Tag Archive: Politics

Ye Adidas!

Tuesday, October 25, 20220

The Adidas controversy…

Should it have been controversial at all? I mean, “Ye” was not only blatantly anti-semitic – not something new for him – but he outright defied Adidas to part ways with him, doubling down on the anti-semitism. Should be an easy call. Yes, you can point to Adidas’ founding history with its founders having been members of the Nazi party. But who cares? That was August 1949, not August 2022. Every German corporation that was founded in that era had ties to the Nazi party. Many American and other nationality companies had ties to the Nazi Party. Want to get upset about that? Go read IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation. This finger-pointing is just an iteration of Godwin’s Law, and irrelevant to the discussion.

So, why not just “part ways” with Ye, call him on his bluff? It should be as simple as “choose a side” to be remembered in history for. And sure, that’s my gut level reaction. Any rational person would do that, right?

And that’s the issue. Adidas took “days” to respond to Ye’s statements with anything more than that they were reviewing their partnership with him. Because Adidas isn’t a person. Adidas doesn’t have a gut reaction. I’d bet that most of the people who’ve been screaming for Adidas to cut ties with Ye immediately are against, say, the Citizens United decision. They’ve probably been railing for years against treating corporations like people.

When it comes down to it, Adidas was facing losing 20% of their gross profits. That’s going to affect a whole lot of people, not just Adidas’ bottom line, which was already on a downward trend. The likelihood is that a large number of people will lose their jobs. Dozens? Hundreds? More? And, despite it being the “right thing” to do, the markets won’t care. Adidas’ 125,000 stockholders are going to take a hit, and probably a huge one. I’m betting that the opening of the stock exchange today is going to see a massive sell off and plunge in price. [It did – a 5% drop at the opening bell, though surprisingly, by end of day it had recovered most of that to close at only 1% down.]

Also, who knows what their contract with Ye involves as penalties for breaking ties with him? It could be even more costly in the short run.

Even if Adidas were a person and not a corporation, who among us would make an immediate ethical decision knowing that it would cost us 20% of our annual income and destroy the income of various friends and family? Ethical or not, I’d bet most of us would want to take a beat and figure things out. We might well know our ultimate decision, but we’d want time to plan how to lessen the impact on ourselves and others.

So Adidas took four or five days to make a decision. No doubt there were a lot of people involved in making it. I’d guess no more than a handful, if any, were not in favor on a gut level of ending their relationship with him. But Adidas is a corporation, not a person, and the board and executives and shareholder groups had to consider not just being on the right side of history in the long run, but the health and survivability of the company in the short run.

I’m glad they did the moral thing in the end. And while on that gut level I wish they’d done it faster, I hope they figured out a responsible approach for themselves, their employees, their contractors, and their investors.

 

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Don’t Say… ?

Tuesday, March 8, 20222

There has been a lot of outcry over the “Don’t Say Gay” bill debated and recently passed by the Florida legislature (HB1557/SB1834). On one side, the claim is that the bill prohibits any school teacher or administrator or third party in a school from ever mentioning anything related to gender identity and/or sexuality. On the other side, the claim is that the bill simply asserts the rights of parents to have a say in what their children learn about those topics. Since the only thing I’ve seen in relation to this has been a lot of social media and news reports, all without any citation, and all with a lot of hand-wringing, I decided to read the bill myself.

Now, not being a lawyer, I can’t delve into what might be possible because of specific wording. Legal scholars and lawyers will no doubt argue the fine points in court cases to come where this new law gets tested. But the bill is basically only three pages, and nothing that comes across as deeply mystifying legalese, so I’m going to give it a stab.

Edit: I’ve been asked to give bullet-points about my conclusions, and you can read on to flesh out the details:

  • This law only applies to public schools
  • This law applies to all grades, not just the GOP touted “it’s only kindergarten through third grade kids”. That’s just one sentence out of the bill, the rest applies to all grades. 
  • This law leaves vulnerable kids, particularly LGBTQIA+ kids, without a safety net for counseling, making it “talk to your parents” or nothing, and obligating school employees to notify parents of anything kids say about their sexuality or identity.
  • By leaving the definition of “age appropriate” vague, this law puts the onus of defining it on state employees whose jobs are beholden to elected officials, while taking those officials off the hook for making what might turn out to be unpopular decisions.
  • Edit: This all didn’t age well, as over the next 10 months, Governor DeSantis, by executive fiat, extended all these restrictions through the rest of elementary school, and then on to secondary school; upped the ante on book-banning in school libraries, while cheering on private forays into public libraries and bookstores as well. And then, another couple of months later, got the legislature to codify it into law. Also added in prohibitions on teachers and school employees “using” pronouns or asking students what theirs are, and prohibited trans students (well, trans people in general) from using public restrooms unless they correspond to their birth gender, regardless of whether they’ve undergone any medical transition procedures, subject to genital examination, DNA testing, and the potential for arrest for using the wrong bathroom.

First, this bill does not apply to all schools. It applies specifically and only to public schools. What a private school chooses to teach and how they interact with parents is not addressed.

Second, and probably where much of the debate comes from, is the introductory paragraph, which is a litany of more than a dozen assertions about what the purpose of the bill is. Most of it relates to parental notification and involvement in school approaches to the well-being, both physical and mental, of students.

The basic assertion is that the school and its personnel are not to undertake any actions in the realm of a student’s well-being without either prior involvement of the parents in the decision, or if something happens in the moment, without notifying the parents. In the midst of the litany is a reference to not encouraging classroom discussion on sexual orientation or gender identity in “primary grade levels”. But let’s get into the actual bill, since the preamble doesn’t contain any details of anything enforceable.

