Wednesday, March 31, 2021

American Teacher

Probably the most reviled and scrutinized occupation our country has to offer. If you feel swayed by To Sir With Love, or Marva Collins, or"Gangsta's Paradise"--don't be. I loved it, but I'm getting out. It's the least respected, least rewarding job you can find in the USA. It kills your soul, even if you find a pretty good school for a time.  Yes, America, your school systems are broken, but not for the reasons you think.  

 It can all be ruined by the wrong dragoon at the top.   But more importantly are the parent customers, who are the main source of  American school ruination.

 And here I've spent most of my career in the highly touted private schools as my husband has toiled in the public. Boy, have those fancy private schools fooled you (and me). The personal is surely political. You and I might think the best people, the ones you would like to surround yourself and your children with, are in the private schools.  We are mistaken, because this is where you can find a decent number of criminals, particularly of the white collar privileged variety: you know, the kind that are ruining this country because if their undemocratic ideology that has convinced them of their "me first-you be damned" actions.  Case in point, the SAT admissions cheating scandal.  If you think that is an isolated incident, you would be mistaken.  Private schools of all sorts are full of this stuff, with mind-blowing creativity for beating the system.  

This is why, if you think you are defending your child from a corrupt environment, you have come to the wrong place.  Where are your children going to be exposed to drug use and users?  Private school.  I wish I could tell you how many of my former students were busted for drug use in my fancy boarding school on the water  (or more importantly, the ones who were found out but WEREN'T busted, expelled, etc., and maybe even went on to get special awards, rank, privileges at said school).  No, we're not talking about some goth, weirdo who hides in the shadows contemplating rebellion and anarchy: I mean your student leaders and future movers and shakers--they have truly learned some life lessons at school, boy, about how the system works.  There is so much surface gloss in American schools, it's a wonder we all don't drown in lacquer.  

Remember, those of you who are old enough, how school used to go?  Teachers taught during the 8 hour school day, and students were expected to keep up, then be tested on what they learned.  Those who were goofing around or cut corners inevitably got a bad grade, and the diligent students learned self-reliance, how to use their time, manage information, and get good grades.  They rarely missed school and turned out later in life to be the kind of people you would like to hire as employees or run businesses or government institutions.

Fast forward to now, where all sorts of "value added" changes to education have made this old-fashioned.

  Follow the money, yes, who are the super donors, but also follow your local school's tutoring policies--do they allow teachers to be paid extra big bucks to "tutor" students?  Think about it, that's a system built for several layers of corruption.  A reputable school in the old days wouldn't allow such a thing, because it could compromise the teacher's integrity and be considered unfair to the other students.  But nowadays?  It can be part of the "value-added" attraction of a school--it's not a coincidence that lots of school have adopted this sort of School-speak borrowed from Corporate America.  If you're attracting parents from the system, use the language they understand. 

 Now, I would say the most stalwart and upstanding teachers would refuse to take money for helping a student, and may agree to help for free in the growing  "tutorial" hours built into the school day.  But some, sometimes coaches or their academic buddies who got sucked into the system, agree to be paid, and instantly lose their "fairness" clout with the other untutored students, because they know what's what.  It is mindbogglingly easy for a compromised teacher to give too much even subtle  help in a tutorial or even in a classroom setting.  And they might even feel justified into thinking they are being a good Samaritan by doing so--he just needs a hint and he'll remember what I said during our $50 an hour tutoring session!  And what about when a teacher is grading that kid's test later, is the money not going to affect the outcome of the grade--due to guilt over the money, or perhaps a feeling of obligation, or even "proof" that the tutorial was successful and worthy of the pay? And for the most cynical, it encourages the parent to spread the word about the amazing results, and pass on the tutor's name to other wealthy parents who can afford such amenities.

I know people, particularly in California, who make a  good living free-lancing tutoring in this way--no need to deal with the strictness of any school structure--free to teach!  And the SAT/ACTs necessitate a whole industry for this kind of thing.  (I'll skip over people who manage to worm their way into a wealthy family's good graces this way and become virtual family members, who may even somehow marry into the wealth.)

My former school went from a nighttime 2.5 hour mandatory study hall, with a rotating schedule of actual teachers supervising it and offering help in their subject, to that plus a mandatory 40 minute tutorial period after school, which morphed into the night study-hall, afternoon study hall, and 30 minute before school study hall, initiated because the school athletes were unable to do the afternoon study halls due to practice and games.  The athletes rarely had the extra paid tutorials because it was not considered necessary, except to hit their minimum SAT/ACT scores, which are generally lowered for college athletes anyway. True fact.

This  morning study hall time became a much more important thing as my school was becoming more and more competitive in local sports, especially football!   This was due to a policy of scouting and recruiting from the local public schools for their ace athletes.  But, largely, they rarely showed up to tutorial, knowing the headmaster would "fix" their poor grades, exempting them perhaps, from a devastating or missed test that occurred near/on game day.  These athletes were not naturally poor students, many are quite bright, but they are not expected to do school work. The system failed them, by frequently yanking them out of classes for games (often my afternoon classes were bereft of athletes who were traveling to high profile games that might  be on TV! and would definitely make the local sports section of the paper!)

Of course, even public school have for years been helping students by issuing Independent Educational Plans for students that have documented learning disabilities. I'm not objecting to the existence of this system that provides things like extra time on tests for kids who slowly process information --who says learning quicker is better?  Or kids with visual problems or dyslexia that makes it necessary for others to read to them--I had a kid who went to West Point but was brilliant with an amazing memory who needed to be read to.  I'm talking about the wealthy parents who can afford to game the system with a psychologist who documents a student's ADHD that allows for extra time on , say, the SAT that then gets him or her into Stanford or U Penn.  And that was partially what happened in the college admissions scandal, along with a little help from coach/ tutors.



If you want to blame professional athletes who seemed to have prima donna attitudes about their privileged lifestyles, you need to look more closely at their breeding grounds, and in particular their high schools who view them as a cash cow in exactly the same way that the NCAA schools do.  It's a feeder system that puts athletes on a totally different trajectory that makes them ill-suited for anything other than the narrow world of professional sports, which we all know is a gamble for most of these young guys who get stars put in their eyes by the adults they have come to trust.  Once upon a time, a school's lobby or hallways would contain a portrait of the school's founder or history of the namesake.  Look at it nowadays:  It's a memorial to the athletes who "made the show"--together with pictures and trophies of the local glory days.  What is a young impressionable student to do or think about what is important in life?  But people of other countries will tell you--America is sports mad.  And it is--it takes up way too much  American oxygen, especially in schools.  

However, non athletic students of wealthy parents also miss a significant amount of school.  Often it's for family vacations like ski trips, foreign travel or golfing jaunts taken during the school's scheduled academic days--even during exams!  This is the element that just screams entitlement, and woe betide the teacher who tries to hold Ritchie Rich's feet to the academic flame--best way to get an impromptu visit from the principal/headmaster.

Heres a telling detail I recently saw on a school job posting website.  The advertisement was for a generic "teacher" for a high school.  In the fine print it stipulated "coaches" who could perform classroom duties.  Now, for any other teaching job, an ad will lay out very specific types of candidates they are looking for: AP qualified ENGLISH teacher, ESE (a students with disabilities designation for which the teacher needs particular training) MATH teacher grades 9-10, 2 years' experience and state certification required.  In this ad even the Bachelor's was "preferred", not mandatory as was the certification and experience.  These are the guys running your schools, and frequently, if they stick around, they get in good with the admin, who might direct them to a cheesy online "Leadership Course" that will qualify them to become future administrators.  This is who runs many schools, folks, and explains why they often need an office assistant or other person (as an English teacher I have been asked to proofread an incompetent admin's letter they were sending to parents, alumni, donors, etc.).  If you are thinking your school's administrators have a higher level of education than their staff, think again.  They are most likely to be from the ranks of those athletes who did not get proper schooling when they could have, who did not "get into the show" and now need a new way to utilize the skills they focused on when they were in school.  This is particularly true in private schools, and might even be driven by admin's guilt (or empathy, if they were themselves athletes) at the way former student was passed through the system.

And now I want to discuss the way the "other' non coach teachers are treated--and with the exception of some sports fanatic geek history, math, or whatever teachers who want to bask in the sports dazzle as assistants, or love the school spirit of sport, there are those who get put upon to cover coaches' classes or otherwise get treated as expendable as an academic.  The double threat (triple threat, in the boarding world) is largely a myth, because it is the rare educator who has time enough for a full plate of academics and sport.  Extra money goes to coaches, and there is an attitude that older, experienced teachers can be easily replaced by less expensive bright eyes out of college, and so, retirement is forever dangling once you pass 50. 

