Saturday, February 28, 2015

Entry 274: The Terrible Twos and Number Two

A lot going on these days both in my world and in the world.  At the G & G household, Lil' S has full-on entered the terrible twos, which we have heard from friends and family are more like the terrible two-through-four-and-a-halfs.  The general consensus seems to be that by five the random hissy fits and bouts of impossible intransigence become more the exception rather than rule.  Two and a half more years: I can make it!  Acutally, it's going to be much longer than that because we've got another one on the way.  Yep, that's right, baby number two.

I haven't mentioned this on my blog yet, because I wanted to make sure it was really happening before I announced it to the public (my readership is almost in the double digits, after all).  Twice we thought S was pregnant, and it turned out she wasn't, and that made us sad (her much more so than me -- biological clock and whatnot), so we've been proceeding cautiously.  Plus we have friends who just lost a baby in utero at like eight months, and ... we'll I don't even want to think about what that would do to S.  Ideally, I would prefer to hide the pregnancy from everybody and announce that we have another kid when it actually pops out the vag (or in our previous case, is surgically extracted from the womb).  But that isn't going to work for obvious reasons.  So I guess I might as well talk about it.  Early signs indicate it's a boy, and he's due in August.


[It's looking like another Virgo baby.]

Actually, I was thinking about miscarriages and stillbirths and what a cruel, cruel bit of nature they are.  What's their evolutionary purpose?  (Or, if you're not down with evolution, why would God create a life just to stomp it out in a heartbreaking way before it even reaches viability?  That certainly doesn't sound like a very loving thing to do.)  They are much more likely in older women, so maybe it's to encourage us to have kids at a younger age?  I don't know.  And then why can men produce children at 96, but women struggle in their late '30s?  Maybe it's because in humankind's early years, the women were the ones who took care of the children, so they had to be relatively young to be there until their kids reached adulthood.  But the men did the hunting and lived shorter lives on average, so those who survived needed to be virile as long as possible to ensure enough women got pregnant to propagate the species.  That sounds reasonable enough.  It might not be true, but it sounds plausible, right?  One thing I learned in reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything is that the entire existence of life seems to be to create more life.  So I try to look at things through this circular lens.

On a similar topic, I listened to a really interesting Fresh Air episode (even if Dave Davies was filling for Terry Gross) about aging: why and how we do it and what we can do prevent to it.  Since I am now well past my prime in terms of physical fitness -- I, literally, reached my peak 20 years ago -- I'm interested in this latter discussion.  I don't mean I want to go John Travolta at the Oscars or anything like that.  But I do want to start doing real things that can help me live longer and prosper (RIP Mr. Nimoy).  The big one I'm trying to do now is to limit my sitting.  Seemingly every month I read an article about how bad sitting for long stretches is ("sitting is the new smoking" is the current buzz phrase).  I sit a lot, almost the entire day, and unfortunately it's not the type of thing you can make up for with extra exercise.  It seems to be that you actually have to spend a portion of every hour on your feet.  If you work all-day on a computer, obviously this can be really challenging.  S has a standing desk in her office, and I think I need to ask my boss to get me one.  What I would really like is a treadmill desk, but I don't think my company would foot the bill (pun intended) for that one.

Now hold on a second while I put my computer on the mantle and stand up ... There we go.


[A new dad at 96 -- and I thought I was old at 35.]

Anyway, in other news, the Supreme Court is about to hear a new Obamacare challenge that, if enforced, would almost certainly cause a whole lot of people to lose their health insurance.  The basis of the suit would be comical if it wasn't real (the card says "The Moops"), and there is reason to believe that this tactic could backfire on Republicans, but the fact that the suit was brought about at all is a sad commentary on the state of conservatism.  Reality -- how things actually effect tangible carbon-based human lifeforms -- has little place in modern conservatism; it's entirely a construct for hypothetical beings that exist in an idealized version of America that never actually existed and never will.