The first section of the actual bill requires that a school adopt clear policies for notifying a parent if their child seeks help, or a teacher notices an issue, around their physical, mental, well-being. It requires that the school recommend the child talk to their parent first, and that the parent give permission for the school to be involved in the process. It carves out a clear exception for cases of suspected child abuse that might involve a parent.

But, the troubling part of this is, as someone who began to “come out” as gay during high school, and had friends who did as well, being able to talk to a teacher or counselor about it because of fear of parental reaction, was really important. Had they been prohibited from talking to me about it, I’m not sure where I’d have sought out support. Well, I actually do – since most of the counseling I got ended up being from my rabbi, who was open about having a conversation and not talking to my parents about it, though he did encourage me to do so.

In the same vein, the second section prohibits the school from requiring students to fill out questionnaires or participate in activities that might lead them to openly discuss issues of their physical, mental, or emotional well-being in the school, as opposed to talking to their parents about them (same exception in regard to potential child abuse cases).

Again, the same issue arises… since some of these sorts of issues (at this point, nothing’s been mentioned in the meat of the bill about sexual orientation or gender identity, but we are headed that way) are ones that many kids have reasonable concerns about talking to their parents about. Taking away the option for counseling and support without parental notification or permission leaves vulnerable kids even more at risk for not getting support.

Section three is clearly the one where the “Don’t Say Gay” moniker comes from. But honestly, to me, this is the least troubling part of the bill. The first two sections, as I noted, are where I see a real issue. The only thing that this section prohibits is “classroom instruction” by teachers, administrators, or third parties about sexual orientation or gender identity, for students who are in kindergarten through third grade. From fourth grade on, there’s no prohibition, though there’s an oddly phrased sentence about such classes being age appropriate, not defined, which obviously could be subject to a variety of interpretations. The big issue here is it leaves that definition in the hands of the department of education, which could well make up all sorts of reasons for not teaching about these topics to various grade levels, depending on political pressures from state officials.

While it’s possible that a six year-old could have questions or concerns that might be addressed in counseling (back to the first section), I have to agree that kids of that age don’t need to have those conversations in class. The bill doesn’t prohibit a teacher or administrator from answering questions about such topics, it prohibits making it a part of the curriculum. Could the term “classroom instruction” be misused to castigate a teacher for their approach to answering questions? I suppose, but I imagine that’s in the arena of fine points that will end up in a courtroom.

Section four is pretty innocuous, and probably no different from what every department of education law includes – that any support services offered by school personnel must adhere to guidelines established by the school system and the state’s department of education. Obviously, those guidelines could be altered to be something horrific, but that’s not part of this bill.

Section five requires that the school notify parents at the beginning of the school year what sorts of health services and counseling the school makes available to both students and their parents. Pretty standard.

Section six requires that the schools notify and receive permission from a parent before administering either physical or mental health questionnaires to their kids.

Section seven basically just establishes the details of what parental notification and permission involves, and parental remedies if a school violates any of the above rules.

In sum, my biggest concern revolves around the lack of access to outside support for vulnerable kids that is built into the first two sections of this bill, now law, that goes into effect this July.

I understand the impetus that many, if not most parents, have to be involved in the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of their kids, and to not have an “outsider” having those conversations. At the same time, they might want to take a momentary step back, and think about their own childhood and teen years, and whether there were issues that they really needed to talk to someone other than their parents about.

Prohibiting any sort of counseling or conversation with a student in this arena on the part of school personnel without parental involvement is short-sighted, and is more likely to create more serious well-being issues for kids. Obviously there need to be some lines that aren’t to be crossed, but the way those two sections of the bill are worded aren’t where the line ought to be. And including vaguely worded phrases like “age appropriate” or “developmentally appropriate” in the law, with the definition of those left to a group of employees of the state, beholden to the governor and/or legislature for their employment, is a slippery slope to nowhere good.

[The bill can be found here: Senate/House bill

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Hidings in Plain Sight

Saturday, June 13, 20200

We’re in quarantine, and what is there to do besides lots of TV, movies, online surfing, gaming, and reading. A couple of friends recommended the new book Hiding in Plain Sight, by Sarah Kendzior, a journalist, about the “rise of” Donald Trump. When I sought it out, it turned out there a whole slew of books with the title Hiding in Plain Sight, and what the heck, it was a “project”.

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America 

Sarah Kendzior

I hate to say it, but… yawn, and no. Given her background in journalism and her history of pointing to “the dark times”, I have to say I expected a hell of a lot more. Basically the book is a bunch of repackaged info from various articles and opinion pieces we’ve been subjected to over the last four years plus since Trump became a prominent figure in the political world. Her primary news source seems to be Buzzfeed, and while not to denigrate them as a news source, they’re certainly not the be all and end all of political and economic news. Other than a brief glance at Trump’s early years, one would think on reading this book that he, the state of the U.S. both economically and politically, all began somewhere around the year 2000, during the Bush 2 years, and that it all came as a complete shift in the landscape of America from that moment on, and took everyone by surprise. Except her, of course, because she’s been sounding the alarm since then, basically the year she graduated from college. How prescient. The book focuses much on Trump’s connection to Russia, both to the Putin government and to shadowy crime figures in the Russian mafia in New York City, some named, some not – the vast majority of it based on his real estate dealings with various Russians, and little else. She also stoops to the tired, anti-semitic tropes of various “Jewish” finance figures – and before anyone jumps to point out that some of those figures Trump dealt with were, indeed, Jewish, let me just point out in return, she doesn’t refer to any of the myriad of other finance figures he’s dealt with over the years as “Christian”, “Muslim”, “Hindu”, “Buddhist”, or any other religions – but she makes sure to identify each Jew as a Jew, even down to reminding us more than once that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is “one of them”. I finished off the book feeling like a needed a shower. Not just from the possibility that some or even all, of what she wrote might be true (I’m not discounting that it may well be), but from her blatant biases. ☆☆

