Dear Jon Stewart

Dear Jon Stewart,

I’ve had to think a long time about my reaction to your Rally to Restore Sanity back on Oct. 30. Don’t be bothered by the long pause; I’m a slow thinker. I hadn’t really been able to sort through my feelings over it, because I knew I was disappointed, but didn’t WANT to have been disappointed. This rally had so many people counting on it, me with them, maybe more than most. When you announced the Rally, my first reaction was, “When and where? I’m there.” I had a lot of faith that this was going to be the defining moment of my generation. We had the primary satirist in the country telling us about ourselves straight up, and we needed to hear ALL about ourselves. You could feel the hunger for direction. My guess is that you knew how keenly disappointed America has been for the last year or so. Like Michael J. Fox said in “The American President,” we’ll cross the desert looking for leadership, and if we don’t find it, we’ll drink the sand. Here’s where we come to the problem.

Mr. Stewart, you raised our hopes without a plan for how to fulfill them. Perhaps you didn’t realize it, much less expect it, but for the people who miss a sane America, you became our stand-in for Obama. When we elected him, we thought we were getting Teddy Roosevelt. Instead, we got Stuart Smalley. The surge of hope we felt when you announced that we were all going to take a stand for sanity was the last scraps we had after watching a Dem majority go soft and squishy, un-led by our new President. Yeah, he got things done, but he didn’t lead, he didn’t challenge his critics, and because of his Hamletphilia, he left a power vacuum that the GOP stepped into. We were losing hope, and you reminded us what we loved about our country, our votes, and that election. So expectations were pretty high.

I’m cutting to the chase. What we got was a one and a half hour Daily Show/Colbert mash-up with a 25-minute plea for sanity. I don’t know what others expected, but me, I expected a little more direction…and a lot more seriousness. I dunno, being summoned en masse to the heart of our nation to rally for the sanity and unity of our country demanded a little more than skits, music, and Mythbusters. It demanded direction, not a reinforcement that we all were really hip and creative. I expected something tangible, something intrinsically valuable, with laughs thrown in.

You ARE comedians, after all. I expected comedy. But you don’t drag a quarter-million people from all parts of this nation together unless you can deliver more than a show. This wasn’t just a road version of your everyday comedy. We expected fun, but we expected substance. What we got was a big rally that celebrated us for being at a rally. We congratulated ourselves for being so devoted that we would travel across the country to prove it. That was the extent of it. We accomplished nothing.

What took me this long to want to write this, though, was the little gnawing bit I couldn’t put my finger on. We heard the message just fine, criticizing the media for dividing us, and so on. Yeah. But here’s this: Mr. Stewart, you and Mr. Colbert are part of the problem.

It has nothing to do with the direction of your politics. Your fans know you’ll go after Dems just as much as the GOP. (The GOP just happens to provide you with more material.) It’s the polarizing nature of satire. What you do, the satire you make, hitting the media 4 nights a week and approximately every other hour on Comedy Central, allows the side not being skewered to feel vindicated. It’s meant to create sharp emotions, as satire always has. But you can’t be satirical without being divisive. Satire hits extremes, else it’s not good satire, and seeing your sacred cows gored creates resentment. Unless you’re perceived as fair to all sides, you’re going to fail, and the positions you’ve taken on the show are contrary to conservatives. You make fun of conservative people, roles, stereotypes, politics, and so on. No matter what you say about the media or the left, you are the guy who goes after conservatives. Want to know why?

Because you don’t make fun of liberals in the way conservatives want.

They don’t want to hear the jokes that make liberals laugh at themselves, so they don’t. They want to hear about why liberals are the enemy. I think that goes both ways. I don’t think liberals are necessarily interested in what conservatives think makes them funny. And in this polarized climate, the perception is what counts. You’re liberal because even your self-deprecation is liberal. You’re the enemy.