On a related subject, I read this gem of an article describing how one man's libertarian fantasy quickly collapsed under its own lofty ideals.  It pretty much sums up everything I think is wrong with hard-core libertarianism.  I've mention my dislike of libertarianism (especially as practiced by Rand Paul) several times on this blog before, but in reading this article I thought of something new.  In the article, this guy Ross Ulbricht creates a pirate contraband website with the idea of it being a pure laissez-faire marketplace free from the meddling hand of the government.  But in order to keep the site working he has to implement more and more practical restrictions that essentially mimic what the government does with our marketplace.  At some point, he recognizes this and makes the distinction that people don't have to use his website.  They can seek out a competitor if they're unhappy.   But we are always forced to follow the government's tyrannical rules.  There is no competition in the government.

This is something people say a lot -- the no competition in government thing -- but if you think about it, it's not really true.  For one thing, the American government is not stopping you if you want to move to another country.  Go ahead and set up shop in Somalia, where there are basically no rules, and see how well that works out for you.  So that's one thing.



But another thing -- one I hadn't consider before -- is that our government actually is a highly competitive field.  Competition is a cornerstone of our government.  But it doesn't translate to great results.  And the reasons it doesn't, actually point out flaws with the free market.  What I mean is this: We have a lot of elections in this country -- at every level from neighborhood to nation we decide through our votes what we want our government to do.  In theory, if we don't like our current government we can change it, and in theory anybody can run for public office.  Politicians should have to compete and should have to please their "customers" (the public) to stay in power.  So, given his, why are so many people -- often a vast majority -- perpetually dissatisfied with the government we picked?

There are two main reasons as I see it.  One, access to public office is effectively limited to people who have the money and time to run an election.  This kills a lot of the competition.  But this is similar to how things work in a laissez-faire market.  Even if I have a great idea for a video streaming service that's way better than Netflix, I don't have the start-up capital or connections to compete with such a big and company.  Sure, if I keep plugging away at it, I might be able to raise money, introduce my product to the public, and grab a piece of the market, but that's by no means a sure thing.  You have to get really fortunate.  And even if I started to do that, if Netflix notices me, and if they are ruthless enough, they could probably use their deep pockets to crush me.  That is, unless there are some sort of government safeguards, like, say, net neutrality, which at its core is a very anti-free market law.  (The government is preventing the sale of a good, faster Internet, between two autonomous business like Netflix and Comcast.)

Two, in elections, people don't pay attention or don't care and often vote for unscrupulous or otherwise bad candidates.  So even if you are paying attention and you do care, you might get outvoted.  Again, there is a parallel in the free market.  Consumers also don't pay attention or don't care, and they often buy products from companies who are behave unscrupulously, so this behavior continues even if you don't support it with your dollar.  And just like how a politician's election has consequences on everybody, not just those who voted for him or her, big business' actions effect even those who don't patronize it.  You might never purchase a GE product, you still have to live with the pollution in the Hudson River.

The reason government often doesn't work is for the same basic reasons the free market often doesn't work: the wealthy and the powerful almost always win, and many people make bad decisions and these decisions can hurt you (as unfair as that is).  So, in my opinion, we should have laws to mitigate the societal damage from these two maxims.  In short, hard-core free-market libertarianism is as much a fantasy as communism.

And I'll close with a relevant quote that Ralph Nader attributes to his dad: "Capitalism will always survive, because socialism will be there to save it."  Hopefully, Nathra Nader, hopefully.

Until next time ...

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Entry 273: Dead or Alive?

News has surfaced in the past few weeks that Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird, has written a followup to her classic novel that might or might not be published.  My response to this was, I presume the same as many others, absolute astonishment: What?  Harper Lee is still alive?!  I was floored.  And it brings to mind my most favorite morbid pub game: Dead or Alive?  The rules are simple: One person throws out a name and everybody else has to venture a guess as to whether he or she is dead or alive.  The objective is to stump as many people as possible.  Let's play, shall we?  Since we are only together in cyberspace and not at a pub, I will suggest all the people.  You can guess and see how many you get right.

[Give yourself an '80s pop culture gold star if you get this reference.]