Hiding in Plain Sight: A Street Kid’s Journey from Female to Male

Zane Thimmesch-Gill

Not a book I would normally gravitate towards, but I’m glad I read it. It was a fascinating first person memoir of a “FTM”, or female to male, transgender teen, ostracized from, at the time, “her” family, following through to a mix of attempts at foster home living, living on the street, living in shelters, and more. All the while, she does her best to maintain high school and later, college studies, while coming to grips with one form of gender dysphoria that ultimately leads her partially down the path to a transition to being male. While we don’t know the eventual outcome, it’s clear that there’s no one path for him. For the most part the book is highly engaging, and paints a picture of a life that most of us can’t begin to imagine. At times it seems a bit overblown, and I found myself thinking, “how could you react to this situation like this, where someone is trying to help/be kind”, but, I’ve also never been in the situation, and no doubt there are psychological and physiological factors that I can’t fathom without having lived it. Worth a read. ☆☆☆☆

Hiding in Plain Sight: Eluding the Nazis in Occupied France

Sarah Lew Miller

A quick read. Understandably, given the subject matter – a teenage Jewish girl’s story of her family’s survival during WWII, it’s kind of hard not to compare it to the more famous work of Anne Frank. But it’s not the same story – different countries, different situations, different outcomes. It lacks some of the intensity of the famed Diary, mostly because she, and her family, are able to basically continue to live their lives. They get jobs, they find places to live, they have neighbors and friends, they have people who help them and care for them. It’s still a very poignant story, and a reminder of a time not all that long ago. And, of course, given the times we’re living in, it’s difficult not to also consider the lives of people around the world during the current pandemic, and the different levels of existence that different people, in various cultures, are experiencing. Well worth a read. ☆☆☆☆

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Incredible True Story of a German-Jewish Teenager’s Struggle to Survive in Nazi-Occupied Poland

Betty Lauer

Staying in virtually the same theme, we once again have a teenager’s diary, in essence, of the same. So, I’ll start it with the same opening as the previous review…. Understandably, given the subject matter – a teenage Jewish girl’s story of her family’s survival during WWII, it’s kind of hard not to compare it to the more famous work of Anne Frank. But it’s not the same story – different countries, different situations, different outcomes. The book is well written, and although phrased in first person, is, as above, an “as told to”, by the author. The life of young Berta Weissberger, and the place and time that the book covers, are actually pretty interesting, a bit more so, or perhaps it’s just the quality of the writing, than the previous book. The biggest issue in this book is that the book is almost as interminable as the six years it covers – it goes on for nearly 600 pages, detailing day to day life in, at times, excruciatingly unnecessary detail, as one day after another often looks much like the previous day. Still, I found it an engaging read and worth recommending. ☆☆☆☆

Hiding in Plain Sight: A Shelby Belgarden Mystery

Valerie Sherrard

Without meaning to be flip about it, this is the sort of book that people who like this sort of book will like. It’s a cute mystery, a bit “Nancy Drew” – all teenage girls and giggles and crushes and the like. As such, it’s not my cup of tea, but then, I’m not the target audience for the book either. It’s clearly a “YA” book aimed at the teen set of the female gender. Maybe because I read a lot of mysteries, or maybe just because the author makes sure to point out the clues, several of them repeatedly, in a sort of “this will be on the test” manner, but I’d basically worked out the whole thing by a little over halfway through the book. If you’re a teenage girl who likes easy reading mysteries, you may well enjoy this. ☆☆☆

Hiding in Plain Sight

Lucy Felthouse

I… just can’t. I’m not even sure if it was well written, it was just so far outside my personal comfort zone to read that I couldn’t give you an honest assessment of that. Nothing red flagged me with major grammar or spelling typos, so, there’s that. But, basically, it’s a soft-porn novel that pretends to be about a supposed professional, experienced spy. One who just turns to jelly when a handsome man looks at her, and a) can’t get her and his clothes off fast enough, b) immediately heads into the “oooh, a man likes me and he’s sexy and kisses well, maybe I should give it all up for love, and c) can’t keep her mind on her job. Professional…? I don’t get the hype and high reviews for this book – unless they’re all coming from very, very, lonely people. ☆☆

Hiding in Plain Sight

Mary Ellis

A well written, fast paced, easy read of a private detective novel. I like the style, I found the principal characters likable. And, I don’t mind that there’s a clear Catholic bent to both the writing and the story – I assume that that’s the author’s background and she brings what she knows to make the novel work. But, there are negatives. The secondary characters are a bit caricatured, right out of central casting stereotypes for Italian Americans; the Catholicism takes momentary negative turns with snide or disparaging remarks or thoughts on the part of the principals towards other Christians, and, no doubt the horror to end all horrors, those of either lapsed faith, or… can we use the word, atheists; and last, while not limited to this author, why does it seem like every female detective needs to fall head over heals in love with some guy who she randomly meets on a case? (If anyone can point me to a detective series with a strong female protagonist who doesn’t go that route, I’m interested!) It was still an enjoyable read, though the negatives are enough that I don’t find myself moved to continue on to other books in the series. ☆☆☆

This seems a good place wrap up this post, with a septet of books delved into. There are plenty more of the same name, plus a slew of Hide in Plain Sight, or just In Plain Sight. On the fiction side they seem to bounce between romance and detective novels, while on the non-fiction side, there’s a hunt for Nazis, a bible truths tome, a book of investing essays, and more. Whether I come back to this venture remains to be seen. It was an interesting approach to finding things to read that I might not normally be on the lookout for, and instead, I might just try something similar with another title. Time will tell.

 

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You Can Keep Your $3 Bill

Friday, October 18, 20193

I’m not Queer. I’m Gay. Clinically, I suppose Homosexual. But, I’m not Queer.