In addition, is just the general mistrust the general public has been persuaded to believe about educators. Everyone is ogling at you to reveal the fact that you are secretly a child molester/child lover. Why else would you take this low prestige, low status job? Truth is most teachers can't wait to get away from  the youngsters at the end of the day to recharge --that's how you tell the iffy ones.  If they claim to LOVE being around your kids 24/7 and want to take them on extra trips, etc., "get to know them" as people", watch out.  The majority of teachers are not these "star mentors" in that way, and know how to practice good boundaries.  The American public tends to lump us with the minority of bad guys, and keeps a jaundiced eye for all educators.

 Oh, yes--other countries revere their teachers with less skepticism--supposedly. Russia, China--yet still , not getting paid so much, if that counts. However, some Amereican academic teachers (even some coaches!) are the smartest, most moral people I have known. Beat the capitalists by a long stride. BUT--the bad teachers are the worst of the worst. They somehow seem to think they're pulling the wool over everyone's eyes and indulging themselves. Yes, but you may ask--indulging themselves in what? Well some of this pertains to being in a wealthy private school. It's just not indulging themselves in youngsters. (which a small and signficant sector do, sadly).  We had a football coach that seemed to think school met only three days a week, Friday never counted, and you can bet the rest of us who had to cover for his gross ass resented his tight bond with admin.  

 But more common are the rich parent schmoozers--getting everything from fine bottles of wine to fabulous vacations to cash prizes to box seats at stadiums to the acquiring new professions outside of teaching that require little effort and pay off big. The American Way. Then there's us in the trenches, who roll our eyes at these jackasses and keep the school together. While the uglies are seducing the 16 year olds and their parents in numerous ways--by the way, they're often coaches, not lowly teachers!!--why stay ten years in the trenches beating your heads against teen or tween angst when you can soar, quite easily, with a National Louis Leadership course!

 See, this is the root joke that explains what is really wrong with American education--the predominance of cheesy online higher degrees that are full of nonsense and the latest Education-speak--easily transmutable to Business-speak. "Value-added", for example. These people are the dead weight of American Educaion and therefore American culture. If you want to know why American culture is in the toilet, you only have to look at the values of these cardboard cutouts of role models. They could care less about your kids--they ask "What can your country do for me?" Cynical in spades.  They're the ones who will tell you teaching is an easy gig, and give it a bad name.  And, for them it is, because they don't put in the effort to research and do it right, to actually teach academics.  When they are in the classroom, they are nothing more than glorified babysitters who learn through the grapevine of fellow travelers how to use no pain websites to "teach", while they read the sports web newspapers.  They adapt"fun' useless activities from their sports background to fill up the time and convince some students they are great, interesting teachers, maybe their favorite.

But, I don't need to tell you this, you already know it.  Or at least suspect.  From your own child's school.

Sept, 2021:

Covid Year #2--yes, what a game changer.  Sports are on the ropes. Teachers are heroic, and in short supply.  Early retirements are happening everywhere, because some people are smarter than me, and value their health over their career and money.  I guess I'm just the wrong kind of worry-wart.  BUT!  Finally getting my public school teacher street cred.

And yes, it's hard.  And soo different!  My new school is beautiful.  Well-managed. Clean and new. More professional in so many ways--in fact, I'm having a hard time sorting out which professional might actually be able to sort out my students' problems.  Which they have a lot of...and there's the rub.  We take everyone who lives nearby in the right district.  And we actually are supposed to figure out HOW to educate kids who have massive problems---indifferent parents, mental and  medical problems, epilepsy, learning disabilities, no food at home (we serve breakfast AND lunch for free to all students, no questions asked--teachers have to pay @$4 for the same meal).  

If you have a kid who's smart, academically inclined, college bound--let me tell you, if he/she wants a straight, good education, send him/her to public school.  The smart and academically gifted get tracked into programs that are advanced, full of fellow "good influences" and with resources to get your kid into college, with a scholarship, plus giving him/her access to fantastic and well funded arts programs.  At least here in Virginia.  I can't speak for other states like my former one, Florida--I know there are variables there, depending on location.  But my friends, the BS you have been fed that a public education is a lesser thing because it's free--totally propaganda.  My friends and colleagues  cautioned me when I agreed to this job that it is an *ahem* "urban" school.  Well, we have no metal detectors at the gates, no open drug dealing, brawls, graffiti or anything of that nature.  I do have some sassy black girls who are taking away years from my life..and some boys who still do hoods and "pants on the ground".  (How is this still a thing?)

They are all scared of school this year, although they will deny it till the cows line up and sing in harmony.  They've been out for 18 months and forgot how to do it.  And I have all 9th graders.  If you have any feel for the field of education, I accept your condolences.  I had 25+ failures in Q1, all kids with more than 10 absences in  a two month period--don't forget to subtract the weekends.  It is hard.  For all of us.

So take a hard job and make it harder. GOP to the task.  These corrupt, single-minded folk trying to save their precious brand have really started treading the primrose path.  See them in hell, if you care to follow.
They are disrupting school boards, teaching the gullible how to do it, by inflaming them with lies about what public schools do--this critical race theory nonsense, which no schools teach.  Let's see, what have my 9th graders been studying this year so far in World History--hmm.  The Cradle of Civilization, Mesopotamia, the Hebrews and Ancient Egypt. The only alarming thing is the number of my students that think Moses' parting of the Red Sea is a historical fact.  Now they are moving into Ancient Greek History--the birthplace of democracy, Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato--good ol' white centric philosophers.  And 60% of my students are black.  

Friday, May 1, 2020

Journal of the Plague Year:2020


So I decided i had to officially honor this strange time with a post--the year of the Plague, (Coronavirus/Covid 19).  It didn't really become reality for us until March, even though the rumors were swirling, my kids in Cali started sheltering.  My principal was hinting, but we finally started doing online school, non-essential businesses closed, Ken and I did our last-dine in restaurant meal, I think at El Maguey, or maybe it was Vito and Michaels. Doesn't matter: they are both closed except for take-out, now.  I've been doing online school since the 2nd week of March,  a week after my parents left Florida from their annual trip to Destin.  Ken's spring break got extended and eventually segued into online school.  We have to count ourselves lucky as some of the few Americans not losing any  pay during this crisis.  The strain  and learning curve was tremendous---my worst bit was trying to grade all my research papers online while simultaneously learning the technology for online school.  Things have eased somewhat, although the occasional day jams up, like today!  --Started happy hour promptly at 3:30pm.

Once I decided to make this post I raided other threads to chronicle the early days, just in case  it will one day be interesting.   Some highlights--Joe got stuck in Cali because his cheap-o flight got delayed for a month.  He got a job with the Berkeley branch of the USPS.  Trump's poll numbers are tanking.  My Russian friend got stuck in Moscow with his fiance, and now is worried that Trump's immigration restrictions will make it impossible for her to come to the US.  All this as Kate and Joe finished their desert trip, and K just began to walk again.  I think the big picture positive of this is Trump withering on the vine in a massive show of incompetence.


Here it is, in medias res:



March 22, 2020:  Katie is walking, but in a paranoid fog with Joe, trapped in her duplex.  This has to be one of the strangest moments of my time on earth.  The sky is blue, there is a pleasant breeze, and we are quarantined.

It all feels quite ridiculous and medieval, or at least 1665; wasn't that the Plague Year Daniel Defoe wrote about?  Maybe I should get excerpts of that for my students to read!!  This week, I am off, but with lesson plans for next week looming over my head.  I have to do virtual school.  I had to learn how to launch a program called Google Meets for my students to have a virtual class--I ordered a mini whiteboard to teach from.  It also has a somewhat unreliable vocal to text program you can use. 
I guess I'll get used to it, and it should give me back about two hours a day that my commute always robbed from me.  Who knows for how long, but Italy makes things feel ominous.  And here Kate and I had talked about going there this summer.

I'm not panicked in the least, but I am being precautious.  Ken was pretty sick at the beginning of the crack-down when we stopped school, so i've been keeping distance, washing, sleeping in Joe's room.  He's been very quiet, and says, although he no longer has the 101.7 fever he had at the height of it.  I'm sure he just has an ordinary flu bug, and now they're giving new symptoms, none of which he had: vomiting, diarrhea, nausea.  Kate and Joe are the ones showing anxiety, especially Kate, but they are in one of the epicenters that have been in lock-down for almost a week.  Joe is ready to come home: I thought he was beginning to chase the California dream, but i think this killed it.  I'm just wishing Covid would kill all the mosquitoes near our porch and patio--can't enjoy the fresh air with those little bastards around.

What is really interesting me, however, is how this will possibly change American life after this.  Will we finally switch our priorities, consider something more important than consumerism, wealth, and the over the top work ethic that drives it?  We've already had Andrew Yang and his guaranteed income, which Trump & co. has bizarrely adopted in a watered down version to  get himself ingratiated (after his initial blunders/denials) and re-elected.  His numbers are holding, with even a slight upturn, but I credit that to the general tendency of Mr. and Mrs. America to support any president in a time of crisis as a show of solidarity and optimism.  

