A Free Man

My Dad and I don’t agree on much politically. I’m a hard core socialist and my Dad, as a libertarian, is about as far away from me politically as you can get without coming back the other way. But despite being wrong on most things, he thinks things through thoroughly and is always civil in his opinions, unlike your underwhelming correspondent. My Dad sent me an e-mail today asking my opinion about Sarah Palin after the debate. I don’t think that he’ll mind that in the spirit of guest posts that I’ve been into here on A Free Man, I thought I would publish his mail and my response. First, my Dad’s thoughts in italics:

Looking for your unbiased and honest opinion if you saw any of the VP debate. Since I don’t have a dog in the fight and can’t vote anyway*, I can be objective. I am objective to the point that I dislike both McCain and Obama, so I’m happy I can’t vote - I’d have to go with none of the above on the ballot.

The media has been ripping Palin so much, I thought I would take the time to see her in action. I don’t quite understand why the media beats her up for inexperience but gives Obama a pass, but I guess that is their agenda.

So anyway, I watched the first part of the debate, and she won me over quickly. Down to earth, folksy and positive responses to the questions. Biden, on the other hand, like all lifetime “experienced” politicians, sidesteps the question and goes into ripping the competition. This is what I am used to - Democrat or Republican, doesn’t matter. Palin did not go too far down that road. I would like to think that she could set a trend for the future, but that is probably too much to hope for. And probably if she hangs around, she’ll end up like them.But it was a nice few minutes.
So anyway, I thought, well maybe it was just me. So at tennis today I dared to bring up politics - not usually a good mix,. Most of my comrades are Obama guys so I expected to hear pretty negative things. But amazingly, they to a man, were very much impressed by her and how she handled herself.

So, if you got a chance to see it, what did you think?

Well Dad, since you read my blog I suspect that you already know that my opinion of Sarah Palin is not a very good one. I did watch the debate, which was shown nearly live on Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV, the PBS equivalent. First of all, I think Joe Biden was fantastic in the last hour and that is unfortunately getting lost in the chattering about Palin. He was smart, quick witted and importantly acted as the terrier that I had hoped he would. He went after Palin a couple of times on absolute falsehoods spouted by her and the McCain campaign. In his finest moment, he challenged the whole Maverick® label that Palin and McCain have draped themselves in. After the sixth time she said “maverick” Biden, clearly peeved, went on a sharp riff, challenging the Republican candidates’ maverickness.

As for Palin, she definitely exceeded expectations and in her defense, presented herself much better than she had of late in interviews.  I’ll admit that I, like a lot of other people, watched in part to see the Palin Express completely come off the rails. But she formed complete sentences, had some coherent thoughts and above all, and as you pointed out, Dad, was thoroughly charming. She didn’t convince me that she knows what she’s talking about, particularly, because she flat-out refused to address the questions posed and stuck to her talking points.

But this is my problem with Sarah Palin: she’s all charm. As you say yourself, she’s down to earth and folksy. A lot of people perceive a connection with her.  She’s someone a lot of people would probably like to have a beer with. That’s great, but I don’t want to have a beer with my president, or vice-president. I don’t want my president to be someone I can relate to. I don’t want my president to be just like me. I want my president to be much smarter than me, I want my president to be much more competent than me, I want my president to be much better than me. I don’t think I could run the United States and I don’t think Sarah Palin could run the United States. We’ve had eight years of being led by a “regular guy”, a “folksy” speaker, a guy that people wanted to have a beer with. Dad, are we better off than we were eight years ago? I don’t think I could run the United States and I don’t think Sarah Palin could run the United States.

That’s my objective opinion. What do you guys think? Let’s hear your (civilized) opinions about Sarah Palin post-debate.

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* My Dad retains his Canadian citizenship despite living in the U.S. for over thirty years. Smart guy.

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Do you guys ever get the idea that you’re being ruled by a gang of not very bright, petulant children? One of the advantages of being an expatriated American is that I can typically watch the goings on back home with an air of detached bemusement. But sometimes devastatingly dumb decisions made stateside can spiral out and smack me about on the other side of the world. For example, when the Congress of Megalomaniac Brats fails to try and save the world’s biggest (not much longer) economy because one of them called some of them names. That’s why I still stay actively up to date with American politics. That’s why I sent my absentee ballot to the Volusia County Supervisor of Elections today.

Maybe now that I’ve voted I can ignore the rest of this train wreck of an election.

Yeah, probably not.

All this mess, Nathan’s comment the other day and this post by We Be Toys reminded me of the last uncontrollable force that I had to try and control. My Siberian Husky, Timmins, is now the very model of a well behaved pooch. Hold on, I’ve just got my tongue stuck here in my cheek. At any rate, he’s certainly an easier animal to deal with than when we were still living in the States. When he was a younger dog, Timmins was virtually impossible to keep contained. With a running start, the dog could clear a six foot fence with not too much trouble. He used to sit by the front door just waiting for a failure in vigilance and then bolt. Once loose, you got the dog back when he wanted to come back. No matter how accomplished a dog tackler you were, Timmins would leave you cursing in a cloud of dust.