I was recently chastised for not “being woke” and “accepting my Queer identity”. Well, sorry, but I don’t have one of those. “If you’re Gay, you’re Queer, you just haven’t accepted it yet” was the response. Well, no, if they were the same thing, if it wasn’t a separate identity tag, we wouldn’t need both a G and a Q in that ridiculous alphabet soup of 2SLGBTQIA+. We’d pick one and stick with it. We’d come up with one term to encompass us all, and we could have one letter. Maybe a superfluous letter like C. I don’t know what it would stand for, but it would be far easier.

Sidebar: When I first moved to NYC in 1982, I was fairly active politically in gay politics, and I became a volunteer at what was then NGTF, the National Gay Task Force. I became part of the “inner circle” of people who met at least once a week, usually twice – I was one of the two people who setup, ran, and trained the staff for the “crisis hotline” that we started around that time. And, I was part of the debate that went on for many long hours in 1985 over whether or not to change the name to NGLTF, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. I came down on the side of no. Not because I didn’t understand the argument from the lesbians who proposed it, but because I felt that it was a slippery slope to ending up with, as I put it above, a ridiculous alphabet soup, as one group after another came forward to demand an addition to the name. Those of us in that group ended up being the minority, and the executive board passed and changed the name. We were assured that it would “never happen”. Thankfully, somewhere along the line, as it did actually happen, the board decided against ending up with the N2SGLBTQIA+TF and the organization became simply known as The Task Force. I think it kind of loses something there, but maybe that’s just me.

See, I’m from a generation where the word queer was an epithet, something that got said to you while you were being slammed up against a locker in the hallway. It was used just as often as fag, the other major slur thrown out as a fist smashed into your jaw. It was, perhaps, a trifle more polite among genteel society, who might never tell a fag joke, but held nothing back when telling a queer one. Sort of the equivalent of sambo, spook, or spade for Black people in place of nigger (I’m going to use a few terms in this post that I would never normally use, because I want them to make a point – I hope never to use them again).

And perhaps that’s why it was “chosen” as one to create a political/social identity. “Reclaiming the word” from the haters, much as some in the Black community reclaimed the word nigger, though at times modifying into nigga, perhaps to show some sort of difference, or evolution, or perhaps it’s just an Ebonic shift [Edit: John McWhorter, one of my favorite linguists, has a whole section of one of his podcasts devoted to the difference, I stand corrected.]. The problem is, as it is for many Black people hearing that word, that queer to me still brings up all those old associations of hate. I’m not interested in putting in the work on my psyche to shift my view and make it a positive thing, burying the past. It’s no surprise that while this movement started in the 1980s, the word queer has primarily been adopted by younger generations, ones for whom the word already has begun to lose its sharp edge while they were growing up. Someone throws it at them and they can proudly claim it for themselves.

But for me – hey, let me adopt the vernacular of the day – it’s a trigger word. You get to have yours, you want me to be woke enough to accept that there are words that trigger you? Fine, you better woke up yourself and accept that your word choice is one for me. I’m not going to demand that you don’t use it, I am going to demand that you accept that it’s not the word for me, and that no matter how many times you say it proudly, I’m going to cringe, and find it offensive. And while I understand your desire for me to use it when I refer to you, it’s a word that I simply won’t use – I’ll do my best not to offend you by using a word that’s not your preference, but I’m not going to use a word that for me, retains its derogatory meaning.

But, even more so, in this presidential campaigning season, I’m finding it offensive from those who are not a member of either the Queer or Gay or Lesbian or… you get the idea… communities. Elizabeth Warren, who is not my “cup of tea”, I often agree with her on what the problems are, but rarely on what the solutions are, is the worst offender. She stands up in front of crowds and bursts out with how happy she is to be in front of her “Queer brothers and sisters” or some such. Not 2SLGBTQIA+, or any variation of, or speaking those out in their individual words. No, she just lumps us all as one big Queer Community. And it grates on my nerves every time. I mean, even Mayor Pete doesn’t do that, and he at least would have some claim to be a part of the generally identified group.

Now, let’s try a thought experiment. Or two. Let’s go to a Trump rally. Remember when Trump said that he was “a real friend of the gays”? Imagine that he said “I’m a real friend of the queers”. Imagine that he stood in front of a group of Black voters and said, “I’m a real friend of the niggas”. Or the Jewish community and said, “I’m a real friend of the kikes”. Etc., etc. But okay, I get it, Donald Trump is way and below “not my cup of tea” for many of us. So let’s go back to Warren, or one of the other Democratic candidates who has, on occasion, thrown out the word queer (though as best I can think of, she’s the only one who has used it on its own, a couple of others have either used the acronym or spelled it out with gay, lesbian, bi, queer, trans…). Imagine Warren standing in front of a group of “ethnic” voters of appropriate stripe and saying, “I’m so happy to be in front of a proud group of my nigga/kike/spic/wop/towelhead/nip/chink brothers and sisters”?

I’m guessing you can get that that wouldn’t go over well with a whole lot of them. And you know what, “queer” doesn’t go over well with a whole lot of us.

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Flag Waiving

Monday, September 25, 20170

I’ve had an itch. There has been so much stuff going on in the world of politics, economics, and everything else, over the last few years – or maybe it’s just become more important to me – that I want to have my say. And hey, I already have this platform, and while this site may have been primarily a mix of published articles and critiques of restaurants and books, why not critique other stuff?

I know, I know. “You’re a chef, stfu about politics, stay in the kitchen and cook.” Yeah, well, you’re an office worker, a landscaper, a police officer, a hairdresser… so stay in your cubicle, garden, squad car, or salon, and stfu yourself. As the saying goes, opinions are like assholes, we all have one (except for the rare individual with imperforate anus or a similar medical condition, but we’re not going there… oops).