It's not that i don't feel optimistic about this--i think it will blow over, but something will linger in the air.  One smart person online, I forget who, pointed out the panic hoarding mentality is a truly American reaction to crises: we think we can magically buy our way out of our problems.  The things being hoarded are kinda humorous.  Universally, toilet paper and bleach, canned goods.  Locally,  and at our Publix, we're low on raw chicken,  canned soup, rubbing alcohol, and whipped cream--at least those are things I've been wanting for 3 days and can't get.  Starbucks in Cali finally lost its "essential services" status and closed.  My neighbor Maggie in a burst of her classic entrepreneurial spirit, parked her food truck at the neighborhood mini-mart and is selling bagels of the shuttered bakery nearby.  We are eating more leftovers, and I made chicken soup from scratch from the lonely rotisserie bird I luckily nabbed, thinking to myself he reminded me of the scrawny single rooster Scarlett O'Hara's butler was chasing around the yard at the height of the Civil War starving times.    Ok, have I reached hyperbolic yet??

So, this is my speculation of how things will change.  First i don't think Trump will be re-elected even if people may be showing tacit support now--in fact, I think he wasn't going to be before this happened, but now with the stock market..of course there'll be those diehards who will say it's not his fault.  

I think the real change will be more subtle, a taking stock of priorities. I think this might just end the Rep/Dem polarization that we've been stuck in for a decade.  It looks kind of silly from this viewpoint.  We may have some sad deaths that will give folks pause.  I think there will be a move towards more compassion, maybe something like we had in the mid-60s after all the assassinations, but this one will be more lasting and have less political posturing.  My guess is our homeless population  will have some deaths.  (Still have "The Masque of the Red Death" in the back of my mind, though...).  I know we'e been giving mouth loyalties to anti-consumerism for a while by buying 2nd hand, recycling, biking-to-work, building tiny houses, but I think something deeper is going to take hold in our consumer habits.  This uneven testing is definitely going to make many question our supposedly magnificent health care system and perhaps move us towards a free set-up?  The most unsophisticated American can understand this situation.

It's so weird, but it almost feels like this whole thing has been orchestrated by God for the greater good:  get rid of Trump by tackling him where it will hurt, change hearts and minds about politics and our social system,  putting a dent in campaign practices that have led to all this, all perfectly timed to recover before election season.  Wow.  I can't unsee that.

Hits on Trump:


  • stock market losses--the words recession and depression have been floated
  • late to the party denial and deflection
  • the poor response of our medical system "the greatest in the world"
  • Fauci and other officials  who contradicted Trump's pov
  • the local governments who stepped up in his place to take unpleasant actions
  • THE (right wing) WASHINGTON EXAMINER!  is calling out Trump for not listening to  advisors, even intelligence sources!  
  • refusing the WHO tests with typical contrariness and smugness
  • They're now saying 10-12 weeks of quarantine!  Ouch. That's into summer.
  • White House is going to open Obamacare enrollment b/c corona.  (Many states had already done this.
  • That ridiculous slam on reporter Peter Alexander which shows why Trump rarely had White House briefings anyway.
Mar 26:  getting mentally prepared for online school, but honestly, in spite of the barage of e-mails giving sources, advice, whatever, I don't feel like it will be that bad.  Even in addition to losing my under 2 hours of driving, I think my daily work will lessen as well, and I WILL GET TO USE THE BATHROOM!  Yay.. 

Been trying to adopt a more creative edge, but not entirely being successful in that.  Ideas to write songs that already had lyrics, and learning a new Mott the Hoople (not new ot Mott or even Bad Company)  the old rare chessnut (sp?)  :"Ready For Love."  Some of my family members seem to be dealing harder with this shut down than me.  One in my house and one in Cali, but she has other things on her mind.  

April 14: Covid time.  Ken just got notice that they're not going to let him keep taking his Soma.  Hm.  good thing he's not as depressed as before.  But how did they come to this decision? 


May 1--can't let this go by for memory, Trump's crazy speculation then meltdown bout how he suggested we investigate injecting disinfectants, like bleach, into humans as a cure.  And we used to think Woody Woodpecker sounded cookoo..

May 3:  The tension in my little fam ratcheting up.  Joe's coming home, to get his car, to officially become a Californian--so many mixed feelings on that.  Kate's panicking , i think fueling her to want to spend summer here--but is that a good idea?  Six months ago I woulda said yeah.  But, what is Joe going to go back to Cali TO?  We need to keep her place through June I think, and I may have to shake the family trees to make that work.  K's sounding bad: knew she wouldn't handle Joe leaving so well, and now i guess her AP gig has fallen through.  She's swinging wildly at multi-opportunities, and I' not sure which she wants or will do.  Everything from staying put to La to OK to Baltimore??   I feel for her having to make so many choices.    I guess the best thing is throw the spaghetti at the fridge and see what sticks.

For me I just got word I didn't make the cut for a SPCath gig I applied for but had forgotten about.  There goes my easy commute--unless we keep online school...

Ken and I have been systematically going through all the James Bonds  (26, I think?) to keep ourselves occupied, and we don't have too much more to go--already at the Pierce Brosnan ones.
Life seems to be squeezing us dry.  My flamethrower to the corona is walking around my garden, re-imagining it, even occasionally doing something!  All this year I've been moving things that I picture doing better in a new place--more artistic, or better conditions.  So far it's worked to brilliant effect with my new succulent garden by the porch, moving  a volunteer firecracker plant stuck in the fence to pots: exploding with mini firecrackers now!  Moving dotted horsemint to a more back garden situation--they are still recovering.  And dousing everything with dolomite.

So, my fantasies have turned to Roses.  I'm searching and researching, since It's probably too late to plant.  I already did three white roses in January (? ) I think--Joe was still here--maybe it was Xmas.  Those have been great--always putting on new growth and flowers, except during the dry spell we had.  Well, some even then.  I'm thinking it's the special soil I bought, and the non acid mulch.  Trying to decide where to put others:  really love David Austin 's Roald Dahl--  that yellow-pink combo plus sounds like it's a diehard.  Maybe in the front to replace my little finicky mystery rose that won't die and won't bloom--that's why i don't even know what it is!  Maybe this last drought did it.  Also like Dortmund, climbing--but the only place I can see where it might go and get enough sun is the chain-link fence on the back patio.  --well that could stand beautifying.  I thought of the bare wall that's actually the back wall of the old front porch, but I think that needs a really light colored rose to show up there--looking for that....I originally thought that Dortmund on the east side front porch, but I think it only gets a few hours' sun...boo.  It would look cool with a climbing rose, and I think I saw a mislabeled Dortmund (as "Dartmouth")  in the Pasadena Community Rose garden, going crazy with blooms--will have to keep an eye on it through the seasons to see if it will live up to its praises.

May 16:  Done with my eighth grades two more weeks of school.  I'm fighting some bug--hope it's not you-know-what.  First, Joe and I both got Diarrhea, about 10 days in from his awful Frontier Airlines flight--completely full to capacity plane!.  If I die, I'm suing them.  Since then, I have had three days of fatigue, some chest congestion, and on and off throat irritation.   Apple suggests  self isolation with my fam, but no testing yet.  I can still breathe, etc.    I applied for A ritzy Cath HS job.  Made an I-movie for Dick's retirement which I think turned out pretty well. REALLY sick of online school, even if I'm down to just attendance, meetings and one class.

May 19:  Whatever I have, I'm getting over it, I think.  It's ridiculous how the slightest cough and sniffle makes us all think we're infected, ready to die.

May 31:

The Plague Year becomes the Riot year.  The Plague/Police Brutality/Riot Year.

How about this to solve our racial and political divide?  A new reality TV show, but not the sensationalist kind.  Two people from opposing viewpoints, state their opinions about politics and race for the audience.  Maybe there should be no visuals where one can see the other--only the audience sees both.Then they are forced to listen to each other's life stories, in an attempt to get them to analyze how they got to believe what they believe.  They try to make the other one live in their shoes. Certain questions should be asked, like what was the hardest thing you ever had to do?  What was a decision you made where you could see two different sides?  What makes you uncomfortable?  I dunno, maybe there's some big reveal at the end where they find out each other's labels.  Dunno if that would work somehow.

June 12:

Two weeks into the protests,  and St. Pete'sprotests have been peaceful by all appearances of video clips and news reports, although I've seen the aftermath of our local riot/looting in Tampa: a burned down Champs Footwear plus an  adjoining Asian restaurant.  Quite a few boarded up windows along Fowler Avenue, which parallels the crime-ridden neighborhood of Suitcase City in Tampa. Phone stores, fireworks businesses, shoe shops, some clothing stores.  Preventative, mostly, I think. I also watched video footage of the night of this incident, which seemed much more opportunistic than a pure protest.  A number of what appears to be neighborhood cars were parked in the University Square Mall parking lot, honking their horns, shouting, and if that was a protest it was a strange looking one without the usual signage, more like an angry tail-gate party.  One of my former students who recently attended law school, and who is politically active on the left, assures me that a right wing agitator started the fire, but local news have posted pictures of the man they are looking for, who is black.  Who knows what the truth is in this climate?

