlying logic, and even the fallout. President Obama has not done that; he has not suddenly started talking like Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. Indeed, quite the opposite.<br /><br />Which leads to the third disappointment: the lingering suspicion that President Obama wants to have it both ways. He seems to want to be respected for charting a course that is not that of the Bush/Cheney years—e.g., one that places diplomacy, not force, at the center of our global leadership—while at the same time being given permission to pursue the same nasty, off-the-books habits, tactics, and policies, but in a manner that is more <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">effectively</span> off-book.<br /><br />The world is a nasty place, and President Obama’s original, campaign-era formulation that faux-righteous might will not protect us remains as true now as it was then. Hidden righteousness, in the form of “preventive detention,” is unlikely to protect us, either. It only degrades our democracy, our society, and the quality of both our government and our moral judgment. On this issue, President Obama should be stopped.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">UPDATE:</span> In his 31 May <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/opinion/31rich.html?ref=opinion">column for the <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span></a>, Frank Rich dissects Dick Cheney's speech and the way it was reported in the news - and, very helpfully, points to an article by Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, writing for McClatchy, that points out 10 "inconvenient truths" that Cheney overlooked. <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/68643.html">That article is worth reading</a>.<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-7334613205494754614?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-10726056748267786592009-05-09T23:03:00.000-04:002009-05-09T23:03:00.836-04:00Regressive New York?<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor<br /><br />Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2009/04/shotgun-wedding.html">and even Iowa</a> all now permit “opposite marriage,” while “liberal” New York (and California, too) lag behind. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/nyregion/10gays.html?hp">An excellent article</a> in tomorrow’s <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span> notes that as a new bill makes its way through the legislature, some New York politicians seemingly remain closed-minded. For example, Jeremy Peter’s article has a great story about a State Senator, as in this snippet:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Proponents of same-sex marriage who visited </span><a style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;" href="http://www.nysenate.gov/senator/george-onorato">Mr. Onorato</a><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"> in his office in Long Island City acknowledge they have not made much progress.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">“He said right off the bat that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that this is a religious issue,” said Jeremiah Frei-Pearson, 31, a child advocacy lawyer who went to the senator’s office two weeks ago accompanied by a gay man and a straight official from one of the state’s most powerful labor unions.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">“I explained to him that I go to church every week and that religion teaches us not to discriminate,” Mr. Frei-Pearson said, “and that ultimately your faith should be kept separate from this decision-making process.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">He said he also tried to appeal to Mr. Onorato by explaining that he was engaged to a black woman, and that an interracial relationship like his (Mr. Frei-Pearson is white) would have been frowned upon years ago, just as many gay relationships are today.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">“None of that seemed to resonate,” Mr. Frei-Pearson said.</span><br /><br />To which I can only say: wow! Great reporting, great quotes … backwards politician!<br /><br />The many perspectives (and resistance) to gay marriage in New York might be a reflection of a quality of our state that is, in an odd way, less at issue in places like Vermont, Maine, and Iowa: diversity. The same can be said of California, a similarly large and <a href="http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13528065">divided state</a>. Logically, one might expect homogenous societies to enforce orthodoxy and resist (seemingly) heterodox notions like acceptance of gay marriage, let alone gays themselves—while diverse communities should be the opposite. The logic, though, may overlook the much more complicated set of connections between people’s sense security and (emotional) safety. In a funny way, places like New York may be more challenging political and social environments precisely because they toss many, many different people and perspectives together.<br /><br />Not buying it? Me either, necessarily, because it starts to sound like another excuse. The truth is that this is a classic case of groundless discrimination, for which too many bad excuses have already been offered.