Getting Ridiculous
Apparently Sony has spent $100,000 to digitally remove a Kabbalah bracelet from Ashton Kutcher's wrist in an upcoming movie. 
The story is test audiences found it really annoying. <blank stare> Good grief. Who was their test audience? The 700 Club? They're probably the only people not wearing a Kabbalah bracelet who even know what it is. It is supposed to be a charm against the Evil Eye. Not that I knew that before reading the article. In fact, for those who—like me—don't even know what a Kabbalah bracelet looks like, here you go. Apparently the charms are optional.
Only folks like the 700 Club have to be up on every theoretical vice known to man so they can be sure to tell everyone else they are sinning. I'm sorry, but are you so insecure in your own faith in God that you have to make everyone else conform to your standards to convince yourself you are right? Is wearing a Kabbalah bracelet really such a glittering temptation for you that you must ensure no one around you wears one? You don't need to be born again. You need to grow up.
Curioser and Curioser
Much continues to be said as Terri Schiavo's time on this earth grows short. Some of it I agree with. Some of it I do not. As arguments grow more impassioned, it seems that we have indeed left the real world and entered a realm of bizarre fantasy.
One editorial in the WSJ raises the right's favorite specter of "activist judges" who "impose their own values, especially in the absence of specific guidance from the law." What kind of nonsense is that? Wasn't Judge Greer upholding the law that says a husband is the legal guardian of his wife and vice versa? Isn't that the sacred institution of marriage that the right is so determined to defend from incursions by the godless, hedonistic homosexuals? People have been chanting "God's law, not man's law" in defense of their belief that Terri's life should continue to be sustained. Well, what about "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." (Matthew 19:5, Genesis 2:24) Which of God's laws do you wish to enforce? Is the institution of marriage sacred only when parents and spouses are in agreement? I guess it does only mention the man, so maybe there's a loophole there.
It has also been suggested that the most compassionate route would be to turn Terri's care over to her parents since they are obviously willing to assume the burden. I'm not sure that's the most compassionate route. It is certainly the easiest. Michael Schiavo's seems rather insistent that Terri would not wish to have her life prolonged artificially. It is interesting that he has refused to allow what are apparently routine medical tests for diagnosing persistive vegetative state. Some have suggested sinister motives. Perhaps he just feels the point is moot and fears some discovery that would do nothing to improve Terri's condition, but give the family and politicians grounds for prolonging the battle. Perhaps he is simply a man is willing do what it takes to see his wife's wishes carried out.
One blogger suggests that it is unlikely a 25 year old woman could have given much thought to such issues and it seems a stretch to assume Michael or Terri knew what they were talking about at such a young age. His rationale is that he is 40 and till now hasn't given it much thought, so a 25 year old wouldn't have given it much thought either. Well, I'm 37 and have already taken the steps necessary to ensure there is no such battle over my wishes should a similar fate befall me. I have known for a long time I do not wish my life prolonged artificially. It was probably firmly set over 15 years ago after visiting my grandmother who had lingered for years in a battle with cancer. I had been out of the country for two years. When I left, I never expected to see her alive again. I returned in August. I flew back to visit in September. She died in October. For me the real tragedy was seeing this once vital woman wan and wasted, so strung out on pain medication she barely had the cognitive power to recognize me. It rooted in me the belief that at some point one must simply let go of life and move on. What that point is a personal and individual matter. That no living will exists in Terri's case is more likely a youthful sense of immortality that precludes one from believing that such a thing could actually happen than the lack of a firm opinion on the matter.
I must say that I have to agree with those who say it is cruel to simply deprive Terri of nourishment and let her starve to death. I will probably be stoned for suggesting that something could be done to ease and even hasten Terri's passing. The end result is the same. The decision that Terri's life is better ended is the same. One friend tells me that the passive act of letting nature take it's course is better than a overt act to end a life. I guess I'm too literal a person to see much merit in such hair splitting. Being truly compassionate often means making very hard decisions. Much has been made of this drama unfolding at Easter. It seems to me the focus is always misplaced. Once again, I must ask the religious right, "Do you believe in an afterlife or not? Do you believe in a resurrection or not?" Death is not an ending, merely a transition. And, just for the record, I do not belong to some death cult.
