Fitznseizures!

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 03:29:12 GMT

hello. this is not the person who usually writes this blog. my name is grandfather mouse and i'm 'borrowing' this blog.

my nephew, walter, suggested it. he's better at high-tech things than i am and he figured an 'abandoned' blog would be just the place for me. he might be right.

not sure if i belong in a blog named 'fitznseizures', but nobody else seems to be using it at the moment. i suppose i should introduce myself. as i said, my name is grandfather mouse. well, that's what everyone calls me anyway, even my nieces and nephews. i've been grandfather mouse for so long it seems like the only name i have these days. and it suits me, i suppose.

i'm a bit more literate than your average mouse, i suppose. it comes from growing up in a university library. i liked to read, learned to as a very young mouse and never lost the habit. but unlike most of my fellow mice, i've never been terribly unfriendly toward humans. i don't always understand them, but i've always had a sneaking fondness for them. i've been observing human behavior most of my life and, though i prefer my own kind because they make more sense, i've grown quite fond of a small group of humans over the years. they don't necessarily know each other, i just noticed them at random and took an interest.

There are a few of these humans that i've corresponded with over the years and, though they can't write me back, it's been an enjoyable relationship for me. i don't think my extended family quite understands my preoccupation with human beings, though my great-nephew walter, seems comfortable with the idea. he's unusual, walter is. for one thing, he likes music. a lot of mice like music, but walter wants to make music. he would like to dance, but mice aren't built for dancing. our back legs are just not right for the job. So he found this miniature violin somewhere, with real strings and a bow and has been sawing away at it for years. the sound, regretably, never gets any better, but walter doesn't seem to care.

his mother cares, but she has resigned herself to a son who isn't quite 'normal' as mice go. walter has always had unusual ideas, for a mouse, which is why he and i get along so well. he's always been my favorite, but don't tell the rest of the family that. they'd be hurt.

walter, who is actually my great-great-great-great-great nephew, thought maybe i'd enjoy having a blog. i wasn't sure what a blog was until walter explained them. i read a few online and it got me interested, so he started looking for abandoned blogs that still had 'time' on them. that's how he found this one. nobody's written anything in it for months and months, so he thought they might not notice if i did.

i should explain walter, i suppose. he's a youngster yet. still lives with his mother, in fact. that's unusual, since he's almost two now, which is kind of old for a young mouse to still be living with his mother. he should have taken his first trip over a year ago, but he is the last baby his mother will ever have and she's a bit clingy. walter is a good son and doesn't want to upset her, but he's chafing at the bit to get out and about more.

adult mice tend to move around a lot. in fact, some of us are like human gypsies. we like to travel. i'm like that. i enjoy moving around the country, visiting relatives and just seeing things. walter hasn't done much travelling yet, but i'm working on his mother to let him go with me on a few short jaunts. i'm thinking a trip to chicago first, since he lives in libertyville, illinois. and then, maybe, a train trip to washington dc. but whether or not i can convince his mother that her youngest, her baby, should go that far away is doubtful.

i really have to try to get her to see reason. i think a quick trip to the windy city and then a longer trip to the capitol would be just the ticket. walter wants to go, so if i can convince honoria to allow it, that's the plan.

mice, i should explain, tend to travel by train quite a bit, though i've taken planes a time or two as well, and one memorable boat trip to alaska once. trains are remarkably easy to hitch rides on unseen. easier than busses and cabs, though i've got something of a knack for slipping onto those conveyances unseen also. i've been all over the north american continent and the south american continent as well. someday, i'm going to see europe. meanwhile, i should get walter properly launched.

well, my legs are getting tired of roaming all over this keyboard and the human who owns this blog is snoring rather loudly. she has a lot of books, so i think i'll enjoy watching her, but the snoring isn't quite my cup of tea, so i'll quit for now and post again later, when i know if walter can go to chicago with me.

Why Isn't Washington D.C. A Fertilizer-Free Zone?

Wed, 25 May 2005 23:47:28 GMT

O.k. this one is from the Washington Post, via AMERICAblog:

The Washington Post today told us that the Secretary of Defense okayed shooting down the Cessna that was flying over DC a couple weeks ago. Apparently, the pilots were seconds away from shooting down the plane -- which was flying over D.C. neighborhoods -- which means the missiles and the plane would have fallen over D.C. neighborhoods -- and the mayor of DC didn't even know this was happening.

So, it appears the newest threat we face in DC isn't terrorists. It's stupid pilots who give Rummy's guys a chance to test out their missiles over DC. If the missiles miss, where do they end up? And, if the plane is hit, where does the debris go? How far is the debris field?

I wonder if the knuckleheads at the Pentagon have thought this through. Probably not. Residents of DC don't matter:

"The authority to authorize a shoot down of a civilian aircraft is delegated to a very, very small number of senior civilian and military officials," Swiergosz said. "It is well rehearsed. There is nothing ad hoc about it. . . . At the end of the day, we are going to safeguard the capital, and they are not going to get to their target."

Um, no, "they" (whoever they are) won't get "their target" because it will most likely be some nitwit lost pilot who doesn't have a target...but they will potentially wipe out a DC neighborhood. Hmmm. I feel safe now.

Also, I saw the idiot pilot yesterday on the Today Show. What a moron. He wants his pilot's license back. No. He's too stupid. He scared the crap out of a lot of people and could have caused a lot more death and destruction.

O.k., so think this one through, people. The Only Preznit We Have was out riding his bike. Had NO idea what was happening. His "second in command," Puppetmaster Cheney, was hurriedly evacuated, as were many others in the administration.

And Rumsfeld gave the shoot-to-kill order.

Who's running the country? And why is it ALWAYS someone we DIDN'T elect?

Let's go one better. Washington D.C. is a "no fly zone". Planes can't fly over it without being shot down like ducks in season. This is because we were attacked by big scary guys in planes once and so planes are, obviously, the enemy. Because they were used to hurt us once before.

Does that mean that Washington D.C. is a "no fertilizer zone"? Because, if I recall correctly, the explosives used in the first World Trade Center bombing years ago were made from fertilizer.

And then there's guns. Lots and lots of guns. Scary things, guns. Guns have been used in our nation's capital before. They killed Kennedy with one. They shot Reagan with another. President Ford was threatened by at least one insane woman with a gun. Possibly two.

So is Washington D.C. a "no gun zone"? And if not, WHY not? After all, we want to be safe, don't we? I mean, Safety Uber Alles, right?

Obviously, if nothing else, Washington D.C. is NOT a "fertilizer free zone" because if you took the shit out of the Capital, the place would cease to exist.

Putting It In Perspective

Tue, 17 May 2005 03:08:36 GMT

I think CJR Daily, which is part of the Columbia Journalism Review, has put some of the brouhaha over the Newsweek Qur'an item in real perspective.

Not that I expect it to run on Fox News anytime soon.