The list:
  1. Gene Wilder
  2. Michael Dukakis
  3. Shirley Temple
  4. J.D. Salinger
  5. Walter Payton
  6. William "The Refrigerator" Perry
  7. Pat Benatar
  8. Neil Armstrong
  9. Louis Armstrong
  10. Sidney Poitier
  11. George Peppard
  12. Mary Tyler Moore
  13. Dick Van Dyke
  14. Bobby Fischer
  15. Joe Piscopo
  16. Gerald Ford
  17. Paul Hogan
  18. Boris Yeltsin
  19. Mikhail Gorbachev
  20. Tammy Faye Bakker
I'll put some carriage returns in here, so you can't see the answer immediately.  Just scroll down a bit.

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
1. Gene Wilder: Alive
He's 81 and has not been in a theatrical release since 1991 (Another You).  He hasn't done acting of any sort since 2003, when he appeared on Will & Grace.  Apparently he had a TV show in the mid-'90s, Something Wilder, that I just completely forgot about or never knew existed.  Apparently he writes books now.  My favorite movie of his, without question, is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  It still holds up today (and is SO much better than the Johnny Depp version, which, frankly, was shite).  I show Lil' S clips on YouTube (If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it ...), and he likes them.  They're much better than Gummibär that's for sure.

[One of my favorite things about this movie is that there is a slight eerie undertone throughout it.  You can hear it in this song with the chime sounds.]

2.  Michael Dukakis: Alive
I know.  I'm as shocked as you are.  Like Wilder, he's also 81.  How come he never pops up on any of these political talking heads shows?

3.  Shirley Temple: Dead
Very recently dead: February, 2014.  She was in her last film in 1949, and then she got into politics, serving as ambassador to Ghana under Ford and later to Czechoslovakia under the first Bush.  She was basically out of the limelight the last 20 years of her life.  

4.  J.D. Salinger: Dead
He died fairly recently, 2010, but he was extremely reclusive and basically didn't publish anything the last 50 years of life.  He's best know for The Catcher in the Rye, but my favorite story of his is "For Esmé—with Love and Squalor."  I've never actually read it, but ESME is a legitimate crossword puzzle entry because of it, so I like it.  Speaking of crossword puzzles, anytime I get one rejected, I'm going to remember this quote from Salinger's Wikipedia page: " He also continued to submit stories to The New Yorker, but with little success; it rejected all of his submissions from 1944 to 1946, a group of 15 poems in 1945 alone."

5.  Walter Payton: Dead
Sadly, "Sweetness" is no longer with us, having died in 1999.  (Damn, it's been almost 15 years!)  His death somehow slid under the radar a bit.  By the way, if you want to check out an awesome running back season, look at Payton in 1985.  The '85 Bears were one of the best teams ever, and he basically was the entire offense.  And yet in their Super Bowl blowout win, when they got the ball to the one-yard line, instead of giving the ball to Payton to get a touchdown, they gave it somebody else ...

6.  William "The Refrigerator" Perry: Alive
Payton's teammate who played defensive end, occasionally moonlighting at fullback.  The "funny" thing about Perry is that, at 335 pounds, he was ENORMOUS when he played and today he would be about standard size.

[How apropos is this?  Perry, Payton, and Gorbachev.]

7.  Pat Benatar: Alive
And still touring ... huh, how about that?  Apparently, she is also working on novel about the second coming of Jesus Christ.  That sounds ... interesting. 


8.  Neil Armstrong: Dead
He died of complications from a heart procedure in 2012 at age 82 -- and so too died the truth behind the "moon" landing.  By the way, I went to YouTube and watched the moon landing footage for the first time ever like a month ago.  Pretty crazy.  It looks real to me.    


9.  Louis Armstrong: Dead
If he were alive today he would be 113.  He died before I was born.  I just threw him in there to see if you were paying attention.

10.  Sidney Poitier: Alive
This one might be too easy.  I forgot Obama honored him at a ceremony -- the State of the Union? -- a few years ago.  His last theatrical release was The Jackal in 1997.  His most famous movie is Lilies of the Field, for which he won the Best Actor Oscar.  He was much before my time, as I think I've only seen two of his movies In the Heat of the Night and Sneakers.  He turned 88 yesterday.  Happy b'day Sid.

11.  George Peppard: Dead
From the love interest in Breakfast at Tiffany's to Col. Hannibal Smith on The A-Team -- now that is range.  He actually died a pretty long time ago: 1994.