So, I’m going to pick topics that strike me as interesting, or get me riled up, or whatever it may be, and write a brief commentary on them. Plus, maybe it will breathe some life into this blog. Maybe I’ll even get a comment (nasty ones with all sorts of curse words or insults will most likely be simply deleted, unless I can find a way to make your life hell by using it in some fashion). So, onto the show….

You might have guessed from the title, this is going to be about the whole flag, Pledge of Allegiance, taking a knee controversy.

Personally, I grew up with the Pledge of Allegiance. We recited it daily, standing at attention, hand over the heart, and with gusto. It’s ingrained into me. I see people asking questions on Facebook and Twitter about whether the folk who are so riled up about the whole take-a-knee thing are standing and reciting the pledge when they’re at home watching the game. First off, there’s no requirement to do that, there’s a whole protocol for being in the presence of the flag and all that, but you know what, while I don’t stand at attention, I usually find that I’ve pretty much automatically put my hand over my heart and quietly recited the pledge to myself along with the folk on the screen. It’s so automatic I’d have to truly put a conscious effort into not doing it.

I spent a lot of my earlier years in one form or another of public service. Be it in the Boy Scouts, on into being an Explorer Scout with the Ann Arbor Police Department. Be it in Army ROTC for a year and half until being asked to resign because we were back in the days before Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Be it participating in the Michigan State Police summer programs. Be it as an EMT and later a paramedic for the ambulance services in Washtenaw County. Volunteer for the Red Cross, teaching CPR and First Aid. I was interviewed (several times) by the CIA (yes, that one, not the Culinary one) when I was working on my doctorate in psychology, for a profiler position, until I told them I was gay, at which time they offered me a job in the secretarial pool.

One of the things that was always present, and it’s been said more eloquently by many veterans, including some who disagree with the take-a-knee stance, was that part of what we were there to protect was people’s right to dissent, people’s right to free speech, people’s right to protest. That’s part of what America is all about.

And I understand the urge, the need, to protest. I’m not black, never have been, never will be. But I am gay, and I am Jewish, and I have had my share of prejudice to deal with. Setting aside being asked to leave the Army and the CIA, I’ve been fired from two jobs for it. In the restaurant business of all places. Going back to my days as a paramedic, I was stripped of being a supervisor because of it. And actually, before that, I’d worked as a security guard on University of Michigan’s campus, and I was stripped of being a supervisor there for being gay too. I’ve been physically attacked for it at least a dozen times that I can think of. I was refused admittance to Yom Kippur services at a synagogue of which I’d been a member for years, when the board of the synagogue took it into their heads to root out the homosexuals. And when it comes to verbal abuse, both for being gay and for being Jewish, I can’t remotely begin to count the number of incidents I’ve been through in my life.

And so, I’ve participated, mostly in my younger years, in protests and rallies and organizations and what-have-you that were in favor of gay rights, or against antisemitism. I don’t do so much of that anymore because I’m simply tired of having life being about a constant battle. I just don’t have the energy to invest in it, I want my energy invested in things that are positive, and creative, and yeah, I know that may be a cop out, but so be it.

So here’s the thing. I viscerally don’t like what Colin Kaepernick did that launched this whole movement. It’s automatic. I’m one of those people who when someone doesn’t stand during the Pledge, or doesn’t put their hand over their heart, nudges them to do so. But I wouldn’t force them to. I wouldn’t call them names. I wouldn’t demand they be punished. Because I recognize that regardless of my personal feelings about it, they have the right to theirs. I recognize that he, and the other players who have now taken a stand, or a knee, beside him, aren’t “disrespecting the flag”, anymore than any other person who chooses not to recite the Pledge is. They’re not “expressing a political opinion”.

They’re calling attention to the fact that after decades of supposed progress in integration and equal treatment, we just aren’t there yet. Be it in opportunities, compensation, inclusion, oppression, violence, or hey, even joke-telling, it just ain’t equal. As a friend posted earlier today on Facebook, “Thinking NFL players are ‘protesting the flag’ is like thinking Rosa Parks was protesting public transportation.”

I know this from my particular circle in the world, when here we are in 2017 and I have friends and acquaintances, many of them who claim to be bastions of tolerance and liberalism, who think nothing of telling fag jokes, or making comments about Henry’s and my relationship that they’d never make to a straight couple, or making assumptions about our relationship based on our age and cultural/racial differences (the latter brings up a whole other can of worms that has allowed me to see some disturbing racism in friends whom I never wouldathunkit of) or thinking it’s okay to comment on their imagination about what my (or other gay people’s) sex life is all about, or imploring me to “understand” why someone, at random, or an employer, or whomever, has a reaction to my being gay (usually justified by some sort of religious context).

To sum it up, while I personally will probably always stand and recite the Pledge, and the flag is something that holds a place in my heart, that’s emotional. As a thinking person, and as someone who believes in democracy, I will also always respect the right of any of my fellow citizens to not to do so. I may not like it, but I get it. And that’s the key point I want to make. It doesn’t actually matter why Kaepernick, or anyone else, chooses not to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Even if there were no racism, no oppression, even if it was all, as the saying goes, rainbows and unicorns, for people of color, it’s irrelevant. We live in a democracy and they don’t have to stand or pledge. That’s their right.

And yes, sure, an individual team owner could choose to fire them for it, legally – First Amendment rights don’t apply to employment situations (unless your employer is the government). And I’d support the right of that employer to do so, even if I don’t think they should, morally – the issues are too important in this day and age. And you know what, it’s a minute at the beginning of a football game. Stand, pledge your heart out, let the players (and spectators) who choose not to, have their moment too, and then get on with the game. And then after the game, let’s get to work on the issues they’re protesting so that one day, hopefully soon, no one feels the need to take a knee.

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The Book Stack #9

Sunday, June 11, 20170

jumbled books

Forbidden Thoughts, editor Jason Rennie (2017).

