Women as Gobs

In the First World War, members of the American Army were called doughboys and members of the Navy were called gobs. But a curious thing happened by accident. The Navy began the war by setting up some elaborate standards for joining. These standards were golden but someone forgot to add that you had to be male. When this oversight was called to the attention of the Secretary of the Navy,  Josephus Daniels, he had the good sense to respond by enlisting 11,000 women. After the war, they were all mustered out, but the door had been opened for women to serve in the next World War, and nothing has been the same since. 

The Italian Justice System

I understand almost nothing about the justice system in Italy, but I've read three entertaining books that give examples of cases where prosecutors in Italy have constructed elaborate cases based on paranoid conspiracy theories. Foreigners and natives in Italy go to jail for decades for reasons we might consider absurd. But of course prosecutors bring good cases, too. The Sunday paper had an interesting article from the McClatchy news service. In 2003, under orders from President Bush and Condileezza Rice, the CIA stupidly renditioned (kidnapped) a radical Muslim cleric in Milan and flew him to Egypt, where the Egyptians somewhat reluctantly tortured him and held him in prison for a few years, finally releasing him because there was no evidence he had committed a crime. The Italians coped with this incident by conducting a trial in absentia of  many Americans (not including Bush and Rice, of course, who skated free). In the end 23  absent Americans were found guilty and sentenced to terms in prison. The catch is that 19 of the Americans on trial didn't exist. Also they lacked adequate legal representation. 

Kissinger

According to Terry Eagleton, our "American satirist Tom Lehrer, declared that he abandoned satire altogether when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize." (Writers learn that it is difficult to mock a mockery. But Lehrer seems to have pulled it off in this case.)

Bacon and Weiner's Junk Mail

I have no problem with Anthony Weiner photographing his own junk and sending the pictures to consenting  young women on the Internet over a period of several years, but I wouldn't vote for him in a Democratic primary. I don't mean to be picking on him. We have elected an astonishing variety of people to high office of late. Perhaps the most striking example was Ronald Reagan, who led the Free World while senile. That, even in retrospect, seems not to worry us. But I draw the line at voting for a photographer. Of course, I admire the work of Ansel Adams--I think of him every time I pass a certain church in Bodega--and I deeply respect artists in general. But they make their contributions in a different way and on a different plane. Someone has pointed out that Weiner's root problem is that he is addicted to running for public office. He needs a good therapist to help him control the urge to seek votes. As a private citizen he would be able to focus on his talent, his natural endowment. He could develop his editing skills. As Bacon once wrote, "Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study."

Opinions on Every Issue

For Democracy to work, the voter must have an opinion on every issue. That way she can cast informed votes. Yes, it is true I have never met Michelle Obama, but in my opinion she is a good person. Her husband is a weak waffler, a Fascist murderer or a thoughtful advocate of gay rights. I know George Zimmerman is a coward and murderer, although I have yet to set foot in Florida.  Without doubt the Palestinians or Israelis deserve my support. I grasp little about fracking, but I'm against it. El Salvador is a mystery to me, but like Noam Chomsky, I am prepared to tell the workers there which political party they must support to avoid being idiots; I say, vote for the one Chomsky prefers. I understand that he has not visited Central America recently, but like me he has opinions, and he is bitter about them, too.  I would write more here, but it is time for me to go into the next room and listen to Pacifica. This afternoon I must decide whom to support in a three-sided genocidal war in Central Asia. I can do that. I have an opinion on every issue.

The French Dead

In World War II, I learned today, German air raids killed many British civilians. The Allies' air raids on Europe killed even more French civilians. Oops.

The George Zimmerman Story

Now that Zimmerman is free to kill again, maybe some of the dust will settle and we can see things his way. What we know is that Zimmerman took a gun to a fist fight. He did that because he's a natural born coward.  He got punched a little, so, as Zimmerman himself claims, he screamed like a banshee for a few minutes.  Next, according to Zimmerman, he got loose (did the boy back off, appalled by the screaming?), and Zimmerman pulled his gun, which probably had a round already in the chamber. Then he thumbed off the safety. Then he killed a teenager. He has no regrets.