My former student has made enough posts about her own participation in St. Pete protests and various other activities that I'm pretty sure she is actively involved in Antifa--she has their flag in her profile, and has posted about some online activity that seems to be about outing extreme right wing folks.  I have read some credible sounding reports that this is, in fact, what Antifa does, more than trying to incite violence in public, as the right claims.  She is posting screenshots of text conversations, and live video of ugly behavior, often saying she has done follow-up with the appropriate authorities.  She seems to be going on the attack at times, impersonating a sympathetic new member, then turning the tables once they start spewing some hate-filled words.  I noticed she recently changed her profile name,  probably to dodge retaliative actions.

What to make of this?  First, I think this probably is more the methods of Antifa, rather than the random and stupid violence they've been accused of, although perhaps in the early days there was some Antifa destruction, like the bank in Berkeley.  It's an interesting tact, the online outing, and seems to get people fired from jobs, barraged with counter comments, de-platformed, I imagine.  Ultimately can be helpful, I suppose, but I worry for the counterpunch--will my student have violent or other repercussions?  She has noted that the right wingers underestimate her smarts and gun skills.  She is kind of a badass.  And beyond that, where do these angry men go next, after they've lost their jobs, been publicly shamed?  i kind of doubt they will now just slink off to the therapist to get the help they need.  Where have these guys come from?  The other response to the disenfranchised millennial generation.

If Trump gets beaten, can we count on all these scary people to just dissolve and blend back into the mainstream?  That seems overly optimistic.

Oh, yes, and back to the plague.  Florida's numbers are climbing again after a few weeks of  Phase 1 reopening, and one week of Phase 2.  Bad news, right?  Here at my house, we're still acting like we're still in lock-down mode, with the exception of going to a very small Russian restaurant in Tampa, where we were the only customers for 75% of our meal, with the occasional masked Uber-eats deliverer coming in to pick up meals. 

Is this going to put us back in the Zoom classroom?  I don't really mind--saves me the drive, but how long will parents put up with that again?  Of course, protests aren't helping, and it seems to put a hitch in the theory that weather will kill Covid.  And, our cases in Florida are on the rise.

Jun 13:  Well, I had to enshrine this somewhere, and I'm not sure about FB.  But I just heard the funniest true joke, from Moms Mabley, about police and their relations to the black population.  She was describing getting pulled over for running a red light, and her explanation? Says Moms, 

 "I said, cause I seen all you white folks going on the green light I thought the red light was for us!" 




JULY 25: I feel like two words have blown up my life: "Israeli terrorists." What idiocy America has become-so many people trying to control other people. It really is less free than 20/40 years ago. This horrible year needs to end. With a whimper, please, I've already had too many bangs. I'm starting to think Ken's ideas to get out of this situation may not work. He needs to get a decent job. Joe too. I can't have all this on me. It's too much.

Nov 24, 2020. So, new thought about the Trumpster . This is my stance. I recall saying to myself, about all these wanna-be "hero" shooters, like the the Columbine kids and those that followed, with sad subreddit, and 4/Chan, then 8 chan and whatever chan followers who really don't have a good grasp of the essentials of the good life, and hero worship amoral shit. Donald is one of you. I vow, like I vowed for the Columbine dopes, and all the school shooters that followed, never to legitimize your names in remembrance, or in a worshipful, cultlike following that gives you legitimacy or historical significance. You are a splot on history with no form. As is the anomaly that is #45 ( DJT, the non-president) . You will dissolve with the stress your chaos caused my body, into nothingness, and let's hope the media powers that be have the sense to keep you there. Ultimately, you are uninteresting in your self-absorption, much like a bullied school shooter. This is your comic legacy ;). You are forgotten.

Feb 13, 2021:
Have made it 2/3rds the way through the Plague year,and school has been a rotating mess of virtual and "live" students, with me permanently in the classroom. Teachers in and out, the latest with a mild heart attack, a few have gotten vaccines, but not me yet. Diocese claimes to be working on it for us. My boss heroically spent two months at home, recovering from knee surgery--good timing. I have been thinking about our doctor system that has brought us here. This is being aided by watching Nurse Jackie.


So, when we were growing up, all our parents wanted us to be doctors, or marry doctors. In the USA, especially among the immigrant class, this was the replacement for aristocracy or whatever high class equivalent that saidyou made it. So because of that, combined with the revving up of our capitalist system in the 2nd half of the 20th Century, this is how we got to where we are. Doctors are the closest to God, like kings once were. Not to be questioned, heroic, larger than life, saviors. Nevermind the large numbers of them slinging plastic surgery and opiates and other non-essential services. Are doctors seen this way in other countries, say, Russia or China--aren't they more humble, make less money, and part of the hoy polloi? If we didn't worship the career so much, we wouldn't be willing to pay so much for it--thinking it is so valuable a service. Thus, the imploding of our health care system. In some places, and in the US in the past, the work itself was what got respect. Are there really tiers of doctors and is the cost the best sign of quality? Designer doctors? I'm afraid that like a lot of American product, tis is a lot of hype and a house of cards.


America loves to make heroes: soldiers, sports warriors, and in recent history, the 9/11 fireman and police, and now medical staff. Thank god they are including nurses this time around, However, Nurse Jackie gives a caveat--the heroes always have a dark side. Being a hero, if you're not Jesus Christ himself, takes a heavy toll, and we in America need to address that and stop calling people heroes while expecting them to work 60 hour weeks, have a perfect family life, and be model citizens. This Hero worship attitude has screwed up many of our nation's potential; its soldiers, policemen, fire-fighters, ER doctors, nurses, teachers. We cannot run on empty, and we have to look at the type of personalities who are drawn to danger--they are easy to flip to the dark side. Look at the make-up of the Capital rioters.

Thursday, February 7, 2019

Rags

Rags

February 7, 2019:

I realized for the first time how much journalism has changed since my childhood, and even young adulthood, when my daughter moved to Brooklyn about 10 years ago, with a fresh English degree from her honors college, and got to write a story, a blog really, for the prestigious New York Times. It was a features about the people who hand out water during the NY Marathon--slice of life thing. It felt like a breakthrough, but it wasn't.  She didn't get paid, just the honor of having her name associated with the NYT.  It was a theme for her life there: two unpaid internships at publishers that forced her to get jobs, in the meantime, at coffee houses, perfumeries, and bookstores to pay her rent.  I know how this industry, in its moment of crises, has burned through a mess of millennials, and NYT may have actually been better than most.

We know the causes: CNN and the 24-hour news-cycle.  Internet news. A thousand news start ups challenging the old gray guard, in print and on TV.  Internet ads, the destabilizing effect of rescinding the Fairness Doctrine on Network TV, allowing for the rise of Fox News, and yes, MSNBC, so that journalists feel like they no longer need to feel objective or fact driven.  Opinion  has become news; we hardly get anything else these days.  I waste so much energy trying to find good pieces out there, and they sure are lacking, even with all these young, Ivy-league and super-educated minds going to waste out there.

So, I've had it.  I'm starting a list. Of un-newsworthy headlines. Or undignified op-eds.  Unlike my music lyric list "Words for Food"  with all my favorite and inspiring words in music, this list will be one intended to make collective blood boil.  I know the millennials, probably deciding their words aren't valued anyway, have a hand in this--it's their language and slang/obscenities half the time.  I'm really getting tired of seeing swear words in headlines--how are you supposed to take a newspaper seriously when its editorial staff doesn't?  I think I'll make some system where I try to highlight the most egregious, overwrought, non-objective words in the headline, to emphasize what I'm seeing.  I'm sure I could fill up a whole page, just today, with little effort.  I don't know whether to just let them work their own magic or annotate.
Well, as it goes, I suppose. Hopefully someone will be embarrassed enough to stop.  Here's the inaugural headline:

Feb 7, 2019-
--CNN:
"Nancy Pelosi just threw some serious shade at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's 'Green New Deal'"  Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

Yes, it's an opinion piece, but feels more like sorority party gossip, and not even original in its wording.

--Huffpost:  
"Jeff Bezos Says National Enquirer Exec Threatened To Publish ‘Dick Pick’"Carla Herreria
This seems to sum up everything that's wrong with journalism--isn't there a more dignified way?  There was another headline that said "Bezos Exposes Pecker."  Yeah, that was a clever thing that couldn't be resisted, wasn't it?


--Slate:
  

"Everyone Should Wear Nametags. All the time"  Shannon Palus

Her other headline was even more demanding, telling us for some reason what a menstrual emoji should look like, and why the one she saw just wasn't good enough. I can't be the only person who thinks these attempts at cutesy journalism just sound like the demands of a brat in the throes of the terrible twos.  Lord, am I tired of these, and bet I should be able to list one daily from Slate or Huffpost.  Again the wording is rarely original, often starting with the phrase "Why you should.."

--USA Today:  
"O.J. Simpson's advice to Roger Stone: 'Man up' and 'stop crying'"
Why is this a story?

All right, I found a bunch more but I can't stand looking at them any more.  Will revisit as needed.