Part of dog ownership for Dr. O’C and I was chasing our dog around the streets of Columbia, Missouri as he terrorized cats or whatever other small mammals he could find, chasing him around as he occasionally glanced back at his pursuers with a look of brazen disobedience. We never held a party in which part of the festivities didn’t involve some of the guests wandering around our neighborhood trying to catch our wayward dog. We tried everything to keep the damn dog in the yard and nothing worked.

Somewhere along the way, and I really don’t recall whose idea this was, it seemed like a good idea to try to electrify the fence around out backyard. “It seemed like a good idea at the time” was kind of a theme of the first thirty or so years of my life, so one spring afternoon I came home from work early with some contraband fencing and a few curiously willing work colleagues. We spent the remainder of the day drinking beer and wiring my backyard for electricity. For a house near the center of town, we had a remarkably big yard and so the details are pretty hazy but I do remember Nathan, who actually grew up on a farm, was particularly helpful. What I can’t remember for the life of me is who tested the fence. I do recall one of my work colleagues, who in hindsight I suspect of sadism, trying to convince me to force the dog onto the fence to show him what it was.

I couldn’t cope with watching my dog hit the fence for the first time, so I went inside and waited. I didn’t have to wait long for a shrieking yelp followed by a long, low mournful and angry cry. I hurried out the back and Timmins was in the exact center of the yard looking as if he had just come face to face with his maker. He didn’t move from the center of the yard for hours and that was only to come in to the house to go to bed.

Lest you feel too much sympathy for the dog or are inclined to judge me harshly, that fence only kept the dog in for about a month before he figured out how to avoid a shock and still escape.

I never hit that fence, so I couldn’t tell you what it felt like. Dr. O’C did, at least once, despite knowing it was there. She wasn’t the only one as various people, again at parties, would forget it was there and rub up against it to their surprise. There may have been a time or two that I neglected to tell people that we had an electric fence, just because they annoyed me.

To try and tie this meandering post together, I’d like to give you my best Sarah Palin impression:

Well Katie, to fix this economic crisis, such as, I would suggest putting all of the Congresses together in a pen with a, you know, electric fence and ok, I mean, obviously out there for God and everyone to judge. Then there will be reform, such as with mavericks and lipstick. And we’ll say thanks but no thanks to that bridge to nowhere. Katie. Obviously.  They’re not waiting to see what Barack Obama is going to do. Is he going to do this and see what way the political wind’s blowing? I’ll try to find an electric fence and I’ll bring it to you.

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This week is the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week, “the 27th annual celebration of the freedom to read. This freedom, not only to choose what we read, but also to select from a full array of possibilities.”

From the ALA, here is a list of the ten most challenged books of last year and the reason for the objection:

1. “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell 

Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group

2. “The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier

Reasons:  Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence

3. “Olive’s Ocean,” by Kevin Henkes

Reasons:  Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language

4. “The Golden Compass,” by Philip Pullman

Reasons:  Religious Viewpoint

5. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain

Reasons:  Racism

6. “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker

Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language,

7. “TTYL,” by Lauren Myracle

Reasons:  Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

8. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou

Reasons:  Sexually Explicit

9. “It’s Perfectly Normal,” by Robie Harris

Reasons:  Sex Education, Sexually Explicit

10. “The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky

Reasons:  Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

Here are some suggestions on how to support banned books week. I’m going to make sure and take some of these on board this week. I’m going to read one of these banned books, “The Golden Compass”, which I’ve just never gotten around to tackling. I’m going to read out to my son, so he’ll learn a love for the written word. And I’m going to speak out by posting about Banned Book Week and reposting a book banning post that I wrote a couple of weeks ago:

Just a warning in advance, I am in a bad mood today. Not in any kind of mood to mince words…

Strange Scottish Girl, who has a snazzy new site by the way, asked me the other day for a political post. I’ve not written one in a while, largely because the whole Sarah Palin nomination/ Republican circus has just depressed me. I’m depressed at the cynicism of the McCain campaign thinking that disaffected Clinton voters will flock to Palin just because of the number of X chromosomes that she bears. I’m depressed that the Republicans are falling back on extreme social conservativism to engorge their base. Again. I’m depressed that the oldest presidential candidate in history has selected a viciously pro-life, creationist, anti-science, book banning neo-fascist to be a malignant melanoma away from the reins of my homeland.

Mostly I’m depressed that it seems to be working. The most recent Real Clear Politics aggregate polls have McCain up three points on Obama, the first time he’s led since he became the presumptive Republican nominee back in the Spring. This isn’t because of McCain’s slightly histrionic and more than slightly disingenuous speech last week, it’s because of Palin.

I don’t even want to post about Palin, I just can’t drum up the words. She represents everything that I think is wrong with the Republican Party and American politics as it stands today. I was really pretty optimistic about things because it looked like things were changing - even the G.O.P. had weeded out the wing nuts and nominated a socially moderate candidate, but then Palin.

But this isn’t about Sarah Palin, it’s about book banning….

