Sexism, alas, is alive and well

Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto felt the cold wrath of the Twitterverse after he tweeted this gem: "I hope the girls whose boyfriends died to save them [in Aurora] were worthy of the sacrifice." Taranto later conceded that this was “an ill-considered tweet.” Ya think?

Madness in orange

Clever, and true

"Guns don't kill people. They just make it very easy." (A reader on Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish blog.)

Let Sally Ride rest in peace

There are times when gay activists should, well, shut the fuck up. Andrew Sullivan, a proud gay man, made this problematic observation about the late Sally Ride, the first American woman in space:

"Her achievements as a woman and as a scientist and as an astronaut and as a brilliant, principled investigator of NASA's screw-ups will always stand, and vastly outshine any flaws. But the truth remains: she had a chance to expand people's horizons and young lesbians' hope and self-esteem, and she chose not to. She was the absent heroine."

An absent heroine? Really, Andrew? Like most folks, I had no idea Ride was gay. More to the point, I could care less. Ride chose to keep her sexuality private. You know, like most people. Though she was openly gay, she opted not to go all Joan of Arc about it. Sullivan, frothing with righteous indignation, is insisting that she was obligated to help lead the Hundred Years' War for gay rights. Um, no, she wasn't. Ride was content to shatter NASA's glass ceiling by pioneering space for females, no trivial task. Sullivan is flat wrong to redefine Ride to fit his own narrow precepts. And nobody has a monopoly on truth. An absent heroine? Hardly. Tell that to the millions of girls -- gay or straight -- that Dr. Ride has inspired by her example and fortitude.

The 'Dark Knight' Rises, Again

Sadly, as Hamlet said, "murder, though it have no tongue, will speak." Man's penchant for evil, for senseless killing, has always mirrored our capacity for good. The nation is, yet again, convulsing en masse over another example of this self-evident truth. This time, a midnight showing of the newest Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, provided the killing ground. A lone gunman walked into a packed Colorado theater, opened fire, and killed or wounded some 50 moviegoers. The story has sucked the oxygen from all other news today. It is media-driven overreaction, but an understandable one. The tragedy, the latest in a long tradition of such tragedies, should at least give us pause. But so should the awful fact that 250 people were killed in Syria yesterday, the "highest death toll in a single day since the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad erupted 16 months ago," according to Reuters. Echoing Columbine, the "Dark Knight," this time in the guise of a demented, 24-year-old Ph.D candidate, has risen again in Colorado. Unfortunately, he is legion the world over.

The heart of the matter

The juxtaposition of the story (below) about the tragic Colorado shooting and an advertisement promoting the very instrument the alleged gunman used to carry it out speaks volumes. To their credit, The Denver Post pulled the ad from their website and apologized. Too bad we cannot do the same with a certain mindset relating to guns.

Blue Fairy economics

Let's face it: People are fundamentally irrational. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Oversimplifying the complex, finding levity in gravity, and clinging to a belief in Pinocchio's Blue Fairy, can be helpful in keeping one's sanity. Still, there is a price to pay for our quick willingness to untether ourselves from cold reality. For example, Mitt Romney has actually gotten some traction with his I-know-how-the-economy-works-therefore-I-can-cure-what-ails-us shtick. This is rubbish, of course. Yet, some folks are swallowing it whole.

As Prospect writer Paul Waldman notes, having a president with solid economic knowledge (along with an equal grasp of foreign affairs) is indeed desirable. But, "the presidency is not a technocratic position." Waldman finds it odd that Romney has based his entire candidacy on the premise that his self-proclaimed business acumen will allow him to "make dramatic improvements in the economy."

Waldman writes: "But if there were a magic key to unlock spectacular growth and widely shared prosperity, you'd think we would have found it by now. There hasn't been a president in decades, the current one included, who didn't have lots of businesspeople working in his administration. And Barack Obama talks to corporate leaders all the time. If Romney knows something they don't, he hasn't told us what it is."