Public debate on these issues is a good thing. It may not be possible to reach a true consensus, since faith and religion—which rarely allow for compromise—are involved. Whatever society's eventual stand on such matters is, we should be open and public about it. In other words, we should not pretend to one morality while quietly keeping to another.
To be or not to be…
The recent media frenzy over Terri Schiavo has me thinking a lot about the issue. There is only one thing that is absolutely clear to me: Congress has absolutely no business whatsoever getting involved in what should be a personal and private matter. I'm extremely cynical when it comes to the efficacy of government, and bullshit like this is not helping.
Honestly I think the "right to life" crowd is full of it as well. Characterizations of "starving Terri to death" seem hardly appropriate. If Terry was cognitive and able to feed herself, locking her in a closet and denying her food and water would constitute starving her to death. If she was only cognitive enough to express the desire to be fed and still denied food, that would be starving her to death. Letting Nature take its course can hardly be viewed as a brutal act.
I'm having a really hard time understanding the justification of religious groups and their "right to life" nonsense. People have a right to life that man should not interfere with. All well and good. We don't take reprobates out to the corn field and shoot them. But when nature has acted and the ability of an individual to sustain its own life has ceased, saying such an individual has a right to life seems as foolish as saying I have a right to feel the sun on my face and insisting the setting sun is depriving me of my rights. Life is a temporary state of being. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Isn't Terri theoretically better off leaving this mortal coil and a meaningless existence and being with her God and her loved ones already passed on? The actions of the religious groups seem to indicate they don't really believe what they preach.
One friend suggested that Life is a gift from God and man is not allowed to take it away. Terri had a heart attack that has left her unable to care for herself and feed herself. In the days before IV drip, the matter would have been settled a few weeks after the heart attack. Just because we can do a thing does not mean that we should. How exactly is man taking away Terri's life here? Are we not intervening to thwart "God's will" that Terri's time on this world be over? Is it only an act of God when we like the outcome? There are senseless tragedies all over the world every day. People console themselves with platitudes such as, "God has called him home." or "The Lord moves in mysterious ways." If the heart attack had killed Terri outright, I'm sure such things would have been said over and over. How do we know that God hasn't called Terri home and she's pissed off her family won't let her go?
I have a hard time understanding how anyone can say keeping Terri alive artificially through modern medicine constitutes saving her life. It's been 15 years, people. Even if she regained some form of consciousness, what kind of life would that be? People are constantly saying, "We must assume Terri would want to live." How can you make such a stupid assumption? Would you want to? To me it seems a selfish desire to not let go of a life long ago lost, like a child who refuses to relinquish a cherished doll even though all the hair has fallen out, the arms are coming off and stuffing is leaking from burst seams. Why has there been no discussion of personal dignity here?
This is a personal tragedy, no matter how you slice it. It is a decision I hope never to have to face. If it ever comes to that, I'm pretty sure I want the world to butt out and let me and my family wrestle with it. I could not even begin to care less what Congress ( or Mel Gibson for that matter ) thinks I should do. I, for one, have a living will that states I do not wish my life to be prolonged by artificial means. If I were Terri, I would absolutely not want to "live." The water gets a little muddier if it were one of my daughters in a vegetative state. It is extremely uncomfortable for me to even ponder that situation. I would hope at some point I would be able to let go of the hope that my daughter return to me, that I would be able to think more of her and her dignity and allowing her to move on than of my own selfish need to have her near me.
Royalty
The passenger cabin was being served by an obviously gay flight attendant, who seemed to put everyone in a good mood as he served them food and drinks.