There are, however, a few details that should be considered by the armada of self-righteous media critics so readily offering up unqualified condemnations of the magazine. First off, Newsweek couldn't have expected its story to stir up so much Muslim anger, given that details about Guantanamo interrogators allegedly defacing the Koran have been periodically published for more than a year now. A Nexis search reveals multiple mentions of similar allegations, including a March 14, 2004 report in the London Observer that "copies of the Koran would be trampled on by soldiers and, on one occasion, thrown into a toilet bucket"; an August 5, 2004 report in the London Independent that "guards allegedly threw prisoners' Korans into toilets;" and January 2005 reports in the Denver Post and Hartford Courant that some prisoners "were forced to watch copies of the Koran being flushed down toilets." Given that none of these previous reports sparked protest, much less riots, it's unrealistic to expect the magazine's editors to have seen the protests coming -- after all, they thought the detail was insignificant enough to be confined to one sentence in a short report tucked away in the front of the magazine. (True, the Newsweek piece claimed the allegations about disrespecting the Koran came from a government report, while previous pieces relied on eyewitness accounts. But the magazine can be forgiven for not expecting protestors to parse the difference.)

In fact, there's a good chance that Newsweek's piece was cited as an excuse for rioting that would have occurred regardless. In an excellent post on the subject that also touches on the issues raised in the previous paragraph, Kevin Drum points out that "The Taliban stages a resurgence every spring [and] anti-Americanism has been on the rise for some time ... The Newsweek story is clearly just a pretext, and another story would have done just as well given their obvious animosity toward America." It's perhaps not quite that straightforward, but the Taliban's history does suggest that the rioting would have occurred around this time with or without Newsweek. And the fact that no protests followed previous reports on the topic supports that notion. Not that either evidence or logic will stop bias warriors from citing the Newsweek slip-up as one more piece of evidence that the major media tilts rabidly left. Be patient with us, and we'll explain the reasoning of conspiracy theorists, as we understand it:

I strongly recommend reading the entire article.

A Small Recommendation

Sun, 15 May 2005 01:25:20 GMT

I have family and friends who laugh at me for wanting a blog. They've read blogs, they tell me, and it's all just silliness or partisan nonsense. They prefer REAL news and trustworthy reportage.

And I ask, plaintively, "Where on Earth do you intend to find that?"

There has been a great deal of naval-gazing done by bloggers recently on What Bloggers Are and Aren't as opposed to What Journalists Are and Aren't. I've been both. And while I'd love to just give you my deathless thoughts on the matter, after a few months of this long self-absorbtion by the "blogverse", one of my favorite blogs took up the subject and did a better job of explaining it than I'll ever do.

So my recommendation? Go to Emphasis Added and read this essay, please.

I would like to point out the following few 'graphs, however, for those of you who don't like to read long essays by people you may not know, because I think they say something we need to hear before we become "consumers" of a very bad product -- namely news as currently perpetrated by our mainstream media.

Whereas the mid-20^th century media organs may have been arrogant and monopolistic, they were at least genuinely authoritative. They had standards, they spoke for someone, and they cared about getting basic facts right and having a coherent point of view. Today’s media is peddling the remnants of its authority to add the patina of respectability to transparently self-serving propaganda. They still have the arrogance, the presumption of importance attached to their views, but the craft has fallen away and the ethics are a joke.

It’s the gap between what the media should be and what it actually is that has brought about the blogger revolution. The reasons are simple. Media outlets are, and always have been, creatures of commerce. Back in the old monopoly days when the entry costs were high and not everyone could start a newspaper or a TV network, there was plenty of money to be made and journalists could afford their ethics. The lack of competition paradoxically meant that those few actors in the market were going after the entire audience, not just some segment of it. The bias was toward the mainstream. It didn’t pay for networks to box themselves in catering to narrow ideological constituencies or exposing themselves to ridicule with lax standards. Publishers got behind the whole earnest code of conduct we associate with journalists because it helped give their product credibility in the market.

As new technologies and new business models changed the playing field, the competition became more intense. Media outlets compromised in all kinds of ways to gain or retain their audience. They were no longer in a position to hold to lofty standards if the readers demanded sensationalism and bias. Increased competition led to segmentation, where media outlets sought the intense loyalty of narrow market groups instead of a mass audience. These narrow groups don’t want to be challenged, and they don’t care about objectivity. Once it became clear that a bad product would sell as well or better than a good one, standards began a race to the bottom.

But, as some friends and notorious family members would say, what's the problem? A free market will do what it will, even allow a "race to the bottom" if it seems warrented. Why the fuss?

The following makes as good a case as I ever could:

If this were only about selling socks and mattresses, it wouldn’t make any difference. But the press plays an important social role in a democracy. For citizens to make meaningful decisions about self-government, they need to be informed. Everyone needs to have the same basic set of facts in front of them so they can evaluate competing arguments and visions on an apples-to-apples basis. Without an objective and authoritative media to provide this master narrative, discourse dissolves into a bunch of silo’d realities where every separate media audience has their own narrow view of the world, reinforced by a press that tells them only what they want to hear. That’s a recipe for the disintegration of civil society – a path many think we’re already pretty far along.

So we have this tension between a legitimately important institution on one hand and the usual capitalist imperative to maximize profits on the other. And the fact is, there is no necessary connection between good journalism and the things a media outlet needs to do to make money. It’s not even really a question. Private companies are responsible to their shareholders, not the public. Journalists can get degrees from graduate schools, form trade organizations, and talk till they’re blue in the face about their profession and their importance, but at the end of the day, the ones who take a corporate paycheck are employees of giant institutions whose actual responsibility to serve the public interest simply doesn’t exist.

The thing that worries me is that the vast majority of people don't realize, or understand what is really at stake in this situation. The American Revolution, that thing we're all so proud of, came about because of a form of "citizen blogger". Pamphlets and broadsides helped spread the message of independence to the general population. Thomas Pain's Common Sense helped make a persuasive argument in favor of something many at the time were calling simple treason. This country might not have been what it became if it weren't for people taking up their pens and making a case for what they believed.

There were, of course, legitimate press outlets back then (Benjamin Franklin, for instance, owned one of them). And many helped the cause of independence. But privately published pamphlets, leaflets and other printed materials spread the message even farther than the professionally created newspapers did.

I wonder if the "professional media" of that day and age felt as threatened by pamphleteers and other writers as the mainstream media seems to be by bloggers?

I think, honestly, that eventually blogs, like this one, humble and pathetic though it may be, could well be subsumed by whatever the "mainstream media" turns into in the years to come. I think "professional bloggers" will eventually emerge, with some professional code of ethics and/or standards, and a scale of payment somewhere just below a fry cook at McDonald's (history laughs at those who think writers are all weathy middle-class types).

But for now, I'll take what I can find online as an alternative to what passes for journalism these days. It's not perfect, but it's better than just being lied to and expected to roll over and ask for more.

With apologies to Arlo Guthrie...

Fri, 13 May 2005 22:26:34 GMT

Arlo Guthrie once wrote a song criticizing Nixon, which had the chorus, "Well, if you didn't know about that one, then what else don't you know?"

The news about The Only President We Have's historic bike ride while the Capital was being evacuated has taken on some new twists.