Of course he hasn't. He only hopes that his Pixie Dust strategy works long enough to get him elected. And it might. But neither Romney nor the man he wants to replace are in possession of a magic wand that will "deliver us to political nirvana." The difference is that Mr. Obama is well aware of that fact. But the election, alas, may come down to how much of the electorate still believes in the Blue Fairy.

Hmm ...

James Carville (interviewed by CBS News): "The only person who has seen Romney's taxes is John McCain and he took one look and picked Sarah Palin."

Writing with ancient bones

On the first day of class, it's not unusual for a teacher to put chalk to blackboard to spell out her name. What she's really doing, as NPR science writer Robert Krulwich put it, is "crushing the skeletons of terribly ancient earthlings" against a hard surface to visibly communicate her identity. Behold what a piece of chalk looks like under the microscope:

Krulwich explains:

"Chalk is composed of extremely small white globules. They look, up close, like snowballs made from brittle paper plates. Those plates, it turns out, are part of ancient skeletons [single-celled phytoplankton algae] that once belonged to roundish little critters that lived and floated in the sea, captured a little sunshine and carbon, then died and sank to the bottom. There still are trillions of them floating about in the oceans today, sucking up carbon dioxide, pocketing the carbon. Over the millennia, so many have died and plopped on top of each other, the weight of them and the water above has pressed them into a white blanket of rock, entirely composed of teeny skeletons. ... The White Cliffs of Dover are all chalk, piled hundreds of feet high."

Nature never ceases to astound.

The 'Bain' of the conservative elite

Andrew Sullivan's take on the campaign woes of Mitt Romney and the state of American conservatism:

"The reason America's elite finds itself under so much criticism is not that they are elites. It is that they have become self-serving, accountability-free elites. Romney's pique that he could even be challenged to take responsibility for a company of which he was legally CEO is a perfect symbol of this abdication of responsibility. Think of the contrast with his father - a man who actually ran an industrial business well, who expressed solidarity with the civil rights movement when so many didn't, released twelve years of tax returns to prove he wasn't gaming anything, and invited reporters in for a Sunday service at his local LDS church. George Romney clearly felt that with great wealth comes great responsibility and accountability. Mitt is fine with the wealth part; just not the responsibility and accountability. Which is a pretty good summary of what has gone wrong with American conservatism today."

The definition of moxie

During the early stages of World War II, Nazi Germany attempted to use its Luftwaffe to decimate the Royal Air Force (RAF) -- especially Fighter Command -- as a prelude to an amphibious and airborne invasion of the UK. The campaign is famously known as the Battle of Britain. Herr Hitler, however, underestimated Britain's will to resist. Historian Michael Korda (The Untold Story of the Battle of Britain, 2010) writes: "At all times, new pilots had 'almost no chance at all' of surviving their first five sorties because of inexperience, because they received the most-damaged and least-reliable planes, and because they were likely to be their formations' tail-end charlie and thus most vulnerable. For the survivors, the odds of survival rose during the next 15 sorties as their skill and confidence grew. After 20, however, the odds again decreased to zero." Those are frightening odds. And yet, they kept flying. To be sure, patriotism, duty, a fierce determination to defend one's homeland, and sheer moxie were the main factors motivating these brave pilots. But without putting too fine a point on it, there was also the saving grace of youth. The average age of RAF pilots was 20 -- a time when we are utterly convinced of our own immortality. During the Battle of Britain, of course, this mistaken presumption was godsend.

Caped Crusader needs a bigger cape

Holy roadkill, Batman! Superhero flying isn't as easy as it looks. Physics students at a British university have concluded that: “Gliding using a batcape is not a safe way to travel." The math doesn't add up. "After accounting for the drag and lift forces acting on Bruce Wayne in flight, the doomed trajectory was calculated. The 15.4-foot wingspan is just half that of an ordinary hang glider and, when launching off an 492-foot-high Gotham city skyscraper and gliding (successfully, the team predicted) for around 1,150 feet, Batman’s velocity would peak at 68 mph before leveling off at a life-threatening 50 mph descent." In other words, the Caped Crusader would be "a messy afterthought for Gotham city’s road sweepers." Heh.