This book got a lot of play in the last year or so as “Milo” rose to (in)fame with his various political antics. And antics they are, watching him speak or reading his rants, it’s pretty clear that regardless of whether he believes what says or not, he’s not actually interested in anything but self aggrandizement. Mostly his positions are pretty poorly formed and rely on the misdirection of using non-PC language and/or personal attacks, taking everyone’s attention off of the lack of substance to anything he’s saying. Yet somehow, the editor and publisher of this collection of short stories, decided that his name on the cover would be an attraction. It worked. But then, for those seeking to read more of his work, the disappointment of finding that all he did was write a foreword note at the beginning of the book that has little if anything to do with the content. He asserts that there’s never been a collection of such revolutionary non-PC science fiction in all of history. Obviously he’s clueless to the Libertarian origins of much of modern Sci-Fi, or even the genre as a whole. But let’s set all that aside and get on to the meat of the book itself.

There are some great stories in here that save the book from being worthy of nothing more than the scrap heap. The problem is, there are also a bunch, probably more than half, of the stories, that do little more than attempt to incense the reader by being as non-PC as they possibly can, throwing in words and thoughts and actions that are guaranteed to horrify anyone with leanings to the left. But they go way too far, and I don’t mean that because I’m incensed by them, but because they’re little more than the same as I accuse Milo of above. They’re distractions, they’re glaring baubles, designed to do nothing more than distract the reader from the fact that the stories have no substance. They’re just ranting and exaggeration designed for effect and show the authors’ complete lack of story telling ability.

In the end, there’s just not enough to recommend the book. There’s far better, shall we say, non-leftist, non-PC science fiction out there than anything in this book. ☆☆

Infomocracy by Malka Older (2016).

It’s an interesting read, relatively fast paced, and I enjoyed it. On the other hand, it was a little like going to an all you can eat buffet, where you take some of everything, get back to your table, and it’s both too much food to eat, and not all of it quite goes together on the same plate.

Taking the level of suspension of disbelief into the political and information realm, it requires that you believe that countries that currently exist still kinda sorta do, but not exactly, and are instead now connected not by cultural or racial heritage, but by a mosaic of political viewpoints, scattered across the globe. Often they’re completely disparate to their neighbors, and even within individual countries, broken up into a mess of political parties, some run by corporations, some by de facto governments, some by grassroots organizations.

And somehow, within all of this, we’re expected to buy into that all of these same factionalized and fractionalized groups of people and political organizations have agreed to have everything coordinated by one single entity that provides them with filtered information so they can make a decision where they want to live and work at any given moment. Throw in a gratuitous romance with two high powered individuals, who somehow decide, in the midst of all this Information overload, to not bother to check each other out but just go on gut feeling, and then proceed to violate the principles of their careers just because each other was good in bed.

It doesn’t make it a less fun read, but it does make it a little hard to swallow. ☆☆☆☆

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (2014).

This one was a slow slog to get started on, and several times during probably the first half of it I was tempted to just give up and set it aside. Much of that, I think, is that it felt like a slightly stilted translation – as if the translator was searching for a way to express concepts that he didn’t quite know how to put into English fluidly. I’m glad I stuck through it, as in the end, I liked the way it developed and will probably go on to read the rest of the trilogy. I wasn’t wowed, but I was intrigued.

It’s interesting, given the political climate in which we’re living these days, in various parts of the world, how the premise of first contact is handled. The idea that humans basically divide into two camps (three in the book, but still more or less fall into two ideals) – those who see contact as a threat (in this case an explicit one) and do all in their power to resist, and those who see it as an inevitability with which they collaborate. Kind of reminds me of the current sci-fi television show Colony.

I also liked the undercurrent of the conflict between science and religion, though I think it’s perhaps drawn as too starkly a black and white issue, one or the other. That probably fits more the Chinese cultural model of what science and religion are all about (though I’m no expert on Chinese culture), at least from what I’ve gleaned over the years. ☆☆☆

The Gourmet Detective mystery series (8 volumes), by Peter King (1996-2003).

Okay, hmm… I’ve read the whole series now. I’m not going to do individual book reviews, some of them are better than others, but they’re all enjoyable, quick reads. Then again, throw gourmet food and wine into anything and I’m likely to add some points to it in my mind. Bizarrely, though, given that I gave all the books three stars, I don’t know that I recommend them. Had they been written fifty years ago, I’d give them some more slack, but here are my issues with, well, all of them:

The gourmet detective himself, our protagonist, is an unlikable twit. He’s a middle aged, pretentious white man, with delusions of self importance. He fancies himself a ladies man and, of course, manages to get one or another into bed (trailed off, never portrayed, just make sure we know it happened, wink, wink) in all or almost all the books. He’s misogynistic, racist, and classist. He fancies himself a connoisseur of all things food and wine, and throws about names and terms, most of which the average reader will not have heard of, and will probably just move past without much thought. The problem is, he’s pretty much clueless and the mistakes in his descriptions of various ingredients, dishes, and bottles of fermented grape juice are legion.

In short, and yes, I realize I’m generalizing and could be accused of bias myself, he’s the sort of detective that a 70+ year old retired upper middle class British metallurgical engineer (who apparently at some point went to the Cordon Bleu cooking school to be trained as a chef, though my bet is he just took a few cooking classes for home cooks, then again, who knows, but it seems he did it after retiring at some point in his 70s) would reimagine himself to be if he were to become a food detective. In short, a sort of Walter Mitty alter ego. ☆☆☆

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance (2016).