Read the rest of this post.

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When I was born, thirty-ahremeah years ago, there were about 3.7 billion people in the world. The most recent estimates place the population of this planet at 6.725 billion, which means that world’s population has nearly doubled in less than four decades. At our current growth rate we face an imminent Malthusian crisis. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but at some point we’re going to reach the tipping point at which there will not be enough agriculture to sustain the world’s population. Food prices are on the rise and This is one of the reasons that I chose to do a Ph.D. in the field and the place that I did. It turns out that, in the long run, I’m neither breeding nor genetically engineering better crops but it is a field which I still follow with some interest.

There has been a renaissance in plant biotechnology in the last quarter century, which has made it possible to increase crop yield, develop new strains with resistance to many diseases or to too much salt, heat, drought or soil toxins. A big part of this golden age has involved transgenic, or genetically modified (GM), crops. A GM plant is one that has had a foreign gene inserted into its genome. This usually results in an added or modified trait. For example, some of the most common GM plants have had a gene from a soil bacterium which produces a protein that is toxic to some herbivorous pests. When these pests feed on Bt crops they are killed without the addition of pesticide.
The use of transgenic or genetically modified (GM) crops has been a contentious issue around the world for the last couple of decades and made the news here in Australia earlier this month. The governing Labor Party in Western Australia banned the growth of GM crops in that state four years ago. However, in recent elections, Labor was ousted and a Liberal and National coalition have promised to rescind that ban. This follows lifting of bans on GM crops in New South Wales and Victoria earlier in the year. With a changing environment and mired in a seemingly endless drought, Australian wheat farmers are poised to reap the benefits of transgenic technology if drought resistant or salt tolerant varieties could be developed. In other news from earlier this month, China announced a $3.5 billion GM crops initiative  to help the world’s most populous nation catch up with the West in the race to patent new plant genes. The Chinese are beginning to place a priority on food security and see GM crops as the best way forward.

I’m in the minority of plant scientists in the sense that I’ve always been a little hesitant about the use of GM crops. I’m not an alarmist, nor would I support a ban of GM crops for human consumption as the European Union has instated. I believe that most GM crops are perfectly safe and that the technology does have potential to revolutionize agriculture. Hell, I’ve made transgenic plants myself, though none that are going to find their way to your dinner plate. (Unless you have a rather unusual palate.) I do, however, have some pretty serious concerns about regulation, environmental issues and intellectual property.

In terms of regulation, my concerns revolve around scrutiny of GM crops that make their way into the human food pool. GM crops have been approved for consumption in the U.S. since 1994 and there have been exactly zero reports of ill health effects. However, there are an increasing number of instances in which unapproved GM crops are finding their way to the supermarket. The inadvertent release of Starlink corn, a GM line approved only for animal feed,  into the human food supply in 2001 raised some fairly serious concerns regarding regulation and ones that have not been fully resolved. There were no reliable reports of health effects of any kind, despite concerns over potential allergic reaction. More recently, in 2006,  a GM variety of rice that had never been approved or marketed appeared in commercially available supplies in both the U.S. and Europe. It is still unclear how the GM line “got loose”. This is the crux of the problem, regulation of transgenic plants is spotty and inconsistent with different universities, research institutes and companies having wildly different regulations. American consumers in particular should be vigilant here as there is a combination of lots of GM acreage and regulatory agencies stripped of many of their powers after 8 years of the Bush Administration.

One of the benefits cited for the use of GM crops is the reduction of pesticides and fertilizers required for cultivation. For example, growing Bt crops can vastly reduce the amount of pesticide required. Some researchers are concerned, however, that there are also environmental costs of the use of transgenic crops. The most serious of these is potential transgene escape. Recent studies of transgenic sugar beet and canola have shown that cross-pollination of non-transgenic relatives of transgenic crops can occur and that the presence of the transgene can persist for at least six years. This becomes especially problematic when GM and non-GM crops are grown in close proximity and is the most likely explanation for the GM rice escape in 2006. Beyond transgene transfer, there is an issue of harmful effects of transgene products. One of the toxins expressed in Bt crops has been detected in the guts of predators of plant pests. For example, aphids that feed on Bt corn are themselves fed on by ladybugs. Researchers at the University of Kentucky have been able to detect low levels of Bt toxin in the latter. In a controversial study published in PNAS by researchers from the University of Wisconsin, it was claimed that corn byproducts enter streams and are subject to storage, consumption, and transport to downstream water bodies and result in reduced growth and increased mortality of nontarget stream insects. It is worth noting that the large-scale mono-crop agriculture that predominates in the West is environmentally disastrous anyway. Most researchers think that GM crops offer, if anything, a slight improvement on environmental effects.