From today's War Room in Salon:

More on Bush's bike ride

It took the White House press corps a whole day, but members at least started asking questions about why officials waited 47 minutes, and until President Bush had completed his Maryland bike ride, to inform him Wednesday that all hell had broken loose in Washington, D.C., when an errant aircraft had penetrated the city's strict, post-9/11 no-fly zone and seemed to be zeroing in on the White House. In all, 30,000 people were evacuated, including the vice president, first lady and Supreme Court justices. But Secret Servicemen who were bicycling with Bush, and who were made aware of the unfolding situation, chose not to interrupt his exercise routine.

As War Room noted yesterday, the New York Times was among the few major news outlets that initially, and prominently, highlighted the White House's bizarre don't tell-don't tell policy regarding potential terrorist attacks on the nation's Capitol. Today a few more outlets pick up the theme, although in the Beltway's typical subdued, polite way. (As usual, ABC's The Note, the daily tip sheet for D.C. media elites, comes to Bush's defense today; it fails to link to a single Bush-on-his-bike article, signaling to the media's cozy club that it's not a story worth pursuing or chattering about.)

The Palm Beach Post notes, "The alarm was going off at his house. His wife and a close family friend were home at the time. The neighborhood was evacuated. Fighter planes were scrambled to intercept an aerial threat.

"But President Bush, biking in Maryland, was not told about the incident that caused the evacuation of the White House, the Capitol and other government buildings Wednesday until long after it was over."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, hanging onto the phrase "protocols" like a life raft (as in 'proper protocols were followed') still insists, "The president was never considered to be in any danger, and protocols that were put in place after Sept. 11 were followed," he said.

That explanation drew some bi-partisan head scratches. Former Bush security official Richard Falkenrath, a one-time Homeland Security advisor, told the Post, "My expectation is... [Bush] would have wanted to be told. It's a very big deal. This is very deep penetration of the airspace. If it was possible to tell him, I'd certainly think the system would want to tell him."

And Leon Panetta, chief of staff to president Clinton, said there is no reason to leave a president out of the loop, no matter how short-lived the situation. "I don't think there is a legitimate excuse for not telling the president of the United States about that kind of potential emergency," he said. "It was serious that it happened and it could have been even more serious…. That is something that just simply cannot happen again."

As for the inescapable feeling of deja vu this tale brings, the Hearst News Service politely notes, "The episode recalled a controversial delay Sept. 11, 2001, when Bush remained in a Florida elementary-school classroom for seven minutes after being told by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card that a second airliner had crashed into the World Trade Center."

-- Eric Boehlert

[11:44 EDT, May 13, 2005]

D.C. cops were in the dark about plane threat

Despite all the self-congratulatory talk among security officials about how all the proper responses were followed Wednesday after the tense airplane scare over the skies of the White House, it turns out that Washington, D.C., police failed to get word that an errant aircraft that had penetrated D.C.'s strict no-fly zone was minutes away from being shot down over city streets.

The Washington Post has the embarrassing details:

"On a day when federal agencies were keeping track, second by second, of a potential attack on the capital, however, the city was out of the loop.

"D.C. police officials had no idea that fighter jets and helicopters were being deployed over Washington to intercept an errant plane on Wednesday, even though they had a sergeant in the nation's homeland security command center and the ability to monitor what was taking place at their own headquarters. At police headquarters, someone had disconnected a phone line that would have provided emergency communications from the Federal Aviation Administration, the officials said.

"It was not until he heard fighter jets screaming past his office that D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey had an inkling of the events that had been consuming federal officials for a half-hour."

-- Eric Boehlert

The questions this raises about the basic, core competency of the people running our government is astounding. I have rock-hard conservative Republican relatives who swear that the country is MUCH safer in the hands of the current administration than it ever has been. It honestly boggles the mind.

And You Thought “Freedom Fries” Were Silly…

Mon, 02 May 2005 00:22:55 GMT

It seems lawmakers in Texas are even weirder than the national variety. From Salon:

May 1, 2005 | AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Willie Nelson's name is off the road again.

A state legislator had proposed naming a 49-mile stretch of Texas Highway 130 being built around Austin in honor of the Texas country music singer.

But two Republican senators, Steve Odgen of Bryan and Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio, said they didn't want Nelson's name on the road that crosses their districts, citing the musician's fondness for drinking and smoking, and active campaigning for Democratic candidates.

"It's frustrating, and sad in a way, but at this point, there is no reason to make this an unpleasant experience for anyone, especially Willie, so I'll take no further action on the bill,'' said state Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, an Austin Democrat and the bill's author.

Barrientos said he wanted to honor Nelson "for so much good music and so many good works.''

What do you want to bet that the main reason for opposing the honor wasn’t the “drinking and smoking”?

"Shut Up!" Said The Government...

Sat, 30 Apr 2005 17:31:57 GMT

O.k., I've had computer problems, which are now all better. But I haven't been blogging for a long time now (Two weeks! Yikes!). I've been collecting a few things and I should get to them. I might even do that. But first, something I tripped over today on a blog called Light Up The Darkness:

Two teachers arrested at a 2004 campaign rally for President Bush and strip-searched at a county jail have filed a lawsuit alleging law officers conspired to violate their constitutional rights.

Alice McCabe and Christine Nelson, both in their 50s, were among five protesters arrested at the Sept. 3 rally. The pair were handcuffed, taken to the county jail, strip-searched and charged with criminal trespass. The charges were dropped months later.

"I believe the federal government behaved very badly in this situation," said David O'Brien, the women's attorney.

And what exactly were the circumstances surrounding the arrest? According to the AP article:

A Secret Service agent allegedly told McCabe, who was on a sidewalk near the rally, that she was on private property and would have to move. When they moved to a parking area, the agent approached again and repeated the order.

After asking why, McCabe was arrested by a state trooper. Nelson was arrested later by another trooper, according to the lawsuit.

The arrests were ridiculous. The lawsuit is understandable. But what I think people are missing is the point.

Look again at the second paragraph (emphasis mine), because it bears repeating:

Alice McCabe and Christine Nelson, both in their 50s, were among five protesters arrested at the Sept. 3 rally. The pair were handcuffed, taken to the county jail, strip-searched and charged with criminal trespass. The charges were dropped months later.

It wold be interesting if someone with Nexis access could go and check on the number of "protester arrests" that ended with this same phrase. I know I've seen it before. Many times. Many, many times over the past four years.

Someone is saying something the administration doesn't want said. An arrest is made. Is it a valid arrest? No, of course not. Do the people making the arrests know this? I would guess that they do, in all likelihood. And then, either the court throws out the charges or they're mysteriously "dropped", but months later, long after any effective protesting could be done.

If you can't stop them legally, just stop them illegally. It still stops them. And nobody comes back at you and says, "stop doing this".

A small community I used to cover for a local newspaper had a less-than-unique way of augmenting it's scanty revenues. It was a well-known speed trap. It's police force spent nearly all it's time stopping cars for speeding violations.

The problem was, too many people knew it was a speed trap and carefully drove at or under the speed limit while in this particular village. Revenues were dropping like stones.

But arrests weren't. The local police continued to pull drivers over left and right and slap tickets on them. Most of these drivers contested the tickets (which were laregely unwarrented) and judges began listening. In fact, in one week, the village brought so many traffic violaters to court that one judge called them all up in a bunch and summarily dismissed all their charges, then warned the village that action could be brought against them if the egregrious ticketing continued.