So right now, you’re contributing to the problem. And by coming on at the time the divisiveness was starting to grow, and by taking on the establishment, you earned yourself their enmity almost immediately. Not all the pious kumbaya-spoofing self-referential ironic humor in the world makes up for helping maintain the divide. You might have had a chance with the rally, you might have gotten something started, but like this Administration, there was almost no substance underneath. It was hollow, it was presumptuous, and really, Mr. Stewart, you set us up for disappointment. We didn’t come together for just a laugh, you and me and a quarter-million people. You know that speech at the end? We needed an hour of that. Or maybe we needed a whole weekend of the whole thing. We came to belong; we needed to be challenged. Instead, we got a benediction and thank-you-for-coming.

Why did we do this? What did we accomplish? So what?

RED ALERT!

Okay, fellow babies, here’s the long and short of it: this is the most important election in our history. Not 2012. Now. Listen:

The Citizens United decision recently gave corporations the ability to spend unlimited amounts on campaigns, and groups no longer have to disclose donors. Already they are funneling at least three times as many dollars into these campaigns, almost all for Republicans. Corporations are now baldly buying candidates. This is the last moment before the corporate takeover of America. Who do you think is going to vote for campaign reform? Republicans? After they just had their election bought for them? Three billionaires have pumped most of the money into this election cycle, and a lot of that has gone to fund Tea Party operations, whether Tea Partiers believe that or not.

Now, where do you think the Tea Party is going to be in all this? Do you think you’re really going to be power players? Do you really think your “citizen’s uprising” is going to be the first step to dismantling government? Dream on. Once the Republicans have a majority, they’ll freeze you out quicker than a spurned lover. Because…where are you gonna go? Who else are you going to caucus with? Democrats? So once the GOP has the majority, you can kiss campaign finance reform and the “citizen’s uprising” goodbye…and welcome to the oligarchy.

Get this party started

IIIIII’m comin’ out, so you better get this party started…

I suppose this is one of those things where you wonder, “Okay, now what?” I’m not even how to address the situation. On the one hand, I am definitely a drama queen, and I think everyone who knows me knows that. But on the other hand, I have no idea how many who know me have ever wondered if I am gay. Technically I’m bisexual; I just don’t like the focus on “sex” as an identifier. I’m going to go with “two-spirited,” because that describes where I am best. It’s not just a matter of preferring one or the other, or being open to both; it’s that there are some things I like about men, some things I like about women, and a great big muddle in the middle of the Venn globes where these things blend.

I’m like that, too. Some things about me are fairly feminine--like being a good listener, or being nurturing, or being in touch with my feelings, about not liking to see people get hurt. Underneath a lot of it, I’m gentle. But there’s also the part everyone sees, with sarcastic humor, sloppy upkeep, a good amount of gruffness, and (developing late in life) a linear, no-frills, no-bullshit perception of issues. Somewhere along the line I decided to be more male than female, since my feminine side has gotten my ass kicked in many ways most of my life. Now that I’m in a much better emotional place, I’m going to start letting that feminine side flourish more. It’s weird being two-spirited, you know. I like power tools, and I cry at movies. I like cuddling, and I watch football. I’ve been trying to reconcile this all my life.

For years, and this is the biggest obstacle I had to coming out, I struggled with the idea that I had to be one or the other. Something that still sticks in my mind was reading an interview with a British celebrity who denounced bisexuality in no uncertain terms, saying you had to choose--you couldn’t be a little bit pregnant, was the analogy he used. I heard that a few times. Society doesn’t like you to inhabit the gray areas, either. They want you to fit in easily referable labels. That’s not an American thing, but a human thing, and everyone does it. People like mental shorthand, which is what labels are, because their heads are already full of problems and trying to figure a new one out is annoying. So I understand that. It’s just that when I grew up, bisexuality was seen as indecisiveness, or guilt, or any number of other things that are wrong with you…the one thing it never, ever was is “healthy.” Even among people who considered being gay normal, being bi is suspect. There’s something WRONG with you! Choose a label and stick with it!