The final issue that I have with GM crops is that I’m not sure that, as things stand now, they will solve world food supply issues. The vast majority of GM crops are owned by one of a handful of large biotech companies. Monsanto produces more than 90% of crops worldwide with Syngenta, Bayer Cropscience, Dow and Du Pont producing the remainder. It is of some concern that these companies will have too much control over world food productionor will force traditional farmers out of the market.  The biggest fears around world hunger are in developing countries where farmers generally can not afford to buy new seed stocks each season and rely on ‘recycling seed’. Most corporations aren’t in the business of giving their products away for free and thus legally obliagte farmers to buy new GM seed each year. There are instances of biotech companies aggressively protecting their intellectual property. Call me a cynic, I just doubt that the biotech companies that hold the patents for most of the useful GM crops are that interested in solving world poverty.

I know I’ve spent most of this post discussing some of the concerns surrounding transgenic crops, but at the bottom of everything I do think that GM crops could, in the words of Nina Fedoroff, be the source of a new Green Revolution. The Golden Rice story is a wonderful example of academic scientists working with biotech companies for humanitarian purposes. I just think that regulation, on a global scale, is absolutely key. Because we now live in a global economy and agricultural products are shipped around the world, there needs to be a global consensus on how to regulate GM crops. The biggest unresolved issue, and potential for trouble, surrounds inadvertant spreading of GM pollen to neighboring fields or wild relatives. Regulations need to be established to minimize this risk. Importantly, you can not force people to accept a technology with which they are uncomfortable. Just as now we have organic produce alternatives, as GM crops become more prevalent, there should be non-GM alternatives. This requires either labelling of GM products or non-GM products to allow consumers an opportunity to make an informed decision.

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Boy Z’s health troubles continue, I shan’t bore you with the details. Dr. O’C called our local GP for an appointment this evening. They didn’t have any openings, but suggested that we call for a home visit. I thought they were playing a remarkably unfunny practical joke on us. But an hour or so later a proper M.D. showed up at our door, efficiently diagnosed Boy Z with the croup and wrote us up a script for Prednisone. What did we pay for this, you ask? Zero dollars and a lower income tax rate than what we would be paying in the States. Just saying.

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Always closest to the flame
Ever closer to the blade
I am poison crazy lush
Built these hands to lift me up
We are servants to our formulaic ways

I am not an economist. John McCain and I share a stated lack of understanding about the economy. Hell, I’m not even that good with managing money. So, I’m really the last person in the world who should be writing about the current American economic crisis. But I’ve really gotten sucked in to this latest Bush mediated catastrophe, particularly into how it came to be. I’m not sure how the country is going to get out of it, but I’m pretty sure that letting new president Hank Paulson bully his way into unlimited power is not the best way out. Here’s hoping, for the sake of my friends and family still living in the People’s Republic of America, that our Congress finds a pair.

The reason that I feel qualified to declaim today is that you don’t really have to be an economist to figure out what happened in the States last week. You don’t even have to be particularly bright. President George Bush summed it up perfectly back in July when he exhibited a bit of uncharacteristic honesty and even more uncharacteristic accuracy saying, “Wall Street got drunk.” This is the first and hopefully last time you will see these words on my site: George Bush was right. “Wall Street” - the investment bankers, traders, speculators, Captains of Industry, Masters of the Universe  and their greedy ilk - were on a binge that they thought would never end. I imagine that there’s a few of us that can relate to that feeling, a party that we hope can go on forever, regardless of consequences, ignorant of the fact that we’re just drunken assholes staggering around in the cruel light of dawn.

In a way, the Wall Street revelers aren’t completely at fault. Someone continued to serve them as they staggered up to the bar, puking up dodgy mortgages and mumbling about liquidity. Someone was there providing the booze to keep the illusory party going. Someone failed to follow the unwritten rule that every good bartender knows - there’s a point at which some drinkers need to be cut off, for their own safety and the safety of others. The bigger failure in this crisis is the bartender’s.

The man behind the bar in this case was the federal government. After the last economic crisis similar to the scale of the one we’re in today, the one so great that we call it Great and study it in history, the Roosevelt Administration and Congress put a number of checks on the banking industry, a number of regulations to prevent a collapse such as the one in 1931. A lot of people didn’t like these regulations, considered them Socialism. But our well regulated financial system kept us in a state of prosperity for nearly 40 years. During these four decades, the hardcore capitalists where whining like petulant children about the undue hardship placed upon them by the government. Somewhere in the mid 70’s, our elected officials started to listening to these guys. And slowly, FDR’s legacy started to be chipped away. The crumbling started under the Carter administration, under pressure during the gas crisis in his administration. Reagan came in like a bulldozer, crushing banking regulations in his wake. Under a recession, Bush I was limited in his deregulation, but the last two presidents - Clinton and Bush - basically eliminated any controls that the Federal Government had over investment banks. Although the G.O.P. is in charge of this meltdown, it’s been a real bipartisan effort to get us here. All of these leaders had the misfortune of listening to the capitalist lie that the markets would regulate themselves, that everything would be OK if the government just got out of the way.

