Memos From The Asylum

2011-11-17T23:28:00.001-05:00

Here I Express my feelings about Wall Street and what we are supposed to value.

I have renamed my blog not to abandon the spirit of Howard Beale, but to further reinforce it. Beale, the fictional newscaster played by Peter Finch in the prophetic film "Network" has been used and abused and misunderstood by those on the right and by those on the left. Beale was never a demagogue. And he never told a lie. In fact he even begged viewers to shut their TVs off while he was on. Beale knew one basic truth: we have made an asylum out of our environment. We have allowed those in charge to be our keepers. We have accepted the notion of continuous warfare. We have embraced a media that has made a Snookie more important than the hungry and the homeless. We have continued to hate others because of their differences from us. We eat and die in fast food franchises and fast burial mortuaries. We accept the notion that we work hard only to be screwed in the end by those who are supposed to look after us. While children get sexually abused near the football field, we choose the sport over their innocence. This is the asylum we all share, and it is from my padded cell that I will continue to expose the evils, the hypocrisies, and the misery we have allowed to permeate our short and fragile lives. These are memos from the asylum.

Homophobic Theological Hatred Wins In Brooklyn District 9

2011-09-17T15:30:00.001-04:00

The Late Harvey Milk, Jewish Gay New York American, would be a victim of burning or stoning if he lived under a theocratic dictatorship like the Republican Tea Bagger Taliban want.

I was quite disgusted by theorthodox Jewish vote for Republican Bob Turner in the 9^th Brooklyn Congressional district. This was the special election for disgraced ex-Congressperson Democrat Anthony Weiner's seat.

First, Imyself am a Jew and have no problem with it. I am not, however, religious inany way. I am also a very strong supporter of Israel and even go as far to saythat there is no such thing as a Palestine people and that there will never bepeace there because of the religious hatreds. I am ashamed to say that at onetime, I voted for what I now consider the worst scum of history includingRichard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. I did this because at that time I was a oneissue voter. The entire planet could be going down the commode, but as long asIsrael is ok, that was just peachy. I have thankfully grown a little wiser downthe corridors of the years and now vote for what is best for this country andnot necessarily what is good for Israel. Now, no matter what, I vote Democraticonly because the alternative is frighteningly worse. Yes, I never thought Obamawould be good for Israel, but he has to be good for the USA first. And what didhe do? Obama simply reiterated American policy regarding Israel since at leastthe time of Jimmy Carter. Bush and the Bush before him said the same thingabout Israel’s borders. I always thought that we Jews are supposed to have goodmemories. Falling hook line and stinker for a Republican hate and fearcampaign, as religious Jews did in my district, makes me wonder about thosememories. I voted for Obama in the last election and will vote for him againbecause the alternative is theocratic fascist totalitarianism. If that soundsparanoid, check out all the things Republicans have done to deny civil andworker rights since they were mistakenly voted into office last November. In any event, I voted for Weprin. The onlymessage I have to send to our president is keep fighting these reactionaryreligious extremists (the Taliban of our country) because the future of ourdemocratic republic is at stake during the worst era since the time ofMcCarthy.

Second, this is the otherissue that sent droves of religious Jews to the Republican Jerry SpringeriteTurner: intense theological homophobia. Check out this disgusting ad that camein my mail. I scanned it before ripping it to shreds and tossing it into thetrash.

Republican Political ads like the one above targeting fundamentalist Jews, should be outlawed, especially since same sex marriage is now law in New York state.

Weprin made the mistake oftelling the truth. He voted for same sex marriage as a representative of ALLthe people and not just as a representative of his own group. Fundamentalistreligion is antithetical to democracy. If it were up to me, I would bar membersof all fundamentalist sects from being able to run for and hold public office.I don’t believe that they are capable of separating their religious side fromtheir secular side. Look at Rick Perry. I can’t even imagine the kind ofcountry we would have under the likes of him. On the other hand, if afundamentally religious person can separate his own inner church from state, asWeprin and Jimmy Carter can do, then why shouldn’t he or she be allowed to run?Weprin proved this case when he fairly and rightly cast the yes vote for samesex marriage. This makes him a heretic in the eyes of his fellow orthodox Jews.Their theological hatred of homosexuals was exploited handily by the Republicancandidate under the guise of some stupid PAC, the National Organization forMarriage. Orthodox Jews turned out in droves to vote against the man, the adproclaimed, who violated the Torah.

I am quite ashamed of what myorthodox Jewish brethren have done. They have sunk to the lowest in my eyesbecause they invoke the Torah and yet succumb to the same kind of hate thatcould eventually put people into ovens. Whether these religious bigots like itor not, same sex marriage is legal in New York State. If they don’t like it,they should go and live in another state. If they don’t like President Obama’s Israelpolicy, they should go and live in Israel where their voices will count. Beyondmy contempt for my orthodox brethren, is my disgust over the direction thiscountry appears to be going. When a political candidate like Bob Turner can getaway with pandering to hate and fear in order to get votes, then we have gone along way to proving to the world the kind of classless slobs we all are.

Look at the picture of Dov Hikind above in the ad.Photoshop out the beard and skull cap and then Photoshop in the pointy whitesheet he should be wearing on his head. We live in a country where people cheerwhen more people are executed. We live in a country where religious views aresubstitute for bigotry. I for one would never want to live in a country ruledby a fundamentalist religion. I could care less about Islamic religious lawcreeping into our midst when we have the real threat of Judeo-Christianfundamentalist law slowly imposing its will on the rest of us.

And here is the ultimate irony: I’d like to see atleast 100 orthodox Jewish families, beards, wide hats, long black coats andall, try and buy property in Bob Turner’s neighborhood of Breezy Point. When Ihave had the occasion to bike ride through there and even eat at one of theirlocal restaurants, the anti-Semitism there is palpable. I overheard one patrontalking about what he would do if his daughter would marry a Jew. I would bequite surprised if there was a large Jewish contingent in this neighborhood. Asit stands, there is not a black or Hispanic person for miles in this community.Certainly, Turner needed the votes of these religious bigots. On the otherhand, I doubt if he would want them to be his neighbors.

I for one will never walk into an orthodox synagogueagain. Religious extremists of all sects love to invoke their faith alongsidetheir hate, but in the end, they are all hypocrites. These Republicans, teabaggers, and religious fundamentalists everywhere care more for the unborn thanthey do for the already born.

On Ed Schultz: We Need Liberals With Big Mouths For A Change

2011-05-26T00:42:00.016-04:00

Mr. Ed Schultz, my new hero, the mad and loud liberal of the air waves

MSNBC News commentator Ed Schultz was suspended for a week without pay for referring to "colleague" Laura Ingraham from another network as a right wing slut during his radio broadcast.

I feel Ed Schutz's rage.

Ever since the Republican Taliban took the mid-term elections, they have considered it as a mandate to destroy our democratic republic as we know it and hand it over to the corporations.

The Republican Taliban want to destroy: worker's rights, social security, abortion rights, gay rights, the EPA, the USDA, Medicare, the VA, and any program that has the stench of humanity in it. They intend to take all this money and give it to those who need it the "most": Corporations, insurance companies, coal companies, oil companies, media companies, and the rich in general, including the Koch brothers. Because as we all know, they are so generous, they're going to create more jobs with all the extra welfare they will be getting from the federal government. Funny, I always thought that these people were against socialism.

The Republican Taliban want, instead, to recreate an America that existed in the 19th century, a young America, still testing the waters of a growing social conscience, but still under the iron clad rule of the "trusts." Ironically enough, it was a Republican President, Teddy Roosevelt, who became known as the Trust Buster. What the heck happened to those Republicans?

For weeks and weeks, thanks to the reporting of Ed Schultz, among others, I have been witness to a very disturbing trend. The rich have gotten richer. The middle class is being squeezed. The working class is still more oppressed and more angry than before. We could be seeing the beginning of a class war in this country which could ultimately lead to a second American civil war where this time we will decide if we are going to stay the USA or be changed to a CSA, Corporate States of America, not a democratic republic but a corporate oligarchy that George Orwell would appreciate.

I am quite afraid of what the right wing is now capable of thanks to the Citizens United decision which allows corporations to buy elections with the use of political ads. This country has always been under threat by evil elements. Take the McCarthy era for example. Now we're in the era of the fake Tea Bagger movement and the Koch brothers. If any freedom loving and responsible American believes that his or her freedoms are untouchable, look again! If we become complacent, we can lose it all. The America of Laura Ingraham is not my America.

For two years since Obama was elected, all I've been hearing in the media is the rage of the tea party. I knew what their agenda was. They yelled and disrupted town hall meetings. They were portrayed as a right wing force to be reckoned with. Even the use of the term "tea party" is Orwellian because the REAL tea partiers would have thrown these upstarts into Boston harbor because today's baggers would problably be supporting the king of Britain. But once you see what's behind this movement, you understand its ultimate objective: cripple workers, institute a one party system, bring back the Gilded Age, create a new lower serf class.

If the agenda of the Republican Taliban doesn't fire you up, doesn't make you want to spit fire and crap rockets, then you must be dead. That is why I am glad we have newscasters like Ed Schultz and also Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, and Chris Matthews. But more than that, I am glad that Mr. Schultz has a big mouth, a bigger mouth on his own, on his newscast, than all the tea baggers put together, and he takes a dim view of people or groups of people trying to undermine our country and our democratic republic. We on the liberal progressive side need to be angry, need to have big mouths to expose these people, their party, and what they stand for.

I consider myself a big mouth progressive liberal in most issues. Whatever he said about this person, while Mr. Schulz has graciously apologized, I would like to have heard what Ms Ingraham said that ticked him off. I am sure that it was something Mr. Schultz picked up on, something dark within the "hearts" of the the right: to shrink the federal government so small in order for the corporations to grow large and to take over. To paint our president as something alien because he is black. In many ways, the Ingrahams of the world are the vanguards of this new more dangerous right.

At one time, these extremist righties were consigned to the back of the auditorium where their notions were dismissed as pure insanity. Now, many of these dangerous maniacs are in positions of power to undo decades of social progress this country has made. Back in the dim time of the 90's would any government official threaten anyone with a bat, as dictator in waiting, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey did to a 76 year old woman? More and more we are shown the thugs these new Republican Taliban are, and more and more, I am thinking, will this country be over run by their kind, and will I a liberal progressive have to consider a second amendment option to protect my country during a future second American civil war?

To Mr. Ed Schultz: Keep fighting. Keep that voice up and loud in the rotten faces and closed ears of those heartless right wing scum and all they represent for a more horrible future of our country, if future there be.

A Letter To President Obama From an Ex-Teacher Nov.2010 To Jan. 2011

2011-04-08T01:34:00.035-04:00

President Barack Obama

President Barack Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

INTRODUCTION

      I apologize for the length of this letter. I divided it under different headings so that you can choose to read any part you wish. Before I get into the issues, I wish to first tell you where I am coming from. I believe that you are the best president we have had in years. I don’t write these words lightly. In general, I despise politicians. But you are the only president that I have ever identified with, and you are the only president I have ever enjoyed listening to. I thought your press conference after the debacle was the best I have seen. I never saw a politician answer question so candidly the way you did. No matter what I write below under each heading, I intend to vote for you again, In fact, if I had my way, I would run you for 3 terms. By then, I would run your lovely wife for 3 terms. By that time, your children should be old enough so that I can vote for them as well 3 terms each. I wouldn’t mind seeing an Obama in the White House for the rest of my life.

      I wrote on my Facebook page that you are the only sitting president in the history of our country who has ever had to explain his religious beliefs or his birth. I sincerely believe that if you were as white as that idiot Glenn Beck, they would never be questioning your religious beliefs or your background. I am a white Jewish person whose grandparents came from Hungary. You, Mr. President, are every bit as American as I am. Your religious beliefs are none of anyone’s business. Even though I have never been to Hawaii, I always wanted to visit there and maybe even live there. I also think you have a beautiful name, better than a Bush, a Reagan, or a Nixon.

      I read someplace that you were homeless for a time. During the early 70’s I found myself sleeping in my car for a month. You are not a person born with a silver spoon in his mouth. You know what it is like to have a tough time, and I appreciate you even more because of this.

      I wish that you and the Democrats weren’t so afraid to be more liberal instead of center near the right, but even so, I like your personality. I would gladly, if I could, meet you and sit down for some juice. I don’t drink coffee or tea. But juice is my picker upper. I realize that I will never meet you as long as you are president, but when you go back to private life, I would be glad to sit down and have juice with you. I love the fact that you are professorial at times, and that you are a highly educated person who is also a gentleman. I would adopt you and your family as my own if I could.

      I hope that in this introduction I have made clear how I feel about you. I am glad that I voted for you and hope to have the privilege of voting for you again. Please be more liberal, more progressive. I do not like middle of the road Democrats, especially since today’s middle of the road is more to the right than ever before.