The following year, there was a housing boom in the village and the police began easing off local motorists.

I don't think a housing boom is going to help those protesting the Bush government.

When Good Words Go Bad

Wed, 13 Apr 2005 00:45:52 GMT

Somehow, the stern, scolding voice of Julie Andrews, from The Princess Diaries, resounds in my head, "Manners matter!"

Why that should be stuck in my head today mystifies me a bit, though it probably shouldn't. Because I come before you not to discuss ettiquette, but semantics and the damage done.

Semantics matter.

I went to The Carpetbagger today and found out that the Republicans are, once again, trying to change their terminology, this time attempting to change the historical record as well. (The following is just an excerpt. You might want to read the whole piece.)

In 2003, Republican senators, specifically Trent Lott, came up with the approach. On May 7, 2003, the Washington Times reported, “The tactic would be so drastic in the usually congenial Senate that Republicans refer to it as their ‘nuclear option.’” A few days later, the LA Times reported, “Republicans have been discussing what they have referred to as the ‘nuclear option.’” A few days after that, Bill Frist’s home town paper, The Tennessean, noted that GOP senators have a “tactic they call their ‘nuclear option.’”

Notice the choice of words here; Republicans came up with the term and used it with reporters. It wasn’t Dems or GOP critics, but the tactic’s proponents who embraced what they called the “nuclear option.”

Then they changed their minds — and insisted reporters play along.

Just perusing the news from the last couple of weeks shows repeated examples of outlets misidentifying the “nuclear option’s” origins. The AP, NPR, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the LA Times’ Ron Brownstein (twice) have all framed the phrase exactly how the Republicans have asked.

[Schiavo’s] death may also intensify conservatives’ demands that Senate Republicans rewrite the chamber’s rules to eliminate the Democratic filibusters that have blocked confirmation of some of Bush’s federal judicial nominees. Critics call that the “nuclear option.”

But that’s not quite right. Everyone called it the “nuclear option” until Republican pollsters encouraged them to start using a phrase that sounded less apocalyptic. Since then, Republicans have toyed with the “constitutional option,” the “Byrd option,” “filibuster reform,” and even, according to CQ, the “Majority Rules Option.”

It seems that The Carpetbagger has no problem with what they call their option, he or she just wishes they'd stop making the press toe the line every time they change the terms of the debate.

I'm a little less sanguine about the "name change", personally. But I've always believed that the words we use are far more important than most people realize. Maybe it's the writer in me. Or maybe it's that I've seen the damage words can do.

I sometimes feel like the only person in the world for whom the phrase "politically correct" feels like a slap in the face. But it always has.

It's not a real phrase, to begin with. Given that politics in America spans a vast range of outlook and opinion, there can be no single "correct" version of anything "political". So "political" in this sense is used in it's alternate meaning of "cautious in consideration of the feelings and opinions of those around you". Somehow this is a negative quality. To be considerate of those around you is, somehow, seen, to be weak-minded and cowardly. And "correct" is even more perjorative in this phrase. Instead of meaning "true," "proper" or even "desired", it means "overly sanitized and less-than-honest".

When something is labled "politically correct," at worst it means you have been labled a cowardly liar. At best, you're considered overly cautious and uneccesarily polite.

This is obnoxious enough in and of itself, in the way it pretzles the language used. But the specific instances of what is labled "politically correct" are what bother me so much.

It's "politically correct" to support affirmative action. It's "politically correct" to denounce hate speech in public. It's "politically correct" to advocate for the rights of immigrants, minority religions, women, animals, equal rights and don't get me started on the ACLU (exactly why is it offensive to carry the card of an organization committed to defending the Bill of Rights?).

In other words, when you do anything considerate of others beyond your own social group, you are labled as weak-minded and wrong. To care about and actively lobby for the welfare of those less fortunate is now considered a social faux pas, not because it IS wrong, but because the Right has managed to hijack the language and make it SEEM wrong.

And we let it happen.

Back in the 80's, when the words were first coined, we laughed at them. "How silly," we assured each other. "Let them play," we said, "it's only words and can't hurt us."

But we were wrong, weren't we? To defend anything beyond God, guns and gumption these days is to be Politically Correct and that is a Bad Thing. Much better to be rude and wrong, so long as you're being "honest", isn't it?

So is it important that DeLay and company are trying to change the "talking points" away from "the nuclear option" to something more palatable?

Yes, it is. And it's time we said so. Before we're hijacked once again.

A Cautionary Tale...Of Sorts

Mon, 11 Apr 2005 02:28:31 GMT

His voice struck me as scary.

It was my job, listening to this man. I never met him. He never, thank God, met me. But night after night, I listened to him. His voice was calm, his tone was even. And he left me slightly nauseous and afraid, consistently.

I worked for a small, weekly newspaper. My first job at this paper, in fact, for quite awhile, my only job, was to transcribe the answering machine that took calls from our readers that would be published in that weeks Sound Off! column. We went through, maybe five or six 90-minute tapes per week. We had an avid readership and a staggering amount of repeat callers to our column. He was one of the more repetitious of our callers.

I worked at night, usually alone in the newsroom. And he was almost always one of the first three or four callers on every tape, leaving a minimum of approximately six calls per day. All pretty much the same. Over the course of, I would guess, two years, I got to know quite a bit about this man, or at least quite a bit that he claimed about himself.

He said he worked in the juvenile justice system, and he used to drive an armored truck before that. He was divorced, the father of three, if I recall correctly. He lived somewhere in the same city where my paper was located, in a private home. He was vehemently anti-abortion.

I tended to give nicknames to some of my callers, based on their repetitive riffs, like the Logo Lady, who called in eight or nine times a night to decry the presence of television station logos in the lower right-hand corner of her tv screen. But this man never received a nickname. He scared me too badly.

I did speak to my editor about him, more than once. But my editor pointed out that my job was not to pass judgment on the callers, just to transcribe their calls, word for word. He would decide on what was published. And he generally came down in favor of the callers.

In most cases, this didn’t bother me, but in the case of this particular caller, it bothered me more than a little. I felt that publishing his rants merely encouraged him in his insanity. And I felt that there was no real way my editor could understand my fear.

The words themselves were unsettling enough, but it was the calm, implacable tone, the voice my editor never heard, that frightened me so much. This man was not sane. It was something you could tell from his voice, I think, more than anything else. But the only thing my editor ever saw was the transcription of his calls, he never listened to the tapes themselves, and each tape was erased and reused, so there was never any record to refer back to.

In the beginning, the caller started out relatively mildly, as most do, objecting to abortion on moral and theological grounds. The fact that he called in over and over to make this argument said little about him, really. Because calls were published without attribution, most of our callers with an agenda called in over and over, so that their words would be published in various permutations, over and over, making it seem as if many people were calling about the same thing. These days we would call it Astroturfing, but back then it didn’t have a name. It was merely annoying.

He began to personalize things fairly early on, mentioning a laundry list of “abortion doctors” across the nation that were being targeted by various anti-abortion groups. This was during the early days of violent, even deadly attacks on physicians who provided abortion services, and this man was very much in favor of this practice. He began carefully justifying the murder of physicians in order to “save the unborn”. He did this in call after call after call. Night after night. Week after week.