Now, if that sounds like madness to you then you are one of the sane people. Anyone with a modicum of insight knows that “The Market” is only interested in one thing - “The Market”.  Capitalism is at its very core, a purely selfish economic philosophy. It is all about a few folks that have a lot making a lot more  and everyone else, everyone in their way, be damned. It is about greed. The current problem revolves around mortgages. The credit market, not satisfied with its customer base and free of any restrictions decided to branch out and find some new suckers. Led by a few brave innovators, they began to offer credit to people who probably shouldn’t have them. Competition drives capitalism and soon the innovators were followed by all manner of lending agencies and the requirement for huge loans pretty much thrown out the window. After a while, surprise, some of these people couldn’t pay back their loans and the lenders suffered a real shortage of capital. Capitalism without capital equals a problem, panic ensued and here we are today with the Paulson administration ready to bail the lenders our of the drunk tank. What has failed in the U.S. this time, and in most of our previous economic crises, is capitalism itself. “The Market” failed to regulate itself. The government, stripped of its power, was ineffective to stop the few from screwing the rest of us. Ironically, and somewhat satisfyingly, the only apparent cure is socialism.

There is one group of people in this giant mess who are absolutely not at fault, despite what you may hear on Fox News and talk radio. The Cavutos, O’Reillys and Hannitys of the world are trying to place the blame on people who were offered and accepted these dodgy mortgages. These people took on mortgages and then watched their lives fall apart as the “variable rates” varied skyward and they could no longer afford the repayments. The right-wing jerkoffs would have you believe that these people intentionally went in to take advantage of their drunken mortgage lenders. That there was a conspiracy among “the poor” and “minorities” to bring down the American economy. This is clearly ridiculous; who would go in to buy a house with the knowledge that they would not be able to afford it and that the bank would come and take that away? Are there that many sadists about?

I know this to be true from personal experience. When still living in Oxford (yes, Britain has had the same problems and is suffering as well), Dr. O’C and I talked to a mortgage consultant about how much money we could potentially borrow if we were to buy a house. She quoted us an insane amount of money, several times more than our combined income. When we expressed surprise and mild concern, she turned on the hard sell and threw a lot of words at us - variable rates, interest only, incentivised risk - that we didn’t really understand. Now, Dr. O’C’s dream is to own her own house and I know that both of us were tempted to take this woman at her word and jump in to the financial deep end. I think that Dr. O’C and I are reasonably bright people, but we were nearly wooed by this brokers big talk of dreams fulfilled and money almost literally growing on trees. In the end, thankfully, we decided to wait. Thank goodness for that. I know for a fact that we would be one of the people on which the Retread Right is trying to, as a distraction, pin the blame.

I don’t know how this is going to turn out. I don’t know which presidential candidate would do a better job of sorting it out. Actually, I’m pretty sure that Obama would do a better job as he seems to have a better grip on what has gone wrong. McCain just seems to be reacting.  I don’t know if it’s going to get worse of if President Paulson’s bailout will sort it out. But I do know who is and who is not at fault. We can blame this on Wall Street greed, an incapacitated Government and Capitalism. Not at fault are people who were unwittingly sucked in to the whole mess and who now, apparently, are the only ones who aren’t going to be bailed out.

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I should point out that I don’t really care that much for Bush - they were kind of grunge posers - but this song just fit perfectly. But “Razorblade Suitcase” from .

 

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Hi y’all,

I’ve been throwing a few bombs your way lately, haven’t I? I got an e-mail from one you last night expressing disappointment with a throw-away line that I left in my “This I Believe” list. It was a joke, albeit a not very good one. One of the limitations with the written word is that it’s hard for the reader to see my wink, my tongue in my cheek. Short of using emoticons, something that I absolutely refuse to do, it’s pretty hard to get tone of voice accross. My initial reaction was to write back saying, “C’mon, it was a joke!”, but then, I realized that my tone has been pretty anti-religious of late. I’ve been gunning for you guys lately, pretty much since my Sarah Palin post (which wasn’t a Sarah Palin post). I’ve always said that I don’t have a problem with anyone’s religion as long as they keep it to themselves. Since the Palin appointment I’ve begun to realize that statement isn’t entirely true.

I’ve got a problem with the Catholic Church. This stems from their refusal to change their stance on birth control, the cover-up and protection of priests that abuse children and their sexist structure. This problem is so big that Z remains unchristened. Dr. O’C comes from an Irish Catholic family with all the baggage that goes along with that and even though she hasn’t set foot in mass in decades, refuses to let Z be christened in a Protestant church. I, because of my social-political problems with Rome refuse to let the boy be christened in a Catholic Church. We’re currently sitting at an impasse.

Most of all, I have a problem with Fundamentalist churches. I blame George Bush and the last 8 years of clusterfuck on the Fundamentalists. The Religious Right undeniably put Bush over the top in 2000 (well, actually it was the Supreme Court, but let’s leave that aside) and 2004. The G.O.P and its fundamentalist Christian allies made the political agenda about social issues in the last two presidential election and it worked to their benefit. The “Culture War” is a creation of some clever marketers and all that it’s doing is distracting from real problems - like an American economy that’s falling to bits and the two wars that people are dying in on a daily basis and the fact that Americans are spending far too much of their dwindling savings on health care. And they’re doing it again with this damned Palin thing. Sarah Palin is a creation of the Religious Right and it’s designed to get those “values voters” involved again and while the Left is fixated on her tanning bed, the banking system is collapsing. When I said that your God is a bit of a dick, I was talking to these marketing people, these leaders who are willing to watch the country fall apart if they can just keep gay people from getting married. Phew.