So for all my years growing up, I was terrified. I tried desperately to make myself one or the other. All I wanted was to be settled, to be identified. I hated being confused, and believe me, I was one confused puppy. I can’t count the number of crushes I had on boys growing up, but I had more crushes on girls. There was an imbalance, so I figured the gay side of me was just…wrong. I thought that I had to have started with one and begun to change to the other, and I couldn't decide which was the "real" me. It’s been over forty years and I still struggle with it. But a thought occurred to me the other day, while I was thinking over when (if ever) I would come out, and all the fear I feel about my gay side, and memories of desperate yearning to be mainstream. It was simple, because I was thinking deeply on how I respond to men and how I respond to women. The underlying emotion about men, though, was fear. Tons and tons of fear. But I know that fear is what has been hammered into me since I was a child, and it doesn’t reflect what’s in me. It’s what’s been constructed around me. I know now I was born to be both. It's just me. So I thought: Why can’t I be as enthusiastic about men as I am about women?

I love women. I love all kinds of women, feminine or glamorous or nerdy or tomboyish. My tastes are pretty wide. Now, my tastes in men are much narrower, but I’ve never been happy about it. I’ve never felt free enough to say in public, “Wow, look at HIM!” the way I might about a woman. Fear of being revealed made me hate that part of myself. But I do have friends who’ve known about me, and the beautiful relief and freedom at being able to be open to them tantalized me. Just a couple of weeks ago I visited a friend for the first time, and though the subject had never come up in any way, I felt so free with her that I tossed in a couple of catty comments about men we talked about that I thought were cute. I like that energy. I missed out on it growing up. I would have loved to have sat up nights with a friend, painting our toenails and talking about boys. But this was Indiana and Michigan we’re talking about, not exactly liberal hotspots. Being out was like signing a death warrant.

Not that that mattered. When I was young, I was not effeminate, but I got bullied. A lot of what I got was savage homophobic language. Thinking of it makes me cringe now. It was pretty bad. I’m surprised I survived, as are a lot of gay people who dealt with the hostility of society. Making it through really was a miracle. Those of you who’ve known me for many years, I want you to think about this. How many times, in my presence, did you make fag jokes? How many times did you use the word, “faggot,” or “queer,” or “nancy boy,” or “pantywaist,” or “sissy,” and never know that you were talking about me? How many times did you cut down gays, insult gay people, put gays into nasty categories, and say ignorant things, not knowing you were talking about me to my face? How many times did you argue that I don’t have the same fundamental human right to marry who I want? How many times do you think I died when I heard someone I loved and cared about rip to shreds something that was essential to me?

There’s prejudice on the other side, too. I’ve heard of bisexuals called straddlers, indecisive, dilettantes, posers, fakers, dabblers, and the like. I’ve had it said to my face, and it’s come from gay men and women. I’ve seen the bigotry among people who should know better than to look down on others. I understand it, though, because I’ve known the anger that comes with having been put down all your life and looking for an outlet for it. That doesn’t excuse it, though, no more than it did me when I looked for outlets for my inner anger, either. But it hurts almost as much as knowing your family hates people like you when the people who are supposed to be your community don’t like you much, either. It’s very tough being alone when all you want is to belong.

So I had my moment of clarity. As soon as I thought, “Why can’t I be as happy about being gay as I am about being straight?” I knew I was coming out. Now I understand the “pride” business more than I did before. It’s more than being proud of who you are. It’s accepting yourself and casting away society’s bigotry. It’s making emotional choices for yourself, not letting the history of outside hatred shove you into a corner and make you sorry for existing. It’s saying, “I ENJOY this part of myself! I can have FUN with this! This can actually bring me some happiness, and I can feel free!” Why can’t I be as free about being gay as I am about being straight? That did it for me. Finally, this voyager found a path that leads to stating who I am and that I am going to live and enjoy my life, and for anyone who wants to hate me for it, I’m sorry you’ll be deprived of what I can bring to your day.

So the closet is behind me. I don’t know if this is brave, but it’s certainly essential. Now, expect me to be a drama queen about this for quite some time. I know it’s coming, and it’s fair to warn you. I’ll probably go overboard with freedom, too, and it will probably make you uncomfortable. Sorry about that. I’ll try not to be too militant about it, but if you tell a foul gay joke in my presence, expect to get hammered. It’s like the N-word. If you’re an insider, you get to use it and joke about it, and if you know me well enough and are okay with me being two-spirited, so can you. But no fag jokes.

