Most of what I've read and heard about the Gloucester Seventeen, the local high school teenagers having babies, has struck me as missing the mark. It's unclear whether it was a pact or not but national attention now pretty much guarantees that we'll never know for sure unless we know someone in the town personally who will speak unguardedly. From here on out it's all speculation and theorizing.

In yesterday's Financial Times of all places an article by Christopher Caldwell made an analysis of the situation that is unusual and a bit unsettling. He wonders whether "[g]iven the increasing likelihood that a woman will raise her children alone, might not the teen years be a prudent time to become a single mother, while the financial and day-care resources of one's own parents are still available?" and therefore whether this might not have been a reasonable, even rational, choice by the teens. But he bases this on his assertion that "[t]he present ideology of family planning arose in a more fluid society than our own [that] was constructed by college-educated baby-boom elites who, as they climbed from the middle into the upper-middle class, came to find pitiful the lives their mothers led as housewives." Mr Caldwell must know different baby-boom college-educated mothers than I do - or am.

My feeling about Mr Caldwell's logic is that, first of all, he's probably correct that there was some positive intentionality behind the large number of pregnancies and that the girls think having babies will be a terrifically fun thing to do. Lots of teenage girls think having a baby would be terrific fun . . . until they have it and then they discover that the baby is a person who demands attention and time, kind of just like - wait - something familiar - oh, just like themselves. But by the time they are right smack in the middle of discovering that having a baby leads to - drum roll - directing a human being's life, it's too late to do anything other than sign up for programs where your kid can be cared for by the community or, if they are alive and available, their own parents. And therein is the real problem.

It doesn't matter whether every teenager in the universe has a baby as far as the biology goes. What does matter is that the spawned children be able to have physical needs met (teenagers in school can't earn very much money so the resources of the community and parents must suffice) and also to have their emotional development tended to (teenagers are in emotional, hormonal flux and certainly not equipped for the emotional context of childcare so this will either go undone entirely or the community and parents will have to cover it) and also to have their minds nourished (teenagers are still developing their own intellects so, again, the community and parents must pick up this slack). From a practical standpoint, teenage parenting (1) produces offspring whose emotional and intellectual development is, by definition, less adequate than it could be if the parents were more mature and stable and (2) puts a burden on the community and/or on their own parents.

The inevitable inadequacy of a teenager's ability to nurture and guide a child was exemplified to me by the parents of an aquaintance of mine were unskilled workers with minimum wage jobs their entire lives which led to enormous feelings of dissatisfaction and inadequacy. By the time the children were in their thirties, both parents were alcoholics and profoundly sad and unhappy. My friend used to say that his siblings and he had managed to be "thrown up" not "grown up" when they reached adulthood.

Sure, a few teenagers are remarkable people who will succeed in raising terrific children. And a few children are hardy and remarkable people who will succeed in being secure and mature no matter what. And plenty of so-called solid parents are dreadfully neglectful and completely inadquate to their task. But why have children simply when eggs and sperm find each other? Wouldn't it make more sense to have them when one's own emotional, rational and financial situation is stable enough to accommodate adding a developing and growing person to the mix of your own life? That won't be a panacea that solves all societal ills but it could help to prevent filling day care centers with babies and toddlers whose parents leave the work to the centers' staffs and, later to the schools and, still later, to the managers and spouses of vaguely unhappy and dissatisfied adults.

Labels: about me, media, modern culture, reflections

A fairly casual friend with whom I have lunch once or twice a week, during which we seem to plunge into intense conversations, raised the question today of what obligations I think should or might follow between two women who call each other very good or even best friends. I think she feels like an old wife who is much cared for but not especially enjoyed nor whose company is sought by her mate. At what point, she wonders, would it be reasonable or even psychologically sound to give up her long-time friend's company in exchange for a fair amount of loneliness/solitude before she makes new friends, but during which time she might be able to stop feeling like an old worn toy. They've been friends since grammar school so she will not find another friendship of so much endurance nor constancy; on the other hand, she is weary of never receiving offers of help from her friend, not of physical assistance nor of money nor, really, of anything. Their bargain seems to be my friend's effort and energy in exchange for her friend's company. Interesting and a bit unsettling. I'm not even sure what questions to ask to help. My father once said that sometimes friendship is very uneven, 60/40 or even 90/10 for a while, but that at other times it goes quite the other way. But when I said that to my friend, she said it never seesaws the other way. Brother. I have to believe she gets more out of it than she is able to verbalize so perhaps my role should be to help her identify that? If anyone has any thoughts . . . . ?