Image of Big Brother as He appears in the second film version of 1984

PLEASE FIGHT THE RIGHT VOCIFERIOUSLY

      I understand that as an adult and as a gentleman, you are trying to find a way to work with people who will never work with you. I understand you can’t come on TV acting as if you are spoiling for a fight, but I believe that is exactly what your enemies are doing. You and your party have done a great deal in the first two years of your term. You stand for things fair and humane. The Republican Tea Party Taliban, on the other hand, stand for everything I am against. I think that you should have bragged a little more about your accomplishments. When the Republicans stated their intention to repeal your health care bill, I was hoping you would answer: when heck freezes over. In other words, you and the Democrats are being way too nice to the Republicans. Niceties are inappropriate for these times. This is a war. I am not talking about the so-called war on terror. This is a war for the salvation of all the things that make our country great: fairness, humanity, freedom, liberty. The Republicans and their corporate backers are against everything this country stands for. Evil bullies like them have been trying to undermine this country for years. In the fifties, it was a McCarthy and now it is a Boehner. Being nice to these people is not going to get you anywhere. In fact, I wish you were not afraid to be as progressive as you can be. I do not like the so called Republicrats or as you call them…blue dog Democrats. Democrats are supposed to stand for something different from Republicans. If Democrats continue to seek the middle, they will be voted out. The Republicans are not “wishy washy” about where they stand. I know exactly what they intend to do if they had their way. I would like the Democrats to be as fanatically liberal as the Republicans are conservative. I want the Democrats to stand up for their liberal values even if they have to put the boxing gloves on and be as nasty to the Republicans as they are to the Democrats. If they don’t do this, your party will lose in 2012. AND THAT WILL BE A TRAGEDY.

      Some of the pundits say that you don’t show enough emotion. I think that is nonsense. You are simply being the gentleman that you are. The last thing I want you to do is come out with a cowboy hat and a six shooter. I want you to dig deep into yourself and remember the days you were homeless. Feel the rage for a change and come back at them with force in your own tough way.

      You ARE tough, Mr. President. Anyone who went through what you did and comes out on top has to be tough. I know that once you show your dark side to your right wing Republican enemies, they will be afraid, very afraid. Right now, they are not afraid. In fact if I had my way, if the job numbers remain the same next year as they are now, we should impeach the Republican house. How’s that for being mean? Then they will know what real fear is.

Today's cracked Youth under Republiot Threats

STAY IN TOUCH WITH THE YOUTH

      Mr. President, please keep in touch with young people the same way you did during your initial run. I read that many of the young people stayed at home this time and did not vote because somehow there has been a disconnect between your relationship with them then and your relationship with them now. You should tell them that the Republicans want to see the retirement age raised to 70, for example. I realize that 70 may seem a long way for most people in their teens and for most people in their 20’s. But take it from me. I just turned 60 and got a big shock from it. Old age is there before you know it. I voted for you in part because of your youth. I want to see a better world for the people of the future. I don’t want them looking back on us and condemning us for our inaction and blaming us for the horrible state of the planet. (if the Republican Tea Party Taliban have their way that is).

PLEASE UPGRADE YOUR INTERNET MAILINGS

      I get a lot of mail from your supporters, and from you. There seems to be no way to give any feedback on these mailings. All I get is pep talk and requests for donations. In fact, I am giving 25 dollars a month out of my pension check to help you in your fight for the middle class. I have been doing this for a few months already and have never received any indication that you are even getting my money. Am I making these deductions out of my fixed income for nothing?

      My wife and I are being audited by the IRS for 2008. One of the things they don’t believe is my deductions for my purchase of DVDs. Before I retired, I was a NYC public school teacher for 28 years. For about 23 of those years I taught a course in my intermediate school called introduction to movies and media. I would gladly give you all the details of what I taught as if you were a parent of a child in my class, but that is a subject of another letter. When I got the notice of the audit, I wanted to withdraw my 25 dollar a month donation just in case I have to pay the 10 thousand dollars they may want. I went to one of the letters I got from your group, I think it is Organizing for America, and wrote them about this matter. I never got a reply nor do I think they ever got my note. I am still deducting the 25 dollars a month, and I still have not gotten any indication from this group that they are even getting my donation.

      By the way, I am pretty angry about this, and I was pretty angry about it when I walked into the polls. In spite of this, I voted Democratic all down the line thinking that voting based on my anger will not get me anywhere. In fact, voting for the Republicans is like sticking a rusty nail into an already open and infected wound.

      Your internet mailings are a very important way of staying in touch with the voters, but you have to make sure that we are able to reply to your messages. Right now, there is no feedback one way or another, and again, I wish I knew that you were getting my 25 dollar a month donation to help the middle class. This 25 dollars is an addition to my tax liability. I also give 20 dollars a month to the Humane Association and 50 dollars a month to Greenpeace. I have always been supportive of all kinds of charities despite my financial situation. Putting my money where my mouth is has been very important to me….now if I only knew your “help the middle class” campaign was getting my monthly donation.

David McCallum, from The Outer Limits, shows what a good education does for you.

EDUCATION

      As I wrote above, I was a NYC public school teacher for 28 years. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. Your solution to our educational problems is more charter schools and forcing teachers to work in the summer months. The dumb right accuses you of being a socialist, and yet in regards to this and some other issues, you seem to be more right wing than the right.

      Charter schools are really private schools funded by public money. Many of them bully their way into public school buildings and take over. Since the right is obsessed with privatizing everything, charter schools fit that pattern very well. When I went to school, we had no need for charter schools. I was graduated knowing how to read and to write, how to add and how to subtract. The reason our public schools worked was because the teachers ran things and the students did not. Parents were more involved in those days, actually raising their own children. If traditional public schools were allowed to slap some of these trouble makers and their parents upside the head, maybe this fear would make the trouble makers behave. In any event, charter schools have the unfair advantage of being able to pick and choose any student they wish, leaving the dregs to the beleaguered public schools. This is certainly not fair. If charter schools are public schools, they should be forced to accept every student a public school has to accept, and charter schools should be forced to abide by the same rules public schools have to follow. Our country’s unique contribution to the world of education was the free, open public school system. Additionally, public schools were in many ways the center of a community. Sadly with the attack on public schools, many of these centers of community activity no longer exist.

      Teachers’ unions are also under attack since many of these charter schools can opt to not have a teachers’ union in their building. Let me tell you why teachers need a union. I personally witnessed teachers being treated as second class citizens. I saw them treated the same way I was treated when I was a blue collar worker. Principals and assistant principals spoke to teachers like trash, even yelling at them in front of students. Teachers don’t have a private office or a private bathroom in their classrooms like administrators have in theirs. I also know that no matter how good a job you do, if a principal or another administrator doesn’t like the way you look or dress, you are out. If they don’t like your politics, you are out. Mr. President, as long as our country and its school administrators want to treat teachers as if they are nothing more than tools, we need unions. Employees who feel equal to their employers out of mutual respect don’t have much need for a union. Teachers, on the other hand, are under siege by administrators, school secretaries, school custodians, the parents, and the students. As we have learned in the past, without a union to protect them, teachers are left to twist in the wind.

      You said that you want to extend the school year. I understand your need to want to do this. Other countries are going way ahead of us to places we should be by now. But there is another stark contrast. These countries may force their teachers to work year round, but at least their society forces students and parents to respect the teacher. In our country, a longer school day or year just means more of a bad thing. Before you force teachers to work in the summer remember this: Parents should be forced to work harder as well such as simply raising their kids to respect the adult authority in the classroom.

        By the way, the mayor of New York City just showed how much he respects his teachers by picking another non- educator to run one of the largest school systems in the country (10 November). Would you pick a non-firefighter to run the fire department? Would you pick someone without medical experience to run a hospital? It is because no one in this country really takes the teaching profession seriously that millionaires like Bloomberg can pick one of his own to run the schools.

      I do not like the idea that business is insinuating itself into all aspects of our lives, and with the Republiots running the house beginning in January, this will become much worse.

ISRAEL AND THE MIDDLE EAST

      I am not disappointed by your Mid-East policy. I knew before I even voted for you that you would not be good for Israel. There was a time when I was younger that I was, sadly, a one issue voter. I am ashamed to say that I voted for some of the worst scum of American history including Nixon and Reagan because I perceived they had a more positive attitude when it came to Israel’s security. I have since grown up and now vote for the person who will be best for THIS country, not necessarily good for Israel. I believe no matter who is president of this country, Israel will do what it wants to insure its security.

      I have followed the wars in the Middle East since I was a kid. All of them were started as wars of aggression against the Jewish state. In fact, I believe that the whole basis of this conflict stems from the religious hatred these particular Muslims have for Jews and the Jewish religion. You may think that Israel’s creation of settlements is an obstacle to peace, but in 1948 when Israel was established, the Arabs went to war with the Jews even then, in spite of the fact that the Jewish state had none of the so-called occupied territories, and the old city of Jerusalem was under the control of Jordan. Israel should have never given up any part of its historic land for nothing, and I hope that it is not forced into making any more suicidal concessions. Even if Israel gave every piece of land the Arab aggressors demanded, they would still find something to complain about. This is because they hate Israel and the religion of Israel. I am not surprised and quite annoyed by the fact that you promote the fiction that there will be peace between Israel and its neighbors if only Israel did not expand settlements and still occupies so-called Arab lands. There are 21 Islamic countries in the Middle East and one Jewish one. I will not allow a 22nd Arab Muslim state there. By the way, Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is the capitol of the Jewish State of Israel.

12 November 2010

ON RIGHT WING DEMOCRATS aka, REPUBLICRATS aka BLUE DOG DEMOCRATS

      The most undermining concept the Democratic Party has is the so-called right wing Democrat. I have to tell you, I literally despise these people for many reasons but most importantly, they blur the distinction in the public’s mind between what the Democratic Party stands for and what the Republican Party stands for. People are not going to vote for Republican “light”. They are going to vote for the real thing. I, on the other hand, would never vote for a Republican even if they threatened to pull all my finger nails out. And I am not so fond of this Democratic Party either, but the alternative is far worse.

17 November 2010

OUTSOURCING

      I buy something in this country. I should not have to call India or any other country when I have problems with the product. I have never heard of doing this kind of thing. While I feel bad for jobless people in other countries, I am more concerned with people who are unemployed here in this country. If American companies want to outsource American jobs, I have to consider not doing business with them in the future. The Democratic Party should not be soft on this issue if you wish to see the job index rise.

The face of the Enemy dujour in 1984

THE WAR

Mr. President, my favorite book is 1984. I can’t even count how many times I have read this book. The first time I read it, I was in the ninth grade. I never forgot the lessons this book taught me, and in many ways, it helped to change my life. As you know, the book deals with life and death under a horrible totalitarian government whose three slogans are War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength. I just turned sixty, and I don’t even remember when I lived in a peaceful and secure world. War, similar to what happens in Orwell’s novel, has gone on forever. How much money could have been saved and used for better projects had we not been at war? As you know, I want you to be president for a long time. The continuation of war is going to eventually kill your presidency. I personally do not recognize the war on terror as a true war like the ones we have with other countries. Once you start waging war on words or concepts, you can be at war for hundreds of years, a war that will never end.

I consider the terrorists to be sociopathic and psychopathic criminals who need to be hospitalized in institutions for the criminally insane. Criminals are hunted by police, NOT American soldiers. I would like you to end the war in Afghanistan which was begun for the purpose of hunting down Osama Bin Ladin. Instead of sending in troops, you should be sending in secret agent police who would work undercover until they find this criminal and others like him. This is a more surgical way to prosecute this conflict. Using the word “war” in our fight against criminal terrorists keeps the military industrial complex up and running while at the same time draining all our money and our resources. In the novel 1984, war is continuous in order to keep the structure of that society intact with the rich on top and the poor always on the bottom.

Without good infrastructure, nothing stands for long.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

22 November 2010

When I heard your inaugural address, I felt as if I was in the presence of a true visionary. We need to rebuild the infrastructure as soon as possible. We are one of the greatest countries in the world, and yet we have no high speed railroad. We have no modern up to date electrical grid. You suggested in your speech that all of this would change. Imagine how many jobs could be created once you started this project. I may not live to see all the improvements in infrastructure you plan to make, but if you do nothing or let the Republiot have their way, no one will ever see improvements in this vital area.

I have not flown since 9-11-01. I feel that the airlines have gotten away with murder and still they treat the passenger like cattle. Many services used to be part of your ticket price, and now you have to pay for everything, and be treated like a criminal to boot with those intrusive body scanners which I refuse to be subjected to. Too bad the rails are so slow and run down that people seem to have no choice but to take an airplane. I would rather ride my bicycle to my destination, but it would be nice if I could use a high speed cross country train. You have many great ideas…Please don’t give up on them. Personally, I would gladly pay more taxes if I knew that in part they were going to help make our lives better and easier.

Col. Hefner gets it in The War Of The Worlds, directed by Byron Haskin and produced by George Pal. When the Republicans have their way with the environment, we are all going to end up like poor Hef here.

THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE FUTURE

      Again I cite your inaugural address with all its visionary themes. You mentioned wind energy and the like. You mentioned getting us off the oil addiction. I don’t care about me. I care about the future and the young people of today who will have to deal with it.

      I am frankly quite disappointed with my generation: The Baby Boomers. I saw a lot of promise at first, but years later in the present, I see that our world is as rotten and as messed up as ever. I guess all those 1960’s demonstrations and civil disobediences were just a hypocritical way to simply get out of class and have fun, especially if your parents are footing the bill for your college education. Years later, the main thing my generation has contributed is more graphic mainstream movies, loose fitting jeans, and chronic “yuppyitis.”