You know the running joke where people start comparing how hard they had it growing up… it starts with something like “we had to walk 5 miles to school every day…” and ends up with things like “uphill both ways” “cardboard boxes for shoes”, etc., etc.? This book is that done in long form. It’s an ostensible memoir from someone who grew up in a disadvantaged, poor community (except he really didn’t, he grew up skirting around it, because he actually spent most of his childhood living with or near relatives or step-relatives who were fairly well off and encouraged him to stay away from that community) who spends nearly 300 pages trying to convince us that his particular disadvantaged, poor community has it worse than any other one. And he also ricochets between being pretentious about his own life and condescending about his roots and the people who still live there, and trying to hold them up as somehow better by virtue of being in worse straits than how he imagines (with no evidence that he has any experience of) other disadvantaged, poor communities to be. Basically it’s a barely veiled tome touting “Hillbilly (i.e., poor white) Lives Matter More” and as such is just as egregious as much of the BLM movement comes across at times. ☆☆

Daimyo by S. Lee Lyndon (2014-2015).

Really enjoyed this entire trilogy. It was an interesting glimpse into a culture and period that I’m not overly familiar with, other than just peripherally from being into the martial arts world. It would be a complete spoiler to tell you what the overall arc of the story is, so let’s just say it covers the adventures of a young Japanese fisherman as he matures in life. In the end, while a totally logical step by step, the overall arc of the three books is a bit far-fetched, but fun to follow along. It’s a sort of novel form of the theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics, or adaptation, sometimes called Lamarckism, i.e., that somehow or other non-biological accomplishments and internalized histories can be passed down genetically to the next generations (pretty much a dismissed idea in the genetic world). Still, a very enjoyable read. ☆☆☆☆

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild (2016).

This one was as difficult to read as it probably was to write. An outsider attempts as close as possible, an insider view of a particular culture, in this case, far right wing, for the most part fundamentalist Christian, Tea Party voters, from an industrial area in Louisiana. She ingratiates herself into their world and admirably does her best to tell their stories, particularly what has led to their political alignment and voting (what’s often talked about in left wing media as “why do these people vote against their best interests?”). She succeeds in making it interesting, and even in giving a decent view into the logic and thought that these folk use. At the same time, if it was at any point her intention to make them look actually logical or sensible, she fails, because bluntly, they come across looking more moronic than the so-called “liberal media” has ever portrayed them. Maybe that was her real, behind the scenes intention from the start. ☆☆☆

Sixteen books seems enough to give you some reading material for now…. Enjoy!

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The Book Stack #6

Monday, October 31, 20160

jumbled books
Continuing with some more fantasy, and a bit of other….

My Tender Matador / Tengo Miedo Torero, Pedro Lemebel, September 2002, Translator: Katherine Silver

Let’s start outside the realm of fantasy. I actually don’t remember how this one came to my attention – it’s the story, basically, of the end of the days of Augustin Pinochet’s rule over Chile, focused on the events leading up to an attempted assassination. The book goes back and forth between Pinochet’s viewpoint, and that of an aging drag queen, the latter of whom has befriended a young, handsome man who turns out to be involved in the assassination attempt. It’s extremely well written, and the characters are well defined. It was a little slow reading for me as I initially started reading this in the original Spanish version, but the constant use of colloquial terms and street slang made it near impossible, and what I ended up doing was reading the two versions more or less side by side (learned a lot of Chilean street slang!). ☆☆☆

Code of Conduct, Brad Thor, July 2015

Over time I’ve read through the entire previous series (15 previous books) of the “Scot Horvath” novels. These are sort of Jack Bauer/24 on steroids if you can imagine that. They’re thrillers. They’re fast paced, they require some level of suspension of disbelief – they’re not totally out of left field, they’re basically, “what if?” scenarios that any of us could imagine given the state of the world right now, even if highly unlikely. And Thor makes them completely believable as potential scenarios. For me, given that I like thrillers of this sort, they’re entertaining as well as thought provoking. Fast reads. And, this one fits right in with all of that. There’s now a 17th novel out, Foreign Agent, and it’s on my reading stack! ☆☆☆☆

The Ronin Trilogy, Travis Heermann

Another trilogy, this one consisting of Heart of the Ronin (2010), Sword of the Ronin (2013), Spirit of the Ronin (2015). I stumbled across this one when I was looking for some martial arts books for study, and it looked interesting. Since the first volume was available for free on my Kindle Unlimited account, I gave it a spin, and rapidly went on to the sequels. Although set in feudal Japan, and following the story of a ronin, a masterless samurai, the writing style is very “western” in its approach, which gave them an interesting flavor – sort of like watching a completely foreign culture and concept develop from an outside observer’s eye. The author has a nice little quip on his site, “Writing fiction set in a far different time and place is challenging. The key is cram as much background information into your brain, let it percolate for a while, and see what bubbles out.”. And, no question, that’s what he’s done – creating a real image of a very different world than I’m familiar with, and at the same time, letting it develop in a way that I could actually visualize it, without feeling lost. I loved it. ☆☆☆☆

The Inheritance Trilogy, N.K. Jemisin

And, yet another trilogy! The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010), The Broken Kingdoms (2010), The Kingdom of Gods (2011). This one took me a little bit to get into. I can’t even tell you exactly what it was about it – it’s certainly well written, and an interesting concept. I think that it was that the protagonist in the first volume just didn’t resonate with me, and I initially found her viewpoint to be sort of a bore, or maybe it was just that the development of the story started out too slowly for me. But, the book picked up, and I ended up enjoying it enough to go on to the other two volumes, which take place from the viewpoints of other characters, and I liked both of those volumes much more. I mean, what’s not to like about a world where humans, gods, godlings, and demons, all live together and interact on a daily basis? In the end, highly recommendable. And, a nice perk that you can buy the entire trilogy in one volume. ☆☆☆☆