12.  Mary Tyler Moore: Alive
This one might also be too easy.  I don't remember hearing about her in ages, but according to Wikipedia, she's somewhat active in politics/charity and was on a TV show just two years ago: Hot in Cleveland, whatever that is.

13.  Dick Van Dyke: Alive
Also alive.  This one surprised me much more than his former cast mate.  Although apparently he was in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb just last year, so if you saw that, this is also probably a gimme.  Bonus question:  Dick's brother Jerry Van Dyke (Luther Van Dam on Coach) -- dead or alive?  Also alive.

14.  Bobby Fischer: Dead
He "just" died in 2008, so he was alive for a long time after people forgot about him.  Fischer was a weird, weird dude.  He became a chess master at like 13 and was the undisputed champion of the world after his 1972 victory of Boris Spassky (that was an crazy event in and of itself).  Then he joined a religious cult and basically retired until a rematch against Spassky in 1992.  The match was in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in violation of U.N. sanctions, so it basically stopped Fischer from returning to the U.S. (lest he be prosecuted) and eventually led to him renouncing his American citizenship and moving to the Philippines and then to Iceland (the site of his '72 match).  Always a bit off, he became a total nutcase in his old age.  In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, he said "I applaud the act," and then went on to spew a bunch of anti-American, antisemitic gibberish.

15.  Joe Piscopo: Alive
Alive, and he apparently has a morning radio show in New York.  Huh ... I had no idea.

16.  Gerald Ford: Dead
He died in 2006, but he made it all the way to 93.  That's not too shabby.  How many presidents are left?  Five, right?  Carter, Clinton, the Bushes, and Obama.  I wonder what the record is for most presidents alive at once.  Apparently it is six which has happened three times (thank you, Internet!).

17.  Paul Hogan: Alive
And older than I thought.  He's 75.  Hogan deserves some credit from me.  After all, I named my blog after his character.  I started this thing when I moved to Australia in 2010 (it's almost been five years), and Crocodile DG, of course, is a play on Crocodile Dundee.  Turns out in Australia, they are not such huge fans of Hogan.  Once I was talking about Australian actors with an Australian colleague, and I brought up Hogan, and he said to me "Pfft... You guys can keep him."  My colleague was also willing to give us Mel Gibson.  Gee, thanks. 



18.  Boris Yeltsin: Dead
He died in 2007.  He lives on in crossword puzzles, however, as his wife Naina makes an occasional appearance, and the clue is almost always something like "Boris' wife".

19.  Mikhail Gorbachev: Alive
Wait, what?  Gorbachev is still alive?  Indeed he is, and he was active in politics as late as 2009.  I feel like I haven't heard his name since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.  (Except in crossword puzzles, where his wife, Raisa, also makes occasional appearances.)  It's probably because that egoist Vladimir Putin is hogging all the headlines with his Super Bowl ring stealing and his shirtless horseback riding.  I was listening to a podcast the other day about just how evil Putin is, and it made me think, you know, maybe Mitt Romney was right about the whole Russia being "our number one geopolitical foe" thing.  Events over the past few years, certainly have added credence to that statement.  However, it should be noted, Romney probably would have changed his position at some point anyway (he later hedged to "a geopolitical foe").  And when it comes to statements about Putin, the GOP doesn't have a lot of credibility -- not when their last president said the following: "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul. He's a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country and I appreciate very much the frank dialogue and that's the beginning of a very constructive relationship."  I can't believe George W. Bush was actually once the leader of the free world.  It's surreal in retrospect.

20.  Tammy Faye Bakker: Dead
She died in 2007, but her husband Jim is still alive.  Bakker was a nutty right-wing fundamentalist Christian, but she was also kinda down with the gays.  I think she just liked pageantry.  I saw her picture on the wall of a wine bar I was at last weekend, and I had to ask the bartender (who was in the picture with her) if she was dead or alive, so I figured she was a good Dead of Alive candidate.



Well, that's it.  How did you do?