Other than this, I’m not going to try to make too big a deal of it. Some people have coming-out galas. (That’s where “coming out” comes from; it doesn’t mean coming out of the closet, it means coming out to society, like a debutante. The term originated in the early 20th century among the very lively gay societies in urban America, according to Wikipedia.) I think it’s fun that I came to this decision a mere 5 days before Coming Out Day. I’m not sure what the repercussions (“blowback,” ahuhuhuh) will be. I just know I owe it to myself to enjoy this part of my life as much as I can.


(I waited until today to post this. Surprise!)

You kids get off my lawn!

Matt Taibbi, in his latest Rolling Stone article on the Tea Party, makes a poignant observation. Paraphrasing, he said that in the Tea Party there is such a yearning for a simpler, more honest time that is forever lost that it almost breaks the heart. Someone, in a private correspondence, said that what we’re seeing is the last throes of white male dominance in this country. Times, they are a-changing.

Put into that perspective, it’s easy to understand. I’m old eniough to start yearning for the simpler, more honest days...in which the old generation used to yearn for the simpler, more honest days....in which THAT old generation used to yearn for the simpler, more honest days. It’s part of the cultural fabric now, seeing change rushing toward us like an oncoming train and wishing for our childhoods, when truths were clearer and people were less harsh and more of a community.

Not all the wishing and protesting in the world is going to bring it back, though. Not unless we face some sort of Mad Max technology-destroying apocalypse, that is. We’ve entered a world we’ve made without the vision of the consequences--isn’t that the way it always is? We celebrated the ubiquity of cars way back when, but smog and global warming wasn’t a concern. We love labor-saving machines but regret the lost employment. We like our cheap goods but pay lip service to regretting the poverty in which we place workers. We love the internet but complain about how isolated we’ve become.

Like most old cranks, I don’t like where we’re going. The ages-long era of privacy is over. We never predicted that when information technology got to this point that it would bite us in the ass. We didn’t see that when all the world’s information was at our fingertips, our personal and private information would be there too. Just as, when little bitty cameras were invented, we never predicted that our every move could be recorded and put on the web for all to see.

I saw this morning where a college student killed himself because his roommate set up a webcam in their dorm room and caught him having sex with another man, then broadcast it on the internet. Then I read--this same day--that many apps in the Google Android app store collect your information and sell it to others. Sure, they tell you they will in the 30-page license agreements for the software, but who has the patience and expertise in legalese to plow through all the garbage they put up to purposely drive you away from learning their purposes?

We are starting to shrug now. Loss of privacy is just another price we pay for constant connectivity. We’re finding out that we can live with everyone knowing what we do. What would be nice is if this had a positive effect, like turning everyone tolerant of the common activities they now think are deviant (i.e. gay). What is more likely is, as our culture becomes angrier, hastier, and more prone to attack pre-emptively, this knowledge will turn into bludgeons. The generation enraged over the rise of a black man to the Presidency is teaching the younger generation that rage is the path to coercion and dominance. We’re teaching the next generation that hate is the answer.

I wish for the wistful days when kids could play outside forever and we didn’t worry about strangers; for the days when communities held pot lucks; for the days when you could sit outside without listening to people scream at each other, and for the days when you could leave your door open during the day and not worry about random intruders. But raging against your own common good is not the answer. Screaming that the world isn’t the way it used to be isn’t going to accomplish anything positive. The answer is to fix the current model, not trade it in for an Edsel. Trying to force a 19th-century decentralizing political system onto a 21st-century technological giant is a recipe for the death of a country.

GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY!

I'm sure that if you're a lefty, you've demanded that the rich pay higher taxes than the middle class. If you've tried to get that past a libertarian, they probably have countered with arguments about equality and fairness that mask the true issue (they want to be as rich as possible, even if only vicariously through their heroes). Somehow, you knew there was an argument against that. You knew you had the moral upper ground, but perhaps were stymied by the arguments about generating jobs, keeping what they rightfully earn, and such. Perhaps you found yourself caught between wanting to be a good lefty and trying to be understanding of the capitalist ideal, and you couldn't find your argument. Here it is.

