Tomorrow marks D Day. That ghastly queen in England will not be at the commemoration.

Way to go France!

(I realize the French may or may not have been intending to snub the British people as well. I don't applaud that aspect. But I'll take small victories over the monarchy where I can get them.) The NY Times says  Liz is "fuming." I am delighted.

Her poor little "highness" snubbed? Not nearly enough.

What I don't understand is why people outside that country--or inside--agree to use words like royal or highness without the ironic distance of quotaion marks. 

The monarchy is a ridiculous and decrepit institution. There's no place for it at a celebration of one of the great historical triumphs of/for Democracy. (ie, not a triumph of/for a privileged, hereditary ruling class. Ugh. Disgusting.)

If Liz wants to attend as an individual, fine, but if she were invited, the institution comes with her. I am so repulsed by the sight of foreign leaders--particularly ours--bowing and deferring to this symbol of a thousand years of oppression.

Her Majesty. Please. She is not a majesty. She has earned nothing. That family should have been discharged to fend for itself a hundred years ago. Calling her that is a disgrace.

I prefer the sentiment Thomas Jefferson expressed in our Declaration, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . . " -- That was a direct rebuttal to the preposterous "Divine Right of Kings" and a direct contradiction of the concept that there exists a Magisterial personage such as The Queen.

Monarchies are relics of the Middle Ages--that wonderful period of human culture--and long before. Their existence in the twenty-first century is ridiculous. They are an abomination.

I understand why our leaders swallow their pride and adhere to the rituals of this Medieval anachronism. You can't make every interaction with the Brits into a fight about basic human equality. (That should be a given, but if the Brits insist in rubbing the world's nose in the idea of basic equality every time their country interacts with the world, you have to pick your battles.)

So you can't snub the institution every time, but I applaud every country and individual when they do stand up for what’s right and snub her. I get a great big smile every time I see another nick chiseled out of her royal armour.

Go French!

MAY 28, 2009 2:18PM

We temporarily interupt this blog for a much better post on another blog.

It's called What Sotomayor Actually Said in 2001 Lecture.

It's wonderful. If you've been frustrated at all by the coverage of the nomination, and/or the discussion around it, or if you've been troubled by that one quote bandied about everywhere, you'll be happy to read this.

It is so well put together. It is great work by the blogger J.E. Robertson, based on a great speach by Sonia Sotomayor. 

It reveals an incredibly wise woman who is about to join our top court. I feel better about our country already.

---

(And I nominate this post for Best Post of the Month--an imaginary title I just made up, but highly deserving.)

It's something to behold, huh?

Quite a change.

I thought it was interesting when NBC cut away to the White House for a moment during the inauguration to show the moving vans going at it while everyone was a few blocks away. It didn't occur to me that the same thing was quietly happening on the web.

Look at that "Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov" at the lower right.

It sure has.

Eight years ago, about now, a group of my friends were lamenting the president our peers had foisted upon us. We were all kind of whining about it, except one guy, Zack, who advanced a theory, not his own, that America always gets the president it deserves.

When we're in a greedy mood, we act greedily. When we're filled with hubris or arrogance or anger at the outside world, we respond in kind, and get what we ask for.

America was in a sober mood last year. We had been fooled recently, and would not be fooled again. Not for awhile, at least.

In both parties, we brushed aside foolish contenders and advanced wise and capable leaders. Three people--John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama--emerged as finalists, each of whom might have made a great president. But one among them was perfect for this moment: calm, rational, unwavering, but also hopeful and inspiring.

This morning, he gave a brief speech that embodied all that and more.No trying too hard or reaching for false profundity, he told us exactly what we needed to hear. And the "us" was not limited to the inhabitants of this country. That alone was refreshing. There are a few billion other people in the world. We do better when we notice.

I smiled, I cried, I looked to the sky and thanked God.

It's a tough time. They always say that, but this time it's true. We need a great president right now. We got the one we deserve.

woohoo! i just saw my first presidential ad of the year. it was for barack, on the news in denver.