                                            ******************************

--Here's one from Fox, Feb 18, 2019:

"Kamala Harris gives awkward response when asked about Jussie Smollett claims"

Again, why is this necessary to report?  Hmm.  Both are black, that's about it.  I didn't even bother to read the article.

Ok, I just peeked at it, to be fair if I was going to be critical.  So her "awkward answer " (asking her to walk back a tweet supporting Smollett) was comprised of a speculation that she was looking around for staff, implying she doesn't write her own tweets.  Her answer was perfectly reasonable, saying she should wait until all evidence unfolds, but then the text gratuitously threw a bunch of "ums" in her direct quote to make her sound either unsure or insincere.  Did I just imagine that when I was younger, the press itself made some sort of effort to demonstrate that anyone guilty of a crime, or the victim, was treated objectively until the evidence was in?  And remember those fine old days when a minor's name wasn't dragged through press mud to protect them?  

Huffpost, again:

Roger Stone Attacks Judge Presiding Over His Case In Bizarre Instagram Post

If anyone deserves some tit for tat (IMHO), it's Roger Stone.  But don't become the enemy.  How about letting the public read the details for themselves and letting us judge? (In fact, they are truly bizarre details, implying Mueller hand picked this judge, and some razzle-dazzle about Hillary Clinton and Benghazi. BUT, it's these kinds of headlines that make me think journalists really are elitists who think we don't know how to analyze.  Maybe if y'all didn't try to do the hard work for us, the nation's readers might actually read?  I almost didn't read this because of the headline, but changed my mind, thinking of this thread, and  to see if the histrionics matched the details.  They almost did.  I think that comment about the circle with the X --meant to  read as a crosshairs to signal the Trump wackos -- is way over the line of objective journalism.  Maybe it's even true, but it makes the writer look paranoid to Joe middle America.  Who is the intended audience here?


NBC News, April 27, 2019:
White House celebrates Melania Trump's birthday with bizarre photo 

The photo is a strange one, of course, as many photos with Melania are these days. But one of those 30+ photographers shown in the picture must've got a more ordinary one.  Did the White House choose this one.  One thing, using bizarre in the headlines is definitely a trend.


Washington Post, May 16, 2019:
Kushner skirts GOP senators’ key questions on his immigration plan


This one maybe isn't as bad as usual, but it does have a bit of snark-what might be a more objective word/phrase? leaves unanswered, perhaps. I know it's the truth, more or less, but why put the 40% off

Jun 19:
Ok, so I haven't been very diligent with this post, mostly because I am truly having a hard time finding any hard news stories that make my point AND don't leach into an opinion piece.  I mean, look at any news feed, any day--more than half if not more is just opinion pieces reworked into news.  Either there is much less hard news than there used to be or newspapers/news sources  just aren't doing their jobs.  So I might have to just resort to identifying the worst sort of opinion pieces that insult my intelligence and verges on propaganda, attempts to unfairly sway.  From today's Huffpost is a case in point:


Huffpost, June 19, 2019:

Democrats Slam Joe Biden Over Comments Invoking Segregationist Senators

This headline really tees me off.  It is labeled "Politics" rather than news, but still, if it was a lawyer in court, it would be accused of leading the witness.  I almost didn't do the red highlights until I really  looked at what was going on here and dissected it.  Out of Touch is the mantra. This is aimed at a particular audience, not all voters in the US.  It's aimed at the left of center readers who are trying to make up their minds about which Dem to vote for in the primary.  It has been quite obvious that Huffpost has been gunning for Grandpa Joe for some time.  Here's a few more of their recent stories on him:



That last is all about the seemingly left attempt to put Biden in a barn with the likes of H. Weinstein

Lots of left leaning news sources have run stories about age in politics, (somehow often not pointing out Warren's age, isn't that interesting?  She's not an old white man.

Anyway, if you actually read the text instead of just skimming the headline you'll see the disconnect.  Biden is waxing nostalgic about the day when Congress actually worked together, cooperated, and he was using the segregationists as a case in point.  He wasn't saying he agreed with their segregationist viewpoints, for god's sake; in fact, he was pointing out how they scared him and belittled him.  And yet there was a level of professionalism and civility in Congress then that eludes it now.  Now if Corey Booker et al. want to intentionally ignore Biden's seemingly heartfelt point for some stupid political gain--with millennials, the gullible, well, report that.  But to lay it all on Joe as this headline in this deceptive--yes, I said deceptive! way is all on Huffpost.  There is a full ton of this kind of stuff out there these days--no wonder everyone buys into this fake news mantra. Disrespect.


Yahoo News, June 23, 2019:

Trump warns he’s not ‘prepared to lose’ reelection

Now, I already read this story through another news outlet, one that extensively quoted Trump and gave the surrounding context, which did not in any way make it sound ominous the way this headlines seems.  This sounds like he implies he will act on some unscrupulous, undemocratic behavior like a coup to retain power.  The other was in response to some reporter asking what he would do if he lost, and in typical puffed up fashion, he answered that he wasn't going to lose..there was no reason to think he would lose..he's not prepared to lose.  That word warns is really uncalled for, and gives heat to his fake news mantra.  You can see how that changes with context-- it's not like he was making some finger-waving boiler of a speech warning he would refuse to relinquish power.  Let's keep our heads people.  Even when he implies he'd like to do a third term, you know that's  (probably)just part of his fantasy that he's popular.  At least I hope so.

Yahoo News, Sept. 22, 2019:  (Also labeled POLITICS)

Intelligence whistleblowers face a dangerous path to Congress

This is not so bad in the headline, although I might have highlighted the somewhat controversial word "dangerous".  No, it's more the first paragraph that turned me sour here:

"WASHINGTON — When House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., issued a rare subpoena to acting spy chief Joseph Maguire, commanding him to share with Congress an “urgent” and “credible” disclosure reportedly relating to the president, it kicked off a heated debate across different government agencies and Capitol Hill over how to handle the anonymous complaint.

One of the most perplexing questions for outsiders is if the complaint was so urgent, why didn’t the whistleblower go straight to Congress, bypassing the jurisdictional battle between overseers?"

I don't quite see, having already read the backstory from several sides on this issue, how the word commanded is warranted here. Two thoughts: the writer is a conservative and wants to make Adam Schiff sound imperious, or the poor thing is a liberal wanting to reach in and grab the recipient of his subpoena (and any interested parties), pressing down the weight of his position that might not be taken seriously. Either way, from a the point of view of old journalistic standards, the word commanded in this context looks ridiculous and biased. This is one of the kind of pieces that I'm getting so tired of--not exactly basic, fact presenting news, but also not really an op-ed article, the kind that just reek of spin and analysis that makes both sides weary.


And, I highlighted the entire question in red because it is the pinhead on which this whole article spins. When you read more, it probably seems somewhat clear that the writer is leaning lib/Dem and thinks she is addressing folks who are already putting up walls against believing the whistleblowers' story.  She's going to tell you logically why a whistleblower cannot go straight to Congress. But here's the problem--how many readers, seeing that 2nd line, just stop there (as I almost did, but for possibly different reasons), and then go on to use the "bypass of Congress", which they may have not thought of before reading this, unfortunately, as an argument to support their anti-whistleblower views at their next social/social media function?



This is why I am so damned tired of , and lose respect for, overly clever journalists/journalism.

April 14:  Saw this today, at the height of the U.S. Covid crises:

Business Insider, via Yahoo News: April 14-

All But Three People Who Died from COVID-19 in a Major US City Were Black

This story would have just washed over me if I didn't know the aforementioned U.S. city so well: St. Louis.

So in the copy, the "City" had only three "white" people die of Covid.  It then went on to cherry pick statistics from St. Louis County--which any St. Louisan could tell you is NOT the same as the City of St. Louis.  The thing is, by the 80s, St. Louis, much like its friend across the river, East St. Louis, is a majority black city.  The County, on the other hand, is majority white--you know, the old white flight to the suburbs--the County is the suburbs, and especially West County which is where  my doctor's wife sister lived before she died, and her husband still lives.  I could not afford his neighborhood, and the majority of West County is like that, with all the fancy malls, trendy cafes and high end restaurants are.   Chesterfield, for example.  Frontenac and Town and Country, which even by it's name you can tell is suburban.   There are a few high end neighborhoods that are white and wealthy--Ladue and Clayton (I think Clayton counts as city?) and some of the downtownish  Streets near Forest Park that have the old French names like Soulard.  But most of St. Louis City is blighted, full of crumbling brick Victorian era identical two-flats that often have two or more on every block with boarded-up windows.  Chain link fences, junk yard dogs.  At least that's the way I remember it, with chicken, bar-B-Q and chop suey store fronts in need of a new coat of paint over the 40 layers already there.  I never had the desire to be a city girl growing up, with sad, gray, dilapidated St. Louis as my only experience.  Some neighborhoods  today are gentrifying slowly, however, if you want to consider that displacement a good thing.

