A Reminder

This is a very religious week. In the Jewish faith, this week has seen the Passover celebration marking the occasion when the Hebrew slaves were visited, and spared by, the Angel of Death. Christians celebrate the resurrection of Christ with Easter. Those without organized religious beliefs, or who practice worship of nature for example, celebrate the rebirth of the world with the infancy of spring.

The news has not been particularly secular in recent days, either. A large-scale rehashing of the Catholic Church's "Molest-o-gate" scandal has seen an upswing in all the major news outlets in the US and abroad. Several key members of an apocalyptic Christian fundamentalist militia group has also got people talking. So you have the good aspects of faith (mentioned in paragraph 1) and the bad, and it is crucial to remember both.

Here's what I believe-- not in a religious sense, but in a personal sense. All human beings get the chance to live a just life and cause some good in the world around us. To me, that belief seems like a pretty good candidate for my personal "meaning of life," and I strongly encourage everyone alive to find their own. But no power in the physical universe-- or the spiritual universe-- gives a human being the right to take the life of another. Or to cause harm to another. Now, "causing harm is often accidental"-- harsh words that come out the wrong way, for example-- but to deliberately plan it is inexcusable, even if you don't follow through with your plan. To participate in an action that you know will harm another human being (i.e., child molestation), but resorting to "higher principles" to defend your motive, or insisting that you mean no harm after-the-fact, is bad enough. But when you take the life of another human being, you relinquish your chance to live a just life and do good. No ifs, no ands, no buts.

I have absolutely no sympathy for child molesters, cop killers, rapists, murderers, slavers, and others of the same ilk. The same holds true (and this is particularly important in light of recent events) for those who further victimize victims of natural and unnatural disasters.

Unfortunately, I still have an unshaken faith in the goodness of human nature. But that's really starting to get tested. Let this be a wakeup call to the world, and let this time of year serve as the ideal backdrop.


On a much lighter note-- if you've never seen the cheesy, classic 1956 epic masterpiece The Ten Commandments, I encourage you to help keep a decades-old tradition alive. Saturday night at 8 pm Pacific, ABC will air the 220-minute extravaganza in its entirety (with the exception of the nonessential snippets-- overture, intermission, exit music, and director Cecil B. DeMille's memorable but labored on-screen introduction). So unless you have your own copy, or access to somebody else's, I strongly recommend the Passover tradition (regardless of your personal religious identification). The special effects may look ridiculous now, but they remain magnificent as a representation of Old Hollywood ingenuity, when the term "personal computer" was decades in the future. In spite of the goofy sanctimony and aforementioned cheese, the last movie that even came close to having this amount of class was Return of the King.

I Know We're Not Supposed to Ask. But Somebody Needs to Start Telling. NOW.

The latest preposterous development in the uphill battle for gay and lesbian patriots to serve in the military without compromising their personal ethics: a suggestion that, if "Don't Ask/Don't Tell" is repealed, GLBT personnel would get their own living space.

The upside? Sometimes it can be totally awesome to have a living space all to yourself. Right? Totally!

But the downside? Well, that would be the implication that led to this suggestion: the belief that all homosexuals are disgusting, unnatural deviants who can't control themselves and will rape anyone who breathes, as long as they're the same sex.

Are you freakin' kidding me, people?! First of all (and these are in no particular order), gays have been serving in the military, secretly, most likely since before the Stamp Act. I'm sure that in the course of that time, there have been some incidents of the kind feared above. But the important thing to remember is that these are completely atypical! Gays and lesbians are (wait for it!) human beings, just like all the other human beings on the planet, with a wonderful little trait called self-control. Common sense clearly dictates that this trait is exercised more often than not in the course of world events.

Second, when people are afraid, their brains start looking for little things to be afraid of. Key example in a non-related case: for the very first time, a six-year-old child goes to sleep without a night light. Naturallly, he or she is very nervous about being immersed in total darkness for the first time since the womb. At this time, anything becomes anything else. A teddy bear stacked in the open closet becomes a hideous monster waiting for the right moment to pounce. Closer to the point, if a straight man or woman is uncomfortable with their sexuality (which happens), they won't want to be left alone with someone who's just said, "Hey, I'm gay." Certainly not without a light on.

That's where the principle of "unit cohesion" comes in (and if I hear that term one more time, I am going to throw myself against a glass door until the world makes some kind of sense). Military brass are afraid that when that paranoia (irrational fear) sinks in, bye-bye to the effectiveness of the team. Well, they're right on that. But the solution is not in segregating gays from straights. That only leads to increasing the feelings of distance and difference. You know what happens when those feelings escalate? Brawls, riots, and, in extreme circumstances, genocide. Don't believe me? Read up on your history.