      One of the reasons that I voted for you was because you are not a member of my generation but are a member of the younger generation who I thought would be a little more concerned about the future since you, more than me, will be dealing with its positive or negative effects. I believe in climate change and global warming. I believe that so-called globalization is contributing to the downfall of our planet. I believe that every second I write more Amazon rain forest if being decimated. You are a Democrat, so to me, you are supposed to be progressive, especially regarding social programs and the environment. Presently, I feel like I am living in a very bad science fiction movie dealing with the end of the world and how we don’t prevent it. The only thing standing in the way is a bunch of doubters and Republicans who want everyone to think that climate change is a myth. Meanwhile, if nothing is done radically to save our planet, no disaster movie ever made will compare with the horror future generations are going to have to deal with, watching this planet convulse beneath the dregs and garbage of our nowhere environmental policy. Fifty years from now, long after I am gone, I hope that the young people then will be enjoying a cleaner and more peaceful planet, so that when thinking about the baby boomers, they won’t be cursing us for our inaction but praising us for helping to make the future (their present) wonderful and fulfilling. You, Mr. President, can make the great future happen if you stop being so middle of the road to the right and go back where you should be in the progressive left. Please help save our planet and fight those who would dare say that climate change is a myth.

Libertines were the best..Liam Neeson as Alfred Kinsey

LEGALIZING CERTAIN DRUGS, LEGALIZING PROSTITUTION, LEGALIZING GAMBLING 29 November 2010

I thought that the movie Kinsey was great, especially when the main character muses: what would this country have been like if the libertines had founded it instead of the Puritans? If you cut the defense budget and then legalized certain drugs, prostitution, and gambling, can you imagine how many millions the government could raise? You may be infected by Puritanism, Mr. President, so you may never consider legalizing all the above, and that is very sad and short sighted, but I will still vote to have you re-elected.

American Indian Leonard Peltier, innocent victim of blind justice

PLEASE FREE AMERICAN INDIAN LEONARD PELTIER

I believe in Mr. Peltier’s innocence. Although I respect individual members of the FBI, I never trusted the agency especially after I read that they had spied on Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X among others. I believe so strongly in Mr. Peltier’s innocence that I would gladly spend at least a year in prison so that he could have at least one year off his life sentence. I am saddened by what the invaders did to this country and to its native peoples. Mr. Peltier is another in a long line of American Indians disemboweled by the long knives of the ever present unjust cavalry. I realize that you have much to deal with right now, especially from the Republican threat to our democracy (I wish I could try each and every one of them for treason). But at some point please consider the plight of this man who was not even where he was accused of being the night those FBI men (helping the murderous police force, the reservation goon squads) were murdered.

Bullies are the worst. Here is the late Vic Morrow, second from right, and his notorious X gang in Blackboard Jungle.

FIGHTING THE REPUBLICAN/CORPORATE BULLY

30 November 2010

      We are trying to fight ourselves out of one of the worst financial disasters in our history. Who is to blame are well known.

      Have they really been punished?

      Not really.

      Who is supposed to bear the brunt?

      The middle and the working class?

      Where can the working person turn to?

      The Democratic President?

      What is one of his suggestions to cut the deficit?

      Freeze the pay of federal employees?

      I did not expect a Democratic president to support closing the budget on the broken backs of working people and not on the broad backs of the rich who could take it.

     Can it sadly be true? Are you knuckling under to the Republican/ corporate bully?

     Bullies have harassed me throughout my life. Bullies harass our country and have always tried to bring about their return to total unquestioned power. You can’t stand down from bullies. You can’t compromise with bullies. I voted for what I thought was going to be a liberal/ progressive agenda, not an agenda that supports the cutting or the freezing of any worker’s pay as you suggest should be done to non-uniformed federal workers. I expect you to stand up tall and loud for everything liberal I know that you stand for. I expect you to tell the bullies that there will be no tax break for the rich. You may want to add that it is your way or the highway. Let them drag their behinds away and sulk and plan, but we’re going to keep a watchful eye on these enemies of freedom. You can’t beat a bully only once. They are going to keep coming back until we beat them down again. We on the progressive side must behave just as dirty…just as low as they are playing. I am sorry for writing these words, but I really sincerely believe that our country is under attack by shadow corporations supported by the Republican Party and the United States Chamber of Commerce. I have no desire to live under a corporate dictatorship. If the public can’t see the threat these people pose to the free world, as the last vote seems to prove, than it is our job to bring it to their attention, in their faces, just like the opposition does, just like the bully does.

      I would love to see you come on national television and tell the public everything this Republican Party plans to do if they had their way. That party loves to use fear tactics to tick off the voter. You can do the same thing. I am very afraid of the Republican Party and was hoping you would be just as vocal about this as I am. I am afraid of what they want to do with Social Security, Medicare, the EPA, the Department of Veteran Affairs, the department of education, and so on down the line.

      I voted for a progressive and wished that you would weed out all the non progressive Republicrats in the Democratic Party and invite them to join the Republican Party. I understand that you would like the Democratic Party to not be exclusionary, but these so-called blue dog Democrats are homogenizing Democratic Party principles and will ultimately kill the party. The bullying Republicans are moving more and more to the right and are daring you to join them closer and closer to their middle of the road. Please, sir, stand up to these bullies, and please do not compromise your progressive tradition.

      I respect you, sir, for your being an adult and a gentleman, but now is the time to shake these fascists up. Anyone who grew up the way you did and eventually rises to become the president of the United States cannot be a weak and/ or wimpy person. There is more to your reserve than meets the eye. Please continue below…

THANKS FOR READING THIS….A WORD ABOUT ONE OF MY TEACHERS, PHILIP ANDERSON OF HOLLYWOOD HIGH SCHOOL CIRCA 1967/68… WHAT I THINK YOU ARE GOING TO DO….A Final Plea To Fight The Enemies Of Democracy, The Republican Party…Recommended Viewing From A Retired Movies And Media NYC Public School Teacher

3 December 2010

      I had some good teachers. Mr. Philip Anderson was one of them. I actually first met him in junior high school and eventually became his sole AV monitor when he worked at Hollywood High School. I remember the experience fondly even now many years later.

14 December 2010

      I was never fond of industrial arts classes that my guidance counselors kept shoving down my throat because they did not think I had the grades to get into college. I didn’t like where they were sending me, so I fired them and did my own academic counseling. I’ve never liked guidance counselors since. But being in Mr. Anderson’s high school electronics class was a treat because it was kind of like an extra period of being his AV monitor. Mr. Anderson knew that I sucked at industrial arts. But at least he allowed me to take his class, be his monitor when necessary, and graded my “projects” with an eye toward understanding industrial arts may not be for everyone, even if their guidance counselors think that it is so.

      The group of students I had to share the period with was boisterous and talkative. I am sure that the noise would get on any teacher’s nerves, even easy going fellows like Mr. Anderson. When I spoke with him, he would say “yes” drawn out and going up at the end. It was a very friendly way to almost sing a word instead of just say it. Mr. Anderson said this word a lot when I spoke with him, and I felt it showed me that he was interested in what I had to say. He was also deaf or hard of hearing out of his right ear, if I remember. So his saying “yes” all the time meant that he was also making sure he was hearing everything being said to him. That incessant loud talking that went on during his class must have been annoying to listen to through a hearing aid.

      I tended to behave in a classroom. I am sorry, but as messed up as both my parents were, they raised me to respect my elders. When I was in Mr. Anderson’s class, I sat in the front row as was traditional for me since I was almost blind out of my left eye. If he needed me to be his monitor, I would be out of the class delivering a projector, picking up film, dropping off film, and helping to run the projector if the person I was delivering to needed me to run it. This particular day I was getting something in the back of the room. The other students were nosier than usual. He was trying to tell me something from the front of the room. I stood there in the back cupping my ear, and that was when it happened. Mount Anderson erupted. His voice rose to a height and loudness I never thought possible for such a gentlemanly and soft spoken person. The room at once got deathly silent as Mr. Anderson continued to explode. I knew that he was not yelling at me, but I still felt the blast of his voice as it filled the room with his rage. Before I knew it, he was back being himself, and the others, the disrespectful morons I had to share the room with, never dared to annoy Mr. Anderson again. He had stood up to his student bullies and taught them that he may be a nice person, but he is no sucker and no pushover. From that day on, the others were never loud in his class again.

16 December 2010

      You probably wonder how this little story relates to you. I believe you to be a gentleman, and I also believe that you are not the push over many are starting to believe that you are, especially in light of your approval of extending the Bush Tax cuts to the upper two percent of Americans. I believe that what you are doing is similar to what Mr. Anderson did. You are allowing these Republican bullies to push you around only to a point. I am sure that even with your unfortunate approval of this gift to the rich, you are getting to a point where you are finally going to reveal your dark side, an explosion akin to Mt. St. Helens. I would hate to see you explode, Mr. President, but if it takes that to save your presidency then you should do it, and please soon. Right now these Republiots want to go home for the holidays and are accusing Senator Reid of being anti-Christmas because he wants to finish other work before their invasion begins next year in January. After all, the Republiot Tea Party Taliban has held this entire nation hostage until they were granted the tax bonus to the rich. The fact that you were able to get anything done at all over the last two years is herculean to say the least. That a party in the minority can do this amount of damage, I pale over what they will be capable of when they are in the majority over the next two years. Only you can determine how you are going to handle the assault. The Republiot Tea Party Taliban is the gravest threat to our democracy since McCarthy. They are seriously undermining the war effort because they want us to always be in a state of war, so that they can gleefully feed the hungry mouth of the military industrial complex, a term, I might add, coined by a Republican, not a Republiot.

      These rightist fanatics are truly frightening to me. Now I have never owned a firearm in my life. John Boehmer and his crowd really gives me a chill to the point that I feel threatened enough to buy a firearm for home protection, but also to be used to defend myself when the day arrives that our democratic Republic falls and is replaced by a fascist corporate totalitarian based society. Remember this, Mr. President, corporations can care less if our country falls. Sure, it will shake the financial world for years to come, but at the end of that time, the corporations will still exist, if not by the same name than by a different one.

      I live in this country in part because of its ideals of freedom, liberty, and justice for all. There have always been forces at work in our country that have tried to undermine our ideals with the hope of overthrowing and taking over our government. We have fought and defeated the likes of these including Joseph McCarthy who sought to instill fear in the hearts of Americans, setting one against the other. In our own time, we have Boehner and his band of merry fascists with their motley crew of tea party racists and bigots. They have made a mockery of the real tea party event in our history. Had these people been there in those times, the real tea partiers would have tossed them into the ocean alongside the British Tea.

      When I voted for you, Mr. President, I voted for progressive leadership, not Republican pseudo-dictatorship, and make no mistake, that is exactly what they would want to see. I voted for you, Mr. President, because I thought you were on the side of the poor, the working class, the middle class, the downtrodden, the helpless, the children, the sick, the physically and mentally challenged. I voted for you in part because you had a vision for the future of this country not tied to the old corporate controlling ways. I voted for you, Mr. President, because you promised that you would not continue the tax break to the rich. Both of us know that trickle-down economics never worked; in fact it was the beginning of the catastrophe we saw in the last decade. We also know for the ten years the tax break to rich has been in effect, they have created next to nothing in jobs. Their purpose seems to be to have fun while the rest of us toil, suffer, grow old, and die.

      You are the only one that stands in the way of the GOP succeeding in its nefarious plans. I would sure hope that I can vote for you again in two years. As I wrote above, I hope also to see your wife and children eventually go into the white house. If we can have 2 Bushes in the white house, why not 3 or more Obamas?

      I realize that my favorite pundit/news people are MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, and when they begin to question your decisions, I start to listen because I trust those two as much as I trusted Edward R. Murrow. There is so much at stake including the planet no less. It has been struck a critical blow by the Bush policies whose repercussions are still to come. Only you can reverse what that monster of the last 8 years did.

      Considering what just went down regarding the Bush Tax cuts, your enemies will now be emboldened to do more and to demand more. Their one goal is to see that you are a one term president. The thought of this makes me very angry because I know that behind this is racism as rotten and as despicable as ever. I know then that you’re not going to let them push you or the American People around and that at some point you are going to go Philip Anderson on their, butts.

      You’re going to get out there among the people. I want to see you on Letterman, the View, every show you can. I want you and the Democratic Party to show just what the Republiot Taliban is. No more urbane behavior towards these slobs. You can’t treat the enemy in such a fashion unless your intention is to coax them until they are over a cliff. I want these traitorous creeps to be exposed and humiliated. I want each and every American to see once and for all that the Republican Party as it stands today is dangerous to our liberty, our children, our planet, our national security, and our future. They are spokespeople for those groups who have now found a legal way to collect graft, those same groups who for years have tried to undermine our unique open and free society. Today, the new threat are the corporations, countries and governments unto themselves, and believe me, they are not looking out for our best interests.

      I hope that you are up for the fight for our country, the war against the Republican Party. I will do what I can to spread the word about this danger we all face, almost as frightening as the terrorists. In the meantime, I really hope that the next time John Boehner cries, I hope it is because you just smacked him upside his orange head.

Gary Cooper in the title role of John Doe in Frank Capra's prophetic look at how a populist movement can be used by a corrupt businessman for his own evil purposes.

I’d like at this time to recommend some movies to you. It turns out that Frank Capra was a prophet. The trouble with corporations, lobbyists, and special interests is predicted in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. The fact that most rich people think only of themselves is dramatically predicted in Mr. Deeds Goes To Town. The fact that grass roots movements like the so-called tea party movement can be used and manipulated by corporations and other special interests is predicted in Meet John Doe where a popular movement, is thus manipulated. Urban sprawl and the invasion of the big city into smaller town life is predicted in It’s A Wonderful Life.

THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: The best most realistic and most disturbing film about Nuclear war is Threads. Not available on DVD in the states. It should be required viewing for the entire world.