So, it's not just me

The Gallup Poll reports that only 21% of adults have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in television news — a drop from 27% last year and from 46% when Gallup started tracking confidence in TV news in 1993.

Once upon a time in the South ...

THE OTHER DAY, I happened across the glossy website of Louisiana’s Southdown Plantation House, “a 19th-century sugar manor house and home to the Terrebonne [Parish] Museum of history, culture, and arts.”

Tourism is its raison d'etre today, of course.

The manor house and museum, located in the city of Houma, is run by the Terrebonne Historical & Cultural Society. On its “history” page, they write:

“For more than nearly a century and a half, sugar was king in South Louisiana, enticing pioneers to the region and rewarding them with prosperity and progress. ... Southdown Plantation House is a lasting tribute to the sugar industry which helped to nurture Terrebonne Parish from its infancy to its present population of over 100,000 residents. Four generations of the Minor Family, along with hundreds of mill workers, fieldworkers, and their families, lived and labored at Southdown Plantation. The Minor Family occupied Southdown House until 1936.” (My italics)

Ah, the pastoral South — so quaint, so genteel.

A succinct timeline is provided. In 1798, the first owners receive Spanish land grants. From 1821-1828, an indigo plantation was established. In 1828, the William J. Minor family purchases the 1,020 acres to establish Southdown Plantation. In 1831, the principle crop changes to sugarcane. First sugar mill built in 1846. In 1859, Minor builds Southdown Plantation House as a one-story Greek Revival house.

And then … the timeline suddenly jumps to 1893 when we learn that William's son, Henry, adds the second floor and details of Victorian architecture.

Um, wait. What happened between 1859 and 1893? That’s nearly a 50-year gap, people.

Slavery (as in human chattel) is what happened — oh, and that whole Civil War thing. My jaw nearly dropped to my keyboard at the omissions. I mean, “Hundreds of mill workers, fieldworkers, and their families, lived and labored at Southdown Plantation?” Seriously? I daresay there was a tad more to the bucolic scene they airily paint.

In reality, sugarcane production in antebellum Louisiana was nothing short of a horror show. When African American slaves weren’t cutting cane, they’d help bundle up the stalks for stacking in windrows or transport to a plantation mill. It was backbreaking work, and notoriously dangerous. The “fieldworkers” would have labored dawn to dusk in oppressive heat and swampy conditions with the constant threat of injury from sharp hatchets being swung only inches away. And there was no such thing as sick leave. If you could walk, you were worked. The monotonous toil must have felt endless to those who endured it under the uncaring eyes of the overseers, and their lash. Oh, and let’s not forget one other pesky detail: The exquisite Southdown Plantation House, in all of its Greek Revival glory, was mostly built by slave labor.

Look, I don’t hold the current generation of Anglo Louisianans responsible for the sins of their great-great-great grandfathers. Indeed, I doubt that this whitewashing of history was even done consciously by the Society members. Let’s call it bad-memory tissue rejection and leave it at that. But those reasons make it no less appalling.

(NOTE: The above photo is the manor house as it appeared in 1891. Click here to see it today.)

Health-care law doomed! ... Oh, wait

This morning's NY Times headline screamed: "HEALTH LAW STANDS."

Yowzer.

I immediately thought of Jeffrey Toobin. So did CNN's Howie Kutz. He wrote today: "During the Supreme Court’s oral arguments over Obamacare in March, CNN’s legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin famously said this: 'This was a train wreck for the Obama administration. This law looks like it’s going to be struck down. All of the predictions, including mine, that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong.' "

Then, inserting the shiv, Kurtz added: "Um, make that wrong twice."

In March, the talking heads confidently pronounced that Obamacare -- and by implication, Obama -- was doomed. It's a familar refrain. This same bunch predicted the landmark law would never pass Congress in 2009 -- until it did. At the conclusion of the Court's oral arguments in March, the media pressed President Obama for his take. Obama simply said, "I'm confident the Court will uphold the law." I remember thinking, "Hmm ... what did (former constitutional law) Professor Obama know that the political media didn't?" Quite a bit, it turns out.