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Entry 272: On Lying

I'm alone on Valentine's Day.  S took the kid and headed south to Key West for a few days.  Her friend E, an immigration lawyer, is stationed down there for a few months, so she used the long weekend to visit her.  It's a quasi girls weekend, as S's sister and another friend are also visiting.  The other three women are single, so I wonder if I should be worried about the potential of debauchery.  Nah... they can't be getting into too much trouble with a hyperactive two-year-old in tow.

I never cared much for Valentine's Day -- it's probably the most made-up of the made-up Holidays -- so I don't mind "celebrating" it alone.  Actually, I'm trying to use this weekend to do all the things that are difficult to do with Lil' S around, so it's turning into a somewhat busy three days.  I put myself a bit behind the 8-ball by going out last night -- now I'm foggy-headed and sluggish -- but that was pretty much a necessity.  The weather here in DC is likely going to take a turn for the freezing, and we will probably get some wintery mix precipitation.  If I wanted to get out all this weekend, last night was the best option.  I actually thought I was taking it easy; I only had three glasses of red wine over about of three hours.  But I woke up this morning slightly hung over.  I guess that's what happens when you're 37 and get served by a heavy-handed bartender.



Anyway, the topic of today's entry is lying.  It's been in the news a lot lately, mostly because of the whole Brian Williams fiasco.  But there have been some other stories about lying as well, such as this under-the-radar revelation that Obama lied about gay marriage during the lead-up to the 2008 election.  (According to his longtime advisor David Axlerod, he always supported it, but said he only supported civil unions for political reasons.  He later "evolved" on his position when public support for gay marriage became more robust.)  And then Paul Krugman dusted off the ol' Iraq War whopper (the gift that keeps on giving) in a recent blog post.

All of this got me thinking about lying, and I've come to the conclusion that lying runs such a broad gamut in extent, type, and moral implication that it's almost too vague a term to use at all.  One thing that always struck me as strange is when people who are accused of lying get so indignant about it -- "Are you calling me a liar?!" -- as if lying was something akin to murder, instead of something almost everybody does almost everyday.  And not all lying is bad.  This is why I propose we do away with the generic term "lying" and use one of the following five terms or modifiers instead:

Heroic lying: In the opening scene of Inglorious Basterds, we all want the bearded guy to lie to Col. Landa (Christoph Waltz's character).  That's clearly the moral thing to do.  (Even if it doesn't work because Landa is a villainous badass.)  This is a clear-cut case in which it is right to lie.  We can all image scenarios like this.



White lying:  This is a step down from heroic lying, but it's still lying for a good reason -- often to spare somebody's feelings.  It's clichéd to say "the truth hurts," but it's also often, well, the truth.  But it's also true that sometimes nothing is to be gained from the truth.  White lies are actually an integral part of relationships (the "do I look fat" quandary).  If you told people the truth about everything all the time, you almost certainly would not have a significant other, and you probably wouldn't have many friends either.  Nobody wants to hang out with Rain Man.

Fibbing:  This is like white lying without the altruism -- you do it to help yourself not others.  I will admit I do this sometimes.  If S wants me to do something I don't want to do, sometimes I'll not do it, and then say I did because I don't want the hassle of arguing about it.  For example, back when Lil' S was younger, S was really worried he was underweight, and one of her things was that after every meal we needed to try to give him yogurt.  So whenever I would feed him, she would grill me about it: "Did you try to give him yogurt?"  And I would always say yes even if I didn't.

Exaggerating:  This needs no explanation.  Why all know what an exaggeration is and we all do it.  Sometimes an exaggeration creeps into something more nefarious (like with Brian Williams) but most of the time it's pretty harmless, so long as it's done in moderation.  I have a friend from high school who was (and probably still is) a chronic exaggerator.  In every story he told, he magically came off as Joe Cool.  My favorite example: He used to hand-roll cigarettes, and he would buy this certain type of tobacco that was difficult to find.  One day he had a lot of it and somebody asked where he got it, and he said, "I know a guy."  Then later we found out he just bought it at the smoke shop, like anybody else could do.  His "guy" was the man who worked behind the counter there.  As my other friend asked him, "Do you call Safeway a 'guy' too?"