<br /><br />With the new bill in the state legislature, New York’s politicians have an opportunity to show that such discrimination has no place in a society like ours. Whether you live downstate in New York City, or upstate in Buffalo, our state needs people who <a href="http://www.outcomebuffalo.com/lyndsey0605078033.htm">want to live here</a>, make their lives and livelihoods here, pay taxes here, raise families here, and contribute to our society—regardless of whether they love someone of the same sex. Preventing gay marriage discourages people from making their homes here, and that’s no good for anyone.<br /><br />Citizens of New York: contact your <a href="http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/">State Assembly</a> member and <a href="http://www.nysenate.gov/senators">State Senator</a> and make your voice heard.<br /><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-1072605674826778659?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-29580501138767630032009-04-25T23:09:00.000-04:002009-04-25T23:09:00.732-04:00Still Faking After All These Years<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor<br /><br />Holland Cotter, the <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span> art critic who <a href="http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/holland-cotter-times-art-critic-wins-pulitzer-prize/">recently won a Pulitzer Prize</a>, pulled out another <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/arts/design/20apex.html?ref=design">terrific review last week</a>, for an exhibition titled “I Am Art: An Expression of the Visual & Artistic Process of Plastic Surgery” at New York's <a href="http://www.apexart.org/">Apexart</a> gallery. It's a measure of Cotter's qualifications for journalism's highest honor that a review of an exhibition so potentially off-putting can be, instead, so intellectually intriguing.<br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">***</span><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><br />I have to admit: reading that exhibition review, the first thing I thought of was something I wrote a few years ago. (Don’t worry, I'm not comparing myself to Cotter.) In my piece titled "<a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/Archive/2004/2004_02_01.html">Smooth, Firm, But Not Subtle</a>," I explored a question that was nagging at me: how does our society treat authenticity—and fakery? As I wrote then:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Two of the most obvious and hifalutin subjects in which authenticity factors significantly are religion and art. ... Likewise in the arts, the 'real' is prized (whether in painting, sculpture, or other fine handicrafts) and an entire network of 'temples' has been constructed around the world to house art objects. Much like religion, art also relies on a broad pool of people who respond with devotion—a devotion bordering on the religious, and epitomized in the form of gifts, much as a religious establishment might receive—to those objects which the clergy comprised of museum directors, curators, and collectors has deemed to be authentic.</span><br /><br />I then continued on to suggest that our cultural affection for authenticity is often fairly weak, and used breast enhancement surgery as an example of the point. Broadly speaking, if some 300,000 women per year (according to <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-12-18-breast-implants_x.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">USA Today</span></a>, although those are pre-recession numbers) are having their breasts "enhanced"—many presumably without a separate medical need for breast reconstruction—that says something about our collective need for the authentic.<br /><br />That is not an expression of judgment; it is an observation. Certainly we all, at times, find some form of happiness in fakes of one kind or another, just as we can also find a kind of <a href="http://dorothysurrenders.blogspot.com/2009/04/white-hot.html">pleasure in the authentic</a>. Extending the analysis into a very present-day context—the Madoff scandal and other Ponzi schemes—one might even say that we seek out people and situations <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/business/14nocera.html">we likely know cannot possibly be authentic</a> and yet desperately hope that they are.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div><br />Still, an exhibition that explores, artistically, this very subject has got to have some real mettle attached to it. It does not sound like this is “<a href="http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/niptuck/">Nip/Tuck</a>,” a show that glorifies the whole premise of our physical artificiality (or, our artificial edifice). Nor does it sound like the photographic version of “Are You Hot? The Search for America’s Sexiest People,” which categorically <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/Archive/2003/2003_04_05.html">mixed up and confused</a> so many of the issues that relate to our collective body image (if we can be said to have one, and I think we can).<br /><br />Cotter’s review makes the exhibition sound much smarter than that, and more compelling. At the same time, the question of authenticity that nagged me then remains, and I feel I am no closer to an answer.