For some reason, the media and Mr. Obama's political opponents keep misjudging him. They keep ignoring the ever-growing pile of facts in evidence. Today's landmark ruling just underlines a point I've been making since the 2008 election: Underestimate this guy at your peril. He has a bad habit of, you know, winning. Oh, and Mr. Romney? You can now fuggettaboud running against Obamacare. That piece has just been knocked off the chess board. Funny how that happened, huh?

Or as the Road Runner would put it: "Beep-beep."

Just about everybody is wrong about SB1070

SO WHATEVER happened to the Age of Reason? It would help, for example, if folks actually read the Supreme Court's SB1070 opinion -- you know, BEFORE rendering an opinion about it. But we're on deadline, the press said. So in its best rendition of yellow journalism yet, it simply declared that both sides had won. SB1070 proponents say they scored an EPIC victory. They boast that the heart of the law -- the right to question suspected illegal aliens if held for unrelated infractions (like speeding) -- has been ruled constitutional. Hypothetically, Arizona can finally enforce its "papers please" law. But the average cop doesn't speak hypothetical. Neither does the federal government. And neither is much interested in prosecuting (or stemming the "tide" of) housemaids and gardeners. So catch-and-release is what law enforcement will amount to. The actual bad guys -- drug dealers, pimps and gunrunners -- don't exceed the I-10 speed limit and keep to the shadows. SB1070 opponents are dancing in the end zone, too. They say the law has been gutted and rendered meaningless. They're not wrong (3 of the 4 provisions were tossed out by the Supremes). But the ruling still leaves the door open for racial profiling and other abuses by overzealous enforcers. SCOTUS got it wrong, too. It rationalized Arizona's right to go all Gestapo on brown people by opining that there's no evidence states will abuse this power. Yes, and hope springs eternal. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a fine ideal. But is it wise jurisprudence given the stakes? Comprehensive immigration reform is the only way out of this mess. The sooner, the better.

The day Kennedy was shot

I updated my father's genealogical timeline on Ancestry.com the other day, adding the traumatic event of JFK's assassination to give it context.

 For me, a third grader in Los Angeles, 22 Nov 1963 began like any other day.

Weather-wise, too, it was classically L.A.: Hazy blue skies (one part high clouds, two parts smog), pleasantly warm, a soft marine breeze from the west. No sweaters, jackets or batteries required.

Being little more than a skinny bean sprout, the world at large – the one beyond school, play, cartoons, and our dog Trixie – was not yet my concern. I was an eager but empty vessel waiting to be filled with practical knowledge and, someday, the wisdom gleaned from the relentless vagaries of humankind. I was unaware that its latest vagary was unfolding in a placed called Dallas. In that, at least, I was not alone.

When the recess bell rang that Friday morning, getting to the playground sock-ball courts first was my top priority. Running to my goal, I unleashed a breathless whoop when I succeeded (ostentatious fist-pumping like Tiger Woods – who wouldn’t be born until 1975 – had yet to be invented). Then, maybe 15 minutes later, my world shifted from its normal, late morning course. I began to hear whimpering. It was emanating from the outdoor lunch tables. A number of the older girls were weeping. Was someone hurt? Teachers had suddenly clumped together along the edges of the schoolyard’s black-top. They were urgently whispering to each other, some nervously covering their open mouths with both hands. Some of them, too, had moist red eyes. What, I wondered absently, had happened? Still, many other kids were playing and doing what kids do without a care in the world. And the bright California sun sat contently overhead. Not comprehending, I inwardly shrugged as I took in this kaleidoscope of contrasting images.

Then the bell rang again, abruptly ending recess, and we filed back into our classrooms.

There may have been an announcement over the PA system. My teacher, Mrs. Buchanan, probably passed on the solemn news to us as we sat facing her, blank-faced at our little desks. I simply don't remember. I do remember going home early, walking up the gentle hill of San Pedro Street, jumping over the familiar cracks on the sidewalk, but noticing an uncharacteristic stillness at the houses along my path. I didn’t know it then, of course, but my school, like most in southern California, had shut down almost immediately as word spread. Mom was not surprised to see me. She knew.