As the plane prepared to descend, he came swishing down the aisle and announced to the passengers, "Captain Marvey has asked me to announce that he'll be landing the big scary plane shortly, so lovely people, if you could just put your trays up, that would be super."
On his trip back up the aisle, he noticed a well-dressed rather exotic looking who woman hadn't moved a muscle. "Perhaps you didn't hear me over those big brute engines. I asked you to raise your trazy-poo, so the main man can pitty-pat us on the ground."
She calmly turned her head and said, "In my country, I am called a Princess. I take orders from no one."
Without missing a beat, the flight attendant replied, "Well, sweet-cheeks, in my country, I'm called a Queen, so I out rank you. "Tray-up, Bitch."
Dolphins, Penguins and Ducks! Oh, my!
Andrew Sullivan pointed me to an article on homosexual, necrophiliac ducks. I'll let you read the account, witnessed by a researcher in the Netherlands for yourself. The apparently recent discovery of homosexuality among animals has been used by opponents and proponents alike. Homosexuals point to the evidence of homosexual pairs in the animal kingdom as evidence that homosexuality is in fact "natural," and hardly the "crime against nature" the religious wrong rails against. For their part, the religious wrong have switched their tactics from saying "even the animals understand that male belongs with female" to equating homosexuality with baser animal instincts. Whatever.
I've always found homosexual activity in the animal kingdom interesting, but not much more than that. It is tempting for homosexuals to try and prove the validity of our emotions, feelings and desires, but I tend to believe such attempts are ultimately fruitless. As the right has already shown, it doesn't matter what facts are available for view. They will simply alter their interpretation of the facts to fit their immutable beliefs. As Churchill said, "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
Even so, when viewing any behavior among animals, and perhaps sexual behavior in particular, it seems we tend to project our own experience and beliefs onto whatever act we are viewing. Take the current subject of ducks, for example. Mallard ducks tend to be rather violent in their mating rituals. I remember watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom when I was younger and being shocked and disturbed watching the apparent rape of a female duck by a male duck. Indeed the above article talks about duck mating practices as rape. But is it really rape? Has anyone ever interviewed a female duck and asked how she felt about the experience? If that is "normal" sexual behavior for a species does it deserve to be labeled as something so negative to human beings as rape? What if it's more like some bizarre S&M thing? I can pretty much guarantee that I would be just as shocked and disturbed watching two humans engaging in S&M sexual practice as I was watching those two ducks mate.
Even the whole necrophilia thing is suspect to me. I mean, come on people. Does a duck have enough brain power to have a fetish for dead bodies? The researcher suspects the two were engaged in one of the flying mating rituals when the first bird slammed into the researcher's window, bringing the chase to an abrupt end. Was the second bird even aware the other was in fact dead or just that it had stopped playing the game? Was it necrophilia or was the second bird just locked in some primal sex mode and unable to disengage that urge to copulate until it was sated? Was it simply unable to comprehend why his partner was no longer participating? Was the pecking really a vicious attack on a dead partner or just a duck's way of saying, "Dude, get up."
Regardless of what might actually be going through a duck's mind, or a dolphin's, or a penguin's, one really needs to have his sense of self based on more than just things observable in nature. It needs to come from within. Science has never dissuaded the religious from their flawed belief systems. It took the Catholic church over 300 years to apologize to Galileo for forcing him to recant what is now incontrovertible fact. Since we don't know more than we do know, I wouldn't base my personal identity on it either. A friend of mine and I were discussing homosexuality a while back. He brought up all the usual arguments: sex as a reproductive tool, perpetuation of the species, natural order, yatta yatta yatta. I shot them down, one by one. He made the comment that I had reasoned everything out pretty well. "Rich," I said, "reason is not why I made the choices that I have. I know what I feel is right. I go with what I feel, and use reason to try and understand my feelings." I know who I am. I don't need science or religion or Roy and Silo to validate my existence. Neither should anyone else.
Please, no! Anything but that!