<br /><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-2958050113876763003?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-41693375304172834632009-04-10T11:50:00.000-04:002009-04-10T11:50:00.533-04:00Shotgun Wedding<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor<br /><br />Two weeks ago, I wrote about the terrible problem of gun violence in the United States (“<a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2009/03/wheres-my-gun.html">Where’s My Gun</a>”), and the failure of our country and our culture to address the subject rationally—never mind actually come to any practical conclusions. In the days since, two other very public shooting “rampages” have occurred, one in Binghamton, New York and the other in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In both cases, there is evidence <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-04-05-new-york-shooting_N.htm">to suggest that shooters</a> Jiverly Wong and Richard Poplawski acquired guns <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09097/961071-53.stm">under questionable circumstances</a>. Those are presumably the circumstances to which the National Rifle Association (NRA) refers when it says our government should be enforcing the gun laws that already exist, even as it continues to foment <a href="http://washingtonindependent.com/37511/at-gun-show-conservatives-panic-about-obama">fear of “liberals”</a> taking away the <a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/04/07/richard_poplowski/">guns of good Americans</a>.<br /><br />Meanwhile, last week the Iowa state Supreme Court <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/us/04iowa.html">ruled that “gay” marriage is legal</a>, under an equal protection clause that prohibits discrimination without a meaningful government interest in a specific outcome. Days later, the Vermont state legislature <a href="http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/04/legislature_legalizes_gay_marriage_in_vermont.php">overrode Governor Jim Douglas’ veto</a> of a bill that legalized gay marriage, making Vermont the first state to pursue this course of action through its legislature.<br /><br />These subjects are connected, because they reflect important underlying, unresolved tensions in our society, around a set of problems and failures by people on every side of both issues. Even if married homosexual couples have no express or explicit interest in firearms—or gun owners have no homosexual attractions, let alone the desire for marriage—both groups should be united around a common set of legal principles that would permit them to act responsibly around their own interests. There are two Constitutional principles at stake here, and neither involve the Second Amendment. At issue are the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, which read, respectively:<br /><br />“<a href="http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am9">The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.</a>” “<a href="http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am10">The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.</a>”<br /><br />The Constitution says nothing at all about gay marriage. One can imagine this is because such marriages were not even a consideration at the time the document was authored, which might very well be true. But a careful reading of the Constitution will remind any reader that many things go unmentioned; indeed, it says nothing about marriage of any kind. The purpose of the Ninth Amendment was in part to ensure that the exclusion of a particular point from the text of the Constitution should not be taken to imply a prohibition on that issue. Accepting the NRA’s particular interpretation of the Second Amendment might be seen to offer gun owners an official leg-up—but the mention of bearing arms does not implicitly receive greater legal resilience just because it is explicitly stated. The power of the Ninth Amendment should be respected, as should the subsequently enumerated right for the states to make decisions about issues not mentioned in the Constitution.<br /><br />Theoretically, a rejectionist response to gay marriage could point not to the Constitution, but to the Bible—except that as presently constructed in the United States, this is not a religious issue but a legal one. While religion may have informed the creation of the Constitution of these United States, religion is also explicitly not the framework under which legal decisions are made. The Constitution respects the right of the people to practice their religion, and also distinguishes between religious practice and state-held legal authority. (Never mind that the Bible does not say anything about a range of issues mentioned in the Constitution, including a specific right to own guns, as well as those of copyrighting and patent-holding.)<br /><br />Supporting the fullest and widest interpretation of both Constitutional amendments should unify these seemingly-disparate groups, and remind us that we do not have to like or approve of every decision made by our neighbors or fellow citizens—but we do need to respect them. If supporters of gun rights also argued for the preservation of other fundamental, Constitutional rights, and if (conversely) gay rights advocates supported the right to bear arms as part of a similar interpretation of the Constitution, we might have more than just a new political coalition. We might have a more vibrant Constitutional democracy.