(and being colorado, it had the irony of being followed immediately by an ad for The Tanner Gun show, famous for being the event where the Columbine killers purchased three of the four guns they used to kill all those kids. how nice. the commercial was appalling. lots of close-up shots of tables strewn with high-powered rifles as submachine guns, and then these displays of knives with curving twelve-inch blades (also very similar to the knives the Columbine killers carried into the attack, but did not use.)

well, it is colorado.

meanwhile . . .

my friend in LA said TV commercials have just ramped up in the last 24 hours there, mostly the caroline one for barack. i found it on youtube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVlnL1_xXJM

wow. i was not quite expecting that. they are not kidding around with the comparison to JFK. good call.

i always roll my eyes when people try to stretch to make those connections (eg, when bill clinton first ran, and endlessly milked the photo of him shaking hands with JFK when bill was a teen. big deal: bill wanted to be the next Kennedy. the connection felt manufactured to me.

but this time, caroline really endorsed barack at the right moment: after that sense of 1960 and 1968 had so clearly returned. months after even barack's rightwing enemies began to acknowledge it, and after the iowa and south caroline victories started to make the dream feel real.

it reminded me of what frank rich said about brokeback in his new york times column about a week after its release, when the film was the talk of the nation. i don't have the exact quote, but i believe it was something like: This film is having such an impact at this moment, because it is ratifying a movement, rather than leading it.

i thought he got that exactly right. there are pioneers, who prep the rock-hard soil, and that is really hard work, and vital. for gay rights that included the stonewall drag queens, and maybe the ACT Up people and all sorts of pioneers. in the media, it included The Real World and Ellen and Will and Grace. we are well past that stage, now. the ground had been ready, but someone or something had to come along and really take advantage of that. Brokeback was that moment.

i think in their own way, hillary and barack are kind of those people, too. people martin luther king and susan b anthony feel like their predecessors, who broke the ground and made today's road possible. and many others, of course. (also gloria steinem, and Betty Friedan on the women's side). these two today are poised to be ratifiers: the country is finally ready for a woman or a black as president--not necessarily eager, or asking for one, but ready, if the moment presents itself. a person of great strength had to come along and make it so.

i do believe that we have two people of great strength today, with very different talents, one of whom will make it so. we will finally have either a woman president, or an african american.

hmmmmmmm. i drifted astray there.

one idea that i was grasping for was that by luck or design, caroline got the timing of her announcement perfect.

if she had done it a month earlier, it would not have worked the same. the obama movement was already rising--very powerfully in some circles--but most of the country, which ignores politics until the moment is almost at hand--had not yet felt it themselves.

most people had not yet felt anything like 1960 or 1968, so if they heard caroline's commercial and saw those images a month ago, they would have felt she was trying to make that connection for them. it would have felt like a bit of a reach.

now i think so many people have felt it--or at least heard about it from people they know--that when she says it overtly, and the commercial shows the images of her dad . . . it ratifies a feeling they already had. it takes an existing hazy connection inside the viewer and transports them directly there: it is 1960 again, we had a leader the country rallied behind. this is how it feels to unite. this is how we can feel again. this is how we will feel, if we make this really happen.

i get tingly when i watch it. i've had my hopes dashed before, and i'm a little afraid to dream again. but i want to.

it was illuminating to sit in the obama precinct captains' meeting wednesday, too. not for exactly the reasons i expected.

i looked around a lot, and what really caught my eye, over and over, was a cluster of the national staffers, who were mostly standing up along railing. (there were 500-600 precinct captains in that meeting, btw, so it was not an intimate experience. they had driven from all over the state, some six hours or more away. those people must have gotten up around midnight to start their journey.)

so the meeting was held in the basketball court in the same complex with the arena, and we were packed into the bleachers. i picked a seat up at the very top, in the handicapped section, partly because there were actual chairs and my back was aching (i have two six-inch rods in my back and seven fused vertabrae), and partly to watch the participants. i was more interested in watching them than the candidate.

when barack came out, i looked over my right shoulder to see how the full-time staffers were reacting. they were pretty used to this stuff, and had been unfazed by anything throughout the morning, but when he came out on the court below us, those guys up top just glowed.

one guy, in particular, i was watching: the one who had recruited me first thing in the morning, six hous before. he had been very nice all day--and really freaking good at his job--but i'd never seen him smile. he had been pleasant, but intent. now, he was beaming. he turned to the guy beside him--one of the guys with a radio in his ear all day--and they exchanged the nicest smile. they were so proud.

is this what it felt like in '68?

bobby's bid didn't pan out, of course, for very sad reasons. it might not have anyway, even if he lived. his brother really excited the country in 1960, too--both were before my time, but i always pictured '68 being more powerful. both ended painfully, but JFK's legacy lives on, both in what he did and what he set up for LBJ to do.

this barack phenom may or may not pan out. he's got a big institutional power to unseat in the clintons. in a week or a month for next december, he might be yesterday's news.

but either way, it will have been exciting and illuminating just to experience it as it unfolded.