There are no figures or citations in this because, if challenged, I can find them; and chances are, the righties would pull out some industry-funded astroturfed study from a no-name university that supports everything they say. So let's just stick with the plain, moral facts: American-style capitalism is in the process of destroying this country, and it is morally right for us to expect them to pay the tab for their decades of misdeeds.

Look. Things were bad in the 70s, and we were losing out to overseas cars, overseas steel, and other products. The Japanese were undercutting us. Our companies here had never had to worry about efficiency before, and it was a concept that rocked them to their core. While paying lip service to the idea of adopting Japanese ideas and efficiency to make our home-grown companies competitive, they attacked employees. They slashed benefits, slashed wages, slashed employees, and finally, when American workers refused to work for less money than it takes to live on in America, the manufacturers up and left. Little by little, at first, they picked up their companies and moved to places like Mexico. Then they discovered just how profitable it was to manufacture in the Third World, so they started building plants in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, and American Saipan, among others. They paid wages that wouldn't buy you a hamburger in this country, then charged Americans higher prices for the privilege.

So far, you're agreeing that happened, but you're wondering why this is a moral, and not a business, issue. Here's the deal. Those companies had social contracts. What? I hear you cry. A social contract isn't legally binding! Well, yes it is. As many a tort has shown us, a non-verbal contract can be just as binding as a signed contract. And here's the contract: the companies agreed, when they built their plants, that they would support entire communities, and the communities, in turn, agreed to provide all the necessities that made a company viable in America. The community agreed to provide a workforce that was able, willing, and ready to work; they would provide safe neighborhoods for the company to operate in; they would provide streets, lighting, sanitation, police, firehouses, and cleanliness. The community would also provide all the local ancillary needs a company might have that you'd never think of, like pharmacies, groceries, doctors, dentists, lawyers, banks. Now here's the kicker: we kept our part of the bargain. We invited businesses in to our community because they promised us livelihoods in exchange for their presence. It was a symbiotic relationship, and it worked.

Then they were suddenly lost. They couldn't cope with modernization (at first) or efficiency. They were losing money on outdated, rusty supply and delivery systems that had never been challenged because there was no need. America was its own ecosystem. Then those companies abandoned America for profits. For those of you who might argue that a business has no responsibility other than to its shareholders or owners, you are wrong. When a business establishes itself in a community, indeed is the primary support for a community, you've accepted responsibility for that community. And they abdicated it. Left it, abandoned it, threw it down the well. Companies discovered that, overseas, desperately poor people were willing to work for pennies (or sometimes nothing, in the case of Chinese slave labor), and with dollar signs in their eyes, they breached their social contract.

Now look at what we have. The disparity between rich and poor has increased dramatically since 1980. Entire neighborhoods and towns, almost entire states, have fallen into decay, poverty, crime, and violence. Little businesses that those companies supported died. The taxes those companies would have paid to maintain the streets, lights, police, and so on, were gone. The companies asked communities to build them an infrastructure, and the communities gladly responded. Then the companies up and left, so suddenly that many communities had no chance to recover. They offered little to no assistance for the now-unemployed, and they didn't even clean up their own toxic messes when they left, leaving yet more liabilities that they expected others to clean up. They promised capitalism, but capitalism involves reinvestment of the profits (the capital) into the company and its community.

They broke the contract, and argued that it was the American Way. They abandoned capitalism for sheer greed, but asked the government to protect their profits. The madness of the Reagan and Bush and Bush II years (and, yes, the Clinton years) somehow bought into this supply-side malarkey. They even abandoned the supposed ideals of supply-side (trickle-down) economics, in which a company makes more revenue by not being taxed heavily and reinvests that into their companies, their workers, their communities. Instead, they kicked capitalism to the curb for good old feudalism. We paid the price.

So screw them. We are now on the verge of seeing the country crumble. Hundreds of billions of dollars will have to be spent to get this country back to the state it was in, and I don't think that's going to happen unless these companies—which are still in America—are compelled to clean up their vast ruin via taxes and other assessments. They abandoned loyal workers who gave their entire lives, they bankrupted pensions, and they never looked back. They broke the promise they made, and that broken promise has cost America countless lives, a healthy and prosperous future, safe neighborhoods, broken families, and a chance at better lives. They broke a contract, and the consequences run in the trillions of dollars. We have every right, nay, a moral imperative, to make them pay for the damage they've done. In a court of law, my feeling is they'd be put into receiverships. Instead, we give them tax breaks.