At the family dinner table later that evening, I recall my father intently watching the news. Having just gotten home, he was still wearing his royal blue work shirt, the one with the orange “AA” (American Airlines) patch above one pocket. Dad was a CBS man, so the anchor on the low-def, black & white TV screen had to have been Walter Cronkite. I would come to know “Uncle Walter” well in the coming tumults triggered by civil rights marches, riots, Vietnam, nightly body counts, and student protests at places like Kent State. I vaguely recall Dad sighing in resignation, and making a kind remark about Mr. Kennedy. I knew was our president. JFK was an admired figure in our staunchly Democratic household. Something bad had occurred, but my child-mind could not yet grasp its gravity. Besides, I was busy patting Trixie, our German Sheppard, who was quietly panting her dog-smile below the overhanging table cloth.

After dinner, I went off to play – and onward to finish living my boyhood. Only many years later did I connect the dots and have that oh-my-god epiphany. Only then did I realize I had been part of a greater American family whose members could recall exactly where they were on the day Kennedy was shot. Like them, I had borne witness to a shocking tragedy, one with the power to knock the breath out of me even years after the fact.

Our 35th President, of course, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Time (10:30 a.m. at my playground) on that black November Friday in Dealey Plaza. It explained the crying girls, the anxious whispers, the pained look on Mrs. Buchanan face, my dad’s dismay at the somber words coming from Mr. Cronkite, and the hush that seemingly enveloped my little world along San Pedro Street.

But that's the way it was in 1963, to paraphrase Cronkite's trademark phrase. It was momentous history, the day Kennedy died, as witnessed through one child’s eyes in L.A.

Men and their cars

My daddy drove a Hudson.

And not any Hudson, mind you. Father drove a 1949 Hudson Commodore 6 Sedan. In the slang of the times, it was truly the Cat's Meow.

You may have trouble picturing this now classic automobile. Think "Driving Miss Daisy," the 1989 movie starring Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy. The car Freeman drove in the film was a Hudson Commodore (pictured above). Dad's car was identical to it. Fortunately, I own an old black & white photograph of my then 23-year-old father posing beside his brand new prize on a Chicago South Side street. You’d need a big ruler to measure the length of the grin on my dad’s beaming face. Turtleneck-clad and pencil-mustached, he sported a fedora in the photo. The gleaming Hudson sported 1949 Illinois license plate "1700 202".

Dad always dreamed of buying a Cadillac. But he never did. A practical family man, he could never quite justify the cost of owning one -- even when he and my mother became reasonably secure empty-nesters. But at least he had once owned a Hudson Commodore. Talk about a "dame magnet." In 1949 he was courting my mother (who could have given 1940s actress Dorothy Dandridge a run for her money in the beauty department; mom is on the left in the photo below). I wonder if that Hudson had anything to do with him closing the deal (they married in 1950 and stayed that way for over 50 years).

As the curtain fell on the 1950s, dad found himself saddled with three kids and a wife to feed. There were few two-income families in the Mad Men Era. The Hudson, alas, had to go. Enter car number 2: The iconic 1960 Rambler station wagon, complete with roof rack and fins. When he purchased it, the car's blue color probably matched dad's unconscious mood. For it was a reminder that his freewheeling days as a man-about-town were gone for good. (Ladies, think of it this way: You end up buying that nice pair of sensible pumps because it's the right thing to do. But what you really want are those hot, black stilettos, right?)

When the family migrated to southern California in late 1961, mom and my siblings flew to the Golden State. Dad and I drove the 4-door Rambler cross-country to Los Angeles via the old Route 66. A memorable trip, it was. As dad’s life progressed, other cars -- Buicks, Chryslers and even a yellow Ford Pinto for mom -- came and went in succession. But the Hudson Commodore had to have remained special to him.

I know that special feeling. When I turned 23 myself, as life would have it, I bought a screaming-red Triumph TR7. It was called "The Wedge." And we’re talking 0 to 90 in six seconds, baby. Like all rebellious teens, I swore I’d never become my father. But let’s face it, that hot TR-7 was my version of his Hudson. Dad was duly impressed, too. When the damn thing would start (always an iffy proposition with Triumph sports cars), it was a dream to drive. And talk about a “chick magnet.” As cars go, it was my first love. Like father, like son -- inevitably.