I was reading today about Bush's proposal to trim back farm subsidies, particularly to cotton growers. Apparently in today's world market it is impossible for cotton growers in the U.S. to make a profit. According to the article:
Without the safety net, some analysts contend, many of the 25,000 U.S. cotton growers would switch to crops such as soybeans or vegetables or quit farming.
And this is bad because...??? Probably because I tend to be fiercely independent, but I've never understood our "entitlement" society. If you can't make a profit growing cotton, why didn't you bail a long time ago? Why exactly does the U.S. need cotton farmers so bad that we are spending billions to prop them up? Why should the government— read: "I"—be subsidizing your losses? I'm sorry, but "because the farm has been in my family for generations," while touching, doesn't cut it. Adapt. That's what humans are good at. No one subsidized me when the tech market went into the tank. No one is talking about subsidizing all the tech jobs that are going over seas to China and India.
Look folks. We live in a global economy. Government subsidies don't help anyone in the long run. It would have been okay if the government helped with transition costs or reeducation. Now the problem is just bigger. Take a look at Europe. Germany's socialist economy is on the verge of collapsing under its own weight. The best we can hope for is for these third world countries to get their standard of living up so that there isn't such a monstrous disparity in the cost of living and hence wages. How long will that take? I can't even begin to guess. Is it going to hurt us in the U.S. until some parity is achieved? You bet.
Totally Missed the Point
Ann Coulter has posted two columns in a row about "liberal gay bashing." All she has managed to do is demonstrate how completely clueless she and other conservatives are and how completely they miss the point.
Ann seems to think that talking openly about someone's sexuality is demeaning to the person in question. Her first example is Jeff Gannon.
Now the media is hot on the trail of a gay escort service that Gannon may have run some years ago. Are we supposed to like gay people now, or hate them? Is there a Web site where I can go to and find out how the Democrats want me to feel about gay people on a moment-to-moment basis?
This is what is called projection in the world of psychoanalysis. Because Ann would hate someone who runs a gay escort service, she assumes that liberals hate Jeff. No one on the left hates Jeff. Liberals don't care all that much that Jeff has ties to gay prostitution. While some or even many may find it amusing Jeff has been literally caught with his pants down, the story is so not about Jeff. It is about a republican White House that doesn't seem to mind having a gay prostitute "breaking" their biggest stories.
Gannon didn't write about gays. No "hypocrisy" is being exposed. Liberals' hateful, frothing-at-the-mouth campaign against Gannon consists solely of their claim that he is gay.
Claim? When you have naked pictures of yourself on-line advertising your sexual services I don't think there's much left to dispute. At that point is has also ceased to be a private matter. If you are going to advertise your services on the Internet, the information can safely be considered public. Besides, no one ever said Gannon was being a hypocrite. The hypocrisy comes from the White House which continually pontificates on the necessity of protecting society from homosexuals, but doesn't seem to mind using them as their stooges.
Ann's second example is Maya Keyes.
Outing relatives of conservatives is nothing but ruthless intimidation: Stop opposing our agenda -- or your kids will get it. This is a behavioral trope of all totalitarians: Force children to testify against their parents to gain control by fear.
You're projecting again, Ann. Is there something you are hiding that has shame bound so tightly to coming out? Don't you get that it is people like you who think homosexuality is a shameful, "private" matter that make people think they need to stay in the closet? It is people like you that make homosexuals fear for their jobs and social status if they were to come out.
Don't get me wrong. I do not believe in outing people who are not ready. I believe that is a personal decision that no one has the right to trump. However, Maya Keyes and Jeff Gannon were not "outed" by the media. We've already discussed Jeff making public his private life. Maya gave an interview to The Advocate, the largest gay news magazine in the country. That's not being outed, that's coming out. Maya is speaking out herself and for that has been cut off from her family. Yes, that's news worthy. Yes, it's worth pointing out that conservatives are clueless and hypocritical, compassionate only so long as homosexuals keep quiet about their "private issues."