By this time, at least a year had gone by and I noticed something new creeping into his calls. More personal information was being shared. The business about being a divorced father, concerned with what his children would think of him, hoping they’d “understand” his views “some day”. His former career as a security guard on an armored truck. The fact that he owned guns, a lot of guns.

And then the insistence that he had a large amount of money, stolen from one of his trucks during his last days with the company. His truck made bank deliveries and he described this robbery as being almost sinfully easy. He claimed he hadn’t spent the money. It wasn’t meant to make him rich. It was meant to further the cause.

That’s when he got really scary. He talked about his guns, and how he’d secreted them in large caches, buried in his backyard, ready for The Day and how, come The Day, he hoped his children would understand, because he wasn’t sure he’d be allowed or able to explain his actions to them.

And then he began actively recruiting those who might feel the way he did. It was only a matter of a few weeks before he began inviting people to borrow his guns to kill “abortion doctors”, finally even offering to pay them to do so. How they were to reach him was never discussed. He seemed to feel they’d find him through osmosis, I suppose.

By this time I almost wasn’t typing him anymore. I typed in a few of his milder comments each day, but he flat scared me too badly to type every call he made. I skipped over most of his calls, his rants. He was the only caller I ever did this to, and I still don’t think I was entirely wrong.

One day, in frustration, he called the paper and talked to my editor. Without actually identifying himself, he complained that his calls weren’t being published anymore and wanted to know why he was being censored. My editor, naturally, brought the complaint to me. I swore he wasn’t being censored, that I was typing up every single call. And I had his milder calls to point to. My editor didn’t believe me, but contented himself with reminding me that it wasn’t my job to censor the callers, just to type them.

Despite the fact that I knew my editor was right, somehow I still couldn’t bring myself to do this. If anything, he was more frightening than ever, with his soft, implacable tone. By this time, he was calling up to a dozen times a night. But I did transcribe more of his calls, even a few of the worst ones. I noticed that the worst ones weren’t being published, which made me feel a lot better about my editor and a bit foolish about my own fears. I resolved to make myself type all of his calls, no matter how uneasy it made me. And I did. For awhile.

Because one day, he stopped calling. No slow tapering off, he just stopped.

It had been my fervent hope that, if he weren’t being published, he’d stop calling. But that never seemed to happen. Published or not, he called every day. Until, suddenly, he simply wasn’t there. His voice no longer sent chills down my spine on a near-hourly basis. I wasn’t sure why he’d stopped, I was just grateful not to have to listen to him anymore.

About three days after this, I was leafing through the daily paper we were associated with when I came across an article that froze my blood cold. A man had been arrested because he’d attempted to solicit an undercover policeman to kill someone. In the course of the investigation, the robbery of an armored truck on which he had once worked was discovered and he was charged with the robbery. After interrogating him, officers went to his home and found most of the money from the truck robbery along with a cache of literally dozens of weapons buried in his backyard.

He had been working at the local juvenile detention facility, but had been let go some months prior to his arrest. He was the divorced father of three.

He was also quite possibly psychotic, though the article never said so.

Everything he’d said about himself was true, including that he was ready, willing and able to hire someone to kill a physician. Because he felt it was the right thing to do. After all, life was sacred and must be protected at all costs.

He was on the side of the angels.

We ignore people like this at our own peril. We turn a blind eye, secure that their excesses will never happen, that somehow reason will prevail and we won’t have to actually do anything about it. It’ll all just go away.

But if this man is any example, it won’t. And his target of choice was doctors, still a relatively popular profession with most people, unlike, say, lawyers or judges.

So when members of Congress or the Senate start talking about abolishing the separation of powers, neutering the judiciary branch and vesting sole authority in the executive branch, don’t be so sure it can’t happen here.

And when someone suggests, mockingly of course, that killing a few judges wouldn’t be so bad…be afraid.

Because they believe they’re on the side of the angels as well, don’t they?

Every Time I Hit Bottom, Somebody Throws Me A Shovel

Sun, 10 Apr 2005 04:30:10 GMT

I knew it was bad, but reading the whole thing, it seems it's much worse than I thought.

From (as per usual) Atrios' Eschaton come the following two links. The first is to a Washington Post article about the conference I mentioned earlier, but with far more details than I had earlier, far more frightening and nauseating details, only a few of which I'll post here.

Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."

Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.

The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence. But then, these are scary times for the judiciary. An anti-judge furor may help confirm President Bush's judicial nominees, but it also has the potential to turn ugly.

In case you think this is just a few wingnuts run amok, check out the guest list:

The conference was organized during the height of the Schiavo controversy by a new group, the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration. This was no collection of fringe characters. The two-day program listed two House members; aides to two senators; representatives from the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America; conservative activists Alan Keyes and Morton C. Blackwell; the lawyer for Terri Schiavo's parents; Alabama's "Ten Commandments" judge, Roy Moore; and DeLay, who canceled to attend the pope's funeral.

Lucky pope.

The second link, again from Atrios, is for a blog called Cold Fury, where Arthur Silber points out the terrifyingly obvious:

No one has any excuse at this point for not understanding what these people want: the ideas offered by Schlafly and Farris, for example—gutting the courts’ ability to review all those cases which relate in any way to the separation of church and state, “abolishing the concept of binding judicial precedents” and the like—would fundamentally alter, and destroy, the nature of the United States as a political entity. And the notion that Americans “as a people” must “acknowledge that God exists” states the essence of theocratic governance as plainly as any Islamic fundamentalist could wish.

And later in the piece, Silber makes the following common-sense observation:

Remember the pattern from history: first, introduce the idea tentatively, with perhaps only one person in public life broaching it; second, other public figures condemn the idea, while it simultaneously becomes more common as part of the national conversation; third, another faux “outrage” is orchestrated and public emotion deliberately stoked once more—and people begin to wonder, “Remember that idea we thought was crazy? Maybe it wasn’t so crazy after all…”; fourth, people begin to think, “Well, we don’t want to do it, but if they refuse to do the right thing…” (in fact, we’ve already seen this one with regard to freedom of the press, offered by a very prominent warblogger—so perhaps we’re farther down this road than even I had thought); and finally, a sufficient number of people “reluctantly” conclude that the original idea isn’t only not crazy—it’s the least those bastards deserve.

And then we’ve arrived in hell.

Indeed.

Maybe They Should Just Cut A Slit In The Mattress...

Sat, 09 Apr 2005 21:10:59 GMT

Such a FUN blogging day. Too many things to pass along. But this one, garnered from (as usual) Atrios' Eschaton site, by way of AmericaBlog, and originally from the Toledo Blade, is just a priceless gem!

I've posted quite a bit of the Toledo Blade's article here, but to be honest...there's a lot more. It's a long, in-depth article. I would suggest you hit the links and read more.

Since 1998, Ohio has invested millions of dollars in the unregulated world of rare coins, buying nickels, dimes, and pennies.