BUT, and this is the critical bit, I do not have a problem with individual people of faith. I have the great respect for people of faith. I am a person of faith, that was the whole point of the “This I Believe” exercise. One of the things that is great about blogging and one of the reasons that I’m slightly addicted to it is that you get to “meet” people that you wouldn’t under normal circumstances. Most of you are now not people that I know in real life and I doubt that I would have met most of you even disregarding the geographical challenges. We wouldn’t run in the same circles our paths wouldn’t cross. But having “met” and “talked to” a number of you over the past year or soI’ve come to realize that one’s religious affiliations don’t necessarily make them who they are. Just because you are a Catholic, or an Evangelical, or a Fundamentalist doesn’t make you the enemy. Just because we have massively different political agendas doesn’t make you wrong. Just because we disagree about evolution or vaccines or Barack Obama. In fact one of the things I find most gratifying about this blog is when there is an active, yet civilized, debate in the comment stream. At the bottom of everything we’ve got the same goals - a good life for ourselves and those we love - and the differences in the paths we choose are what make life interesting.

I’m going to scale back the religious rhetoric here on A Free Man. I respect you guys too much to keep breathing vitriol, in jest or not. Here’s a gratuitous baby photo as a peace offering.

Your friend,

Chris

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* The offending remark is gone because I didn’t like it that much to begin with. The e-mailer will remain anonymous. It’s not who you think. You won’t guess and I wouldn’t tell you if you did. Move on, nothing to see here.

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Just a warning in advance, I am in a bad mood today. Not in any kind of mood to mince words…

Strange Scottish Girl, who has a snazzy new site by the way, asked me the other day for a political post. I’ve not written one in a while, largely because the whole Sarah Palin nomination/ Republican circus has just depressed me. I’m depressed at the cynicism of the McCain campaign thinking that disaffected Clinton voters will flock to Palin just because of the number of X chromosomes that she bears. I’m depressed that the Republicans are falling back on extreme social conservativism to engorge their base. Again. I’m depressed that the oldest presidential candidate in history has selected a viciously pro-life, creationist, anti-science, book banning neo-fascist to be a malignant melanoma away from the reins of my homeland.

Mostly I’m depressed that it seems to be working. The most recent Real Clear Politics aggregate polls have McCain up three points on Obama, the first time he’s led since he became the presumptive Republican nominee back in the Spring. This isn’t because of McCain’s slightly histrionic and more than slightly disingenuous speech last week, it’s because of Palin.

I don’t even want to post about Palin, I just can’t drum up the words. She represents everything that I think is wrong with the Republican Party and American politics as it stands today. I was really pretty optimistic about things because it looked like things were changing - even the G.O.P. had weeded out the wing nuts and nominated a socially moderate candidate, but then Palin.

But this isn’t about Sarah Palin, it’s about book banning. Sarah Palin likes the idea of banning books by most accounts. Sarah Palin asked the librarian in the town she ran how she would feel if Palin asked her to remove some books from the local library. The librarian said she would never do anything of the sort. The librarian was “asked to resign” a few days later. The McCain campaign has tried to quiet this story by saying that Palin’s request was speculative and that the librarian wasn’t fired because she said no to Palin, but for other reasons. Whatever.

I know book banners and I know what they look like and sound like. I grew up in a small town on the steaming pine flats of north Florida. This particular town was famous for two things. One, Ted Bundy killed his last victim there. Two, they banned Chaucer from the schools. When I was a Freshman in High School, my county school board banned a humanities text book that contained excerpts from Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” and Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”. That’s right, 5^th century B.C. Greek drama and 13^th century English frame tales were too dirty for our developing minds. A local preacher’s wife was helping her daughter with her homework one day and came across the mere mention of the existence of sex in Lysistrata and the “The Miller’s Tale” – a farcical story in verse that includes medieval fart jokes – and went all histrionic. She got her husband on to the case, who used his own little bully pulpit to get a rise out of his Southern Baptist congregation. As these things do in small towns, in a matter of weeks there was fury from the community about their precious innocents being forced to read such smut. Smut that 99% of them hadn’t bothered to read. Smut that the vast majority of them couldn’t pronounce, never mind spell.

The irony, of course, is that in the late 80’s most of these delicate flowers were having more sex than Aristophanes could ever conceive of and the jokes I heard in the halls of my school would have caused Chaucer to blush. But logic and reality tend to be irrelevant when a community is stricken with a righteous fury and the school board, with a cowardly unanimous vote, caved under the pressure and banned both the humanities book and the original text.

At the time, I didn’t know Greek comedy from situation comedy and  I didn’t know that Chaucer was the father of English literature and laid the path for seven centuries of words to come. I was 15 and had bigger issues to deal with and I just didn’t really care about the ban.  I was young and still labored under the illusion that elected officials knew best and had my best interests at heart. I’ve always been a little bit ashamed that I wasn’t angry at the time, that I didn’t get angry until I went away to college and read “Lysistrata” and “The Canterbury Tales”. It was at that point that I realized what had been done to me by the preachers and the school board.