Betraying Trust:  This is what we really object to when it comes to lying in the typical sense.  It's not the technicality of the untruth that matters; it's whether or not there was a betrayal of trust.  The Bill Clinton blowjob comes to mind.  Do you think Hillary was satisfied with the answer, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman?"  You could make the case it was technically the truth (it depends on what your definition of is is, and all that).  But that is -- or at least should be -- completely irrelevant.  It's not about lying; it's about betrayal.

So, from now on, instead of using the word "lie" I would appreciate it if you would use a variant of one of the five terms above.  Thank you.

Until next time ...

Friday, February 6, 2015

Entry 271: I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

Well, it's a good thing I've made it a point to not discuss sports much on this blog, because that loss on Sunday was about as brutal as it gets -- an absolute soul crusher.  I went from not caring that much about the Super Bowl, to being completely absorbed, to being completely confused (the halftime show), to being giddy as a toddler on a sugar high (the Kearse catch), to being completely distraught (the end) in the span of four hours.  It was one of those games that makes me question why I'm a sports fan at all.  Why partake in something that I know has a decent chance of making me feel so miserable in end?

My usual fallback answer to this is twofold: 1) It's not my fault; it's something I learned as a kid and would be very difficult to change.  2)  When I get into something I get into something -- and it's better to be passionate about things, even stupid things, than to be completely soulless, right?  But when I -- a damn near middle-aged man -- find myself still dwelling on a stupid interception (they were on the one-yard line!  the one yard-line!  to win the Super Bowl! the one-yard line!) five days after it happened, these justifications ring hollow. 

A friend of mine, a one-time die-hard Bears fan, actually gave up the NFL altogether this season.  I must say this has it's appeal -- more free-time on Sundays, less beer drinking, better husband-wife relations, the NFL is an unscrupulous Leviathan of a corporation, etc. -- but I'm not ready for such a drastic move.  I am, however, quitting sports for one-month: no sports media of any sort until March.  That's about as far as I'm willing to go, at the moment.  And it should be noted that aside from the Super Bowl, February is a very boring sports month, anyway.  Also, my self-imposed moratorium just so happens to expire right in time for the start of March Madness.  Convenient that.

[Yep, this expression pretty much says it all.]

So, suddenly I find myself with a bit more spare time on my hands, especially so this week as S is in Africa for work, so once I put the little man down for bed around 8:00, the night is all mine.  (This weekend isn't going to be fun, though; S doesn't get back until Sunday night.  Why can't daycare be seven days a week?)  What have I been doing with my extra time?  Well, for one, I picked up my brother's last novel again.  After proofreading the first few chapters, I set it down like a year ago and didn't pick it back up until now (sorry, bro, if you're reading this, you know fantasy isn't my thing).  And I must say, it's gotten pretty good.  It was slow in the beginning (probably due to the proofreading), but now it's quite compelling.  I'm "dying" (because it takes place in the afterlife, see) to find out how it ends.  You can find it on Amazon, along with his first book, if you're interested.

Also, I've been hitting the non-sports news pretty hard.  Jonathan Chait wrote a good (if overly verbose) piece on why p.c. culture is a counterproductive agent to progressive thinking.  He got a lot of flack for it, but I mostly agree with him that.  (Of course as a white man I would say that, wouldn't I?)  There are certain topics -- race, religion, feminism --  on which many liberals don't speak honestly for fear of using the wrong nomenclature and being labeled a bigot out of hand.  I think, in general, people, especially people on the left, focus way too much on language, which is often superficial, and not enough on the content behind the language.  It's a very weird phenomenon, and it's very counterproductive to actual progress because you end up alienating people who could be -- and often want to be -- allies in the cause.  Yes, it would be great if everybody used the right term for all things at all times, but we're humans, that's not going to happen...  And actually, come to think of it, it wouldn't be great, it would be extremely boring.  Being p.c. is kinda lame.

As an example, of what I'm talking about, Dan Savage (great podcast, by the way) the sex advice columnist, came under "attack" recently for using the incorrect pronoun in addressing a trans person.  In general, Savage gets heat from time-to-time from certain groups for making the mistake of talking like any actual person.  He says things like faggot and tranny (though he did put the kibosh on that one) and bitch and slut.  He makes fun of the ever-growing initialism to describe queer people (I believe it's now LGBTQIA). He says things that, out of context, people could find offensive.  But -- and this is gigantic but -- he's a huge advocate for the rights of gay and trans people ... and sex workers ... and promiscuous women ... and pretty much any other group of people outside the traditional norm of sexuality and gender.  He supports them and brings attention to their plights and constantly speaks out against their harassment and marginalization.  Shouldn't that be the big point, instead of the fact that he occasionally strays from the holy p.c. dictionary when delivering his message?  Of course.  