Labels: friends, reflections

Apparently Acres of Books in Los Angeles is relocating, to the dismay of many including the ever-brilliant and wonderful Ray Bradbury. Their website doesn't mention it but Laura wrote about it here and Bradbury's visit adds credence. I hope independent bookstores (and other businesses) manage to hang on over the next six-to-eighteen months while the economy does its tremulous little dance because things will right themselves economically even if we have some rough times to go through first. They usually do but unfortunately some cannot hang on. The Mysterious Bookshop in NYC is famous for many reasons, not the least of which is that it is 30 years in existence, in large part because of the foresightedness of its proprietor in purchasing the store and land way back when it was (somewhat) affordable. People do read and will continue to read, nay-sayers to the contrary notwithstanding.

Labels: books, optimism, writing

It all began when I saw edog's list. I'm a tad competitive about some things (understatement) so I had to check and see how I measured up. I copied the list into Excel and bolded the ones I'd read and added them up, but then I noticed that the last one was numbered 100 in text but was on the 98th line. Upon further investigation, I discovered that #44 and #51 were missing entirely so I tried edog's code thinking maybe the printed version had swallowed something but no. I went to The Big Read website sure they'd have the original list but found nothing even remotedly like this. (They've got their books for this summer's recommendations and all kinds of intellectualizing gobbledeegook about Americans and reading but no 100s.) I tried all manner of internet searches and found all manner of lists of books but none were these. Finally I returned to edog and saw he said he'd gotten the list from "Sheila" so after a bit of sleuthing on his site I found her link (Sherri Blossoms) but her list was missing 44 and 51, too. So I clicked her from whence (Moonrat) but again they were missing. I kept going back and back and back . . . six times in all until eventually I got to halo4's list which, blessedly, included the two books (wonder what happened? was it a simple case of Blogsphere Telephone?). In the end, here we are. See rules at the end of the post.

THE LIST - of which waaayyyyy too many are collections, children's and/or school books and/or science fiction. Since this list is unobtainable except via other blogs, I do not know but am curious as to who compiled it and with what criteria in mind. It seems like a mix of "important" books and best sellers and "pc" and "favorites" from its compiler(s). Meme and list writers should include their source. Anyway, be that as it may . . . .

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (I read one so I get 1/6 of a point)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 *Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I gave myself 1/2 a point)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 *Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 *War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (hated it as a kid, like it now)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (didn't understand it at 15, love it now)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 **Persuasion - Jane Austen (Anne Elliott is one of my favorite people in the world)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (started it, didn't like it)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (started it, didn't like it)
40 *Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (marvelous idea but not crazy about the book)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving (a good friend adores this)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 *Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (does watching the movie count?)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (hated the movie, sorry)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons (no way)
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (?)
57 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (Dirk Bogarde made it come alive)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On the Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (you must be kidding)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (that's SIR Rushdie to you)
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 *The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson (marvelous)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (MUST read this)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (loathed it, have major issues with her)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 *A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry (never even heard of this)
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (another collection; sheesh)
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (ugh; cute until you're 11)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (I hate anthropomorphizing)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute (I've read others of his though)
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 *Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (love lots of his stories)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (hated the musical too; so sue me)

So bottom line is I've read lots of them (72-4 depending on how you count) although I feel I should have read them all but I guess no one can be expected to have read every book in the world. Plus, the older I get the more readily I put aside a book that I don't like after 50 or 100 pages.