Finally one of the best movies about nuclear war ever made (it makes The Day After look like a Sunday Picnic) is Threads. This film should be required viewing for the entire planet, and unfortunately the film is only available in Europe. I am lucky that I have a VHS copy of the movie, and I transferred it to DVD. When I get a new DVD recorder, I will gladly make a copy for you if you want. It is a graphic depiction of the horror of that kind of war, and if you get a chance to see it, you will never forget it.

The rubble of the World Trade Center burns and close to 3000 people with it 11 Sept. 2001. This world was never a nice place.

A CYNICAL PESSIMEST CONCLUDES

20 December 2010

      As of today, that historic smack to the bully’s head is yet to come. The tax bonus for the rich has been passed, digging our nation deeper into debt. Instead of leaving a legacy of health and prosperity, we are leaving the next generations of Americans more of the same. What was your campaign slogan: something about change?

      I am often than not, depressed. I am glad that new medications offer some relief for the symptoms. I wish these drugs had been in use during my mother’s time. Perhaps with a little more understanding and compassion on the part of the state of California Department of Mental Health, my mother may have come out differently by the end of her miserable life. Maybe my father, had this country understood the effects of post traumatic stress related battle field experiences, would have lived passed age 46. Those times with my parents were pretty stressful and mostly miserable times. I used to hear them talk sometimes about this or that person who was going to take away my mother’s mental health service. Later, I would understand this to mean that some politician was running for office, threatening to cut these services for the working class because it was a drain on the budget.

      Does this sound familiar, Mr. President?

      When I turned 60, I discovered that my own depression was organic, having gone off the medication that I started in 2001 with great detriment. I have since put myself back on that same medication with the understanding that although part of my depression is organic, another part of it stems from my own issues.

      One of these issues is how I relate to the outside world. A long time friend of mine lost his son recently to cancer. The young man was 23. One day, while my friend and I walked on the Coney Island Boardwalk and admired the sunset, he remarked how beautiful it was and how this was hell.

      I appreciated the irony of his statement. The earth, unsullied and unpolluted, can be a canvas of ever changing beauty, and yet acted out right in nature’s face, our petty hatreds, our crimes against this planet, and against each other in the form of war. With every bit of beauty this planet has to offer we only have another cut of bitterness to add to it all. Wherever you are on this planet, someone else is being screwed over so that you can enjoy some comfort. Want to enjoy a week in Jamaica in a luxury resort? Just remember that the price on the other side of the coin are the workers getting paid slave wages and told not to ask for any tips. Want to enjoy a DVD? Just before you insert it into the machine ask yourself how this little disc got to you so that you could simply play it? You can believe that a lot of pain went into making that little disc. You can almost imagine the person working in that factory more than 8 hours a day because he has no union protection. He gets all kinds of dirt unique to the job on his hands and probably smells the work place on himself hours after he has been home. It is amazing how much misery is so profitable.

      What other place can this be than hell? When I was born, I immediately had a label slapped on me pertaining to a very important position that I hold in this realm. That position, economic status, was working class. In the world of hell, you have to have money in order to enjoy the wonderful but fleeting pleasures the natural world has to offer. I mean, Mr. President, who needs racism to drive people apart when we have money to make it so much easier. Don’t want an undesirable in your club? Just make it too expensive for him to join.

      One of the points you brought up in your campaign was the fact that congress people get the best health care, and you wanted all the citizens of this country to have this care. Right then, the point was further reinforced to me that you and all the rest of the politicians in this country are members of a whole different restrictive club. Only in hell can we understand the true meaning of irony.

      I managed over my sixty years to move from working class to professional middle class, not anything special really. If I want to get into the rich person’s paradise for even a week, I better have saved up for it. If I want to buy my first home in my life, that may be difficult as well, but no matter where I live, I have to live with my class of people, middle class. If I want better, I have to have more money, and if I don’t, well, that is on me.

      So I have to live with the label, middle class that the rulers of hell have placed upon me. The next thing to do in hell is simply suffer. I mean even the investment class that you are a member of, Mr. President, has its share of suffering. I understand under the rules of irony that everyone should be careful what they wish for because they might get it. At least, on your level, you can control some of your own suffering. Many of those on your economic level have no qualms about making others suffer for their profit. The Walmart family comes to mind followed by British Petroleum. You are a political leader, on the other hand, and as such, you are supposed to owe more to the people than to the lobbyist. You are supposed to endeavor to make everyone’s life better in this country, especially those who do not have the advantages that the wealthy have. You are supposed to demand more government when those of the state or city fail in their duty to protect their citizens. You need to have taxes especially if we are to support programs necessary to the health and well being of those less fortunate.

      I don’t trust any politician because 8 chances out of 10 he or she is a member of the investment class and cares little for how the rest of the unwashed masses live. If I wanted to take a really cynical bent on this tax compromise, I would say, what do you expect? The world is controlled by the wealthy, and you have to hope that some of these rulers have a little humanity left in them. Otherwise, they are going to do things to benefit each other and not the rest of us to eternity. A character in Platoon put it like this: “The rich have been f---ing the poor forever, even during the time of the pyramids…”

       I voted for you because I thought that you had that humanity even though you are not a member of my economic class. I figured you were young, and we needed someone who would do the work to help heal this planet and the life forms that share it. But I forget that this is hell, and that the idea of hell is to suffer.

      I was born in 1950, and believe me when I tell you this, Mr. President, this place was never peaceful. There has always been hatred and war, always a budget crisis that somehow falls on the heads of the working and on the middle classes, always hatred, always taxes that seem to go nowhere but to the military. As long as I could remember, Mr. President, everyone who runs for president says that they want change and that they are the ones who will finally do it.

      In the sixty years I have survived on this planet, I know what to expect from politicians and from promises they make about changes to come. Hell never changes, Mr. President, it just gets better at meting out suffering. Who would have thought that right in the middle of my life, the world would be held hostage by a bunch of criminal religious fanatics, and that in the beginning of the second decade of terror and murder, we all get to be naked at the airport, and not get some sexual release in return, at least for our time and for our humiliation. Perhaps in a libertine world, we would have such considerations, but then again, in a libertine world, there would be no need for such devices because there would be no terrorism. There would not even be wars because more people would be busy having sex rather then hating and killing and Sarah Palining each other.

      I hate to even imagine that, yes, old age is happening even to me, and I suppose if I was a little more satisfied with my life, I would not feel as depressed and as fearful about my eventual demise. But the thought that in the remainder of my life, I will still be surrounded by stress, pain, hypocrisy, greed, irony, and agony is making me even more depressed. As my friend said, this is hell. We were on the brink when I was born in 1950, and we have been on the brink since.

      It will never change as long as all of us are divided by our economic status, and those on top can reap the benefits of their wealth in poor as well as in rich times. This is the way it was, and this is the way it will always be, especially as long as mainly the investment class can afford to run for public office. We can never forget that in hell, one’s success is measured by how much money he has, and not necessarily by how much integrity he has.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, MR. PRESIDENT

4 January 2011

      Thank you for reading this long letter. It took me a little over a month to write, but I felt that writing to you would not be a waste of time. I congratulate you on getting a lot done in the last two weeks of December. Since I do not believe in any religion, I can only hope, not pray, that our country will last longer than the Roman Empire did, and that we will never live under the yoke of a corporate dictatorship. Only liberal progressive leadership can stop this from coming to pass. Please make sure you are always safe. I am always afraid for you, and it causes me a lot of stress.

Sincerely and Respectfully,

Gary Perl

Who Cares About Teachers Anyway?

2011-04-04T17:21:00.007-04:00

Glenn Ford tells Louis Calhern, "Who cares about teachers anyway?" From Blackboard Jungle

        Who cares about teachers anyway? That is a line from a very famous controversial movie for its time. That movie, “Blackboard Jungle”, noted also for having the first rock and roll score, painted a bleak, often violent picture, albeit a hopeful Hollywood ending, of life inside the classroom. The film follows our hero, played by a very good Glenn Ford, in his struggles to reach a difficult class he has been assigned. The movie spares us nothing. It depicts a near rape, classroom assaults, a vicious beating of teachers, and a great line by Glenn Ford. Disillusioned and angry near the end of the second act, Ford laments that he ever became a teacher in the first place, declaring, “Who cares about teachers anyway?” In spite of the film’s upbeat ending, the darkness it depicts and the things the film teaches us about society in general, I could write a whole other blog about. Nothing matches Ford’s line, however. It stayed with me for a long time and all during my 28 year career as a NYC public school teacher.

        There was only one other line that eclipsed that one as one also to remember. It was my first rough day working as a NYC public school special education teacher. One of the veterans there took me aside and told me something I should always remember. “As far as the board of education (Back in 1981, we had a board of education, not a department) is concerned, you, the teacher, are shit,” this teacher declared, almost within hearing range of the students he had sitting inside his classroom waiting. “The sooner you understand that, the better off you will be.” He added. For the next 28 years up until the year I retired end of school year 2009, I understood what I had been told. I may have never accepted that I was shit as far as the city was concerned, but it treated me that way all the same. Who cares about teachers anyway?

        I understand, without having been there, what drove teacher Ms Milo of Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn to do the stupid thing that she did, threatening, in front of other teachers, that she was going to get a gun and kill people at her school. The worst thing to have, as a teacher, is a temper. If only the innocent knew the kind of abuse they were headed for as NYC teachers. If they did, they would put 10,000 miles between themselves and Bloomberg/Black. If they have the wrong kind of temperament, they should quadruple that to the 3rd power. I happen to be one of those blessed with a temper. How I was able to maneuver my way across the wasteland of the NYC school system without getting fired because of my temper is a matter of shear good luck. I came close a few times throughout my career and always managed to come through all right. One time, I got so angry at an unruly class, I picked up a table and threw it at a locker in the back of the room. Another time I punched through a window and still have the scar to show for it. There were a couple of other incidents. In retrospect, no matter how lucky I was that I finished my career, if I was principal, I would have gotten rid of me. No matter what, I had no right to show temper in front of children, especially in front of children who have never been properly raised. There should be a class for every student and parent in the public school system on how to treat a teacher. And as principal, I would fully understand the predicament, but I can’t have a short fuse going off, and even though I did not lose my temper often, when it happened, it made up for all the times that it didn’t.

        How was I ever able to survive to a well deserved and sweated for (in blood) pension? Here is where I identify with Ms Milo. I was popular with students; I worked at the school during my stewardship of the school yearbook an average of 35 hours a week; I ran PM dismissal. I volunteered (and got paid) to do “coverages” when a teacher was absent. I broke up fights at risk to myself. I made it very clear in all my actions that I wanted to be as helpful to the principal as possible; I taught a specialized minor subject talent called introduction to movies and media; I did the morning announcements; I ran audio visual. Except for this temper aberration, I was a very useful tool in that school. I minded my business. Did not rat people out if they talked about someone else important behind their backs; I was late once in my entire career, and up until the last decade I had good attendance. The fact I survived and finished my teaching career, I was lucky because I wasn’t the principal having to deal with a fool who can’t hold his temper. The other way I identify with Milo is the way she is described as a good teacher, but eccentric. I too was never able to march to the tune of everyone’s band. Considering what I got into as a career, I had to be a little off to survive. If it weren’t for the vacations and the time off in the summer (for which teachers don’t get paid), the profession can literally drive you dangerously mad.

        My problem was I had a late fifties and early to middle sixties idea of how a teacher is to be treated. In public schools I attended in Los Angeles, California, teachers and administrators were allowed to use corporal punishment on miscreants. Not only that. Teachers could lose their tempers and throw things. They could punish an entire class even if some aren’t guilty. I only saw one kid in my entire career tell a teacher to shut up. (He was from NYC no less), and they rushed his butt so fast out of the room it was like I could feel the wind as they hauled him out. When I entered the NYC system February 1981, I suspected that it would not be easy, but horrendous? That was a whole other thing entirely. By the last ten years of my career, I was feeling the fatigue, and by post 9/11, I discovered too that I had a chemical imbalance and needed to take an anti-depressant (my mother was severely bipolar). Thankfully, the medication also helped me manage my temper. Yet, I was run down. I was getting every illness under creation and ate away at my absent reserve days. I am not proud of this. I thought I was doing a good thing by staying home. Most of the days that I lost my temper were days I came in sick. I decided to stay at home whenever I felt under the weather and this too helped me keep my temper in check. In those later years, as you near retirement, you don’t want to do anything stupid like tell a bunch of colleagues that you are so sick and tired that you are coming to school with a trench coat and a machine gun and going Columbine on their asses. I was eccentric and a little crazy, but I was not that crazy and saved my temper tantrums for when I got home. By the time I walked out of those school doors for the last time, I had absolutely no sick days left. This was supposed to be my last year, but thanks to Eliot Spitzer, I got an early parole. He signed into law the new 25/55 retirement for teachers. I had 28 years in and more than enough. I am so grateful to Spitzer, I would vote for him if he were running for god.

        Who cares about teachers anyway? No one. They are the easy scapegoat in a society of children who have children and then don’t raise them. I tell anyone who wants to be a teacher to forget it unless they are able to put up with a lot of abuse. Some people, not me, are able to change diapers, even adult diapers. Others are able to take a great deal of abuse. I have never liked being abused by anyone.