And by the way, not being so p.c. about everything can actually help a cause.  I started reading Savage Love, like 20 years ago, in large part because Dan's voice was not like anything I'd read before in a mainstream (or semi-mainstream) publication.  If he wrote like political speech writer -- being sure to word things in such a way that nobody could ever take any offense to anything -- then I wouldn't have read him.  My views on LGBTQIA people changed a lot throughout college (although it was just LGBT, back in my day) .  I never thought being queer was wrong or anything, but I definitely was uncomfortable with the idea of it, and I had the bad habit of using gay as a general pejorative term.  What changed was, well, I grew up for one thing, but also I became exposed to queer people and part of that was through reading Dan Savage.  So, you know, everybody needs to stop getting on would-be supporters for using the wrong words and start focusing on the really haters out there.



In other news, the anti-vaxxers are really making waves these days.  This was a movement I was hoping would just disappear -- a fad that would go the way of Gangnam Style.  But it appears to be sticking around.  First, there was an outbreak at Disneyland, and then likely Republican presidential candidates Chris Christie decided to weigh in on the issue (get it "weigh in" ... because he's fat) in typical politician fashion, by talking gibberish.  And then Rand Paul, who isn't a typical politician, basically came down on the side of the anti-vaxxers, saying it's the parents choice because "The state doesn’t own your children".  I actually love that Paul chimed in on this issue because it beautifully illustrates the problem with his entire world-view.

See, Rand Paul, practices a particular form of libertarianism, in which we are all supposed to pretend that society functions as a disparate collection of autonomous units called human beings and that each of these units is responsible only for themselves and that when one of these units fails, the unit alone bears that burden; it's not anybody else's problem, so nobody (especially not the government) has any right to tell another unit what to do.  

The problem with this ideology, of course, is that it fails the most basic test for any ideology: it's doesn't cohere with objective reality.  The unfortunate truth of the matter is that other people's problems affect you.  That's how the world works; we really are all in it together.  And no more is this more obvious than with immunizations.  We have two choices: a) Let people not vaccinate their kids, b) Not have massive outbreaks of preventable diseases.  Because of the way herd immunity works, these two choices are very close to being mutually exclusive.  Don't blame me for this, blame Mother Nature.  Maybe she's a socialist.  

Anyway, of the two choices, b) is the obvious pick to me.  I would prefer to live in a society in which my child is forced -- yes, forced, by the state, if need be -- to undergo the tyranny of a one-second needle prick, rather than live in a society in which there is a nontrivial chance my child will catch a disease that was once all but eradicated.  Rand Paul apparently disagrees with me.  He would like to pick a) -- and if your kid gets measles because they were too young to be vaccinated and went to Disneyland, well, then maybe you should have just streamed Frozen on Netflix and stayed home.  

[I'd rather see the return of PSY than the return of the mumps.]

Now, in the linked article Rand Paul actually says that he thinks vaccines are overall a good thing.  But this just underscores what really bothers me so much about Rand Paulism: It's all this talk about government tyranny and personal liberties.  But when it comes down to it, it's really, "my rights, in theory, are more important than everybody else's well-being, in practice".  He finds forced immunization distasteful (his right), so he thinks it should take priority over society eradicating diseases (everybody else's well being).  You can draw similar analogies with his economic policies and his environmental policies.  So, as you can probably guess, I won't be supporting Rand Paul for president in 2016.

One more thing about the anti-vaccination movement: It makes for some strange bedfellows.  You've got the ultra right-wing, anti-government sect, but then you've also got the ultra left-wing, anti-big pharma sect.  Politically, these two groups couldn't be further from each other on every other issue, but when it comes to diseased babies they find common ground.  It's kinda sweet, in a way -- a very sad and disturbing way. 

Until next time ...