The (deservedly) Lone Ranger

As you probably don't care, THE LONE RANGER,  a current film starring Johnny Depp as Tonto, has been subjected to a lot of deep political analysis. Forgetaboutit.  The movie is a well-intentioned farce of a sometimes hallucinatory type. It is leadenly ironic (irony escapes serious political people), and my is it badly written. The ranger is one of those sit-com characters who cannot learn from experience, so he lives out the same joke repeatedly. Johnny Depp is the only interesting thing in the film, and that is not enough. Do not pay money to suffer through 2.5 hours of wild and wacky tedium.

Two Heroes

When Ed Snowden asked me to return his library books--he was leaving for China in the morning--I said, "Sure." Also I paid his fines, which amounted to a dollar or two. My wife claimed he was using me, but I disagreed, reminding her that Ed had taken the time to show me how to smoke unfiltered cigarettes in the tenth grade. I argued that if Martin Luther King, that great man, had run away and gone to China, he'd still be alive today. Or maybe not.
 I agree that Ed is a different kind of hero than, say, Eleanor Roosevelt or Audie Murphy. Ed is modern, more like my other hero, the bonnacon, once found to the north of ancient Greece. The bonnacon resembled a thick-boned horse with the head of a bull. It defended itself by running away and releasing a fart strong enough to blow the helmets off an army of men. The gas was flammable and scorched a path for 100 yards behind the heroic steed. That might not be my grandfather's idea of a hero, but I move with the times.

Not Borked

THE NEW YORKER has an interesting bit on the people who helped the gays on their road to equal treatment.  The most credit is given to Joe Biden, for the following somewhat obscure reason. You might remember that Robert Bork, brain-fried wingnut, was once nominated to the Supreme Court.  To put this in perspective, Bork is nuttier than Ant-nee Scalia. Imagine a court that has both Scalia and Bork--and then try to sleep. Can't be done. Anyway, Biden led the movement that blocked Bork, and the Republicans then decided to go with someone not entirely crazy: Anthony Kennedy, swing vote who swung the right way.

A Rhine Nixie

For those who like _Tales of Hoffman_ or Rhine nixes (sirens) in general, here is a rocks-in-pockets, wade-into-the-river death poem: "Lorelei."


Lorelei
by Sylvia Plath

It is no night to drown in:
A full moon, river lapsing
Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,

The blue water-mists dropping
Scrim after scrim like fishnets
Though fishermen are sleeping,

The massive castle turrets
Doubling themselves in a glass
All stillness. Yet these shapes float

Up toward me, troubling the face
Of quiet. From the nadir
They rise, their limbs ponderous

With richness, hair heavier
Than sculptured marble. They sing
Of a world more full and clear

Than can be. Sisters, your song
Bears a burden too weighty
For the whorled ear’s listening

Here, in a well-steered country,
Under a balanced ruler.
Deranging by harmony

Beyond the mundane order,
Your voices lay siege. You lodge
On the pitched reefs of nightmare,

Promising sure harborage;
By day, descant from borders
Of hebetude, from the ledge

Also of high windows. Worse
Even than your maddening
Song, your silence. At the source

Of your ice-hearted calling –
Drunkenness of the great depths.
O river, I see drifting

Deep in your flux of silver
Those great goddesses of peace.
Stone, stone, ferry me down there.

Tubal Ligations

According to the Sacramento Bee, recent women prisoners in California have been talked into tubal ligations without getting the approvals that are required by law. (California has a shocking history when it comes to eugenics and to locking up annoying women who seem moody etc.)

"Doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates from 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals, the Center for Investigative Reporting has found. At least 148 women received tubal ligations in violation of prison rules during those five years – and there are perhaps 100 more dating back to the late 1990s, according to state documents and interviews."

Latinos and Whites

You get a category mistake when facts of one kind are presented as if they belong with another kind. For example, consider the following Associated Press opening sentence, which appeared in my newspaper this morning. "State demographers estimate that whites and Latinos are now an equal share of California's population, with Latinos poised to become a plurality by early next year." In one case demographers list people by the color of their skin; in the other, by their cultural background. Yet if we look around, many whites are Latinos. They are now about to outnumber themselves.
 
Of course, there are even more astonishing categories that state demographers might use to startle us in the future: women outnumber whites already, and people under 50 outnumber women.