The secret to improving unit cohesion is to force the paranoid faction to mingle with those they fear. Let all the misconceptions go away and make room for truth. Because as soon as the paranoid people can wrap their frightened, Burt Gummer-y brains around the facts (that gay men and women forcing straight men and women into bed is the exception), this problem will be just another ugly scar on our hideously deformed, scar-addled history.

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Entertainment expert weighs in: This June, a modern American classic returns to regular life after seven years of cancellation. Watch Futurama, starting in the sixth month on Comedy Central! Somebody finally listened!

The Downside

So healthcare reform has passed, eh?

Let's not start dancing in the streets just yet.

The declaration that this "sweeping reform" is, well, sweeping is not incorrect. It is a major step. But not in the right direction (my apologies to the songwriters of Bedknobs and Broomsticks.)

The idea of every single American insured sounds great, doesn't it? Everyone will be covered in the case of emergencies and everyone would have a safety net for the inevitable. But there is one thing about this reform that sticks in my ear like a pterodactyl talon.

A minimum $700 fine if you're uninsured.

Wait, what?

That's right. If you can't afford health insurance (say, if you're unemployed), and you're no longer old enough to be on your parents' policy, what happens? You get a gigantic penalty. Because when you're out of work and can barely afford to put food on the table and a roof over your head, a giant penalty is exactly what you need!

I'm sorry. I have defended political liberalism for a long time. On many of its facets, I am still defending it. But ever since I found out about that little teeny tiny point that they're trying to gloss over, I could not in good conscience support it. Washington State's Attorney General, Rob McKenna, is starting a lawsuit to get that provision dealt with. And rightfully so. I haven't been particularly impressed with McKenna up until now, but I fully support him in this.

Punishing people for being poor is doing exactly what I've been telling conservatives the Obama Administration hasn't been doing. And yet that's exactly what it is. As much as I hate to use this term in regards to a guy I initially rooted for (although he's still better than McCain would've been), he is being exceptionally elitist. It doesn't matter whether or not he realizes it, but that's what's happening. There will be some people who choose not to get health insurance, of course. I don't understand why you wouldn't want to be insured, but it's your choice. Or at least it was. And those people won't be the hardest hit by this policy-- that'd be the people who can't find work. The single parents who still aren't receiving child support. The graduate students who have no money save for tuition and no longer qualify for protection from their parents' insurers.

I'm still a liberal. But for the first time in my life, I'm more ashamed of my ideological "brethren" in Congress than the conservatives.

And, of course, what's making more news than that this week? Sandra Bullock's divorce. Jiminy fez, I hate the world.

Miss Me Yet?

To answer that elusive question, GW Bush, no, I don't miss you yet.

I don't miss the preposterous claims like, "God wanted me to be President." I don't miss the way you turned "Weapons of Mass Destruction" into a catchphrase to further your apocalyptically stupid agenda. I don't miss the way you have no concern for anyone but the white, straight, Christian elite. I can't miss Cheney because (tragically) he hasn't gone anywhere. I don't miss your dingleberry turn-of-phrase (it's nu-cle-ar, not nucular! You speak English, right?!) I don't miss your little photo-ops like throwing out pitches at ball games. I don't miss the way you allowed your staff to bungle through Katrina when people were dying and they needed all those leadership qualities your blind admirers have claimed you've got in the bag.

I don't miss eight years of feeling like I wouldn't be an American if I ate French fries or questioned the merits of "The Star-Spangled Banner" being our national anthem. I don't miss watching you lead the media on by distracting them with the arrest of Saddam Hussein, as if the capture of one Islamic fascist makes up for the freedom of the one who actually did something to us. I don't miss the way your people weaseled out of accountability for anything. You left office with your approval rating somewhere in the low-to-mid 20s. If we lived in a good society, it would have been in the negatives.

You, Mr. Bush, are a liar, a narcissist, a thundering idiot, and a socially blind, rancid, smug, arrogant, condescending, elitist, lazy, holier-than-thou riflehead and not 100 years of the opposite could make up for eight years of you.

No. I don't miss you. And I never will. The current administration has its problems (I cannot emphasize that strongly enough). But there will always be a standard of crappiness in the Oval Office, from January 19, 2009 on. That standard, before then, was Nixon. Now it's you. Happy?

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