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div><br />Asides of one kind or another:<br /></div><ul style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><li>Mark Guarino, correspondent for <span style="font-style: italic;">The Christian Science Monitor</span>, had <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0406/p02s13-ussc.html">a thoughtful article from 6 April</a> about how Iowans are reacting to their state Supreme Court’s decision regarding gay marriage.</li></ul><ul style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><li>National Public Radio’s Michele Norris had <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102851807">an amazing interview with gun store owner Johnny Dury</a> a few days ago; NPR’s web site has an abbreviated text version of the story posted, but the full audio version (linked from that page) is worth a listen, no matter where you are in the United States or what you believe about this situation.</li></ul><ul style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><li>Back in 2004, I wrote a piece about gay marriage (“<a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/Archive/2004/2004_04_20.html">Union vs. Confederacy?</a>”) arguing that “marriage” should be left to religious institutions, while the state should be responsible for civil unions. This would ease the tension over “gay marriage” by allowing for appropriate discrimination based on religious beliefs, while reinforcing equal protection under the law. In an opinion piece from <span style="font-style: italic;">The New York Times</span>, “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/opinion/22rauch.html">A Reconciliation on Gay Marriage</a>,” by David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch, published 22 February 2009, a similar approach is articulated. </li></ul><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-4169337530417283463?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-18508661193520626972009-03-29T22:12:00.002-04:002009-03-29T22:23:00.357-04:00Where's My Gun?<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor<br /><br />The gun violence in America is seemingly endless. Just this afternoon, as I sat down to write about this issue after two weeks of rumination, the news flashed yet another story of more of the same: “<a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h91ZbQTpB1bqDYrWJgMJlTE07KDwD977RQ700">Police: NC nursing home shooting kills 6, hurts 3</a>,” reports the Associated Press. I find nursing homes aggravating and dispiriting, too, but I have no plans to shoot them up.<br /><br />Here is what is on my mind about this whole subject, prompted by <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE52A01D20090312">the shooting spree</a> in the towns of <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/10/shooting.alabama/">Samson and Geneva, Alabama</a> on 11 March 2009: if the National Rifle Association (NRA) claim that an armed populace helps stop crime is so true, how did Michael McLendon manage to kill 10 people before being stopped by the police? That’s the question, and it’s just that simple. And here is some context to help consider this issue.<br /><br />According to the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS251399+24-Apr-2008+PRN20080424">Violence Policy Center</a> (VPC) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2005 the “Household Gun Ownership” rate in Alabama was 57.2%, while the “Gun Death Rate” was 16.18 per 100,000. Alabama ranks 5th in the VPC’s <a href="http://www.vpc.org/fadeathchart.htm">rankings of per capita gun-related deaths</a> (behind, in descending order, Louisiana, Alaska, Montana, and Tennessee). The VPC’s argument is simply stated: “States in the South and West with weak gun laws and high rates of gun ownership lead the nation in overall firearm death rates,” and the statistics seem to back this up.<br /><br />At the same time, according to the <a href="http://www.alabamapolicy.org/issues/gti/issue.php?issueID=198&guideMainID=10">Alabama Policy Institute</a>'s web site, “<a href="http://pages.citebite.com/d1u3y6c4i3uqw">Firearms are used far more often to stop crimes than to commit them.</a> In spite of this, anti-firearm activists insist that keeping a firearm in the home puts family members at risk, often claiming that a gun in the home is 43 times more likely to be used to kill a family member than an intruder.” Of course, to be fair to the Alabama Policy Institute (which thanks visitors to its web site for their “<a href="http://www.alabamapolicy.org/founding_principles.html">commitment to Alabama's families and Alabama's future</a>”) they are not being super-thoughtful about their gun policy perspectives, and are instead just quoting from “<a href="http://www.nraila.org/media/misc/fables.htm#FABLE%20XII">Fables, Myths, and Other Tall Fairy Tales about Gun Laws, Crime, and Constitutional Rights</a>,” by the National Rifle Association, as noted at the bottom of their page on “<a href="http://www.alabamapolicy.org/issues/gti/issue.php?issueID=198&guideMainID=10">Gun Control Myths</a>.” Surely <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2006/12/contradict-me.html">the NRA would not lie</a>. Right?