Controlling the money for the state? Prominent local Republican and coin dealer Tom Noe, whose firm made more than $1 million off the deal last year alone.
The agreement to invest the money in rare coins is rare itself: The Blade could find no other instance of a state government investing in a rare coin fund. Neither the state nor Mr. Noe could provide one.
"I don't think I'd be excited to invest in rare coins," Vermont Treasurer Mike Ablowich said. "It's a little unusual."
The Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation has continued to be the sole investor in Mr. Noe's Capital Coin funds despite strong concerns raised by an auditor with the bureau about possible conflicts of interest and whether the state's millions were adequately protected.
And the state has maintained its stake in Capital Coin despite documented problems:

Two coins worth roughly $300,000 were lost in the mail in 2003.

The firm has written off $850,000 in debt over the last three years to cover a failed business relationship.

Mr. Noe has loaned some of the state's money to a local real estate business that buys and sells central-city homes. A state auditor could not find documents to prove if the loans were sufficiently covered by the value of real estate that a Capital Coin subsidiary held as collateral.

The state trumpets its relationship with Mr. Noe, praising the returns on its investment. A few years ago, as the stock market tanked, most of its equity funds lost money. Capital Coin was one of the only funds running positive returns at the time, officials said.

Mr. Noe is well-known in Columbus. Former Gov. George Voinovich appointed him to the Ohio Board of Regents and Gov. Bob Taft appointed him to the Ohio Turnpike Commission. He's now chairman of the Turnpike Commission.

Mr. Noe is a former chairman of the Lucas County Republican Party who has given more than $11,000 in campaign contributions to both Governor Taft and Mr. Voinovich, now a Republican U.S. senator, over the last decade. He has given tens of thousands more to Republican candidates around the state.
He worked hard to get President Bush re-elected last year; as chairman of the Bush team's efforts in northwest Ohio, he frequently talked with Karl Rove, one of the President's top advisers.

The administrator of the Bureau of Workers' Compensation, James Conrad, was appointed by a Republican governor, Mr. Voinovich, and reappointed by Governor Taft. All five members of the bureau's oversight commission also were appointed by Republican governors. Mr. Conrad declined several requests for interviews with The Blade.

When reached for comment yesterday, Mr. Taft's press secretary, Mark Rickel, said the governor would not answer questions or comment on The Blade's article.
Jeremy Jackson, press secretary for the bureau, said there is no evidence that politics played any role in the selection of Capital Coin.
Mr. Noe also said politics had nothing to do with the bureau's decision to invest with him.
"This had to do with Tom Noe, the coin dealer," Mr. Noe said. "It had nothing to do with politics. If someone tells you that they got involved on my behalf to help me on this politically, then they're lying to you."
His knowledge of coins led Ohio officials to make him chairman of the state's commemorative quarter committee. He's also the current chairman of the U.S. Mint's Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, which advises the Treasury secretary on coinage.

What's next? Cutting a slit in the mattress and tucking the state treasury in there? I know strange times call for strange solutions, but this is downright ridiculous!

I Have To Stop Reading Blogs

Sat, 09 Apr 2005 15:15:59 GMT

...because I keep running into quotes like this, from Daily Kos:

In an interview, Jeff Lungren, a spokesman for Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the panel was likely in some way to take up the issue of how the federal judges handled Ms. Schiavo's case.

But Mr. Lungren said Mr. DeLay had not requested a hearing and the committee had not decided on a course of action. "There does seem to be this misunderstanding out there that our system was created with a completely independent judiciary," he said.

Is there an island somewhere, associated with nobody's government, where I can hide out until sanity returns...if it ever does?

Nice Rant

Sat, 09 Apr 2005 14:55:14 GMT

I'd say this blog is worth another link. Atrios gave it one and so did someone else, but it deserves more. Believe me, it does.

The blog is called The Abstract Factory. And I never heard of it before today. But what I liked is how the guy who wrote this (not sure of his name, but he's a grad student) points out the total dearth of facts behind most conservative argument...and the fact that those who listen...don't care.

Really, they don't. It's not only amazing, it's scary as hell. Go read.

Scary Stuff Out There...

Sat, 09 Apr 2005 14:40:53 GMT

This one is from Atrios' Eschaton, via Congress Daily. Just the last quote. Go read the whole article, but don't do it while eating. Trust me on this.

"What it is time to do is impeach justices," Texas Justice Foundation President Allan Parker extolled a crowd of a hundred or so conservative lobbyists, attorneys and activists. "The standard should be any judge who believes in the 'living constitution' should be impeached."

Allan Parker, if you don't want to read the whole article, was speaking to the "Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration". I love the names these freaks find for themselves, don't you?

Why Doesn't This Surprise Me?

Sat, 09 Apr 2005 14:18:36 GMT

Just to follow up on something from a few days ago...

According to the AP wire service:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday canceled a controversial study using children to measure the effect of pesticides after Democrats said they would block Senate confirmation of the agency's new head.

Stephen Johnson, as EPA's acting administrator, ordered an end to the planned study, a reversal from the agency's position just a day earlier when it said it would await the advice of outside scientific experts.

The aim of the study, Johnson said, was to fill data gaps on children's exposure to household pesticides and chemicals. He suspended it last November after ethical questions were raised by scientists within EPA and by environmentalists.

Over the study's two years, EPA had planned to give $970 plus a camcorder and children's clothes to each of the families of 60 children in Duval County, Fla., in what critics of the study noted was a low-income minority neighborhood.

EPA also had agreed to accept $2 million for the $9 million "Children's Health Environmental Exposure Research Study" from the American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents chemical makers.

"I have concluded that the study cannot go forward, regardless of the outcome of the independent review. EPA must conduct quality, credible research in an atmosphere absent of gross misrepresentation and controversy," Johnson said Friday. "I am committed to ensuring that EPA's research is based on sound science with the highest ethical standards."

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., had joined with Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., in demanding the study's cancellation as a condition for confirming Johnson's nomination by President Bush.

"I am very pleased that Mr. Johnson has recognized the gross error in judgment the EPA made when they concocted this immoral program to test pesticides on children," Boxer said.

"The CHEERS program was a reprehensible idea that never should have made it out of the boardroom, and I am just happy that it was stopped before any children were put in harms way," Boxer said, adding that she would continue to oppose any testing of toxins on humans.

On Thursday, the agency said it would await a report from a science advisory panel, a process that spokesman Rich Hood said could take until May, before deciding the study's fate.

Johnson, an EPA employee for a quarter-century and the first person with a science background to be nominated to lead the agency, has been acting administrator since Mike Leavitt left the agency in January to become secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. He was nominated in March.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which met on Wednesday to hear from Johnson, said Friday it would meet again next week to consider his nomination.

Of course, they had to threaten someone's job to get it done. Very sad. Never mind the fact that now they'll give the job to the idiot who thought this was a good idea in the first place, but hey...no harm no foul, right?

Wrong.

Just A Few New Outrages

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 22:41:56 GMT

So much outrage, so little time...still, why not pass on a few fun factoids...

This one's from ABC News, courtesy of Atrios over at Eschaton:

April 5, 2005 — The good news reached the Jamestown, N.Y., office of Dr. Rudolph Mueller in a fax from a congressman in Washington. Mueller had been named 2004 Physician of the Year.

"My secretary came running in and said, 'Dr. Rudy, look at what you've won, you're Physician of the Year,' " said Mueller, an internist.