I have no problem with anyone’s religious beliefs, none whatsoever. Largely because what  anyone else believes is absolutely none of my business. If you don’t want to watch a movie or read a book or listen to a song because it flies in the face of your religious beliefs, that’s fine. If you don’t want your child to read a book or listen to a song because it flies in the face of your religious beliefs, that’s fine, though you probably ultimately do your child a disservice. Nonetheless, none of my business. But the Christianists that banned Chaucer and Aristophanes went a step too far, they didn’t want anyone to read, watch or listen to something that offended their faith. This is where I have a problem. This is where your religion offends me. This is where your beliefs tread on not only my beliefs, but my freedom to practice them. This is where it becomes my business.

I learned that in my first year of a private Christian college in South Carolina. I learned that I should be angry about what had been done in my hometown. I learned about book banning. It didn’t just happen in that small town in north Florida. It had happened throughout history when zealots with a modicum of power and more than their fair share of influence convinced an ill informed population that a book threatened their morality. And I got angry. And I wrote an essay for a literature class about book banning and book banners. My professor encouraged me to send that essay to my local newspaper and they published it as a guest editorial.

My small salvo in the war against book banning got me my first job as a writer. The surprisingly progressive publisher of our local paper gave me a summer job as an intern reporter. I spent two summers reporting on the local politicians . It was during those two summers that I became a liberal, that I began to question authority, that I learned the dirty truth about small town politics. During those two summers I got to know Sarah Palin. I got to know small minded people that are so convinced that their personal morality is right that they are willing to force it on everyone else by any means necessary. I learned that if people wouldn’t listen and change, the Sarah Palins of the world will litigate their world view. There are lots of Sarah Palins on school boards and county commissions and, yes, in mayors offices in small towns around the country, particularly in the South. I know her, I’ve worked for her and I’ve worked against her and I have had enough of her.

Now most of the time, these people don’t get far in politics. But every now and again one of them is clever enough, glib enough or charismatic enough to climn the political ladder. Sometimes they get elected to the State legislature, sometimes they might be elected to the House of Representatives. Occasionally one of them becomes governor or even a Senator. Increasingly, these small-minded proto fascists are making a dent on the national stage. Recently they’ve made their way on to the U.S. Supreme Court and into the White House itself.

I had high hopes that this year was going to be different. But then came Sarah Palin, with her snide, sarcastic speech and her fundamentalist agenda and I realized that it was just the same old shit from the G.O.P. So, I don’t want to hear from Sarah Palin. I don’t want to be polite about this election anymore. I don’t want to try and balance the two parties and try to be fair. I’m angry and I’m tired of these people and I want them to go away. I want their mandate taken away.   I want them beaten and beaten soundly. Am I a member of the “Angry Left”? You’re damn right I am.

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Wow. I haven’t seen Obama deliver a full speech since the 2004 Convention and am glad that I took the time in the middle of the working day to watch MSNBC’s coverage of this one. How anyone could have watched this speech and not want this man to be our president is beyond me.

Here are some of my highlights:

“It’s a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have the obligation to treat each other with dignity and respect.”

“Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education, because it will take nothing less to compete in the global economy. Michelle and I are only here tonight because we were given a chance at an education. And I will not settle for an America where some kids don’t have that chance.”

“Individual responsibility and mutual responsibility – that’s the essence of America’s promise.”

“We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don’t tell me that Democrats won’t defend this country. Don’t tell me that Democrats won’t keep us safe. The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans — Democrats and Republicans – have built, and we are here to restore that legacy.”

“But I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the nay-sayers don’t understand is that this election has never been about me. It’s been about you.”

“That promise is our greatest inheritance. It’s a promise I make to my daughters when I tuck them in at night, and a promise that you make to yours – a promise that has led immigrants to cross oceans and pioneers to travel west; a promise that led workers to picket lines, and women to reach for the ballot.”

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Well, I just got my e-mail from Barack*, we’re apparently on a first name basis, four hours after the story broke in the media. I’m thrilled to see Joe Biden join the ticket, absolutely thrilled. I know that he brings a bit of baggage with him and that, with 3o some odd years in the Senate, he dampens the Change® message. But Biden’s a terrier and right now Obama needs a terrier.

Because something is not going according to plan in the Obama campaign.  In the most recent generic polls, in which respondents are asked whether they would vote for a Republican or Democrat for President, the Democrat leads by 10. In the most recent daily tracking polls, Obama leads McCain by no more than three points. This is a discrepancy that’s been troubling me since Obama secured the nomination. The Democratic nominee has led McCain by as much as 7 points, but tends to hover around 45%. McCain is creeping up and in some recent daily tracking polls has surpassed Obama.