THE RULES : such as they are:
   (1) bold titles you've read,
   (2) italicize those you intend to read,
   (3)(a) underline those you liked
* (3)(b) tag those you adore with an asterisk, and
   (4) strike out those you didn't like.

Labels: about me, blogs (others'), books, writing

Nifty graphics and comments on "eyeball jazz" at Color Addict (here and here).

Part one of two on Michelle Obama in, of all places, the U.K.'s Daily Mail, not exactly renowned for its hard-hitting or brilliant journalism. Nevertheless, it is worth reading.

Amusing photo spread on celebs and their non-human companions.

Wonderful shoes, than which nothing else needs to be said. I swear I want a pair. I wonder what that means about me?

How car engines work. In case you think this item wandered over from another blog, it's here because my daughter and I were talking about pistons and carburetors and how gas and air and oil make a car go . . . and I finally remembered to look it up. This page has a very cool (heh) diagram, too. (Yes, Virginia, air is necessary.)

Via Laura, a list of ten concerns about Obama. I think some are a bit contrived but I hope we will all ponder both McCain and Obama in depth since for once we have two people whose views differ considerably.

And also via Laura, a charming stroll at Disneyland. I love that she takes such regular and natural advantage of living nearby. Love it for her sake, of course, and much more selfishly for my own.

Good question and very important in light of tornadoes and hurricanes, et al, let alone anything more nefarious.

Labels: blogs (others'), reflections, writing

Here's a little essay (here) that I think will make you laugh out loud if you've been anywhere near toddlers and/or their parents for more than a few minutes.

Labels: children, family, great link(s)

It's time to revive the oft-quoted, utterly descriptive and apt phrase "it's a mad mad mad mad mad mad world." It is very much needed. This time, there's a story from the U.K., a place I revere for many things - scenery (Cornwall, for starters), literature, television and theater, flowers, gentility and generosity of culture, etc., etc., that challenges one's ability to laugh at the absurd.

The Tunbridge Wells Borough Council in Kent, usually thought of as a particularly balanced and solid corner of the kingdom and certainly neither insane nor off its collective rocker, has edicted that council members immediately cease using the term "brainstorming" and substitute the phrase "thought showers." The Telegraph is a paper thought of fairly well; it's not known for reporting false events or humans who give birth to Martians and asking readers to take them seriously. Nevertheless, today it relates that the TW Council chiefs took this step because they "feared the word brainstorming might offend mentally ill people and those with epilepsy."

But since "brainstorming" is used to describe people working together and stimulating each other's ideas so as to gather better ideas than they might on their own, then even if somehow one made a connection between "brainstorming" and "mentally ill people and those with epilepsy" (although how they might do so is beyond me), how could it be at all offensive?

And it occurs to me that meteorologists should take organized offense at the term "thought showers" and protest that the TW Council is publicly humiliating their intelligence.

Labels: philosophy, ridiculousness, U.K.

I usually quite like these things. They're silly and a bit superficial but lend a tiny sliver of a peek at a third dimension for people I otherwise know very little about. And I am exceedingly curious about what makes people tick.

The rules:
1. Post the rules at the beginning.
2. Answer the questions only about yourself.
3. At the end of the post, tag five people and post their names, then go to their blogs and leave them a comment so they know they’ve been tagged. Ask them to read the sender's blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

What were you doing five years ago?
June 2003 — Preparing for my daughter's wedding! She amazed me and touched me by asking me to be her matron of honor (thereby also saving herself the difficulty of selecting one of her friends or sisters-in-law, but hey). It was a lovely celebration of two people's clear and apparently affection and love for each other. A child's wedding is an opportunity to share excitement and joy with her or him and with one's extended family and with a new family as well. June of 2003 was a lovely month. And the birth of her daughter the following July in turn began an era of more frequent contact, greater understanding and even closeness among us all, for which I am extremely grateful. How nice to remember.

What are five things on your to-do list for today?

1. Reserve room for Friday night because the local power company is shutting off power for eight hours for improvements before the height (heat?) of the summer.