<br /><br />So, again: where were the guns during the Alabama shooting spree, aside from the ones being used by the murderer and, eventually, the police? If 57% of Alabama households have guns, and guns are used more often to stop crimes than to commit them, did Michael McLendon just happen to pick targets within the 43% of non-gun-owning households in Alabama? It was not like he was particularly stealthy or selective: the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE52A01D20090312">Reuters article</a> reports that he was “firing at random” as he drove through town, including during an apparent stop at a service station. No one at the service station had a gun? Perhaps they just couldn’t get to it fast enough, or maybe they were too afraid, given that McLendon seemed to be shooting randomly. (That’s not blame: I know that in all likelihood I would be searching for safety in a situation like this.)<br /><br />I am not blaming the victims of this terrible, terrible tragedy. They didn’t ask to be shot and killed. Among them was the wife and child of a deputy sheriff there, and that too raises further interesting questions, worthy of pursuit and pondering: what is this sheriff’s take on gun control issues? And the rest of the police in Alabama, too: do they also subscribe to the “if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” perspective?<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div><br />In accepting my own contradictions, I’m comfortable calling myself a solid libertarian who nonetheless finds some intellectual appeal in the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/0300122233">Thaler / Sunstein</a> approach to laws and decision-making. What does that mean in plain English? Here goes—in four parts.<br /><br />Part 1. The libertarian in me supports the fundamental Second Amendment right to own guns. This is less because of the United State’s Constitution’s Second Amendment per se, and more because (as a libertarian) I do not like unnecessarily restricting people’s freedoms or blaming an object for its misuse by human idiots. (It is, to my mind, largely true that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” and people have been killing each other aggressively since long before the invention of guns.) From cars to cigarettes to people who <a href="http://chemistry.about.com/od/healthsafety/a/dangeousmix.htm">mix household cleaners containing chlorine and ammonia</a>, we live in a dangerous world. But it’s not the fault of chlorine and ammonia that someone dumped them together.<br /><br />Part 2. At the same time, the positions of the NRA are generally unsustainable; it is too simplistic by far to say there should be no restrictions on gun ownership at all, period. We agree, as a society, to regulate a broad swathe of things for the common good—from automobiles to zoos—so the idea that guns alone should be exempt from such a regulatory process is absurd.<br /><br />Part 3. Part of what American society needs is a more honest and open debate about the cost to our society of gun regulation or deregulation. We have never really had a genuine national assessment of the issue—the “issue” here being the cost to our society in human life, not the regulation of guns. I don’t hold out much hope for this, just as I am not holding my breath for health care “reform” or that the Obama administration will <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2007/03/dear-senator-obama.html">push back on AIPAC</a>, but it’s still a worthy goal.<br /><br />Part 4. In the Thaler / Sunstein mold, we should consider moving away just from broad attempts at regulation or deregulation of guns, and towards a system that incentivizes responsible ownership and citizenship across the board—while imposing harsh penalties for those who abuse their rights.<br /><br />We cannot simply eliminate guns from our society and our country; to think that we can is as simplistic as the views of the NRA. We can do a better job of trying to learn from tragedies like the one in Alabama, and do a better job of having real discussions about the impact of our choices—while pushing back on the fuzzy-headed thinking about this issue that comes from the extreme right and extreme left of our political spectrum.<br /><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-1850866119352062697?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-22337973987281615422009-03-29T14:55:00.000-04:002009-03-29T14:55:00.565-04:00RSS Feed Update<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">More technology notes: with the <a href="http://www.sascha.com/2009/03/ever-excellent-mia.html">migration to a new server</a> last week, and the other problems I was having with Blogger, the Atom & RSS feeds for my sites were not working.<br /><br />Those problems should now be fixed. If you need to update your feeds, here's the info:<br />Atom: <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/atom.xml">http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/atom.xml</a><br />RSS: <a href="http://www.2rss.com/atom2rss.php?atom=http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/atom.xml">http://www.2rss.com/atom2rss.php?atom=http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/atom.xml</a><br /><br />Cheers!