I know that polls in the summertime are about as reliable as British weather forecasting, but something doesn’t add up. Admittedly, up until the end of last week, McCain had been bashing Obama around quite a lot without much response. Obama spent a week on vacation, completely yielding the stage to McCain. Maybe that’s why McCain is catching up a bit, but what I find more disturbing is that if the election were held today, a generic Democrat wins by ten and the specific Democrat ties at best. I’m not the only one to wonder that, the pundits have been mashing numbers and waving hands and have come up with all sorts of ‘gaps’:

• The gender gap - stubborn Clintonistas that haven’t come into the party fold. In other words, they would vote for a generic Democrat if that Democrat was specifically Hillary Clinton.**
• The experience gap - McCain’s decades of public service, makes him stronger than the generic Republican. Similarly, Obama’s less than a decade in national office makes him weaker.
• The foreign policy gap - with uncertainty in the Caucuses and Middle East, voters are flocking to military man McCain. Because, you know, foreign policy equals war.
• The attack gap - McCain’s campaign is charging forward, arrows flying like a mob of Hun horsemen. They’ve tried every possible avenue of attack and have found a few that hurt.

All of these probably have something to do with the differences in these polls. But, increasingly, I’m beginning to fear that the real gap is a darker and unsurmountable one. I’m beginning to think that the gap that is hurting Obama is the skin color gap.  Consistently, in polls, a huge majority of Americans (76% in the most recent) say that the country is ready for a black president (or a woman for that matter). That’s both predictable and suspicious. For one thing, the phrasing of the question is tricky. Pollsters are not asking the respondents if they are ready for a black president. Only the most blatant of racists would admit, to a stranger, over the phone that they were unwilling to put a black man in the White House. But, occasionally in this election cycle, hard numbers have belied these whitewashed polls. The discrepancy between the polls in the New Hampshire primary and the results, for example, has been attributed to the so called “Bradley Effect” by a number of pundits. More disturbing and less contentious, however, are the results in West Virginia exit polls, in which 22% of respondents said race was important in their decision between Clinton and Obama. Of those 22%, 82% voted for Clinton. If 22% admitted to being driven by race, how many felt the same way but didn’t admit it?

And the answer to that question is what I’m worried about. Has Obama reached a glass ceiling of his own? When I first heard Obama, at the 2004 Democratic conveniention, I was blown away by his oratory. At that time, I thought that Obama was a rising star in the party but that his race, and more particularly, his name would keep him out of the oval office. I’ve been surprised and thrilled to see him get to the spot he is today - just days away from accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination. It’s been an amazing year in American politics and one that makes me proud of my country. But what if I was right in 2004, what if Obama can’t get past that 45% number. What if there is a enough of a minority of Americans to turn an election who are still so riddled with bigotry that they can’t fathom the idea of a black man in the White House.

I realize that there are scores of reasons that a person wouldn’t vote for Obama that have nothing to do with race. If you’re a Republican and have reasoned policy differences with the Illinois senator, then I have no problem with you. If Obama is a bit too conservative for your taste, I respect that and Nader is running again this year. If you really believe that Obama doesn’t have ample experience for the job, despite the fact that many that have come before him had even less, then fair enough.

If you’re not voting for Obama because his middle name is Hussein, or because he lived in Indonesia then I have a big problem with you. If you won’t vote for Obama because “you can’t relate with him culturally” or because of the church that he went to, then I have a big problem with you. When it becomes, at any level, about the color of Barack Obama’s skin, then you are not making an intelligent, well informed decision. You’re making a decision based on hatred. If you’re one of those 22% of West Virginians, you made a bigoted decision. More importantly, if you, even deep down, agree with them, you are a racist.

Similarly, I don’t think that voting for Obama solely because of his race is legitimate. Again the problem, the fear, the anxiety that is with me is the difference between the number of people who would like to see a Democrat in the White House and the number of people that would like to see this Democrat in the White House.

America is at such a thrilling place historically. We’re primed to finally resolve over two hundred years of slavery, segregation, lynchings, Jim Crow, and racial hatred. We’re at the doorstep of a colorblind society. And I hope that I’m wrong about this. I hope that the fickle summertime polls bear no relation to reality and that the number of people that refuse to vote for Obama because of his skin color are restricted to a few stubborn Klaverns and 22% of West Virginia. Because the election of Barack Obama could be a turning point in American history - like the rise of JFK in 1960 and the Reagan revolution in 1980, but moreso.

The last two presidential elections have not gone the way I had hoped. In 2000, I was confused after the presidential election results finally came in. In 2004 I was angry. 2008 can still go either way. If Obama becomes that generic Democrat, I’ll be able to walk around my adopted foreign home with pride in my country again - a pride that’s been hard to drum up in the last eight years. If Obama has indeed hit that glass ceiling, if he does come in around 45% and loses to McCain, I’ll just feel very, very sad and a little bit ashamed.

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*Started writing this on Sunday morning, but free time is at a premium these days. Daily tracking polls remain about the same as then.

** For those of you saying to yourself, “See, I told you Obama couldn’t get elected”, I firmly believe that Clinton would be having the same problem with a subset of voters that couldn’t handle a woman in the Oval Office.

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