2. Finish French reading for class on Wednesday and prepare answers to the questions provided by the instructor by way of review and homework.

3. Make significant progress on necklace I'm making for my friend for her birthday on Saturday - there are really only 3 nights to work on it what with Friday's power shutdown.

4. Continue tests and make good notations about new software package at work so I can answer intelligently at our meetings tomorrow and Friday.

5. Worry about how to find someone to repair my front and back porches so I can hire someone to do the work, soon.

What are five snacks you enjoy?
1. Terra's sweet potato and vegetable chips
2. Pepperidge Farm's Milano cookies
3. steamed milk and froth with a little coffee
4. ice cream
5. almost any fruit

What are five things you would do if you were a billionaire?

1. Pay off all my and my childrens’ debts and set up college funds for my grandchildren so they wouldn't have to worry about college or graduate school

2. Buy an estate on the shore in Maine and another on the shore near Carmel (CA) - two equally beautiful and different pieces of paradise on earth.

3. Take family and friends on a ship to the Galapogos Islands, covering their living expenses so we could be gone for three or four weeks.

4. Spend one month in France and one month traveling, every year.

5. Save and carefully invest the rest with the help of the best financial adviser I could find so that the money makes money and we'd all be set for the rest of our lives. What fun it would be to leave significant money presents for people now and then.

What are five of your bad habits?

1. Procrastinate. A lot.

2. Make plans to do bigger things than I really can accomplish.

3. Spread out what I'm doing all over the place even though I hate mess.

4. Avoiding people and things that make me uncomfortable even though I know perfectly well that facing them would be all right if I just would face them.

5. Eat out too much because I don't take the time to go to the store and buy good ingredients so I can cook good-ingredient food even though I like how I feel when I do and like how it tastes.

What are five places where you have lived?
1. Greenwich Village - great place to grow up, a small town in an intellectual atmosphere
2. Riverdale, the Bronx - nice but neither city nor suburb
3. Guilford, Vermont - fantastic countryside
4. Dutchess County, New York - strong communities, very pleasant
5. Northampton, Massachusetts - happenin' college town

What are five jobs you’ve had?
1. clerk at penny candy store in Greenwich Village during high school
2. housekeeper at seaside resort on Long Island, one summer during college
3. waitress
4. assistant administrator to college dean
5. assistant book store manager (if only it paid real wages . . . )
6. graphic designer
7. software and document specialist
8. jewelry maker and (eventually) designer
9. mother and grandmother!!
Oops - did you say "5"??

Five people I tag:
1. Missy
2. Color Addict
3. Barb - her post-tag post
4. Morgan Freeberg - his post-tag post
5. Dad - his post-tag post

Labels: about me, blogs (mine), blogs (others'), writing

I want to be in favor of Obama's candidacy. I loathe Billary's naked opportunism and power-hunger. I am scared of McCain for a host of reasons. But when Obama said he had no idea his pastor had said the outrageous things he said, I was dismayed because it was impossible to have been close friends and an influential parishioner and not know what J.Wright thought. Which meant Obama was dissembling, at best. Time passed and I'd kind of gotten myself to the point of thinking he's ambitious but not nakedly so and evasive about some things but who can blame him since a campaign is hardly even related to an administration. Now comes the "Obama seal" that's clearly modeled on the presidential seal. I mean, is this high school? It's so silly as to be pointless to mention it except that the man is running for the presidency of the United States. Can he seriously think millions won't ridicule him, minimally, or be outright disgusted? Is this the insecurity of a child abandoned by his father, a kind of Clintonesque idiocy, behavior that some waive off as meaningless but others view with (growing?) wariness? I've thought he seemed like an adult, as does his wife, and it would be so nice to have adults in positions of power.

Labels: 2008 election, people, ridiculousness

Hell must be getting chilly and pigs' wings must be flapping. There's a story out today that the Brits refused Martha Stewart entry to their country because she was convicted of obstructing justice. (Story here.) Even if one thinks what she did was dreadful, she has served her time and therefore is legally finished with that. And it's not as if she advocates anarchy or rebellion against governmental rule. Meanwhile, known terrorists come and go into the U.K. with organizations (excuse me: organisations) working to overthrow of British law and order. All I can say is good bleeping grief.