        If society wants the best and the brightest teachers to stand in front of their children, they have to first raise their children and then be prepared to answer for their good or bad behavior in a classroom. If it were up to me, it would be illegal to interfere with a teacher during the performance of his duty. Violator’s parents would be fined every time their child disrupts the class. After 3 such incidents, the child is removed to a more restrictive environment where he will be forced to obey the rules or else never be allowed to graduate. I realize that such measures will never be taken. King Bloomberg and the like find it easier to blame public school teachers and their union, instead of placing the blame on derelict parents. He would rather close an entire public school and open a publically private charter school in its place rather than point the finger at those truly responsible for the wide spread plague of ignorance we have in this country today. By not blaming these parent bozos, he or his predecessor are guaranteed more votes. My generation (the dumb boomers) didn’t know of charter schools and the like. Our parents raised us then, and our teachers ruled over us with iron hands.

        A competent, bright, energetic, creative young person is not going to want to work in a Bloomberg public school or in most public schools for that matter. No normal person would put up with the abuse most teachers swallow for an average 25 to 30 years. Not only are the children allowed to routinely disrespect a teacher. You can also add school administrators, school secretaries, school custodians, and parents to the list. If you are a person who invested a lot of time and money in an education degree and expect to be treated as an adult in your school, forget it. I was always amazed and outraged by the depths teachers had to go in order to survive day to day in a typical NYC School: the moronic staff development days, the parent teacher conferences where the parents of the worst students in general don’t show up, the often nasty and not helpful assistant principals, the micro managing of your every moment, the constant and disruptive test preparation days. You like being spoken to as if you were a child? Attend a faculty conference sometime. Just remember the term “conference” is used in the Orwellian sense. I mentioned above that students routinely get away with disrespecting teachers. If I had a dollar for every time I was told “f--- you, I f—- your mother. You suck my d--k etc etc”, I would not need a pension or social security. I could live on the blessings of curses.

        I was the work horse in the minor subject pool. I served all the students that the band would not accept. I was given erratic schedules such as, I would meet 3 different grade levels of students every day. I would meet other groups 3 times a week. I would have others 2 times a week. I would have still others even once a week. Furthermore, I worked with mostly large groups of unruly students. My usual schedule: 10 classes to 13 over the course of a week with a total register(all the classes combined) of 250 to 300 students. I was allowed to teach something I thought up myself. I considered it a great privilege and opportunity. I really did want to teach students about the art and science of movies and how we can use them to also read our culture. Most of the idiots who made the schedules were the AP’s, most of whom were ex-gym teachers. It just so happened that the superintendant at the time was also an ex-gym teacher himself. Gym-teachers tend to have very large classes that meet in the gym of course. When scheduling my program, they forgot that I was trying to teach some kind of unique class. In their muddled minds, gym is a minor subject. G. Perl’s movies and media class is a minor subject. Gym classes have large classes; therefore, G. Perl’s Movies class will have large classes. There was an added bonus in all of this. I would never complain about how I was being screwed. Otherwise, and they knew this, they could take away my movies program. Not only were my classes large, many were, as I wrote above, outright unruly. At the beginning of a typical school year, I would already have a list of 15 parents to call, from one class. Imagine having five out of five bad periods every day for an entire school year from September to June? Imagine getting up five days a week from a warm peaceful bed, getting on your bike in a brutally bitter cold morning, and pedaling 2 miles just to be a baby sitter an entire day. The greatest stress that you live with is trying to do an honest job and keeping the hordes from swallowing you whole.

         In a typical year, I knew that I would basically be on my own without any recourse for help of any kind from my superiors. I ran my classrooms and kept my students safe. I always tried to interact with each class. I NEVER sat in front of my students except when I was exhibiting a movie (showing a DVD). I never read a newspaper when I was supposed to be teaching. I refused to have a desk in my room. I used a long table I had inherited and placed it at the front of the room to the left. I shared that table with students. The gym teachers who scheduled me thought that all I was doing was showing movies. In retrospect, I could have saved myself a great deal of stress had I not really tried to teach these students something. If you were a parent visiting me and you asked me what I was teaching, I could explain it to your satisfaction.

        No matter how hard I worked or tried to make a difference, ultimately I was treated like a tool. Tools have no feelings, but this one did. Imagine now day after day of being abused by the same kids over and over. Maybe you succeed in getting them taken out of your room, but sooner or later they are back again and doing the same thing. Now say, these kids were messing with you and when they are taken out of the room this time, they are given 10 smacks of the paddle on their BEhinds. Do you think they are going to return to your room with the same attitude? You and I know that is from an ancient age. Back then, we had to live under a benevolent and strict adult dictatorship until such day as we were deemed fit to become responsible free members of a free society because we have learned the responsibility of freedom. If Apollo 13 happened today, none of them would have returned because one of the crew gets up late for his shift and complains that it is the captain’s fault that he overslept. Now considering the above, wouldn’t you think that a normal human being would break down after awhile?

        There comes a day in the life of most teachers, especially those who work in difficult schools, when they simply burn out. I thought I would never burn out. Sadly, at the end, I did. Who knows how long Ms Milo has suffered from TBO (teacher burn out), but apparently long enough for her to experience extreme anxiety, anger, paranoia. Who knows when she reached her breaking point. I had the foresight to get medication. How many kids had cursed her out or how many of the administrative staff have not been supportive as they are supposed to be? Who knows. There is a lot of cliques among teachers. The advice I always give new teachers is to keep your mouth shut and your ears open. Never tell anyone your business, and never say anything about anyone behind their back in front of witnesses. Maybe someone went behind Milo’s back to a supervisor. This is all bad enough for someone just starting out, but someone with TBO? That is another matter entirely. Ms Milo had reached her limits and simply exploded. I know the feeling. I wish I had all the answers like the News has. Their editorial page demands that we put brand new teachers in front of these students instead of the old expensive ones and you’ll see a gigantic improvement. I hope that these new young cheaper teachers that the News and the mayor wants realize that they will be working longer and have a worse retirement tier to deal with. The parents aren’t getting any more responsible and the children are not getting any easier. I believe that no one takes TBO seriously. I predict this problem will worsen as time goes on, especially if collective bargaining rights are destroyed and teachers continue to be abused daily.

         Teachers cry out to be treated with respect. The least we can give them is a well behaved socially adjusted child. If not, the parent should take responsibility, not the teacher. His job is to teach, Sadly, this is not the last Machine Gun Milo. There are hundreds of others out there ready to go off. TBO must be dealt with, but it is society’s dirty open secret. How do we prevent TBO? What are the symptoms of TBO? How does a teaching professional get treatment for it?

       What the hell am I ranting about? There is no such thing as TBO, and who cares about teachers anyway?

The Moment to be Turned off By Religion Or Beware Of Demigogues In Long Black Coats And Wide Fedora Hats

2011-03-29T20:35:00.047-04:00

        If I can chart the exact moment that I got turned off to religion, it may have partly come from my experience with Mr. Cunin (I refuse to use his rabbinic title as he makes a mockery of it). In the early 70's, I was young and searching, scarred by childhood experiences, recovering from the death, 2 years earlier of my father. I met Cunin and his Chabadnuts Friday night, Shabbat Teshuvah (of return—the Sabbath day before the Day of Atonement) 1971, on Gayley Avenue in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, California. For the next several years, I would delude myself into thinking that I could even be a part of this cult. Thanks to Mr. Cunin, I was able to break free.
        First of all, I have to be honest: I was a disappointment to Cunin. He was on the west coast to perform missionary work directed at misdirected Jews. We were not human beings to him. We were all projects. Now some of the kids that visited Chabad at that time (I refer to the old pre fire Chabad House--a warm place in contrast to the new phony monster Cunin built after the original tragically burned down) actually went all the way and joined the Lubavitch sect. Those like me, who didn't join or appeared to be wavering, were treated differently. In the meantime, I had made Chabad House in Westwood my second home. At LAVC, where I attended junior college, I was instrumental in getting a Chabad House outreach booth on campus. Yet, something was wrong. At times, I felt my new Chassidic "mentors" were not taking me seriously, and at times I felt they were out right disrespecting me. One of Cunin’s associates, Mr. Stillman, used to call me a piece of shit all the time as a joke for example.
        Then it came that day on the second day of the holiday of Shavuot circa 1972 or 73 (near the height of my association with these clowns), I was invited to "farbreng" (gather) with the major players at that time, at someone else's private home about a mile and a half or so away from the more public Chabad House, south of Wilshire Blvd. I, little old me, the piece of shit, was allowed to be included in this close yichidus (audience alone) with the holy and illustrious leader in the fight to bring those wayward Jewish Youth Nut Jobs like Gary Yisrael Perl to the fold, that man of Torah, that Ba'al Gu'ola of the generation Shlomo Cunin (Yi Yi Yi Yi). I actually really felt this way at the time. Believe me, if there is one reason I should hate myself is that I was taken in by these pricks.
        OK. OK.
        Let me finish my tale.
           The living room/ dining room was spacious with a long table like the kind Jesus and his disciples would sit at, only wider and more oval shaped. Here the group of us sat around it: the host, me, Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Stillman, another student or two like me I believe. It is in a fog, and our hero, the big Cunster himself. I will never forget how Cunin let loose. I saw a side of him that if he had been a hippy instead of a Chasid, he'd be shoving LSD up his ass instead of drinking all that shit he drank that afternoon into the early evening. Oh, don't get me wrong. it was a fun afternoon of singing and talking, relating stories about the great leader of Chabad, the big MO MO himself, the God Father of Pirke Avoth, the Rebbeola of Rock and Rolla, his royal holiness Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn. To tell it, this man never wiped his ass in his entire life. Everything that came out of him was simply pure holiness.
           While Cunin led the mini farbrengen, telling tales of his Rebbe and singing and banging on the table, he partakes of the food and especially of the drink. What's a good Chasid worth without some good mascka (booze)? At one point, he sadly reflected on being so far away from his Rebbe. He was referring to Jerusalem east. Seven-seventy Eastern Parkway, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, NY, was the headquarters of Chabad's world leader. In his telling of this tale, he wanted us to know that there were even greater leaders then he and even greater farbrengens (Chassidic gatherings). He wanted me and the other invited students to want to long for Crown Heights as if the very mention of its name would give us erections that the likes of Rachel Welch, Jane Fonda, and Ursula Andres could ever hope for.
          It could have gone on and on like this, but then that master party animal, the Cunster, gets a hold of a bottle of Sabra Liqueur. The man always was claiming how much he loves all Jews. What can be wrong, then, with a potent potable that is made in Israel, is Kosher, and is named Sabra no less? I remember how excited the Cunster was when he opened the bottle.
          He offered to share.
          I took a taste and immediately knew that had I gone further, I would either be shitting or puking or both at some point later that day or that night. That didn't deter my hero. He drank with gusto from the bottle. That Sabra stuff had a thick sweet syrupy taste, not designed to be chug a lugged the way Holy Cunin was doing it. I had to hand it to him. How many different forms of booze did he drink that day into the evening, I will never know, but the fact that he was still standing by the time we left after dark may have really been the sign I needed to push me over into that blissful land of gaagaa doodoo reeebbeee because only a Supreme Being was allowing this man to stand right now. Had he decided to sleep it off at our host's, I may just have tilted into the oblivion of Rebbe cult worship. Instead, he insisted on getting home to wifey poo.
          I don't even remember how I became the designated walker for Cunin, but there I was, standing next to a burly Chassidic character with wild beard, wild eyes, long coat. He could barely stand. He had to lean on me, like in the song. But I was proud, glad to do this for one of the “mentors” I looked up to at the time.
          So began that trek a mile and a half or so back to his house to the arms of his wife north of Wilshire Blvd.
          The End!!
          Not Quite If only it could have been that easy.
          If Cunin did not lean on me, he would fall or stumble. He must have been over 200 pounds, at least which is how it felt to me as he leaned on me, and we both stumbled along, only I was completely sober. By the time we got to Wilshire Blvd., the Cunster really broke loose. Somewhere in the middle of the blvd., he began to rant and then without any warning, he opened his long coat, whipped out his cockola and took a long piss on Wilshire Blvd. Had a cop been around, our long suffering holy hero would have been arrested for indecent exposure and drunkenness in public, plus public lewdness. The fact that I was there standing watch over him saved Cunin from a fate worse than having to view all of John Voigt's movies while having a big butted Mistress grinding in his groin.
          He did his piss and hid his cock before it was seen. The long coat helped. You could hide an elephant gun in that thing. He took my arm with a hand that held that cock and I, in retrospect, wished the guy took seriously the rule to wash hands before handling the employees. The hands holding me for support were one thing, but the breath later was even worse. A few blocks down from the stream of piss he left, Cunin hunched over. That Jewish made sweet Sabra Liqueur was now taking effect in the worst way possible. With the same gusto that this “chazzer” drank the Sabra, he was now puking that and the food and everything else he consumed with even more gusto. He puked long and copiously on Wilshire Blvd.
          For Goddess’ sake, slime ball! What did Wilshire Blvd. ever do to you?
          In the wake of the Cunin Body fluid dump on Wilshire Blvd., we continued our slow march to his home. This time, I could smell the vomit mixture of food and Sabra on his breath. This stench came from that same mouth that gave these inspiring sermons every Friday night. He used to rail against us misguided folks who wanted to do our own thing. If I knew that I too could piss and vomit on a major city thoroughfare, and get away with it simply because I say that I am religious, maybe I was a fool for rejecting it.
          When I finally got Cunin to his door and safely into the arms of his wife, I don't remember him thanking me. But again, the man was simply plastered. Years have passed since this incident. Had I not been there for Cunin that night, he may have spent a few years in jail, a reputation ruined, instead of being this big phony mocher with a yearly telethon of his own and who can brag that Jon Voigt is his friend. Cunin never saw a Jon Voigt film in his life. His sect shuns movies as a waste of time. If Jon Voight wants a true friend, he should look me up. I have many of his movies in my expansive DVD collection. In that way, I support Jon Voight better than Cunin ever did. But that's not important.
         When I was needed, I proved that I could be responsible where he (Cunin) was not. I look back over the years. I was 22 or so when the above incident took place. Now I am sixty. Cunin never thanked me for helping him that night. He probably doesn’t even remember it. Instead, in a show of typical Cunin gratitude, which is kind of like being punished for a good deed, he yelled publically in my face at his first Chabad Lubavitch fundraiser.
          I was standing beneath the stage setting up my cheap little tape recorder to tape the songs when a furious Cunin hovered over me, screaming at me to remove my tape recorder and get the hell away from the stage. I still see him towering over me from the stage, screaming at me like he never knew me, like I was some little scum he could step on.
          I remember being disillusioned by much of Chabad Lubavitch after I lived in Brooklyn for a number of years. I made Brooklyn my home but ultimately not the religion.The first time I returned disillusioned from Brooklyn and visited Chabad House in LA one Friday night, Cunin still was great at doing his little lessons during his so called rap sessions. I learned that night that the rap sessions were really about listening to him and not about having any rap at all or even your own opinion. It was more like a rape session. That night, I told the assembled crowd that some of what Cunin was saying about the Crown Heights experience was not true. His response was to say that I should talk to my psychologist as if making me seem as if I had a psychotic problem would discredit me in front of this new brood of unfortunates. To set the record straight, I never had the honor of reaching the apex of “misagos”: Psychosis. I will admit I have been more neurotic and borderline than anything else, but that did not stop me from finishing my exhausting New York City Public School Teaching career after 28 years.
          The next time I saw Cunin was in Crown Heights at the Rebbe's farbrengen. I had learned that outsiders could sit at the middle tables at the foot of the raised area where Reb Schneersohn sat. When I saw Cunin and he saw me, the first thing that came out of his skuzzy smelly pubic faced lips were, you, (meaning me) are not allowed to sit here. I looked at him and simply said: I will sit where I want to. (which by the way was not true. I could not sit where I actually wanted to since all other seating or standing areas were reserved). Saying that to his face and his reaction helped me realize just what a dumb tool I had been. He walked away. I am sure, if he wanted to, he could have removed me from there himself, but he had the good sense to just walk away and let me sit where I was told that I could.
          The last time I saw Cunin in public was in the new improved Chabad house. He kept playfully punching me, asking me when I would become a mensch. I wanted to ask him if he had pulled his cock out again anywhere else or had he thrown up or pissed on anything again?
          One day about 10 or so years ago, I am channel surfing, and who do I see on cable, the face of the drunk, the hypocrite, the true piece of shit, Mr Shlomo Cunin's Telethon.
          Jerry Lewis, help us now!
        There he was on my innocent TV, his dark beard now gray. It is simply scary how time just passes. I could not get over it. Cunin on my TV 40 years across my life? I was laughing my ass off at the irony. And then I did what I never had the power to do with him before. I switched the channel.
        In any event, much has happened to deter me from religion since the Wilshire Blvd. King David Yarziet Incident. Cunin and others have faded into memory. They can't hurt me anymore, but who knows how many others they have hurt or will hurt. Yeah, I know that they raise a lot of money and so do many gangsters, but that is what Cunin has always been good at, raising money for his group and for their causes. I won’t deny that this schmuck did some good. That is to his credit. He was not meant to be a mentor or someone you would follow in the religious sense on the other hand.
        In the end, I have to take responsibility for being naive in the first place and making more of these people then they were. I don't use the term "these people" in the pejorative sense as in Jewish People. I am still very much a member of the Jewish people and never deny it. I just want nothing to do with the religion in any of its forms. I especially do not want any members of the clergy telling me how to live my life. In fact, I want no member of the clergy near my death bed or at my funeral. In my mind when I think of why I despise the clergy, Mr. Shlomo Cunin is one the first that comes to mind. I never knew that “Shlomo” was not his first name. It is “Baruch” . That makes Cunin’s initials “BS”. The truth is in the name.
        In part, thanks to my helping him that fateful night, Cunin is the man he is today and not a bum which is what he really is, and while he can put a big show on for his public and make them all think he is holy, I know different. I've seen the scumbag with his pants down, well actually with his zipper down. I realize that all of this is past, and I should not even think about it, but for a good young time of my life, my twenties, I was religious and looked up to morons like Cunin. I just needed to get this out of my system. Someone needs to know the kind of prick, the kind of gangster this putz really is. And if they are trying to get into religion, they should put 1000 miles at least between them and this evil hypocrite. Now that I said it, I can forget him and go on with what remains of my life.