I'm trying to remember if I've ever defended a company's right to keep all its profits. I might've, in an insane time in an economics class. If I did, you'll never hear it from me again. All those companies, the appliance makers and car makers and TV makers who kept their business operations here but moved their manufacturing operations to desperate countries willing to work in fiefdom-like conditions, all of them, they owe us. They sustained this country and turned their backs on us when it we needed them most. And now they argue they deserve even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy.

Screw them.

Why the Quran book burning can be stopped

In short, and very quickly: because it is a terrorist act.

Terrorism is violent acts done to intimidate people, particularly an identifiable group of people, into submission to a political entity. Al Qaeda is political: they want Westerners out of their countries. (We'll leave aside the argument that they are turning every country into "their" country.) The IRA was political. The Palestinians are political. And this Terry Jones is political. He's not doing this for God: he's doing this to protest the community center near Ground Zero. He's doing this to intimidate Muslims. He's doing this to spread fear.

He's using violence to deprive Muslims of their equal enjoyment of American freedoms. That is terrorism.

Short one: How a Republican '10 victory works out for Dems in '12

I was just reading a Media Matters post that said Republicans are looking forward to gaining the House in 2010 and bringing the government to a screeching halt. They are apparently nostalgic about the '95-96 shutdowns. They apparently don't remember that this handed the 1996 Presidential victory to Clinton, who came through this looking Presidential. People didn't like the obstructionism then.

There are very different times, though, than fourteen years ago. Obstructionism now gets enthusiastic approval from an increasingly paranoid and stringent GOP that feels its purpose in life is to do anything, anything, to stop the evil commie socialist Muslim jihadist President. This year, they are on a mission, and that mission is to rid America of any sort of compassion and charity, along with fire departments, police departments, roads, water, and anything else that involves paying taxes. I am not the first to point out that the original Boston Tea Party was to protest taxation without representation, not taxation as an idea. To many on the right, opposing Obama and ending all taxation are the same goal.

That's where I think they'll fail. (Don't mind that my prognostications are never right.) Defeatedly, I'm on the verge of accepting that we may lose the House this year. I've been hopeful all year that Teh Crazee would turn the independents out to vote against the ideologues this year, but Dems have the amazing ability to not capitalize on anything their opponents do, no matter how mad. So with three months yet to go before the midterms, and no organized anti-GOP strategy on the horizon, it begins to look like a White Sox game in the 9th inning when they're ahead by several runs. It's doomed to fail.

But this, I think, will be the Dems' salvation, and may be the last hurrah for the GOP. Yes, if they win in '10, the next two years will be excruciating. We won't see anything getting done. (And may I take a moment to say that what Obama has accomplished in a little over a year and a half is pretty amazing? It's not enough to satisfy us lefties, but it's more than any president since...I dunno...Lyndon Johnson? Maybe even FDR?) Not only won't things get done, but the drama queens who infest the Right will spend the next two years clamoring, posturing, making futil assaults on the Washington hierarchy, and eventually being sucked into the giant swamp that is Washington, DC. They'll have their hurrah, but when it becomes clear that they have no actual agenda beyond stopping the government from working, the independents will turn against them.

It's a little pie in the sky to hope for this, and maybe it's just a rationalization. Maybe I'm trying to find the bright spot in what may be a bleak November. My prediction, though (and take this with a small Siberian salt mine), is that if the GOP and Tea Partiers take back the House, and if they are able to effectively stop the Dems from accomplishing anything for the next two years, they'll be hoisting themselves on their own petard. (Look up "petard." It probably doesn't mean what you think it means. This is the voice of experience.) Just as we had to go through 8 years of GOP Hell to find out how evil they could be, we may have to go through 2 years of Tea Party Hell to find out how incompetent and truly crazy they are. I'm not saying we should give up on '10. I'm saying that if the Tea Partiers take seats and we lose the House, we may be given a great big lemon with a solid gold center.

Except the Dems will do anything they can to screw it up. It's in their nature.