(i wrote this immediately after i got home wednesday, so the timing in it is two days off. and i was too damn tired to capitalize. hehehe):

i just got home from obamamania. quite a day. obama campaign to Denver today, and unexpected chaos ensued.

the campaign announced on Monday that he would come to Colorado at 10 a.m. Wednesday. They booked a 7,200-seat arena on the University of Denver campus and planned on filling about a third or half of it on a weekday morning with 36 hours notice. they thought 2 or 3 thousand would be great. fifteen thousand showed up.

it was nuts.
 
it's not that that was such an outlandish number of people, it was that no one was equipped to handle that. sporting events handle 50, 60 thousand or more all the time. but they have huge teams set up, and paid employees who handle the same thing every day, and standard processes they use over and over at the place, and facilities, and so on. t

his was planned in 36 hours, mostly using volunteers with little or no experience in this sort of stuff. even the 2 to 3 thousand they expected would have taxxed their ability to control them well. this mob, nobody had a clue how to get ahold of.

obama was set to arrive at 10 a.m., doors were opening at 8:30 and i got there at 7:30 to help set up. (my field organizer said don't come at 7, there would be nothing to do yet.) i expected early birds to start showing up around 8.

large numbers were lining up at 6 a.m., in the dark, temp about 9 degrees, about an hour before sunrise.

when i got there, at 7:30, thousands were massed around the entrance, and it was crazy out there. i could barely get in. security refused to let me in as a set-up worker. hundreds of people were pushing forward trying to use that. i said the name of noah, my area coordinator, and someone back there recognized it and said to let me in.

i was in about 30 seconds when a guy came around with clipboards asking for volunteers who were dressed warmly to go back out and do crowd control stuff. that sounded fun, or at least interesting. it took me about one second to volunteer.

people had all sorts of printed web-reservation reciepts, and VIP badges, and lots of other VIP connections to get in, and tons of people who didn't know they needed to bring a printout, and we were also signing up volunteers on the spot.

someone in the campaign made a great logistical decision: no way could they deal with the bottleneck of trying to figure all that stuff out at the entrance. the security people allowing people into the building had to go by one standard thing to stand in instead of a "ticket."

in the end, no matter who you are, or what you had, the only way you could get in that arena was with a big X on the back of your right hand from a dark highlighter.

a handful of us with highlighters roamed the crowd converting all the different entry papers and sob stories and volunteer offers into Xs. it worked really well. i spent three hours working the line, which spanned the length of much of the campus, shouting, "does everyone have an x! you must have an x to get in!"

it was fun.
 
i did all sorts of jobs--i would see one and just start doing it. had a blast.

how exhilarating to be a part of something like that. i knew pretty early on that i was going to lose my seat in the VIP area if i didn't turn in my highlighter and clipboard and go in. but big deal. i've met politicians. the thrill for me was outside, in the mass of confusion. you don't get mobs every day.
 
when barack spoke, i was out on the lacrosse field, with the people from the very tail end and lots of organizers. we had told the crowd barack could come out to speak to us afterward, but he came out first, and so did special guest caroline kennedy, and that was nice.

there was a precinct captains meeting afterward, and he came to that, too. he's really something.

---

i learned a lot. and there were a few odd moments. just because i happened to be there--and was willing to run to the end of the block to tell people--i got to make the announcement to huge numbers of people that they would not get in, but barack was going to meet with them outside. i parroted the phrase the campaign manager said to me, "the senator will address you/them." i started telling one chunk of crowd at a time--the line still stretched about two blocks--and they did seem that excited about it. and about the tenth group, a lady asked, with a little disgust, "what senator?" i was taken aback. "barack." the went nuts. then i started telling the other groups "barack will come out to address you," and i got the same excitement. that cracked me up.
 
i can't wait till Super Tuesday. it's cool that most of America gets to be a part of choosing the nominees again. we get our chance in Colorado that day. i've never lived in a state where i had a voice. exciting.

I tivo Charlie Rose every day. I don't always get to them right away. I use them as radio--while I cook breakfast, clean up, exercise . . .

The great joy of that show is the incredible breadth of ideas and perspectives you hear. I tend to get the most out of the various sorts of artists he has on the show, though those are people I can often hear elsewhere, just not in such depth. (Outside of Fresh Air, the other great source.)

But weeks like this are always special, when most of the world leaders are in NY for the UN assembly, and so many of them stop by his studio for a chat. (It kinda started midweek and will continue through much of next week, if he follows his past pattern.)

In general, politicians are the least interesting guests on his show, but he either culls out the few who are not full of hot air, or perhaps they're not windbags when they're not talking to a domestic audience. These people aren't running for anything here. They do have an agenda with the American public, of course, but most of the ones he has on are smart enough to know they're going to impress us a lot more if they leave the BS at home and just talk candidly. (Or am I just used to American politicians--have they not gotten so slick and full of shit everywhere else?)