-60-

2010-08-23T14:25:00.008-04:00

Above, the late great Warren Oats as one of the Gortch brothers in the classic western "The Wild Bunch" faces his death with bravery and honor.

I am so full of crap.

I was always for the natural way. And now when the world of being sixty reached me today the 23rd of August, the natural way seems anathema to me.

No, growing old can't happen to me!!!

That is the natural way, the way that ultimately keeps us in our place. We may all be the most destructive, the most abusive, the most greedy, the most selfish species on this planet, but none of us can live forever. If there is damage to be done, we can only do it within our allotted time of life which for all of us is unknown. And in that allotted time of life, there is still plenty of destruction we can do with long term harmful effects. Check out the BP oil spill. That will take at least 50 years to clean up, and the corporate creeps in charge are all still young enough to do more damage. Too bad the life expectancy for corporate idiots can't be shortened.

I don't even know what the life expectancy is now, but the fact that we live in a stressful horrible world has no effect on it. People are living longer and yet with less quality. Imagine if we were all immortal and were allowed to rape this planet and the universe with impunity forever. I think that the humiliation of growing old and dying is a small price to pay to protect all existence from our selfish predilections.

And yes, I am so full of crap. It was alright, this growing old thing, while it was happening to someone else, but to ME? I know what my problem is. At this point, I am not happy with myself. The key to a positive and inspired old age is to be happy with what you have accomplished. Last year, I retired from the cursed New York City school system. You would think that I would be happy with such an accomplishment, but I am not. There is still so much more I feel I have to do in order to have that feeling of satisfaction you get when you reach the third and final act of your life.

And whose fault is that? My parents, society, the world in general? There comes a point in one's life when you have to take full responsibility for whom and for what you are. That is one of the major problems with our lives on this planet today. No one is responsible. You can't even step on a plane today to find someone who is responsible, especially when we turn morons like this flight attendant, who deployed the emergency chute, endangering passengers as he slid down, as a folk hero.

I have to learn from this and use my outrage to understand that, yes, I had a sad childhood and, yes, I made many decisions in my life, some bad and some good, and, yes, I have many regrets, but that is the way life is for everyone. From the first day you are born, you are already dirty. Anyone who thinks that they will have a completely clean life free of tragedy, despair, frustration, and self recrimination must think they will spend their entire life in a plastic bubble.

Writing above that I am full of crap is just lip service until I actually take that statement to heart and accept the natural way I always extol and understand that the alternative is living forever on a planet doomed to extinction by selfishness and greed. No one is allowed to live forever, and others, younger, must be allowed the chance to fix which at this point seems unrepairable.

The next time I stupidly lament about growing old, I should think about this friend of mine who just lost his son, 23 years old after a six year battle with cancer. I should think about this and feel shame for reaching the age of sixty and not appreciating it for what it is. If I am so upset about being full of crap, being depressed about doing the natural thing, growing old, I should simply keep my mouth shut, live the rest of my life, and be thankful that human beings only think they have all the power. Our shared mortality blows away that delusion in a heart beat.

-60-

Medication Time

2010-07-21T21:38:00.002-04:00

One of the best dystopian science fiction films ever made was George Lucas' THX 1138 (Robert Duvall, pictured above, in the title role). The film is chilling in its depiction of a sterile underground society where everyone looks the same, has a number instead of a name. The entire meaning of each citizen's life is simplified: work and consume. Love and sex are forbidden. Each citizen is required to take their daily dosages of drugs. Their entire world looks like a shopping mall. They go to something that looks like a phone both to pray to an image of a guy that looks like Jesus but whose name is Omm.

The main character, as are all the characters in the picture, are addicted to drugs. This is one way that the social structure stays intact and keeps people hypnotized into doing their meaningless and robotic jobs. THX 1138's room mate and later lover, LUH 3417, desiring a lasting meaningful relationship outside the constrains of their society, succeeds in getting THX off the drugs he is taking. Once having all his senses, THX is confronted with the full significance of the oppression under which he and LUH must live. He then begins his escape from this place. How he does this is for you to find out on your own. No spoilers here. Yet there are certain images that are pertinent to the drug angle of the picture.
Imagine a medicine cabinet talking to you when you open it, asking, "What is wrong?", every time that you open it. Imagine this same medicine cabinet having a hidden TV camera where your every movement is also scrutinized. There is no sunlight down in the city. It is all metal, white, and light.

And the medication.

The day that I viewed my first prescription medication advertisement on contemporary TV was the day I realized how prophetic THX 1138 has become. No we don't yet live in a shopping mall. Yes, we murdered the mom and pop stores of the past and littered our landscape with McDonalds, Burger King, Walmart, and the like. Yes, we have taken this massive rubber stamp and created neighborhoods that look exactly alike. And yes, we are slowly and subtly being directed by that hidden government: corporations, and yet we have not yet gotten as far as the film depicts in all its claustrophobic horror.

Nevertheless that day that I saw the first prescription drug commercial on TV, I experienced a chill. At first, I thought they were flukes, not something that was going to become a fad, but as more and more prescription drug commercials appeared, I couldn't ignore the signs. The creator of the insipid Star Wars movies and one of the founders of the so-called summer blockbuster film, Mr. George Lucas, is also a prophet.

When I am not looking at the horror behind these 'script ads, I am laughing about their pitch. Each has to stick with a format. The first part of the ad identifies the product and the ailment it is supposed to help or relieve. The last part, the best part, is the part where the drug company has to list all the side effects. You want to deal with your joint pain? Take a Celebrex, but be forewarned it can cause heart failure, kidney failure, liver dysfunction, among other things, in certain cases. That last preposition, "in certain cases", is supposed to reassure you that you can hardly ever be one of those cases. The side effects they list for one of the erectile dysfunction drugs can literally give you a heart attack laughing at it. "Any erection lasting more than four hours," it says, "is a sign that you better get your ass to the doctor or that thing is finally really going to fall off.." That last part is my own contribution to that classic ad.

One of these drug ads actually did me some good. I got so angry at its message that I took myself off the 100 Mgs. of Zoloft I had been taking daily for close to 10 years. Basically, this ad, the one that annoyed me, featured a depressed person, of course, who is actually already on an anti-depression medication. The soothing voice over, god like inquires, "Your anti depressant medication not working correctly?...." Simply add this new drug, and both, in concert, will battle that depression. You would think that they would encourage people to get off prescription drugs entirely, not encourage them to take more, but then how would drug companies stay in business?

I began taking the anti-depressant Zoloft, Generic: Satraline close to 10 years ago. It actually did a good thing by helping me get through the last 8 years of my teaching career. Living those post 9-11 Bush years did little to make me feel well either. So I popped a pill a day until the day I saw that ad. Yes, there are good things to say about medication, but for me, the Zoloft was simply a bandage. Underneath there still lurked the problem that no drug was ever going to cure. Since I've been off the drug, I find that I've gotten my feelings back. I don't like some of the things I see in myself, but Zoloft wasn't going to cure me of that. I simply have to face the truths of myself and deal with them with as little medication as I can. The other way, I am kind of like a zombie.

Prescription drug use should be a last resort. But in our THX 1138 consumerist society, prescription drugs are just another thing to buy. We use all of what we consume, but consuming large quantities of drugs have negative repercussions on the body that sometimes makes taking them the least desirable option. Over the years, more and more doctors seem to be prescribing more and more drugs, especially antibiotics which should only be used sparingly. I remember when I was a kid, penicillin was the antibiotic of choice. Now, I can't believe how many different antibiotics we have now. That's how strong the germs have become thanks to us.

I imagine one day that future generations will be so addicted to prescription drugs that in order to go out into the sun, you're going to have to take your sunlight pills, and in order to go out at night, you are going to have to take your night time pills. Don't forget that before you even think about walking back into your house, you are going to have to take your indoor pills. You never have to worry about failing in bed because you're taking your penis pills. Don't forget that you have to take your sleeping pills to get to sleep. When you wake up, you take a nice healthy bowel movement because you've taken your colon pills. And just like Lucas predicted in THX 1138, Children will no longer have to go to school. They will be given education medication intravenously throughout the years of their youth, except during the summer. No catheters in the summer. It interferes with good consuming.

The question remains: why are we addicted to prescription drugs? As it always has been, human beings have made this planet into a hole, a trash pile reeking of our racist filth, our lust for war, and our desire to consume and destroy everything. For most of us, work has made us into unhappy machines. Check out the early scenes of THX 1138 that show just how robotic the workers are who, ironically enough, work on building robot police used to keep everyone in line. Most of us hate our jobs, and most of us are so stressed that we take more and more drugs to assuage all our ills. The problem again is that prescription drugs are the bandages covering over the real ills: people are just not very happy, and they are simply being used and abused.

As we cruise along in this, the second decade of the 21st century, we eat too much, and we take too many pills. Forcing people to take medication by making it a law, as is the case in the movie, is closer than we think. That time will soon be upon us as we move closer and closer to the era of pure terror and pure consuming, the era of the talking medicine cabinet.