<br /><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-2233797398728161542?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-52460830296423141832009-03-22T12:31:00.000-04:002009-03-22T12:31:00.567-04:00Back Noir<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor<br /><br />I love the city of Buffalo. I have a soft spot for it because it's where I spent many summers, with my paternal grandparents, whom I loved. The city has a beauty and charm that, even in its darkest moments, helped keep it alive. (And I say that not just because I have <a href="http://www.resnicowschroeder.com/media.asp?P=1&id=54">a Buffalo client</a>, but because from Frederick Law Olmsted to Louis Sullivan to Frank Lloyd Wright to Eliel and Eero Saarinen to a longer list of people and institutions than I can mention here, Buffalo has <a href="http://www.wrightnowinbuffalo.com/">a lot to offer</a>.)<br /><br />Therefore, it was with pleasure that I discovered that part of the action in Richard Stark's 1963 novel <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/847069/book/41971190"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Outfit</span></a> takes place in Buffalo, and that the location Stark gave—<a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=798+delaware,+buffalo,+ny&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=44.204685,93.164063&ie=UTF8&ll=42.906093,-78.871888&spn=0.001253,0.002843&t=h&z=19">798 Delaware Avenue</a>—is, as the story has it, one of the city's glorious old mansions. It turns out that it’s the house right across the street from <a href="http://www.tbz.org/">Temple Beth Zion</a>, my grandparents' synagogue. There’s some kind of serendipity in there.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div><br />Much has been written about <a href="http://www.librarything.com/author/westlakedonalde">Richard Stark</a> (aka Donald Westlake) and his "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_%28fictional_criminal%29">Parker</a>" series of novels, and with good reason. Forty-six years after The Outfit was written, it still holds up as a tightly constructed and engaging novel of crime and vengeance, with a David and Goliath twist to it.<br /><br />It was while reading The Outfit, and the earlier Parker story <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/337719/book/41971061"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Man with the Getaway Face</span></a>, that I started to wonder about the timelessness of certain fiction, and how we, as readers, respond to a story. It strikes me as a challenging intellectual question: is it harder to read not-so-old fiction than very old stories? Are the anachronisms of more than a century ago easier to deal with than the missed technological opportunities of the last couple of decades? <br /><br />In reading books from the pre-industrial age, the reader can make an easy mental leap to an environment in which characters are just different: bound by conventions of a period that we may or may not understand, but to which we can immediately relate as distant from our reality. On the other hand, reading a story from what we might loosely call the modern age raises a different kind of challenge: can you, the reader, make a very <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">small</span> mental leap backwards?<br /><br />In these two Parker stories, the anti-hero protagonist maneuvers through a world that is much like ours—cars, electricity, airplanes, beer in a bottle—and yet drastically different. Parker, and his friends, can fly with fake ID with great ease, and even bring a gun on the airplane (given an absence of x-ray scanners at the airport). That’s hard to imagine these days. Conducting a stakeout, Parker has no cell phone with which to contact his friend, and the technology for breaking into the Delaware Avenue mansion is about as basic as possible: some brute force, a gun, and a small flashlight. Perhaps this is less difficult to imagine, given what movies show us about how cell phones and e-mail can be tapped and our general sense of privacy an illusion. But it is also hard to think of the situation as normal, given an absence of security cameras or other of the other electronic devices we take for granted.<br /><br />In a sense, it becomes one marker of whether a book or a story can withstand the test of time: whether it is written in a way that captures our imaginations and overwhelms our sense of the present reality. Stark's “Parker” novels do just that. The author might never have imagined, back in 1963, that years later I could use my computer to zero in on the Delaware Avenue address he put in his book; perhaps he took it on faith that any reader would assume the detail to be true, and any Buffalo native would have easy confirmation if desired. But the fact that I can Google, and the fact that it exists, does not diminish the story one bit.<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-5246083029642314183?