life in the United States

Haiti was a Tragedy Already


And where were you? Certainly not glued to cable news or Tweeting/retweeting links to organizations looking for donations to aid the Haitians now that an earthquake has heaped insult on the misery of their lives.

In spite of his idiocy, the most soulless Rev. Pat Robertson, a great number of Americans will watch the drama du jour in Port-au-Prince via Fox News, or whatever channel their political ideology requires they watch, feel terrible. Because even if they are unemployed and technically squatting in their yet to be foreclosed homes, they have a sense of “there but for the grace of God, go I” and “at least I am being allowed to squat in comfort, because my bank is too afraid of economic collapse to evict me, and not living in a shanty shack on a mud hill”. Except for those things, they will be could be one of those poor wretches someday.

And they could. Remember Katrina? The Superdome? Thousands of soon to be abandoned strip malls have the names of the homeless of tomorrow written all over their walls.

So the privileged (like Will and Jada Smith who are bravely auctioning off some personal art) and the not so much anymore (who never owned art anyway)  will dig not too deep really or deeper than they probably should to send money via the growing number of aid efforts to line the pockets of the incredibly corrupt Haitian government, who might let a bit of this lottery booty trickle down á la Reaganomics to the crushed and dying in the mud-they-used-to-eat Haitian earthquake victims.

And I know how cynical I sound.

But Haiti was a hell-hole where people were so hungry they ate mud. The hills around Port-au-Prince were stripped to build shanty towns which promoted a topsoil erosion that literally has left a brown ring around the island that probably shows up on Google Earth. The government is corrupt and lest we forget, the Haitians are the ones piling into leaky boats and making the dangerous trek for the U.S. coastline back in the 90’s.

If there’d been no earthquake the other day, Haitians would be filling the empty tummies of their toddlers with mud today while Americans got fatter on fast food all the while totally oblivious to the Haitian plight.

And I am not against helping out a neighboring country in its time of need. We should do all that we can. My late father, for example, sent money every year to a Catholic church in Haiti and left instructions in his will for a final donation from his estate. Haitians deserved help before despite Pat Robertson’s misinformation about them having made a pact with the devil* and if they’d just embrace Christianity they could be as enslaved to tourism as their Dominican Republic neighbors.

I just find it sad, and telling, that we can ignore suffering that isn’t catastrophe based. Americans do love their drama. And a good disaster is better than watching the first rounds of American Idol, which I am assured are too boring to bother with.

This is sweeping generalization, of course. Like my father, there are people who care enough to help even when the in crowd isn’t paying attention.

*Which is Assembly of God-speak for being Catholic as 80% of Haitians are.

Let the Blacklisting Begin


I alternate between amusement and horror when I read about the state of the union known as the United States. The Orwellian vibes blending with Eisenhower era McCarthyism makes good Daily Show and Colbert Report fodder, but sometimes it’s too real to be funny.

Glenn Beck is case in point. Despite advertisers denouncing him in droves via removal of their money, Fox News refuses to pull the platform rug that is his op-ed show from their schedule. I only catch the YouTube clips here and there, but what he is doing looks like the creation of a blacklist based on a very narrow interpretation of what it means to be a loyal American. And when the POTUS is willing to sacrifice someone in his cabinet based on ramped up hysteria over non-issues created by a talking head of questionable intelligence and sanity, can Senate hearings on Un-Americanism be all that far behind?

Parents kept their children home to avoid having them listen to a educational pep talk by President Obama last Tuesday. You can read the speech here if you missed it. There was talk of brainwashing and socialism – which far too many adults in the U.S. believe is synonymous with communism thanks to the hysterical right wing constituency and their media shills. There were even teachers, which should scare people, protesting and calling in with “blue flu”.

And I have to ask, what is going on down there in the lower 48?

The economy bottoms naturally as a consequence of  years of excess and stupidity and without their credit cards to opiate themselves and meaningless jobs and shopping to distract them, people’s brains implode, leaving them vulnerable to media manipulated nonsense? If that is the case, then we are a soft, spineless generation who deserve to be scoffed at by our elders who endured world war and great economic depression among other things without becoming nearly as stupid as quickly. They managed to get over their bouts with political extremism, pull up ye olde boot straps and help themselves and their neighbors. We cower in front of Fox News and start scanning our suburbs for communists? We gather at town halls like a French mob, foaming at the mouth over government benefits for the disabled and sick and scream for the head of Obama’s Green Czar? Actual French people who protest on behalf of their own jobs and force their government to  serve them as they were elected to do must be falling down in fits of giggles watching us.

Things are not wonderful. I’ll agree with that. Times are hard and will likely become more difficult for a lot more people before things turn around, and it’s even possible that life will never return to the cushy heights that defined the middle-class American Dream. But blacklists? Really? Secession? Seriously? White supremacy? Suspect thy neighbor? Disrespect for the aged, the sick and the poor? Talking heads as arbiters of right and wrong?

Sure, it makes life easier for the Keith Olbermann’s and Glenn Beck’s of the world but shouldn’t we be allowed the facts without commentary? Just the facts, and let me decide what I think without left or right leaning taint because when Jon Stewart is the voice of common sense and reason where the media is concerned, we are in uncharted waters of scary, a place Christopher Columbus wouldn’t have sailed and he was greedy enough to have sailed just about anywhere regardless of the sea monsters drawn on the map.

When the President can’t give an innocuous beginning of the year pep talk to the youth of America without mama-drama, there is something far more wrong with the state of the union than high unemployment numbers and a disgruntled far right wing.

“And thus I clothe my naked villany
With odd old ends stol’n out of holy writ,
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”

King Richard III (I, iii, 336-338)

It’s time to start reading the news, reading widely – critically – and thinking for a change. Turn off the television. Step back out into the world. And use your brains rather than let them be co-opted by other people’s agendas.

Blacklists do not just happen to other people. Eventually it happens to everyone.

The Town Hall Idiot


Last week there was a viral campaign on Twitter and Facebook to raise awareness for Obama’s healthcare plan. People were asked to post the following in their status/update bars:

No one should die because they cannot afford health care and no one should go broke because they get sick. Agree? PLZ RT

And so I did and attracted the attention of my own personal town hall idiot in Atlanta, GA. How do I know he lives there? He sent me his address after he tweeted me with an absurd, reactionary diatribe.

twitter asshole 2

twitter asshole 1

I have been told by a friend who attended a town hall meeting in the Chicago area that protesters do indeed stand outside and yell “get a job” at those who support universal health care. She found their chanting absurd and beside the point. She has a good job with excellent benefits but she is not the norm. There are many employed people with no or inadequate and outrageously expensive health insurance and with unemployment on a tidal wave rise showing no signs of stopping the practice of tying health care to jobs is long past time for retirement.

The stalker told me to grow up and learn about responsibility. As if. But I am more and more certain that the U.S. should rethink why anyone would grant their claim to “greatest nation on earth” these days.