Drawing Lines
The Supreme Court has ruled that execution of minors is unconstitutional. This has, of course, elicited the usual "activist judges" cry from the left. Honestly, I'm not really sure how I feel on the subject. I tend to think that the "they don't know any better" argument is horseshit. There may be something to the general invincibility that we feel as youth that leads teen murderers to believe they will get away with it, but they know what they're doing. This may be what one blogger intended when he spoke to the teenage inability to connect cause with effect, though his use of homework and grades as an example seems a bit ridiculous. Failing high school English and offing someone hardly seem comparable. It seems to me that with any capital crime the perpetrator has determined he could get away with it. That tends to blow the whole "deterrence" argument.
Scalia, in his dissent, points out
[It is] absurd to think that one must be mature enough to drive carefully, to drink responsibly, or to vote intelligently, in order to be mature enough to understand that murdering another human being is profoundly wrong...
[The Court has] struck down abortion statutes that do not allow minors deemed mature by courts to bypass parental notification provisions. ... It is hard to see why this context should be any different. Whether to obtain an abortion is surely a much more complex decision for a young person than whether to kill an innocent person in cold blood.
As much as it pains me to do so, I have to agree with Scalia. It does seem to me that the decision to abort a pregnancy is much more fraught with moral dilemma than the decision to kill someone in cold blood. However, that begs the question of where the problem truly lies. Is the problem really with laws concerning capital punishment or with our definition of adulthood?
Defining maturity is no simple thing. Age isn't always a reliable measure of maturity. Not when you're 16. Not when you're 20. There are 16 year olds better able to hold down a job and manage their money than some 30 year olds I know, but what does that have to do with the decision to commit cold blooded murder? The point is we have drawn a line and define, for legal purposes, the age of adulthood to be 18. If we feel the need to make exceptions to the rule, maybe the rule ought to be changed. Perhaps that's the question we should be asking. Instead of saying exceptions should be made for certain acts maybe we should be asking ourselves if we think the legal age of adulthood should be lowered. Do you think legislation defining the legal age of adulthood to be 16 would really fly? Not likely.
If you ask me, at issue is not the definition of adulthood or restrictions on the practice of capital punishment. The real issue is the role of the Judiciary in American government and life. Kennedy seems to be saying there is a trend away from the practice of executing minors and there is no compelling reason to not go ahead and legitimize the trend. Scalia on the other hand seems to think that trends are not good enough and there should already be established case law defining a verifiable national opinion on the matter before the Supreme Court should act. Is one approach better than the other? I'm not sure. Still, Scalia's accusation that Kennedy et. al. have "look[ed] over the heads of the crowd and pick[ed] out [their] friends" (Court Opinion p. 74) rings rather hollow, since his approach favors the status quo and his friends who prefer it to change.
The Perfidy of Dreams
I had and interesting experience this morning. I was dreaming that I had gone over to a friend's house and was hanging out watching TV with some other guys. One of these fellows, the only one I remember having an identity, was a guy on my swim team. We'll call him Ralph. The evening wore on and it grew late. Ralph and I ended up cuddled together and sleeping on the couch. It being a dream, we both fit comfortably on a couch where it would have physically impossible to do so.
Those of you who know me well enough are probably assuming Ralph is one of the guys on the team I have dated. You'd be wrong. Here we come to another of those areas where are dreams take liberties with reality. Ralph is actually one half of a couple that has been together for several years. In my dream Ralph was still half of that couple. I never did learn why Ralph's other half hadn't joined us at the gathering.
The truly interesting part of the experience came as I was beginning to wake up. There's really nothing novel about me dreaming about Ralph. I do think he's good looking and did have a wee bit of a crush at first. OK. Fine. I still have a wee bit of a crush. The only real novelty is probably that this is the first time I remember dreaming about him. However, as I began to wake I lingered long enough on the border between dreams and reality to be aware that it was in fact a pillow I had my arms around, but still have Ralph imposed over the pillow. Amazing how the mind works.