Labels: people, ridiculousness

Interesting, enlightening, important and inspirational post at Fresh Bilge on possibly exciting new treatments for cancer. Alan has been beating back CLL for a while thanks to sought-and-found knowledge, a spicy and interesting diet, (mostly) good medical treatment, determination, and lots of exercise. His blog is a must-read for anyone interested in following an unmaudlin and unselfpitying coming to understanding and coping. Among other things, he writes: "IMO, it is the determination to fight that counts, not prayers or rosy hopes. Many people perceive realism as negative, and think it undermines life expectancy. This is a crock. Hope does not heal, but will and effort can sustain health and life longer."

Labels: blogs (others'), illness, reflections

The AP has let lose a pebble of an edict that is causing huge ripples of frustration and anger all over the internet. They have decided to charge for quotations of more than 1 word, believe it or not. Hot Air posted about it here and Michele Malkin wrote about it here and Patterico wrote about it here, noting especially the enormous irony of the fact that the AP quoted from blogs when they announced their new policy. Apparently the AP goose thinks itself so sacrosanct that it cannot bear the idea of any ganders using their words other than they themselves. In the age of wikis and other shared information, this will surely not hold up under any legal testing, as Laura points out. Laura also points out that "the AP quoted 154 words of a Patterico post on [a well-known] controversy . . . [while at the same time] going after a blogger who used far fewer [than 154] words from an AP article than the AP lifted from Patterico's. . . . ." This is ludicrous. First people are arrested for cheering loudly during a graduation ceremony, and now this. The world is going mad again. Quick, someone put the axis back in place.

Labels: blogs (others'), web, words, writing

Just discovered that I've been tagged and I'm actually looking forward to doing this one - it seems a bit probing and interesting - but can't do it until this weekend. Thanks, Laura . . . I'll trackback when I'm done!

Labels: blogs (mine), blogs (others'), writing

What with all the railing and ranting about Michelle Obama's clothes, image, possibly intemperate remarks, etc. it seems only fair to give a bit of time on The Spouse Playing Field to Cindy McCain:

This is about Cindy McCain's drug addiction and theft of said drugs and involvement of a doctor on her staff, whose license was subsequently removed. She, on the other hand, was ordered to rehab but was never prosecuted.

This is about Cindy McCain publishing a Hershey's cookie recipe as her own in this year's Family Circle magazine's Election Cookie Wars. To think that I thought the recipe contest was just something cute and maybe an amusing predictor of election results. I guess she thinks it's much more important than that.

On a much more serious and relevant note, this is about John McCain's military and personal record. Not as angelic and savory as the common wisdom would have it.

Labels: 2008 election, people, reflections

   Another interesting day of similar (or not) birthday celebrants:

   – John Wesley,
   – Newt Gingrich and John Murtha
    - who do have much in common as it happens,
   – Escher,
   – Joe Piscopo,
   – Mark Linn-Baker,
   – John Hersey, and
– Dean Martin, Igor Stravinsky, James Brown, Barry Manilow, Ruben Blades and Red Foley - who have music in common, albeit extremely different music.

Labels: anniversaries, juxtapositions

Someone sent me this quotation and I think it's terrific from about a million points of view:

Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals.
You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your despair. (Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964))

If only we (read: I) could remember all these points all the time.

Labels: people, reflections, words

This article spells out pretty clearly the different approaches that McCain and Obama take to solving national issues. My sense was that they're not very different at all, aside from the obvious surface differences (old/young, white/black, etc.) but maybe there's more to distinguish them than I realized. Which is somewhat good news in that I'd rather be able to make a real choice when voting than pick someone because I like one or dislike the other on a personal level - well, as personal as it can get when it's not someone with whom I'm likely actually to sit down and converse.