The Price of Retribution, Christopher Cartwright, March 2015

For such a small book (okay, 370 pages), it’s a pretty sweeping epic story, that starts with a jewel heist in long ago London and then jumps across the oceans to Australia, and back again. Another sort of “gentleman thief” – I guess those sort just attract me – it’s a great story, with romance, revenge, and a bit of rampaging. I found the writing to be quite good – at times it wandered a little, and I felt like for a moment that I, or the author, was losing the plot, but then it came back on track. The characters are interesting, though I felt that while the central ones are really well developed, that those who were not directly a part of the main storyline were a little greyed out by comparison, as if they didn’t really matter that much. ☆☆☆

The Book of Strange New things, Michel Faber, June 2015

The writing itself was fine, the author is excellent at drawing out characterization and visuals that many would find difficult to imagine. And the overall arc of the story is interesting and was enough to keep me going through to the end. However, the protagonist, and his wife, who we basically don’t meet other than briefly at the beginning and then through a series of letters, are some of the most unpleasant, unsympathetic “good guys” that one could care to encounter. Misogynistic, racist, religiously intolerant, judgmental, and constantly spouting stereotypes about everyone and everything around them – it was just plain unpleasant to read. (Honestly, given the time period I was reading this in, it was like trying to listen to Donald Trump talk about anyone who isn’t American, White, Male, and Christian.) And it was made worse because it was cloaked in a sort of pious righteousness. ☆☆

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The Book Stack #4

Sunday, May 15, 20160

jumbled books
The brunt of my reading over the last many weeks since my last post (and it actually started before that last post) was binge reading through Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files (April 1, 2000 – May 27, 2014) novels.
dresden files
It’s going to seem short shrift to place them all into one small review, but I’m not going to go through and review each individual one of the fifteen. I found them to be fun, irreverent, easy reads, the basic premise, the exploits of an openly proclaimed wizard in Chicago, as he fights demons, ghouls, and more, alongside the local police department’s division for handling stuff that no one can explain, no one wants to handle, and no one wants to talk about. Harry Dresden is a wisecracking magically endowed private investigator who loves nothing more than bringing in cult movie and television references, more or less just to see if anyone around him is paying attention. I found the series to get a bit off the rails in books 13 and 14, where it seemed like Butcher was taking it in a totally new direction, and the writing seemed a bit lost, but it all came back on track in the current last novel. Overall, a great series to get started on if you like the world of magic, the paranormal, crime, and punishment! The series was turned into a not short-lived enough, and truly, appallingly, bad television show that shouldn’t have lasted through the first season that it did. ☆☆☆☆

Several years ago someone recommended Robert Harris’ historical novel Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome (September 19, 2006) to me. Given my love of things Italian, history, and fiction, it was a match made in heaven. It’s basically a fictional account of the life of Marcus Cicero, the famed orator of the Roman senate, as he first came to power. The book is written as an eyewitness account from his personal slave and secretary, Tiro. Historical fiction is a favorite genre of mine, and this was completely engaging, and more or less a “couldn’t put it down” kind of read. My recollection is I read through it in a matter of a couple of days. And, obviously, I loved it. As to why I didn’t jump right into the next book in the series, I truly can’t tell you. But, it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t, and I rectified that with a plunge into Conspirata: A Novel of Ancient Rome (March 30, 2010) right after finishing the Dresden Files. Equally as good, the story continues with Cicero’s political career as he encounters some of the best known figures of that time, including Julius Caesar. Political machinations are the core of the second novel, and it’s surprising in many ways how little the world of political intrigue has changed in the millenia since (then again, the novels are written by someone living in today’s world, so it may be that Harris simply borrows from that which is familiar to a modern audience). In the world of “court politics” or “palace intrigue” this easily rivals the intricacy of well known pop culture references like Game of Thrones, House of Cards, or Scandal. Looking forward to the next novel! ☆☆☆☆

Neal Stephenson, Seveneves, (May 19, 2015)

One of the things that’s count-on-able with Stephenson’s longer novels is that they follow a predictable pattern. If you assume roughly 900 pages or thereabouts for most of them, there will be an initiating event, something that starts the entire story in motion, something to grab your attention, and it will take up the first 150-200 pages. Then there will be roughly 400-500 pages of character development, lots of explication, lots of looking at how motivations develop, lots of “here, let me explain why the story, when we get to it, is going to go the way it goes”. And then it’s finished off with what amounts to the “real” novel, about 250-300 pages where all the action that was set in motion, and influenced by all the motivations developed during the entire middle section, happens. I hear time and again how people launched into one of his books with fascination at the premise, and then gave up 100 or so pages further on when it just got too tedious to continue. And they miss out on all the good part when the story takes off again.

This book is no different. I read through section 1 in under two hours, a complete page turner. Then it took me a month to get through to “section 3” (pages 567-861), because I found I couldn’t read more than a few pages of section 2 (pages 227-567) at a time without drifting off. And then I read through section 3 without pausing in roughly two hours.

Loved sections one and three. I appreciate the info in section two, but my god there’s got to be a way to do that midsection of all of his books in half or fewer of the pages. ☆☆☆☆

Lucy Burdette, Killer Takeout, (April 5, 2016)

Last year I whizzed my way through the six novels of the “Key West Food Critic Mysteries”. Basically, I’d refer you to that review, particularly the last couple of paragraphs where I summed up the series. Much the same holds true for this seventh novel, a fun read, but showing a decided lack of knowledge in the food world.

Although I’ve liked this series a fair amount, something about this latest volume just felt a little thrown together, as if it wasn’t thought through as well as the others, and that’s saying something given my thoughts about the series. I still enjoyed it, just not as much as the rest.

I hadn’t done any research into the author, and “Lucy Burdette” turns out to be a pen-name for Roberta Isleib, a clinical psychologist, also known for writing a series of golf-mystery novels, and who writes an advice column under the title “Ask Dr. Aster”. A psychologist with three different identities… just something to muse upon.

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