So, the cherry-picked stats made it look like the City was majority white, if you weren't paying attention to the wording.  The white population is 65.5% in the county, but only 46% in the city (it surprises me it's that high, but must be the newly gentrifying Central West End).
Anyway, I know the writers were trying to do-good, but they stretched the truth, and anyone in that area of the country would feel that and now be dismissive of any info from that source.  Good job, do-gooders: the ends justify the means, no?  That's the part of the country that can't be alienated.

Apr 15:  I see a well-respected paper calling out these stories that are fueling racist interpretations of Covid victims.  Hmm, I feel prescient, and not affiliated with anyone's b.s.

April 22, 2020:  I think I've discovered the New Fox News--check out this headline that flies in the face of all other polls, which show Biden with a pretty strong lead, including in some of these swing states.  To be fair, A St. Pete poll shows Biden/trump in a tie.


Trump Has Narrow Lead in Key Swing States Despite Voters' Frustrations with Coronavirus Response

President has one-point lead in six crucial states even as voters there worry about opening the country too quickly


https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-poll-swing-states-2020-election-coronavirus-response-a9478776.html

Ok, I'l  admit this is not a screaming headline. (Others of theirs are, however).  It is just how it opposed everything else I've been reading over the last few weeks, which has been showing a fairly steady trend of Biden rising, Trump sinking, and especially concerning his handling of the corona crisis.  But enough of The Independent's stuff has been off trend  that I decided it was time to check out its history and present day owners--well, it started as a Tabloid.  And now is own by Russians--fancy that.

Not enough for you, my skeptical friend?  Let's look at some of their other recent headlines, cherry-picked by hand, by moi:


This is the headline that changes after you click on it, from

Claims of "Fake News" Descend into Chaos at Bizarre Briefing as CDC Chief Admits Quotes Were Accurate


to (once you click on the story), because if that headline wasn't confusing enough, the second was almost as bad:

Trump calls on CDC Director to Denounce "Fake News" --who Admits Paper's Quotes are Accurate

I suppose they were not satisfied with the first?  Don't get why they didn't take it down, then...

Entire Police Force "Resigns" After Officers Suspended For Violence 

Yeah, I added the caps, because for some reason this paper disdains headline traditions.  If I hadn't been seeing these stories all day, I would have no idea what was going on in these headlines.  I can't even tell if it's anti Trump or not, but it's definitely up to something.  The plain story of the "Fake News"story, that I luckily heard first on NPR, is that a head CDC guy said he was sidelined for telling news Trump didn't want to hear: that Covid will be back in the winter--(duh).  But exactly who is this set of headlines--one so bad they needed to double down in badness--who is it trying to appeal to?
The Police Force story smacks of typical British  yellow tabloidism--it's the story of the  57 "band of brothers" who quit a special squad (not the entire police force!) in protest of two in their ranks getting suspended for knocking down and sending to hospital a 75 year old man.  That story was spun in the American press too, because I read an ancillary story that quoted one of the men who "resigned"-(let's call it what it really was--they asked to be taken off the special unit; they didn't quit the NYC police force), anyway the former special units member asked to be taken off because the policeman's union wasn't going to support them.  So this story gets a double spin, first making the resigners look even worse than they did than when they all walked past a bleeding, unconscious man without doing anything--for "quitting".  Then the British version implies the entire NYC police force quit--what a sensational , apocalyptic story that is!  Next, Protest Zombies come back to life!  Again, when you click on this click-bait headline, the second is slightly more reasonable, detailing "an" entire police force--hmm. But repeats the sensational "quitting in protest" from the American press, which now seems questionable.

This paper quite obviously not trying to actually give the public any information.  And I rest my case for the Independent--now a clearly, used -up, dirty dish rag.  ("Taps" will now play...)

And, just to add to this, it just seems like us sick, scared, and quarantined people are being played by a certain political party this past week.  First of all, there was this rash --yes, that's the best word for it, Rash.  A Rash of small but widely publicized "political protests", particularly targeting a few swing states, with participants who are Covid deniers who go to church during lockdowns, and others who reportedly carry guns--who does this sound like?  This immediately followed the next day by Republican governors saying they were going to begin opening their states next week---doesn't this all sound like some horrible plan gone awry that they thought they were going to shove down our throats, like the bosses they are?  And thank the lord, the public dug in--and I'm particularly proud of people in my field, who just said--don't think so, wouldn't be prudent--and if schoolkids are staying home, their parents have to think in ten directions about how this is going to work, this partial birth going back.  Do these people ever actually think, or do they just scheme?


June 6, 2020:

Trump Demeans Female Black Reporter As She Challenges Him On Black Unemployment

 Huffpost:  by Mary Papenfuss

This story occurs at the end of the first week of the George Floyd protests.  I am going to play devil's advocate here, because I really am in  agreement  about Trump with both Ms. Papenfuss and Ms. Alcindor, the subject of the story.  I just don't see why the Huffpost feels the need to inflate plain English.  The words/facts/speeches should speak for themselves:

The put-down occurred after Trump crowed in a Rose Garden statement about a better-than-expected 13.3% unemployment figure for the nation in May. The president shockingly claimed that it was a “great day” for George Floyd — the Black man a white police officer killed last month in Minneapolis — because he would be pleased “looking down” at the jobs stats.

Like I implied, Trump's words and behavior are  definitely worthy of the news' focus, but in the old days a true journalist would refrain from the intentionally emotive language, for the sake of objectivity.  It feeds into the right's argument that certain journalists/media platforms are subjective.  This article was labeled Politics, but not Opinion, which it clearly is. I don't really get this new designation of Politics, and I suspect other readers are confused too--some sort of blurry line between facts and opinion.

I used to teach my students the art of letting words and ideas speak for themselves rather than diluting them with hyperbolic adjectives and so forth.  It carries more weight, for example to say, "He was a strong man"  which sounds like a quiet observation, than "He was an extremely, very strong, man", which sounds like the writer is working too hard to impress, and smacks of, as Hamlet wittily observed, one who "doth protest too much."  To fix,  and not blow one's credibility as an objective watcher, it would have been better to say, losing the "air quotes" , my would-be corrections in red:


The put-down comment occurred after Trump crowed spoke in a Rose Garden statement about a better-than-expected 13.3% unemployment figure for the nation in May. The president had


shockingly claimed that it was a “great day” for George Floyd — the Black man a white police officer killed last month in Minneapolis — because he would be pleased “looking down” at the jobs stats.ccurate

revision--
said, “Equal justice under the law must mean that every American receives equal treatment in every encounter with law enforcement regardless of race, color, gender or creed. They have to receive fair treatment from law enforcement. They have to receive it.”

“We all saw what happened last week. We can’t let that happen. Hopefully George is looking down and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country. (It’s) a great day for him. It’s a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality,” Trump continued. 
“It’s what our Constitution requires and it’s what our country is all about,” he concluded.-

--because these are the actual words he said.  Of course, though, the actual words by themselves don't support the article's claim that George would be happy about job's numbers.  I took out that partial "ironic air quotes" (cheap writing) because they add opinion to the facts, and I would like to note that I had to dig through several stories on this speech before I found one,  on CNN, which has the actual speech words with a smattering of frame,  much less and more objective than the Huffpost article.  Huffpost , although it had a clip of the speech, cut it off  at the strategic moment where they were interpreting the truth.  You can definitely see the difference, and one must suspect that the left simply feels any mention of Floyd's name should be off limits to Trump, which seems a bit over the top to me--he is, after all, as much as we'd like to disavow him, an American, with a horse in this race.  The connection to the unemployment numbers is much less direct than the Huffpost  writer claims, even though it is part of the same speech. Noted.

 Now onto the central part of the article, about the speech being about job numbers, where Ms. Alcindor , who works for PBS, rightly asked Trump to recognize  white unemployment  dropping more than black unemployment, which actually rose 1%.  A true portrayal of the moment shows Trump dismissing the question with a palm-forward, single wave of his hand, then hurriedly gathering his speech materials, saying, "You're something", as Pence initiates a round of applause for the president.

No need to embellish with the words "shushing" and "angrily".   The American public continues to receive disservice from the manipulative press on both sides.  Why do we all have to work so hard to find the truth?  And I can't unring the bell of seeing Trump invoking Floyd's name with these more harsh interpretations.  The emotional anger at him has already been initiated, and I am now also angry at Ms. Papenfuss as well for trying to play me in a way that was unnecessary.  I would have been disgusted by the original, and you have now put me in harm's way of the right-leaning people I will encounter who see your spin. I hope it's just that the last week's events have made you feel things that you could't help bleeding through, but you MUST do better.