Labels: 2008 election, people, reflections

Amy Stillman has an exhibit on at the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington DC (details here). Her work is an interesting intellectual exercise as well as visually appealing. (h/t Color Addict)

Labels: art, blogs (others')

Clint Eastwood's Cannes interview makes for terrific reading - no surprise there.

Labels: movies, people, reflections

Jimmy Carter apparently endorsed Obama yesterday, although it got lost in the primaries mayhem. He also was asked whether he thought Obama and Clinton should team up for the so-called "dream team" - no matter which was at the top - and his answer was unequivocal when he said:

if you take that 50 percent who just don’t want to vote for Clinton and add it to whatever element there might be who don’t think Obama is white enough or old enough or experienced enough or because he’s got a middle name that sounds Arab, you could have the worst of both worlds.

I rarely agree with Carter but I completely agree with him on this. HRC and BHO each have considerable negatives (a/k/a people who won't vote for her or him if they are the only person running). Putting them together would guarantee whole waves of people who wouldn't vote for them. It's a bit odd that Carter is so adamant but I think he's completely right on this.

Labels: 2008 election, people, reflections

I watched the Obamas last night and thought it was refreshing to see a candidate's wife in atypical candidates-wife attire (sleeveless and colorful but not red, white or blue). I suppose I should have realized there'd be a negative way to react, however, and I fear there will be lots of this kind of thing. Few people permit themselves to make outright racist comments, but the feelings are there for many, and they're ingrained, and they won't go away. Unexpressed or unknown thoughts and feelings can easily be deflected into remarks that are much too intense and frantic to be simple opinions about, as in this case, dresses and belts.

The writer of the linked post is generally aware and perceptive, a highly educated writer and poet. He's often kind and usually extraordinarily careful with the precision of his language. Yet he could not resist making a personal and irrelevant attack. He'd undoubtedly be righteously indignant - and would both recognize and note the displacement - were anyone to criticize his friends' and his clothing. Blogs have a bad rap among many because of precisely this kind of pointless, petty, nasty and ugly diatribe. Such a rant does not help in any way except to relate the writer's high opinion of his and his friends' taste. I don't think this is the kind of thing that's meant when the virtues and benefits of "critical thinking" are encouraged and extolled, do you?

I fear it would have been the same if it were Hillary who won the democratic nomination, except that it would be gender jokes and kidding-on-the-square about girls instead of blacks.

Heaven help us for the next five months.

On the other hand, McCain wants town hall meetings with Obama instead of contentious debates, and they've both asserted they'll avoid ad hominem attacks. With all the issues at stake, there is more than enough fodder for intense debate, even anger and frustration, without wasting our time or attention on anything that isn't relevant and doesn't matter.

Labels: 2008 election, blogs (others'), people, reflections, writing

We should pause a moment to recognize and honor the enormous thing that has occurred today:

a black man is an elected nominee for the office of president of the United States of America

Only a few short decades ago, black people could not attend college with white people in many states of this country. Only a few short decades ago, powerful hoses were turned on black children as they walked to school. Only a few short decades ago, appallingly, some people made outdoor sport of chasing and shooting black people set to running through the woods like animals.

Now, in the spring of 2008, the large numbers of votes cast for Obama in every state of the union makes it evident that monumental change has occurred and, whatever you think of the merits of the person himself, it is an important and superb moment for humanity.

Sadly, many people perished in the struggle for human equality. It would be good if they all somehow know what has happened.

An ironic postscript is the fact that today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Jefferson F. Davis, President of the Confederate States of America.

Labels: 2008 election, anniversaries, history, people

There's a quotation appearing on Tom McMahon's sidebar which seems so apt today that I must reprint it. Apparently the pundits believe HRC is likely to accede to BHO more or less momentarily. My thinking is that perhaps she only thinks she wants to be president. I mean, who in their right mind would really want to be president?! Have you ever compared their photos just before they take office and just before they leave? Eight years doesn't usually do such damage.

There's a basic human weakness inherent in all people which tempts them to want what they can't have and not want what is readily available to them.
-Robert J.Ringer

Perhaps she will be Sec'y of State or Health, or even v.p., and will do it so well that it will be self -evident that that was what she really wanted. You think?