It can also be a tough week, because you have to deal with a lot of accents--tougher if you're in the kitchen cooking and trying to listen with one ear and one brain hemisphere, and sometimes the ideas sound a little foreign . . . it's a little more work, but usually worth it.

Tonight, was pure pleasure. The President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, a woman I'd never heard of--OK, I didn't even know they had elected a woman, I'm embarassed to admit--was something of a revelation. What an incredibly intelligent person. And such a wise, thoughtful take on everything. She had been tortured by Pinochet's goons, and her father, a general, had been murdered by them, but she spoke about it without anger. She spoke of the horrible anger she'd had in the past, but it was clear from her demeanor that it really was gone.

I think she was most refreshing the way she talked about issues passionately, but with none of the us/them mentality we have in our politics now. In fact, she talked about her frustration reading our press, which she sees as still speaking in a Cold War vocabulary, about good guys and bad guys in her region. She sees those countries struggling to enact economic reforms that will build their economies in the long run, but also improve people's lives, and how difficult that balance is, and how everyone is looking for the right answers. Essentially, she says that there are a lot of well-meaning people trying different approaches down there, and for us to split them down the middle and slap half of them with the goodguy label and half badguy is ludicrous, yet we do it with barely a thought.

She had a lot to say. I can't convey more than a fraction of it, but I'm the richer for having been exposed to her. I can't wait for the rest of the week.

I've been loving this Boondocks TV series.  

Makes me kinda squeamish sometimes, though. If this were written by a white guy, it would have been cancelled after one episode, and any TV executive involved in greenlighting it fired in disgrace.

But it's freaking funny.

And . . . how do you say this without sounding REALLY white . . . ? I'm understanding better.

Thought I understood the race stuff pretty well. Not well enough, apparently.

So I'm loving the show, for a whole lotta reasons. But the Nigga Moment episode--officially titled "Grandad's Fight"--that one was just too much. Grandad gets beaten up by a mean old blind man, and humilated for it. Everyone involved is black, including the narrator, who tells us and grandad about twenty times that it's just a nigga moment--where two niggas find themselves in a situation where they find themselves driven to act stupid, and it always ends badly.

Halfway through I literally felt like I was going to throw up. And all i could think was: I don't care how black the writer is, it's still freaking racist.

And I sure felt racist chuckling at it. And it was hard not to, it was funny. But good lord. Man, did I feel dirty.

I turned it off, but didn't delete it from the tivo.

Came back about a month later and decided to finish. More nigga nigga nigga, dumb niggas, stupid niggas, Goooooooood!

But finally, the episode climaxes with gramps and the blind guy in a rematch that ends horribly, followed by a mini riot among the crowd gathered to watch. Riley--the angry (eight year old?) grandson who set up the whole disgusting fight and took bets and charged admission and then instigated the riot to get the hell out of there when it went sour--stands back, looks at the mostly white crowd acting like idiots, and says, ruefully, "niggas!"

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Wow. Nicely done. Almost sounds heavy handed describing it now, but it sure lured me in. And enlightened me, too. And not just about white people, but about us, too. And the whole idea of niggas. Or one crucial nigga idea, at least.

This is the first show in ages that makes me feel like a nerdy white guy, and/or a white-guilt kinda guy. Discomforting, because I thought I was way past all that, but I guess that means I wasn't.

And it's funny as hell.

(FYI, It's on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Sunday at 11, I read at one point, but I have no idea. That's what your tivo is for.)

This is kind of cool. Salon is celebrating its tenth and anniversary and every day the past week they have been highlighting their top stories from a single year.

I did most of my work for them in 1999 and 2000, and two of my stories made the list each year. The lists for 1999 & 2000.

From 1999, they picked two of my Columbine stories:

”I smell like the presence of Satan”
Is Littleton's evangelical subculture a solution to the youth alienation that played a role in the Columbine killings, or a reflection of it?
By Dave Cullen

Inside the Columbine High investigation
Everything you know about the Littleton killings is wrong. But the truth may be scarier than the myths.
By Dave Cullen

And in 2000 they featured, this two-part series on one of the last bastions of blatant discrimination toward gays in America. (I hate to call it a "gays in the military" story, even though it technically is, because that has phrase has like the mind-numbingly tired politico piece I specifically wanted to avoid):

Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t fall in love, Part I of II
A rare peek inside the lives of gay military officers, a world filled with staggering sacrifice, loneliness and glass ceilings.
By Dave Cullen

A heartbreaking decision, Part II
Gay officers must choose between personal happiness and the careers they've spent years building.
By Dave Cullen