In THX 1138, everytime you open the medicine cabinet, it asks you, "What is wrong?"

Everything.

The World's Most Dangerous Animal

2010-07-19T14:24:00.006-04:00

The world's most dangerous animal is the human being because all we do is mess with each other.
I did not ask my parents to screw me into the world, but when they did, they opened for me the rotten tasting can of worms that has been fed to me since the day I was born with a damaged eye my father could not stand looking at. The answer was operations on a kid not yet 3 or 4, operations that did not work. In a way, I was lucky and could have been totally blind had my father decided to also have my better eye operated on. He didn't. He was just teaching me the axiom that all we do is mess with each other.
For the next years of my life, I began to see just how we love to mess with each other. I was the only kid in my class who wore glasses, and since I was not good at sports, something else my father was upset about, I had to deal with bullies. Later on, as I entered adolescence, I discovered that the only kind of guy the girls liked were the ones who had a great time making fun of me and picking on me.
When I graduated from college and entered the work world full time, I discovered that even with the best of educations, you still had to deal with that power hungry bastard: your boss. And when I finally finished 28 years of teaching in the NYC school system, I realized just how screwed I have been.
The world we live in is run by all those idiots we knew in school that became student leaders. They grew and festered until they became the heads of government and the heads of major corporations. This had always been the case, even as a child when I was told to hide under my desk to practice what would happen if we were all hit by an atomic bomb. The new leaders have told us that the world changed after 11 September 2001, but I know different. It has always been the same, always the world on the brink of catastrophe, always someone getting screwed one way or the other, always some kind of financial crisis that threatens people's jobs.
Now we deal with international terrorism and a war on a word, terror, that could last until the end of us entirely. We have allowed the big shots at the corporations free reign to rape and pillage this planet until nothing remains. It will take at least 50 years for us to recover from the BP gulf oil spill, and who knows how many other wells will fail in the meantime.
This is all wonderful, however, since we are again fighting a war and at least have the media to entertain us and make us stupid watching shows like: America's Top Model, Bachelorette, The World's Greatest Loser, and Maury Povich. Make no mistake about it: those in charge are having a great time not worrying about paying their mortgage, not worrying about the slime contaminating the Gulf Of Mexico, not worrying about where their next meal will come from. These are the same scum who run the governments of the world where gridlock is the order of the day. Never believe what a politician tells you because nothing will ever get done in this or in any other country, and if something does get done, it is so compromised by bullcrap that it becomes meaningless.
Still, you can always get your mind off these problems and visit Canada where you can beat a baby seal's head to pulp with a bat and let your air headed girlfriend enjoy wearing some nice seal skin coat. If that doesn't move you, perhaps you can visit some far away place and dump all your trash there. Maybe we can keep pumping that ozone into the atmosphere and then deny that there is dangerous climate change going on.
Animals do not plot and plan how to gain power at other people's expense. Animals don't have the nerve to tell you what will happen to you after you die. Animals don't dump millions of gallons of oil into pristine waters. Animals do not wage war as we do and send thousands to die for nothing but oil and money.
Only we, the human being, messes with everything, a process that begins when we are defecated into this world, when we use our playgrounds for bully combat, when we put other finite humans in positions of power over the rest of us, when we presume to be the owners of this planet, we human beings, the world's most dangerous animal. Where the heck are the giant insects when we need them to finally wipe the human feces off this wounded planet?

Tiger Woods Is Only An Athlete.

2010-02-22T17:17:00.002-05:00

Last weekend, the New York Daily News covered Tiger Woods' apology for using his little willy in an unauthorized fashion. There was at least five full pages of this including both the front and back pages. You'd think that this news was so grave that it equalled the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001 ten times over.

Let's get something very clear: Tiger Woods is NOT your priest, rabbi, minister, or imam. He is simply a professional athlete. Many of them are morally bankrupt anyway, so why be surprised? They are not being paid to be moral experts. They are being paid to entertain us.

Do you find the sport of golf as boring as I do? If not, Tiger Woods has given you hours and hours of entertainment. His sex life and other aspects thereof are none of any one's business. Do you think Woods would have been forced to apologize had he been white instead of black?

I think not.

It is a very sad state of affairs when the sexual behavior of an athlete takes top billing over the bloody wars we have going on now, that the media thinks us so stupid and empty that all we care about is who some professional athlete is having sex with.

Well, I don't care and never did.

I just want out of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Trying To Survive The Klein and Bloomberg Show

2007-07-05T16:53:00.001-04:00

Remember those two bumbling idiots, Bloom and Bialystock, played by the great Gene Wilder and the late great Zero Mostel (pictured) in Mel Brooks' movie, "The Producers"? How they conned everyone into believing they were producing a hit play when in fact they wanted it to flop? This is how I feel about New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein, two bumblers trying to con the public into believing that children come first, that teachers will be held accountable, and that all will be right with education in New York City. If only they were simply harmless entertainment as Wilder and Mostel were. But these two, these corporate minded businessmen, are the reality students and teachers must face. Their intention, to turn the school system into a corporation, is well underway. In the end it is the teachers and students who lose, not them.
With their emphasis on testing and statistics, businessman Bloomberg and Corporate Lawyer Klein have lost sight of the bigger picture, the root cause of the problem with public education today. Parents are not held accountable. In fact, when dealing with a problem child, parents are virtually absent. Oh for the halcyon days of the early sixties and before when teachers where in charge and students weren't. Those were the days when teachers were even allowed to smack a troublemaker upside the head and not even fear for their job. Today, it is the other way around. Parents have taught their children to worship freedom so much they go ahead and defy the classroom authority with impunity.
In come the comedy team of Bloomberg and Klein whose only answer is to blame the teachers. True, next September, they will be armed with their new super computer named "ARIS" which is supposed to track the progress of every student and the teachers who teach them, but will there also be a place in the program to track parents who have decided not to raise their children? The department of education, city of New York is so overwhelmed with troubled students, they have no idea what to do with them. Renaissance centers were opened as places to send disruptive students, but when children return from these centers, they are as bad or worse then they were before. This is because the centers are simply warehouses where they dump the trouble makers who sit all day in another school and do nothing. It is kind of like what they do with rotten teachers. The department sends them to a district office to sit all day.
Meanwhile, under the Bloomberg and Klein show, the answer is more testing. That's right, testing, testing, testing. No one can imagine what testing does to a school day. Children need as much structure as possible, but not when every other month, we have to disrupt the day with practice tests and real tests. And what good does it do?
Many Children go home today to one or to no parent. Often, they do what they please. When they arrive at school the next day with chewing gum and cheese doodles, with Ipods and video games, education is far from their minds. Try to teach a class where children don't want to learn, and then you are blamed because you don't manage a class well. Try and send a disruptor out of your class to an assistant principal or to a dean. They will simply send the child back to you so that YOU can contact the absent parent, not them. If you are able to finally contact an incompetent parent, and find once again that you, the teacher, are blamed for the problem, the assistant principal you send the child to will be on the same page as the parent.
"Why do you bother me about this?" says the typical assistant principal who does not want to be bothered in his private office. "The problem you are having comes from your lack of class management skills."
Is it any wonder why the teaching profession is the worst one can go into?
There is a very simple solution to bringing up student scores, and it does not include a workshop model, a super computer, more money, charter schools, longer school days, or longer school years. You bring up the scores by forcing parents to raise their children. You make it illegal for a child to disrupt a classroom. You fine parents whose children continuously make it difficult for the instructor to teach. You support your teachers with every resource possible. You make your professional teaching staff feel important and respected, not like little children who need to be micro-managed.
You don't do it like Bloomberg and Klein who have as much connection to a classroom as a dead body has to life. Certainly, they will shower us with statistics, trying to convince us their show is not a flop. But for those who slave away in the New York City School system, the reality is quite grim. Bloomberg and Klein will always have right wing anti-union tabloids like the New York Daily News to back them. Blaming parents for not raising their children will not give Bloomberg or Klein any votes nor make a newspaper popular. In fact, no newspaper will be brave enough to put the blame where it lies.
The crisis in public education today is releasing a plague of ignorance on American society that we will pay for in years to come. Yet, we will always have those who occupy corporate offices telling the teacher what he should do or not do. Their commitment to the teacher leaves a lot to be desired. The Bloombergs and the Kleins simply add fuel to the crisis.
Children must know their place and parents must be forced to raise them. The job of those in charge is to support the teacher. Anything less is just a show, a flop worse then anything Bialystock and Bloom could produce.

How To End This War

2007-05-28T16:30:00.001-04:00

Today is Memorial Day.

My mind could never grasp what my father went through as he experienced combat up close in the European Theater 1940's. All I saw and grew up with was the war's after effects. My father, who saw friends die before his eyes, who felt the dread of snipers, infiltrators, and bombs, died at a young age of 46. By the time he reached that age, he was already a man far older than his years.

I never got to fight in combat as my father did, nor would I have wanted to. No matter the nightmares he lived with for the rest of his days, no matter ALL the shattered limbs and minds, WW 2, as wars go, has to be one of the most popular.

As if any act of sanctioned murder can be labeled popular.

At least in THAT war, we knew who the bad guys were.

Yet, as popular as the Second World War was, it still murdered millions and ruined countless survivor's lives. That war that irreparably damaged my father has once again been summoned up in the wake of 11 September and is now compared with the war on terror and the war with Iraq. Certainly we were attacked, but which country is responsible? Who are the bad guys??

We are told that the world changed after 11 September. Take it from me. The world was always messed up. There has never been an end to our capacity to inflict punishment on each other. War, whether cold or hot, is still with us all the time, filling a void where peace and harmony should be.

I am reminded of a favorite book I've read called "1984" by British author George Orwell. Published in 1948, the book's depiction of a totalitarian superstate is something I will never forget. One aspect that makes Orwell's opus prophetic is its depiction of a society subjected to a continuous state of war. The ruling party's slogan, "War is Peace", is significant. Without a continuous state of war, the ruling class would collapse and the middle and lower classes would revolt.

Our continuous war, on the other hand, the war on terror and the war in Iraq, would not last if all of us had to live in a constant state of near starvation and oppression as graphically depicted in "1984". This is why we are encouraged to consume. The war, as we know it, is something we see on TV or read about in the tabloids. Otherwise, we are inundated with reports on Paris Hilton, Anna Nicole Smith (loved her legs), and Lindsey Lohan.

The coffins, on the other hand, are hidden.

The bloodshed is as far away as we want it to be.

It all depends on how we use our remote.

Orwell's chilling dystopia can teach us valuable lessons, as a tool, a handbook on how we can end this and maybe all wars.

Citizens of today do not have a commitment to ending the so-called war on terror, of which Iraq is one of the victims. Unlike the Vietnam War and WW 2, the war that most would like to compare it to, the war on terror and the war in Iraq are being fought by an all volunteer armed service. Those of us old enough to remember realize that most wars fought by this country were fought by those who were drafted.

Imagine if this war had a draft. Hundreds if not thousands of people would suddenly be affected, and then maybe there would be some kind of wider outrage. But as long as we have Paris Hilton, Donald Trump, Rosie O'Donnell to entertain us. As long as the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards show up at their appointed times, and as long as our leaders assure us that we can still go out and shop, the war will go on forever and ever, that is if we decide to try something else, and here is where I draw from the great writer, Mr. Orwell.

First, you reinstate the draft. Human beings fighting our wars experience a kind of reality that goes beyond any nightmares. When you are in combat, you live from day to day with imminent death. The sacrifice these young people are making in the name of the war dujour needs a commitment from those not fighting it. How can we enjoy a day at the beach while our neighbor's child is risking his/her life? Total commitment to the war on terror means that ALL of our children are subject to the draft.

Imagine the tens of thousands of new recruits you would have. I hear that recruitment into the armed services is down. If this keeps up, who is going go over and save the world for democracy? Without a draft, there is no commitment.
Second, and this is dedicated to those who love to compare this war with the second world one, we should have rationing. War means everyone must sacrifice. As in Orwell's nightmare vision, citizens at war should experience shortages, including toilet paper, cigarettes, coffee, tea, gasoline, electricity, chocolate, razor blades. No one should be allowed to get gas whenever they want to. As in the second world war, each household, during the war on terror, is assigned a letter A, B, or C. It is only on days your letter is called can you go out and get gas.

Why should anyone mind this? After all, there are young people out there right now on the front lines getting their brains blown out. Is it too much to ask the citizens at home to make some kind of sacrifice in their behalf?

Third, the picture, above, depicts actor John Hurt (left) as Winston Smith in the second film version of "1984". On the right is the infamous telescreen, the TV that watches you. If we are to end this war, we need to watch everyone for our own good. After all, in a time of war, there are always traitors and saboteurs. You never know where they may be hiding. Thus, for our protection, there should no longer be privacy. Government eavesdropping and wire taping should be mandated. A secret police akin to Orwell's Thought Police should have full authority. Those accused of espionage should be arrested and tortured. As long as the terrorist threat looms on the horizon, each citizen should be glad to give up all his freedoms in order to feel safe.

Now if all the above are unpleasant enough, the fourth one will really get you.

The media has done its part to promote the war. But it hasn't done enough. For the duration of this war, there should only be war news. That's right! Similar to New York's WINS Radio with "All news all the time", we should have war news ALL THE TIME. This means that we block all the entertainment in the media and concentrate ONLY on one thing. Imagine the newspapers with nothing about Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, and Tom Cruise. I can, instead, picture at the bottom of every news page a bold red time line depicting the casualties of the day. This would appear daily and never would the numbers get smaller. No matter what page you turned to, it would all be about the war. There would be no Super Bowl, no Academy Awards, no Grammys, Tonys. There would only be the constant reminder of the daily carnage. If someone tries to tune into a premium cable channel to get away from the war's harsh reality, he will find only a blank screen.