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-89117569628428822222009-03-16T16:31:00.000-04:002009-03-16T16:32:59.174-04:00This is Another Test<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The umpteenth test in as many days. (Hence the lack of published content: the system hasn't been working.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">If you're seeing this, that's a good sign World. In which case, more to come soon.</span><span style="background: gray none repeat scroll 0% 0%; overflow: auto ! important; position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 5px; height: 100%; z-index: 10000000; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; opacity: 0; font-weight: bold ! important; font-size: medium ! important; font-style: normal ! important; font-family: trebuchet ms;" id="hwContLayer"></span><span style="background: gray none repeat scroll 0% 0%; overflow: auto ! important; position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 5px; height: 100%; z-index: 10000000; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; opacity: 0; font-weight: bold ! important; font-size: medium ! important; font-style: normal ! important; font-family: trebuchet ms;" id="hwContLayer"></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-8911756962842882222?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19551402.post-11143869770248571122009-03-07T23:00:00.006-05:002009-03-16T21:51:30.378-04:00STOT<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/uploaded_images/Filters-782924.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 301px; height: 400px;" src="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/uploaded_images/Filters-782914.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">That stands for </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >So Tired of This</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">. "This" being Blogger and the failure to "publish" properly.</span><br /><br /></div><div style="font-family: trebuchet ms; text-align: center;">***<br /></div><div face="trebuchet ms" style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><br />Based on the web traffic, one of the most popular set of posts I've ever written are the <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2008/03/sears-please-hold.html">three</a> <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2008/04/sears-responds.html">items</a> <a href="http://www.sascha.com/2008/04/water-water-everywhere.html">about</a> my <a href="http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_04238461000P?keyword=kenmore+water+filter">Kenmore 2-Stage Drinking Water Filter, Model #38461</a>.<br /><br />The issue was that I wanted to buy it - but that no one at Sears was able to tell me what the model numbers were for the replacement cartridges. Eventually, having posted about this publicly, I got a (nice) response from Sears and the information I needed. I bought the filter, had it installed, and have used it happily ever since.<br /><br />That was about 11 months ago. Since then, I have been pleased with the filter with the noticeable improvement in water quality. We've used the filtered water for everything from baby formula to making rice to just-plain-drinking. Only now, months later, has the quality started to suggest we should change the filter. (The unit comes with a built-in, six-month timer - but at the six month mark, the water quality was fine, so we didn't change anything.)<br /><br /></div><div style="font-family: trebuchet ms; text-align: center;">***<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />Like I said, I knew the filter was working. Changing the cartridges gave an additional level of proof. For the last *week* I have wanted to post this item plus a photo of the cartridges I removed from the filter - which showed a terribly dirty, rust-colored sediment cartridge (model #38480) on the left, and a less-visibly dirty "taste and odor" cartridge (model #34373) on the right. <span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/">Blogger</a>, however, has been having fits and won't actually publish the post correctly - either because of the photo or because of the "labels" - so I am resorting to a more fool-proof method. <a href="http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/filters.jpg">You can now find that photo here</a>. The "label" for this post? "Shopping."</span><br /><br />So, now I can say - with further proof - if you're looking for a good water filter for your sink, this model works well.<br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">UPDATE AS OF 16 MARCH: </span><br />1. If you're seeing this post, with the image at the top and the "shopping" label at the bottom, that's a good sign. It means the system really is working for me again.<br />2. As I said before ... if you're looking to publish a blog, well, Blogger still needs some work. If anyone from Blogger is reading this, I am happy to discuss the problems I have faced for several weeks now - which have been resolved, no thanks to Blogger. More on that to come from me shortly.<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19551402-1114386977024857112?l=www.thetruthasiseeit.com' alt='' /></div>The Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04656276484414929349noreply@blogger.com0