This is an interesting article on the Poynter Institute, a rather mysterious enterprise in my town, that is a non-profit, that bills itself as an arbiter of Journalism Ethics, and supporter of new, black and female journalists.  This article may make you question their mission:

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/xg8ygd/its-about-ethics-in-journalism?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=vf&utm_mailing=VF_HivePS_062020&utm_medium=email&bxid=5ee00d2c70909e64ab7b6823&cndid=61370671&hasha=0400cea7ffd5c0af9db985c0d1599e69&hashb=fad8e4a98fba8f42cb020e7bee06c72e41a3d5a8&hashc=a2e9aaf654afbd2cb5f830a27793a67b932eae233cfa91c638ddd747e53a2261&esrc=hivenlpg&utm_campaign=VF_HivePS_062020&utm_term=VYF_Hive

TTtttttt

Monday, December 17, 2018

Faith

Friday, December 15, 2017


Faith

December 15, 2017

This morning as I was walking to school, I was scrolling through my phone, looking for some entertainment to pass the time.  I saw someone's essay on Goodreads, on a review about Bertrand Russell's Why I'm Not a Christian, which I read years ago, and put in the vault along with all my other thoughts about philosophy, God, religion and the great existential questions.

Not to mention, all the great literature I've read throughout my life, from all over the world, that reinforces and elaborates on these ideas.

Since I taught a British lit class that  I felt needed a walk through Western culture, its philosophies and evolution of cultural ideas, I often got this question from students, usually after we had long left the comforts of Medieval and Renaissance Christianity and were delving into Scientific Rationalism and Existentialism--so, what do you believe?

Short answer, I would say, if I didn't want to get into it, or read the room as a bit aggressive:
      "It's Complicated".  Or, "Well, I was raised Catholic..."

I think some of my students read my very intimate and extensive knowledge of Catholic ritual and history as belief.  My faith, so to speak.  They would be right on a very surface level.  Catholicism is a piece of my soul I cannot remove or deny, just like I can't avoid being Italian, Irish, British, and some other Eastern European bloodline.  I can't erase 17 years of my life or even my family's continued pressure.  They are definitely Catholic, most of them.  Others kinda see-saw.

There is something about the richness and awe in the ceremonies and churches of Catholicism. It just sort of amazes me that fairly primitive human beings came up with such a concept, to civilize and pacify humanity's violent tendencies.  And, in some cases, it worked--Kings were not rebeled against, men reeled in some of their baser animalistic natures, particularly for sex.  Women were revered (in theory--when they weren't being abused) on some level and protected. Of course, there were all those Church fueled wars. However, there was also a facade of politeness that was reinforced by the church structure.

In these days of incivility I can respect that.

And Jesus.  I like Jesus, but not in the same way these redneck Southern baptists do. I don't emblazon him on my truck and drive like a madman disregarding others' safety. As a general principle I have much greater respect for the older, more traditional religious practices: Catholicism, but also Eastern and Greek Orthodox, Judaism.  See, these are solid, steadfast, and not mutating all over the place.  Although I don't agree with the Pope on things like birth control and such, but he always maintains the same baseline.  Who's the biggest peacenik in the world?  The Pope, through Vietnam, Middle Eastern messes, nuclear war,  terrorism, North Korean threats, he always reinforces Jesus' message of peace, in defiance of the politics of the times.  That's cool. And poverty--he's the only world figure going to bat for the poor these days.

I have less and less respect for the myriad forms of Southern Christianity in America.  In fact, I would like to state that I can see, in the very public forms,  very little that exhibits Christian morality in their ideas and practices--as they mutate into a thousand political forms. All that bullshit about being blessed and superior as an excuse for being rich and cheating people--God wanted them to do it-He sanctioned it!   Cart before the horse thinking.

And those dip shits marrying and blessing their guns!!WTF!!

First, here's the baseline I was taught, and still believe in:

  • #1--The Golden Rule:  Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You. 
It's like the Christian version of Karma.
Where has this idea disappeared to?  I was taught this should be the center of morality--if you followed this faithfully, you were a decent, moral person.  Of course, everyone has their lapses--that's what confession, prayer is for--moments of meditation, to really think about what you had done or said, especially if it bothers you in some way--possibly you did something wrong that needs working out.  Notice that the Golden Rule is all about fostering compassion for others, walking in their shoes, being a thoughtful, considerate person--not a guard dog constantly on the attack.  You are supposed to police your own soul, not others.

And this is where the Southern Christians (and many Republicans) go so far off the rails----
with a little help from their money-grubbing, political friends.  To paraphrase Fiddler o n the Roof--"God Bless and keep the NRA, far, far away from me..."  ( the original was the Цар).

I'm not saying all Southern Christians are like this, but it is the message that is publicly seen from them, and I don't see too many having the guts to stand up and contradict their rabid, and rich, leaders. 
  • #2-  The Seven Deadly Sins:

             ---Pride
             ---Envy
             ---Anger
             ---Greed
             ---Gluttony
             ---Sloth
             ---Lechery, Lust

And, every reinforcing piece of literature, from medieval times on, that illustrates how these can enter human life. Pride, of course, being the devil's own sin, and #1 one of what not to do in order to be a good person.  I admit struggling constantly with my pride; of my knowledge, schooling, pov, skills and abilities. I do try!  One problem about this in the modern world is humility--the opposite of pride--is seen as weakness.  I suspect it has so much to do with why powerful men have decided it's their birthright to control the "weaker" women in their lives.  ( And people of other races, backgrounds). But see how medieval thinking (maybe not actions--these were ideals, of course) used to undercut those grandiose ideas?  Even the simple idea of courtesy, of the big, bad knight dedicating his service, platonically, to a lady?  That whole unrequited love trope.

Greed is the interesting one for the day.  And echoing that New Testament adage:  "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven."  It doesn't say it's impossible (how big a needle, how big a camel?)  But you can see the tipping point--greed.  All these folks who believe they are using their hard-earned money for the greater good: are they?  I can see someone convincing themselves they are contributing to the greater good by, say, contributing to a political party, but are they really just lying to themselves about fattening their own cushy lives? Or  using a tax break--which substantially takes away from others--claiming they are going to be "job-creators".  I think it's awfully hard for a businessman who feels he's worked very hard for his bread, deserves his cushion, fears a fall and is providing for his children--so many ways to play the compassion game--and I do think fear is an intense motivator, the forgotten underlying motive, that fuels an unconscious need to keep acquiring more and more.  I do understand the pressure to get your child properly educated and prepared for adulthood, but it seems there is a  better way than merely giving them things; you should also give a little hardship, motivate and teach, possibly even with a little deprivation.  The endgame is self-reliance, no? which does not come in a box.

 I have students with 4 I-phones, all active.
Seems there's just an awful lot of unnecessary crap that comes in a box.


Labels are so easy to take on.  Generalizing and judging.

  • #3 Judge not, lest ye be judged.  That's the smartest idea of all.  And one we all miss on regularly.
  • #4 (Roy Moore's sin of Pride): The 10 Commandments

     -Worship no other gods but the Almighty-no false gods
     -Do not take the Lord's name in Vain
     -Keep holy the Sabbath
     -Honor your father and mother
     -Do not kill
     -Don't commit adultery
     -Do not steal
     -Do not lie
     -Do not covet your neighbor's goods
     -Do not covet your neighbor's wife

Of course, in all of these, the devil is in the details.  What is adultery, killing, lying, stealing? Keeping holy the Sabbath?   Thousands of years of traditions for differing religions have been built out of the different answers to these questions.   Many of us think Roy Moore has broken several of these, but he doesn't think so.  Maybe he wanted that big monument up to remind himself.  But why did it have to be on Government property?

Can I make an argument that the GOP taking away their neighbor's healthcare is covetous and stealing?
 
I don't think too many clear headed people would argue with the spirit of these ideas,  even if they might argue the letter of some churches' interpretations.  Atheists might argue against the false gods, Sabbath, and Lord's name commandments, but I think if you consider the spirit in them, even an atheist should see the sense as pertains to the rhythms of a good, thoughtful life: have a day of rest and contemplation.  Swearing is usually done as insult--don't do it.  Don't be taken in by Messianic bullshit, including churches who worship--eh, L. Ron Hubbard or their false creation of business "Jesus".

I'm big on taking this to a sensible level to a plane of mutual understanding, not some church's devilish details, including the Catholics'.

So am I really Catholic?  It's complicated.
Do I believe in Scientific Facts?  Most certainly, the ones that have been proved and seem logical.
Am I an Atheist?  I don't think the atheist, scientists have evidence there is no God, as they should if they want to take that route. Can't prove a negative in logic, right?  DT needs to learn that.
Am I agnostic?  Possibly.  But I like the feel of believing something better is possible even if it's almost impossible.
I also feel truth in Buddhism, although that's harder to break down into moral behavior, except also to sacrifice yourself and understand your relationship to the other in life.
I still think these rules stated above are good ones, until we come up with something better.

I do believe, in spite of the news and appearances of the world, that good  will out over evil, or bad, or negativity, whatever you want to call it.  I think most people have an instinct for it.  I think people can change, even if you shouldn't help them reinforce their most negative qualities, perhaps by helping them too much.  Let them have their own responsibilities to ruin or redeem their lives. I believe in love, as I have stated elsewhere, and although it's terribly hard to define--eros? agape? Fraternal or motherly??  I'm certain it exists, is not a figment of romantic imaginations.  I have faith that the majority of folks are on an upward trajectory of reaching towards the light.