(Historic Sidebar: The manufacturer of dad’s Rambler, American Motors, was headed at the time by one George W. Romney -- yes, Mitt Romney's father -- before he entered politics. Rich is the generational irony.)

The Day the (CD) Music Died

Per the NY Times, 20-year-old NPR Emily White reported that despite being “an avid music listener" and collector of 11,000 digital songs for her iTunes library, "she has bought only 15 CDs in her life." Hmm.

'Notes from Underground' Reconsidered

As Andrew Sullivan noted, David Denby thinks Dostoevsky's classic, Notes from Underground, still kicks us in the gut:

"Predictors of human behavior, as the underground man says, generally assume we will act in our own best interests. But do we? The same question might be asked today, when "rational-choice theory" is still a predictive model for economists and sociologists and many others. When working-class whites vote for Republican policies that will further reduce their economic power—are they voting in their best interests? What about wealthy liberals in favor of higher taxes on the rich? Do people making terrible life choices—say, poor women having children with unreliable men—act in their best interests? Do they calculate at all? What if our own interest, as we construe it, consists of refusing what others want of us? That motive can’t be measured. It can’t even be known, except by novelists like Dostoevsky. Reason is only one part of our temperament, the underground man says. Individualism as a value includes the right to screw yourself up."

Why are we here?

Evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr: “Nothing demonstrates the improbability of high intelligence better than the 50 billion earthly species that failed to achieve it.” He's right. Um, hmm ...

Just because

No commentary. This is just a nice photo of the president by Getty's Chip Somodevilla.

Ray Bradbury, 1920–2012

The author of Fahrenheit 451 lived by a simple credo: “Jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.”

Why is Venus laughing at us?

Every TV news outlet and newspaper from here to Timbuktu is promoting the "Transit of Venus" as a once-in-a-lifetime celestial event -- if, that is, you missed it in 2004 like me and everyone I know. Per Wikipedia, the Venusian transit occurs once a century in pairs separated by an interval of eight years. Part deux is happening today and tomorrow. The next event is scheduled for 2117. Ergo: "Millions will look skyward as Venus crosses the Sun on June 5 for the last time more than 100 years," gushed Astronomers Without Borders. Millions. NASA has a Google Maps mashup to search for "transit" events in your area. And if you're completely around the bend, there's even an app for the flyby. You, too, can "participate in a modern-day experiment to recreate the heady days of scientific exploration," said Wired magazine. Among other things, the app will help you "calculate the size of the solar system." Hey, that's almost better than sex, right? So is the world waiting with bated breath for this "chance of a lifetime" beginning at 3 p.m. PDT? Of course not. Despite the media hawking, it's unlikely the average Joe or Jane has even heard of the pending solar transit. It's a safe bet that millions of eyes will not be cast sunward at the appointed time. And I admit to a certain dyspeptic pleasure in that knowledge. Rather than simply reporting that this event is a boon to scientists probing the makeup of exoplanets orbiting distant stars, CNN et al has turned it into a media circus for ratings. Remember the hype over the "supermoon" last month, a celestial event that was anything but super? Welcome back to the future. Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty, must be laughing. And for good reason.

It's all good

In a shameless bid for free publicity, Ragan's PR Daily (the corporate flacks of Lawrence Ragan Communications Inc) has a list of "the decade’s most irritating words and phrases" that is making the rounds on the web today. Ragan nominates: It is what it is, Man cave, Amazing, Baby bump, Awesome, Whatever, Literally (pronounced “LIT-rally” ), Think outside the box, It’s all good, Process, Just a thought, and Virtual. In my book, "man cave" is probably the most egregious. To Ragan's list, I'd add "not so much", "cool" (which is waaaay overused), and the irritatingly ubiquitous "so" when a speaker uses the word to start a statement or soliloquy. It drives me crazy. The principal perpetrators are techies, academics, hipsters and (increasingly) political talking heads. Chalk it up to the lemming factor in the age of digital mass media.