But to receive the award in person at a special two-day workshop in Washington last month, Mueller found out that he would have to make a $1,250 contribution to the National Republican Congressional Committee. It was a disturbing discovery, he said.

"To actually buy your award and it's not from your peers or from your patients or from the community that you serve, it's really deceptive," said Mueller, author of "As Sick As It Gets: The Shocking Reality of America's Healthcare, A Diagnosis and Treatment Plan." "It's not being honest, it's just not right."

To see what the award process was all about, Mueller sent in his $1,250 contribution and ABC News paid for his travel to Washington for the scheduled events March 14-15, which included a tax-reform workshop as well as appearances by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and President Bush.

Mueller soon found he was not the only winner. There were hundreds of Physicians of the Year present, many of whom found the criteria for being selected equally as opaque.

"You know, nobody knows, so don't feel bad about it," Mueller said one attendee told him. "I think that more than likely it's to get us Republicans together under the pretense that maybe you will work a little harder to keep Republicans in office."

Another winner was more blunt. "I don't think it's worth it from the standpoint of your own qualifications, but I think it's worth it to support the party," he said. "Basically it's one big monstrous donation to the party."

"It's like the old diploma mills," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a government watchdog group. "It's the kind of scam that we've seen congressional investigations look at when they take place in the private sector. But here, since members of Congress are doing it, we're not going to see any investigation."

Yeah, that's pretty much my thoughts on it. But wait, again, courtesy of Atrios, we have yet another fun factoid to give you nightmares:

From Boxer's office:

BOXER SHOCKED BY EPA NOMINEE’S FAILURE TO CONDEMN

PROGRAM TO TEST PESTICIDES ON CHILDREN

Washington, D.C.– During a hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee today, U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) was shocked and disappointed by EPA Administrator Nominee Stephen Johnson’s failure to condemn a pending EPA program to test pesticides on children.

The program, the Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study, or CHEERS, would pay the parent of a baby up to $970 if they expose their child to household pesticides and other toxins over a two-year period. The parents are also given a camcorder, which they can keep, to tape the child’s activities and reactions.

Boxer said, “The idea that the Administration would pay parents to expose their children to toxins is absolutely reprehensible. Further the fact that EPA told parents there was no risk to participating in the study is unconscionable.”

The EPA, National Academy of Sciences, and American Public Health Association have all stated that children are especially vulnerable to pesticides. Pesticides can cause cancer and adversely affect a child’s neurological, reproductive, respiratory, immune, and endocrine systems, even at low levels.

The program, which is sponsored primarily by the EPA, is also sponsored by the American Chemistry Council, which reportedly agreed to give the EPA $2 million to conduct the study.

Johnson said that the program had not been cancelled, and he made no commitment to do so.

Boxer said, “The moral and ethical issues surrounding this program are overwhelming, and Mr. Johnson’s failure to outright condemn the CHEERS program and cancel it is unacceptable.”

###

According to Atrios, the program has been suspended. Wonder why? Is it because it's a bad program, or because Barbara Boxer found out about it and sent out a press release? Ah, but the questions just continue, don't they?

The thing that gets me that nobody seems to be pointing out is WHY these two items need to be linked in one place.

Who appointed the head of the EPA? Uh-huh. That's right. It was Wee Georgie, wasn't it? You know, the guy who's all hyped about the "culture of life" (so long as that life is safely within some womb or other and doesn't need to be dealt with on any kind of realistic basis. And let's not talk about stem cell research, but hey, lets experiment on the kids already here, because, as we all know, at least half of them could turn out to vote Democratic and so what's the great loss there, huh?

But again, why link these two articles? Smoke and mirrors, folks. Bush has deniability because HE didn't know about the tests. And HE didn't know about the fundraiser. Or at least, that's what he'll tell you.

I rode the bus today. Two men were talking about a food bank downtown. I'm quite familiar with it, because I've used it from time to time. The first man recommended his friend go there. But, the friend objected, he didn't qualify. He was working. Ah, said the first, but you don't tell them that. And they'll never check, so it's all good.

Uh-huh, 'till someone who really NEEDS the food comes in and finds none left 'cause "it's all good". It's about deniability and hoping you don't get caught, isn't it? Do we keep letting them off the hook on a claim of gross ignorance? Over and over and over and over? I didn't know the WMD intelligence was bad. I didn't know Gannon wasn't a real reporter. I didn't know they were ejecting people from my events. I didn't know the Social Security IOU's were actually guaranteed to be paid no matter what. I didn't know...

You know, as Arlo Guthrie once asked of Richard Nixon, "Well, if you didn't know about that one, then what else don't you know?"

Since when is ignorance a "one size fits all" excuse for incredibly bad leadership?

One side note: I apologize for the gigantic size of my blog (right to left, that is) after posting the picture. I'm still learning. If I can figure out a way to resize photos before posting them, I will. Otherwise, no more photos. This is VERY difficult to deal with, I'm aware. Thanks for your patience during the learning process.

Second side note: I figured out how to fix the problem. At least in a rudimentary sense. This is, I suspect, a good thing. I have a steep learning curve, but I get there in the end.

Honesty In Politics

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 04:24:16 GMT

Who says that honesty in politics is dead?

Not these guys...

Note: This photo was posted with the permision of my friend, Mikasi, of Mikasi Photography.

Catholic Sex Ed

Sat, 02 Apr 2005 00:45:28 GMT

Oh, yeah, this'll help...not.

Government Abstinence Web Site Draws Ire.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- An array of advocacy groups are calling on the federal government to take down one of its new Web sites, saying it presents biased and inaccurate advice to parents on how to talk to their children about sex.... [AP Top Health News At 4 p.m. EST]

See, this just isn't the way to go. If you really want to make a change in the way young people view sex, you have to go back to what we were taught when I was in school. You have to go with Catholic Sex Ed.

Despite what you may think, there really was such a thing. This was back in the Sixties and it happened in Catholic schools all across the country. There we were, sitting in class, with our knee-length uniform skirts and our knee socks, row after row of prepubescent fifth grade girls, awaiting the arrival of acne, mammary glands and the latest pop quiz, not sure whether to hope for any of the above or not. That's when the priest known in every Catholic parish across the country as Father Whatawaste sauntered into the classroom.

Immediately, every girl in class sat up straight and twitched at either her hair or her collar. And every boy in class snickered softly. Because they knew. Somehow, the word had gotten out to the male half of the class, as it always did. And they had kept this important knowledge to themselves. So when Sister stood up in the front of the class and requested that the "ladies" would please come with her to the A-V room, the same thought burned into each female mind simultaneously.

"That's the last time you're cribbing off one of my test papers, asshole!"

But, because instant obedience had been drilled into us for five long years, the "ladies" rose and followed Sister to the A-V room. We found seats among the folding chairs set on the graduated "step" risers and noted the film projector at the back of the room, already threaded and ready. This was ominous. What film could we possibly be subjected to that the boys couldn't see? As realization set in, we stared at each other in dismay.

We were about to get The Talk.