Dec 19:  The Young Pope shall send this thread in a strange direction.  More after digestion.

I do want to get to the place where religion goes wrong, where it becomes rigid and inflexible, when it fails at complexity, that is looking at life's complexities.  Then, there is fanaticism.  A word that has been watered down to fan.  Fan of--um, Kiss, or Miley Cyrus, or Depeche Mode.

A fanatic is much worse.  Akin to a terrorist.  In its sense of extremism. Its tendency towards the black and white, love and hate.

Hate to resort to this sort of thing, but here's a dictionary definition for fanatic:
a person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal, especially for an extreme religious or political cause.

Much of the world's problems are bred in fanatics. Monomaniacs with a narrow view.

Jan 10:  However, I have a particular distaste for the points of view of the people I know who are atheists.  In seems to become stronger in those who may have been forced into religion early in their life, by family or culture.  It irritates me to death that some atheists, especially two I know too well, think this philosophy is bred from some superior intellect, some superior objectivity that is guiding their, um, non-soul.  Prove it, say I.  Prove there is no God.  no spiritual force, unseen, working in the universe. What is it?  Lessee, isn't there some maxim in logic theory that you cannot prove a negative? * So, therein lies the flaw in their logic--D.O.A.  So, they usually resort to the ad hominem argument that religious people are fools, deceiving themselves.  Not exactly an objective argument.

* see Bertrand Russell's argument about the teapot in outerspace for a rebuttal, but then there are plenty of rebuttals to his rebuttal...

I think perhaps just like you can have religious fanatics, you can have atheist fanatics.  They are obsessed with the idea of proving spiritual ideas to be wrong, most commonly by using a lot of straw man arguments--pointing out the idiocy of snake-handlers and Pentacostals and violent Christians who don't turn the other cheek, the greed of the Medieval Church preaching that greed is the root of all evil and taking everyone's money--sure, they did that.  All those things may be true, but it's only the far side of the spectrum--doesn't prove that spirituality, or any particular religion has no merit whatsoever.  It's just another extreme view to me.

I showed my Drama class today several clips about MLKing, Robert Kennedy, JFK, to give them some context about the 60s, and the upcoming MLK holiday for which we are getting a day off--except for me who stupidly volunteered to get up early to go with the group taking the boarders to Cape Canaveral to the Kennedy Space station before I knew I coulda had the day off.  Eh, I'm kinda glad I'm going--besides sleeping in, what would I have done with myself?  I like my boarder kids this year.  It made me feel nice when some sparked up to know I was going with them.  ))

But back to MLK/JFK/RFK.  I had pulled up the "I Had A Dream" speech b/c one of the Chinese kids had asked why we had Monday off and who was MLK anyway? So, since this class still has a lot of AWOL Holiday people, and this group sorta works independently, I figured I could show the video and they could watch it or not while they did their work.  Honestly, if you are paying attention and have any humanity, any notion of the context, I don't know how any sentient being could not help being moved by that speech.  Add to it the "I Been to The Mountaintop"speech, knowing he's gonna die that week...

Well, when my Drama kids walked in, who are 60% or more African American--some are mixed race--I purposely left the MLK speech up, wondering if they'd ask to see it--thinking they are making the teacher go off topic (beware the guile of teachers planning a teachable moment.)  They asked, I started it up, and one had the temerity to ask--so, that was during the Reagan administration right?  It was a very sincere question, and I explained it was the 80s when Reagan was Pres: this was the glorious and terrible 1960s.

So, recognizing the appalling lack of knowledge our school system had afforded this curious African-American young man, who regularly spouts pop culture references to Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, but doesn't seem to know why they existed, I launched into a mini-history lesson that featured my personal time in these historical moments.  My first stop was RFK's announcement, during his  jump into the  1968 Presidential Campaign as a last minute candidate, of the assassination.  He made a quite stirring and emotional speech, that only he could have made, in his place in history, having the arduous task of telling a huge crowd of his supporters that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on that night in April, had been shot and killed (I added the detail for my audience that the horrid shooter was a man from my small home town in Illinois).  To the questions about the racist nature of my town, I explained what I knew about the complicated racial history of my town, the white landowners who before the Civil War bought land and gave it to runaway slaves who came to our town through the Underground Railroad up the Mississippi. And actively made rumours of "Indian sightings" to keep nosy slave-catcher types away.  About the white abolitionist who was murdered by other white men, the laws in Illinois that weren't exactly "slavery", but allowed one to keep another man or woman in indentured servitude with no pay for 99 years..

I could see RFK's speech had had the desired effect, and explained that he himself was assassinated two months after.  Then I showed the Zapruder film in all its blurriness, so they would understand why Robert had the moral authority to tell Blacks to use reason, not attack all white men, because he had experienced the same sort of violence at the hands of a white man--and everyone felt the weight of those words. I let it run a little into a short clip about the magic Bullet theory and why it was wrong, but explained how Americans were feeling, why there was so much skepticism to believe authority.  Then we went back to "I Have a Dream", after I gave some local history of life in St. Pete for blacks pre-LBJ, who gave himself Vietnam nightmares so he could pass Civil Rights legislation.

Can you believe?  I had a kid thank me for sharing all this with them, in the way I'd done it.  I really felt like I'd accomplished something.  I said, those were the kind of politicians America used to have.

The future--ten kids at a time.

This is why I believe in something beyond us--something made MLK, made Robert Kennedy the fulcrum of a powerful historical moment.  They were not perfect men, but they stood for something.  It may be forgotten, the world may throw shit on it.  But, maybe not.

Jan 24:  To Congress and the executive branch:

You, sir, are no John Kennedy.  (Nor Robert, neither).

Jan 31, 2017:  
So I was asked a deeply profound question:  "Can I (or anyone) change?"  In keeping with my , uh, faith, I have to almost instinctively say "Yes!"  It's that old question the Determinists ask if people truly have free will.  My philosophy is, they do.  We may have to fight the science in our bodies, but we still have a choice.  Maybe I only believe this because I think the other option is so very ugly.

But now I have to think about why that is right, and of course it also relates to my personal troubles--which I think I have already perhaps had success with by making some small, but significant changes.  Like not letting other people control me so much.  They can't control what doesn't comply, Да?  Better for both.   I take the time for my own consumption --what I'm going to put in me both physically and mentally.  I'll have a big challenge in a week or two when the in-laws come.  She ain't gonna push me about.  Can that one change?  Addendum--I think she's getting too broken to push.

But why can people change?  Let's take something obvious, and science based,  like an addiction.  Drugs, porn, sex, alcohol, love, internet addictions.  OCD addictions like flicking the light switch.  A need: for speed. A manic's need for change, new sensory experiences. Obviously people have gotten themselves off these addictions.  Cynics might say they just substitute another behavior, a better addiction.  Religion for Booze, via the 12 steps.  Lessee, did I do that when I quit smoking?  I don't think so.  What did I substitute?

Can't think of anything.  Had another baby?  Nah.  Work?  Possibly, but I already worked when I smoked.   I think some people do swap out one thing for another, like strict exercise routines after a cocaine addiction.

But I think I mean more deeper, profound changes.  For example, I think maybe I perhaps didn't like myself as much when I was, say, 20. Bucking the system, and getting negative feedback.  I made superficial changes, for example,  by being more punk/rebellious in a place where that was not quite acceptable.  Maybe that sorta forced me to change, but further down the road, when I watered it back more.

Going through a real hardship, like possibly losing my daughter via the divorce--emotionally, was more a crucible for real change for me--knowing I could only count on myself to believe that she will understand where the truth of our terrible situation lies.  It's one of those things that just comes with time, repetition, solidness of character. It was a mantra to me--just be yourself, the truth will show itself.  And it did.  And it did force me to choose exactly those things that were most important, most me.

I think that is really the answer to why I believe.  Because I told myself it would happen, and it did.

  Maybe I need to work again on what exactly it is that I want, especially from my creative self.  I'm bored with playing by myself, and bored with the repetition band.  But, see, here's the tricky part.  Being bored is certainly not new for me--my whole life has been me searching for something outside of the boredom.  I think I need to look less outside myself for the boredom busters.

It's in my head, right?  The kingdom of heaven..

Feb 1:  Threading the needle morally, so that you don't destroy others but make yourself happy, is really, really difficult.  And takes subtlety.  I don't mean subtle like the serpent man.  But being open and looking at all the rabbit holes and time tunnels you might be making in your life--anticipating the consequences.  Trying where you can.

And actually knowing what it is you want.  There was a scene in the season 4 finale of Californication  that maybe gets close--the family and friends just laughing, relaxed (a little high, granted) and feeling the love of each others' company.  That's what I want, I think.  And don't have.
Why don't I have it?  Or, better, why do I feel like I don't have it?  Maybe I do. Nah..I spend too much of my free time alone.  But I do have my moments..

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