Celebrities will get a nice long break. True, they are needed to entertain us, to help us forget what is happening to us, but war is something we do on our own. It is our choice whether or not to engage. As long as the media is allowed to entertain us while war death happens elsewhere, we can disconnect ourselves from the battle field and allow ourselves to be deluded into believing that we live normal lives. Dalton Trumbo in his introduction to his anti-war novel "Johnny Got His Gun", wonders how anyone could read the daily news at breakfast without vomiting.

The measures above could never be implemented. People would rebel. They may even decide to end the war once and for all. My chiropractor has an even better idea. We should have a constitutional amendment. Whenever a congressperson authorizes a war, he should be the first to send his children to the front lines.

The key theme, commitment, informs all the measures above. It forces people, behind the lines, people with bumper stickers and slogans, people who voted for this president, to experience the war on a more real and visceral level.

Today is Memorial day. People died. And those who survived would never be the same. The carnage continues and the cemeteries get bigger.

For what? So that a few can profit from it? So we can continue to perpetrate misery for all time? So we can make the world safe for democracy? So we can save American Womanhood? Or Manhood?

Sure we were attacked on 9/11. I live in that city. I will never forget it, but I will also never forget that instead of going after the criminals, we called it a war and then went after the wrong people. The Keystone Kops could have played this war better. Over four years and thousands of lives later, the meat grinder is still running, and the media is still entertaining, and the politicians are still lying.

What about those who are still dying?

We could always implement the above measures and see what happens.

The Style Guide

2007-05-23T16:56:00.000-04:00

The Style Guide, a vital tool for journalists, contains the rules a writer must follow if he or she wishes to remain a reporter for his or her paper.
Orson Welles played the dynamic and tragically flawed character, Charles Foster Kane, in the classic motion picture "Citizen Kane." During one early scene, Kane, who had already purchased a newspaper, puts forth his so-called "Declaration of Principles", the rules his paper will follow as it puts out the news to its public. A style guide is really not that. It is the reporter's tool book of sentence grammar, punctuation, and other rules particular to the paper.
I realize that what I am writing here is going out to the public. I want to make sure that I do not abuse that privilege. Blog Spot has its own set of rules that allows it to be a free site. I really appreciate the fact that I could be that crazy person, blabbing on the street corner, without really abusing people's ears. It allows all of us a free and open forum of opinion, a cornerstone of what this great country is all about.
With that in mind, I have given myself the following rules:

1. This rule deals with the use of the "F" word. I believe that our obsession with the "F" word is moronic. I am allowed to write the word "War" without penalty because it is not considered like the "F" word offensive. Believe me, dear reader, if women ran the world instead of men, the so-called "F" word would not be considered obscene. However, even though I consider the "F" word a clean word, I will never use it in any of my articles (Blogs). I respect the home of the person allowing me to express myself. Besides I have a wide enough vocabulary that I don't have to always use such words in order to make a point.

2. I will always try write the truth of what I see. The reader's agreement with or lack thereof is his or her right in this free land.

3. I will always make sure my blog is free of spelling or grammar errors to the fullest extent possible.

4. Whenever I can, I will site my sources. But I feel I am old enough to present my own opinions as facts , but not necessarily the reader's.

5. The rest, we can work out as we go along.

The News is NOT Funny!

2007-05-23T13:36:00.000-04:00

When Peter Finch, playing Howard Beale in the movie "Network", announces that he will commit public suicide on his news show the following week, he follows this with a grin.
One does not expect such an affect when announcing such bad news, but there he was, grinning away. The producers and writer of this prophetic picture did not realize that one day, the smiling faced news person, announcing bad news, would be the norm.
I make it a point of not watching today's network news. I really don't need anyone reminding me that I live in a mad house. The news today belongs to the entertainers, not the journalists. Whenever we are watching whatever insipid programing the networks dish out to us, they often let us know the bad news ahead by announcing it as a kind of show.
For example: "Tonight on channel x, the beheading of 10 American journalists, toxic waste contaminates an entire town."
This announcement is followed by an image of the anchors all standing together in a little group, all smiling away. You would think that they were going to report on some blessed event, but this is not the case. News is no longer news anymore. It is show time.
That is another reason why I refuse to tune into the news. It is not something funny, and never will be.

Keep Religion In Its Place

2007-05-20T12:23:00.001-04:00

Jerry Falwell is dead. He took with him a legacy that had nothing to do with love. He hated Gays, Atheists, Jews, Michael Moore. He even had the nerve to equate the destruction of the World Trade Center with the wrath of god. He was a symbol of the problem with religion today: those who practice one form of religion or another, in a fundamentalist fashion, believe that they have the monopoly on the truth. This belief in "We have the truth and everyone else is damned" has been the cornerstone of much of the violence we have lived with for centuries. Have we outgrown it? Not at all. For today, our world is threatened by new religious fanatics, this time, of the Islamic bent. Until we put religion in its place, we shall continue to live in fear.
If religion was truly the answer, why is the world today as dysfunctional as ever? Why do we still have war and other forms of bloodshed? The western religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, claim that they teach love, and yet, considering the violence we have all over the world, especially the kind fought with religion in mind, there must be some other answer besides what we are taught in Shuls, Churches, and Mosques.
I am not one who believes in imposing my will on others. If someone wishes to practice religion, I believe that is his or her right, but when that religion threatens to harm me or mine, then I must take a stand.
Don't get me wrong. There are many wonderful religious people out there who practice their beliefs without downgrading some one else's. I have no problem sharing this planet with them. I am thankful that they are the kind of people who believe in live and let live.
It's the fundamentalists I am afraid of.
Whether we like it or not, religion includes a belief in a supernatural personal invisible being. In other words, as long as you are practicing a bona fide recognized religious system, you are allowed to get away with telling people that you believe in such a being without having your butt locked up in a mad house.
Most of us in this country believe in some kind of deity. We look at this idea of a supreme being with an open mind. We often find rationales for the existence of god in every little thing. Our insistence on such a belief comes from our helplessness in the face of our own mortality. The idea that there is a being who directs us and who will comfort us after death guides our way through the back alleys of our existence. Some of us simply could not believe that there is nothingness at the end of our roads and that no such personal being as god really exists. We grasp each day because each of us has some kind of faith in something. Even those who are comforted with the belief in no after life also practice a kind of faith all their own.
If each of us could deal with faith or the lack thereof in peace and harmony without abusing others, I say why not?
Unfortunately this is not the case.
Fundamentalism, on the other hand, is not that tolerant. People of this bent "Really ARE Sure that there is a SUPREME BEING." Every word of their holy text is true to every word. If the Bible says Moses stood on his head for 355 days, it is so!
While the majority of these people are law abiding and productive members of society, there are some, like Falwell, whose utterances smack of latent hatred, couched in the guise of religion.
Falwell was no better than Osama Bin Ladin in certain ways. Had he been born into a theocratic nation as Bin Ladin was, who knows what he would have been capable of. Thankfully, most of the intelligent people in the USA are rational and would not stand for a display of religious hatred from a Falwell or from any other fanatical religious sect. In this country, people who murder in the name of religion are usually locked up for a very long time.
That is how we handle things in our free country.
Falwell had to be content with simply mouthing his hatred. Free speech was better than nothing. Yes he perverted that right, but that is the downside of living in a free society.
If the mostly Islamic countries of the Middle East imposed the kind of limits on religious fanatics that the USA does, we would be able to begin some kind of dialog and eventually have world peace.
In any event, if you are dealing with a fanatic fundamentalist, whether Islamic, Jewish, or Christian, you can't begin a dialog until their various religious texts are purged of all forms of hatred against non-believers. Christians have to come to terms with the anti-Semitism of the New Testament, for example, in the form of quotes like the one likening Jews to Satan in John 8:44. Jews have to come to terms with their part in the genocidal war on the pagan nations living in Canaan in pre-biblical times. Islam must come to terms with its hatred of the non-believer and purge its holy text of such hatred.
As long as hatred is theological, there can never be any peace on this planet.
I am baffled by the high regard the late Mr. Falwell enjoys. But I have no control over the opinions of others, nor do I want it. What I would like to see is the banning of fanatical religious fundamentalists from running for political office, especially the office of president.
We have seen the damage done by this president (Governor Bush). Not only does he lack the intelligence to run this great nation. His fundamentalist religious beliefs run counter to the oath he took to defend and protect the constitution. We already know that a religious fundamentalist can be a president of all the people as Jimmy Carter was, but he was the exception to the rule, and he was not a great president which had nothing to do with his religious beliefs.
Religion is a personal thing and does not belong in the arena of politics. Our nation is pluralistic. Like the stars of the heaven, ours is a country of many religions and ethnic groups. Once someone runs for political office, he becomes a representative of ALL the people, not just his own group.
If a religious fundamentalist does not understand this, he or she should not be allowed to hold public office. Whether the religious fundamentalists like it or not, we live in a secular country, a country founded on basic human freedoms, a separation of church and state. Fundamentalist religion, by its very nature, is antithetical to freedom in general.
That is why we must keep religion in its place and fight those who would destroy us in the name of their faith as Falwell would have and as Bin Ladin is attempting.

Revisiting Janet Jackson's Breast Feb. 2004

2007-05-09T16:32:00.000-04:00

It was a wonderful day for the holy act of the Super Bowl.
Number 38, if you are keeping track, in the year of our lord 2004.
All was in readiness.
The teams were prepared to put on a show.
They were the human sacrifices for this holy event.
Who knew how many broken ribs, legs, and other limbs there would be by the end of the game.
That was not important.
The crowds were restless. They sat there, thousands of them, waiting for the game to begin. Some, before they arrived, were already intoxicated with various potent potables as well as intoxicated with the lust for the blood to come. Those, already at the game, had to be content only with the holy beer. Millions more sat at home or sat in bars watching the event on TV. Millions of dollars passed hands. Gamblers bet for the highest stakes.
This was, after all, "The World Series of Football Games: The Super Bowl". Only Christmas, Easter, Ramadan, Kwanzaa, and Yom Kippur were as important.
I enjoyed this day, not because it was football day, but because I could get a good seat in the movie theater or restaurant without having to stand in line. I hated the game in fact. I saw no reason to waste my time with it, especially now when we were at war, fighting a country that did not attack us on 11 September.
I made a point of avoiding the game, and relished telling people that I had better things to do. This has gone on year after year, but this year and this game would be different. Something happened that day that shook the foundations of western civilization, an historical event, never to be forgotten, an outrage, a blasphemy, a malignant tumor, thrust upon the holy sport, on this, that holy day.
For once I should have been tuned in because I missed it.
The game went on as it usually did, with the obligatory busting of heads over a ball you could not even bounce.
At half time, all the usual changed.
Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake were doing their song until that fateful moment when Ms Jackson had her wardrobe malfunction. Millions of people saw it but could not believe it, the most disgusting thing you could ever want to see....Ms Jackson's beautiful breasts, a black woman's no less, there for all to see.
Imagine the trauma the children must have felt. I could imagine parent after parent, covering their children's eyes so as not to see the outrage. For the rest of their innocent lives, their memories would be tainted by this horrible sight.
The media was no less outraged.
Ms Jackson and her beautiful breasts were front page headlines in tabloids all over this country. I almost felt as if the citizens were as traumatized by the breasts as they were by the destruction of the WTC. Page after page, accusation after accusation for days afterwards covered the pages of the tabloids like blood.
Only it wasn't blood, and no one got killed. I never heard of anyone being killed by a breast unless they were smothered by them. Yet the media's outrage was such that you'd think a capital crime took place.
Meanwhile, buried somewhere on page 8 (or whatever) that same day came the news that 59 people were killed by a car bomb in Iraq. I don't understand how this news ended up buried. To me, it was far more outrageous and offensive than the breasts. What was wrong with the people of this nation when something as beautiful as a breast can offend and the deaths of human beings in a fictional war does not?
Between you and me, I'll take the breast. Those who support war can have the bloodshed.

Mad As Hell!!!

2007-04-29T14:55:00.000-04:00

Howard Beale of the fictional UBS News told it as it was.
I remember sitting in that darkened movie theater back in the middle 70's, the final days of the real movie theater and not the malls that have replaced them. I really didn't know what to expect. I didn't always read movie reviews in those days, so when Peter Finch, as Beale, made the first of his "insane" broadcasts, I nearly fell out of my seat. Sure there are many points being made in this classic film, not the least of which its depiction of growing corporate control over the news media.
I've always respected the serious news person. For me, Beale represented what Edward R. Murrow would have become had he lived on. You can't look at this circus of horrors we've created and not soon go mad from your constant reporting of it.
The classic scene from the film where Beale exhorts his viewers to go to their windows and yell that they were mad as hell and wouldn't take it anymore has become for me a kind of rallying cry. Yes, the people running to their windows were mostly doing so because they were brainwashed by the tube, yet I knew the reality of Beale's words. If all of us out here in the great wasteland truly rose up, mad as hell, perhaps we would finally do something to make our lives more harmonious.
It is with great respect that I dedicate this blog. to the memory of all those lost souls who let the bullies get the best of them, who saw too much, who felt too much and then let it drive them nuts.
Much of what you will read here are my own observations on life during this decade of terror and murder.
And if what you read here makes you want to go to your window and yell out, only do so if you intend to really do something.