Labels: 2008 election, people, words

Some friends and I watched Charlie Wilson's War over the weekend. It was terrific and I'm not at all sure why it only rates 7.5 (out of 10) at imdb. There are some slightly scary circuitous and diatribe-esque discussion threads there but unless you like to read various levels of lunacy and bad spelling, just ignore them. Anyway, the movie is better than most of the current movies I've seen but, then again, I'm mainly a fan of movies driven by plots and characters that make logical and emotional sense so my judgment may be impaired according to some points of view.

I read the book about six months ago so I was curious as to how all the thousands of personalities, passions, points of view, events and mere thoughts could be culled from 500+ pages into a movie that wouldn't run ten hours and put everyone to sleep. What's amazing is that they got the important people, facts and stories in, and managed to convey what I believe is at the story's heart: the conviction that a few passionate people can get big things done as long as they are determined and willing enough to play the "games" of politics and inner-circle dealing. Realizing that an awful lot of things happen that way, one wonders why inner circle politicians don't get more done, after seeing this movie.

And I do not think, by the way, that Charlie and Gust caused the events of 9-11-2001. To me that's like saying that rapist attack women because they wear miniskirts, or that husbands burtalize wives when they defend their self-respect. Those who carried out 9-11 had been memorizing their lines and running tech rehearsals for quite a while, long before all this, and it might just have happened sooner but for Charlie and Gust but it certainly wasn't retaliation or a logical outcome.

Anyway, this is absorbing and provocative. Read and/or watch and let's talk.....

Labels: movies, people, politics, warfare

GWB's commencement address at Furman University yesterday is another example of the absorbing and interesting speeches has often given which are steadfastly overlooked because of . . . well, basically because of BDR. I'm fairly confident in, and look forward to, the more positive assessment of him that will come with historical perspective.

Labels: gwb, writing

All the machinations last night nearly sent me into a tizzy. As two rare readers pointed out, the democrats are putting the voters through an exercise that borders on insanity - after having yelled and screamed about the last two elections for what was legally far less problematic. This nonsense is about power playing and refusal to accept defeat in the face of facts whereas the elections were following the constitutional set-up (electoral college, etc.). In the elections, the electoral college is the way we elect presidents whether one likes it or not. In the primaries, clear rules were disobeyed by two states and one candidate . . . all of which is now water under the bridge or over the dam (or wherever it goes) given backtracking solution that the party seems to have decided. What sanctions? What rules? Go ahead and break the rules cuz you'll get just about exactly what you wanted anyway.

From an ironic and head-shaking point of view, the part I like best about what was decided yesterday is that the only actual change is that the goal post for "number of delegates needed to nominate" was moved up by 93. The difference between Obama and Clinton is still around 175.

So it becomes ever more evident that Clinton's truly driving motivation is power no matter what. When the Michigan primaries were held she said it didn't matter much because the votes would pile up for her everywhere else. She flouted the rules and stayed on the ballot, just in case. When the votes didn't pour in, suddenly Michigan did matter. One can only conclude that she doesn't particularly care about the party, she just wants to be the nominee, come h*&^ or high water. Her spokesperson, Harold Ickes, was amazingly angry and vitriolic after the rules committee's decision. Which was decided by 19-to-8, by the way. Ickes (and, one assumes, Clinton) refuse to accept Obama getting any Michigan delegates. Which I find incomprehensible. What logic earns her all the Michigan delegates? She deliberately ignored the dnc sanction to stay off the ballot while Edwards and Obama followed the rule. So technically no one else received votes. But if all the votes for "Other" weren't for Edwards or Obama, who were they for? Wait! I know. Remember that famous statistic about how high Clinton's negatives are? About how 40+% of the voters wouldn't vote for her if she were the only person running?? Well, maybe she's heard that so often that she just thinks all those "other" Michigan votes were the people who simply won't vote for her even if it means voting for a blank space.

Labels: 2008 election, ridiculousness