It was inevitable. It was also just a bit late. My own mother had held The Talk with me about two years earlier. She'd taken me to her bedroom, pulled a box of Kotex out of her dresser and explained that she didn't use it anymore, but was keeping it for me. Then she explained the mechanics of the thing, why and when it was used, and that I was going to use pads and not tampons, which were only beginning to be advertised on television at that point.

"You won't use tampons until you're married," she told me earnestly. When I asked why, she told me I'd understand "some day," but declined to elaborate. This was the sum total of my exposure to sex education at this point in time.

Now I had a vague hope that understanding was about to be imparted. I was admittedly a bit naive in this belief, but, after all, I was only in fifth grade.

Sister stood at the front of the room and faced us sternly. "Girr-ulls," she began, "we are about to see a fillum." To Sister, "film," like "girls," was never a single-syllable word. "This fillum is special and we have special rules regarding it. There will be no talking during the fillum. There will be no wiggling, giggling or noise of any kind. Whatsoever. Is that clear?" We nodded, afraid to open our mouths. "When the fillum is ended, I will make a brief presentation."

She lowered her glasses and glared at us over the tops. "There will be no questions at the end of the fillum. None. Do you understand me?" Again, we nodded, our mouths suddenly dry. Sister flicked off the overhead lights, marched to the back of the room and started the projector.

How the Disney people and the Kotex people got together to make a film I'll never know. But get together they did. The Kotex logo was everywhere (though the product itself was never shown), as were a mad plethora of butterflies. That was the Disney touch, I suppose. The butterflies had little or nothing to do with the the film, they were just there. But the Disneyfication of the subject matter didn't end with a few monarchs. No, the film starred two venerable Disney actresses, giants in their own right.

Snow White and Cinderella. In civvies.

Snow White was wearing a short-sleeved, blue housedress, like something my mother would wear. It was unnerving. Even the ribbon in her hair wasn't quite right. It was white, if I recall correctly. But it was definitely Snow White. And Cinderella was even more casual, in a pink polo shirt and a pair of jeans. It was an assault on my 12-year-old sensibilities, but there were worse shocks to come.

We were introduced to the 'toon version of the "female reproductive system". It was aggressively pink. There was, of course, no hint or mention of the male reproductive system. Or males at all, really. They had no place in this film, though the omnipresent butterflies apparently did. And why there were butterflies involved in these images is a question that still haunts me.

"Menstruation" itself was never mentioned by name, although it appeared in the film's title. Instead it was referred to as "that time of the month", presumably to shield our delicate sensibilities. There were going to be certain "changes" to our bodies during "that time of the month," we were warned. But things apparently weren't going to be restricted to just a few biological blips. We were also advised that there could be a certain amount of psychological fallout involved as well.

And here's where Disney hauled out it's A-list actresses. Cinderella was shown at her dressing table, brushing her hair in front of her mirror as a male voice gravely intoned that "during that time of the month" we might find ourselves becoming "moody", or even a bit "blue".

Don't tell me Walt Disney wasn't prescient. He had a crystal ball that showed him the future and I can prove it. Because at this point in the film, Cinderella stopped brushing her hair and gazed deep into the mirror. While we watched, her reflection began to change. Beginning at the notch of her collar, just above her breasts, and continuing on to her hairline, a bright blue stain spread, until she resembled nothing so much as a giant blond Smurf -- at least 10 years before Smurfs were even invented.

Now everyone knows that Cindy is an actress with a rather limited range, and she had reached the end of it with this scene, so the film shifted to the real thespian in the cast -- Snow White. That girl has some acting chops, let me tell you, and the film proceeded to showcase them.

As we saw Snow White gazing out her window at a few birds and the inevitable butterflies, the sonorous voice-over informed us that, during "that time of the month," we could even become "quite emotional".

At this point, Snow White's expression became tragic, and her head slowly dropped, coming to rest, face down, on her folded arms. Tears erupted from the corners of her eyes in two arcing streams, to rebound delicately off the tips of her elbows.

I don't know about you, but when I have PMS, I throw things.

O.k., so the film finally ended, the Kotex logo faded away and the final butterfly fluttered off into the pastel sunset. Sister turned off the projector and clomped down the steps to the front of the room. We were sitting motionless and silent as she flicked on the overhead lights. Gazing out over our desperately squinching faces, blinking in the glare of the fluorescents, she jammed her arms far up her sleeves (and knowing what she usually kept in the depths of those voluminous folds, we sat up just a little straighter, if such a thing was possible), peered down at us and hissed, "Young ladiesss..."

Now we knew we were in trouble. If Father wasn't around and she was still calling us "young ladies" instead of her usual "girr-uls", we were in serious trouble here. And then, with mounting horror, realization set in.

We were about to get...The Warning.

Every Catholic school child knows about The Warning. It's a traditional rite of passage. However, the Catholic church isn't quite as naive and hidebound as you might imagine. For example, the church gave up on boys very early on in it's history. Boys were a lost cause where sex was concerned and the church accepted this with equanimity and moved on.

I've dated Catholic boys and I've heard their version of The Warning. The church doesn't waste it's time on boys. Boys get the joke warnings. Things like "If you touch it, it will fall off."

I've worked in hotels and I've seen men come alone and leave alone. And I've never found one tangled in the sheets. So unless these men are tucking it under their arms or wrapping it in the Sunday Times when they leave, this one's a non-starter.

Then there's the classic "If you touch it, you'll go blind." Whenever I hear of a baby being born blind, I never ask if it's a boy or a girl. I just want to know if it came out smiling. So far, that one's batting zero, too.

No, the church gave up on boys years back. Instead, they saved their real ammunition for a much better target. The girls. And they chose the perfect delivery system to make it work.

Because here was Sister, standing at the front of the room, looking stern, practically apocalyptic as she stared down at us and proclaimed, "Young ladiesss, if you touch yourselves...there... (the hands never left the sleeves)...you'll go crazy."

And we had to believe her. Because, in five years of parochial school, we'd never met a sane nun.

Abstinence-only education? It doesn't work. Forget it. You want to make a real difference?

Send in the nuns.

Orwell Lives, Which Isn't Necessarily A Good Thing

Thu, 31 Mar 2005 16:13:23 GMT

So, maybe I'm a cynic, but with this administration, it's kind of a natural outgrowth. Clean Skies, anyone? Forest preservation by clear-cutting?

So when a Republican politician...from Texas, no less...insists that he wants to "reform" the Freedom of Information Act, all my little red flags just pop up all over the place.

Senator From Texas Expects Fight on FOI.

DALLAS (AP) -- Republican Sen. John Cornyn said Wednesday there is broad support for a bill to create a panel to study the federal Freedom of Information Act, but real reforms could run into trouble.... [AP Top Political News At 10:37 p.m. EST]

I once had a politician insist that I had to fill out a FOIA form in order to find out who had filed to run for office in his town. And he made me pay for the copies to boot. This is an Act that is useful and necessary, but which has been routinely abused by those in power for years.

It's no secret that the "Sunshine laws" across the U.S. have come under attack during the last five years. It's no secret that some conservative politicians would like to do away with them completely.

It's just a little too "1994" of them to insist that they want to put "teeth" in the Act. It sounds a little too good to be true. ALL my little red flags are up. Anyone have any information on what this guy REALLY wants to do?