In the days of the Hollywood studio system, films were classified as “A” or “B” pictures: the former were the studio’s prestige projects, the latter generally shorter and produced cheaply and quickly. Ironically, sometimes “B” pictures are more interesting today because they were less subject to studio control (due to their lesser prestige and expense): a clever director or producer could fly under the studio radar, so to speak, and include material that would never have been allowed into an “A” picture. 

A good example is the work of the producer Val Lewton, who declined the opportunity to produce “A” pictures for RKO in order to preserve his creative freedom.
 
Think for a moment: of all the Hollywood movies you have you seen which were set in the Caribbean, Latin America or the United States, how many acknowledged the role slavery played in the historical development and current social conditions of that country? Probably not many, but the topic was included in the 1943 “B” picture,  Lewton’s I Walked with a Zombie (1943). In this, Lewton was ahead of his time, and perhaps ahead of our time also.

I Walked with a Zombie (1943) is a retelling of Jane Eyre set on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Sebastian. The story concerns Betsy Connell (Frances Dee), a young Canadian nurse who has taken a job on Saint Sebastian to care for the wife of a wealthy planter named Paul Holland (Tom Conway), who has lost her mind. The coachman who brings Betsy from her ship to the plantation does not hesitate to tell her of the historical relationship between the Hollands and the Black people (including himself) of Saint Sebastian:

“Holland’s a most old family, miss.  They brought the colored folks to the island.” He later refers to:

“. . .the enormous boat brought the Long Ago Fathers and the Long Ago Mothers of us all, chained to the bottom of the boat.”

He’s polite enough to not add “to work as slaves to create the wealth which the Holland family enjoys to this day” even though it is

obviously true. This isn’t a didactic picture, and the coachman is not delivering a speech: instead, he is a resident of Saint Sebastian, tipping off a newcomer about something every else on the island already knows.  The film’s central symbol is a ship’s figurehead statue of St. Sebastian run through with arrows, also referred to as “Ti-Misery” (“Little Misery”).  As Holland explains to Betsy:

“… it was once the figurehead of a slave ship.  That’s where our people came from.  From the misery and pain of slavery. “

Holland also explains the island custom of crying when a child is born, which seems peculiar to Betsy, as a heritage of slavery:

“For generations they found life a burden. That’s why they still weep when a child is born — and make merry at a burial.”

The Hollands are a leading family of the island, but they are also cursed,  and Mrs. Holland’s illness is the symbol of their decay. The source of that curse is the heritage of slavery: it made them rich, but also corrupted them and cut them off from other people By the end of the film the depths of Holland family’s corruption is revealed, and two of them are dead, one murdered by an arrow pulled from the Saint Sebastian statue.

A few years ago, in his State of the Union speech, President Bush called for a  massive increase in federal spending to help fight the AIDS epidemic in Africa.  At the time, I was suprised that Bush — who is not known as a friend of AIDS victims, people of color, or countries without petroleum reserves — would make such a statement.  Today, I have a new perspective on Bush’s seemingly incongruous statement.

The PBS program, “Religion and Ethics,” said yesterday that the Bush Administration has been requiring one-third of the money spent on AIDS relief in Africa to be spent on abstinence-only sex education programs.  Since virtually the only people who create such programs are evangelical Christians (whose religious beliefs coincide with Bush’s own), it’s obvious what motivated Bush to call for aid to Africa:  it has enabled him to funnel very large amounts of federal money directly into the pockets of evangelical Christians without overtly violating the Constitutional ban on government-sponsored religion.  In other words, as is always the case with politicians, if you want to know what’s really driving them, always follow the money.

For many months, I knew that something horrible was haunting Sophie.  Finally, one quiet night, she broke down and told me all of the details about that awful dilemma she faced several years before, while she was a prisoner in a concentration camp.

Sophie had arrived at the camp with precious cargo in both hands. In her right hand, she held the tiny hand of Molly, her 3-year old daughter.  Molly, confused by all of the commotion, clung to her mother’s side. In Sophie’s left hand, she held a small Petri dish containing a blastocyst that was smaller than a grain of sand.*  A few dozen embryonic stem cells were at the center of this blastocyst.

A Nazi officer stared at Sophie with his steely eyes.  He announced to Sophie that he had decided to release her from the concentration camp, but that Sophie could take only one of the following with her:     A) Molly or B) Sophie’s Petri dish of stem cells.  The officer instructed Sophie to make her choice and that he would immediately throw her non-choice into a huge blazing furnace.

Sophie trembled, “I don’t know what to do.”  She looked at the Petri dish, then at Molly.  Little Molly saw that her mother was in distress.  Molly reached up to hug Sophie.

Sophie sobbed to the officer, “Don’t make me choose. I can’t choose!”

The officer then turned to a young Nazi prison guard and told him to throw Molly and the stem cells into the furnace.

Sophie suddenly released Molly, shouting “Take Molly!”  Sophie watched as terrified little Molly was carried away to her death. 

A few minutes later, as Sophie was released from camp, she carefully cradled her Petri dish of stem cells in her arms.  As she walked away, she whispered to herself, “I did the best I could.  They put me in an impossible position.”

The End.

[This short story is dedicated to the many people who insist that un-implanted blastocysts are the moral equivalent of children, as part of their quest to prevent scientists from developing life-saving cures for real children].

–

*Where do stem cells come from? 

All human beings start their lives from a single cell, called the zygote, which is formed after fertilization. The zygote divides and forms two cells; each of those cells divides again, and so on. Pretty soon, about five days after conception, there is hollow ball of about 150 cells called the blastocyst. The blastocyst is smaller than a grain of sand and contains two types of cells, the trophoblast and the inner cell mass. Embryonic stem cells are the cells that make up the inner cell mass. As embryonic stem cells can form all cell types in an adult, they are referred to as pluripotent stem cells.

The U.S. Catholic bishops have a lot to be concerned about these days.  The Church has been closing numerous parishes.  Fewer people are going to Mass.  Catholics are struggling with the meaning of ancient Catholic doctrines.

It was with this backdrop that the bishops held their “vigorous debate” over another pressing matter.  After all the dust settled, though, the resolution could finally be announced.  Thanks to the bishops’ effort, freshly tweaked rote prayers can now be uttered at Catholic Mass.  Bishop Donald Trautman declared that these new prayers were “the most significant liturgical action to come before this body for many years.”

• Instead of saying:  “The Lord be with you” / “And also with you,” Catholics will now say: “The Lord be with you” / “And with your spirit.”
• At confession, instead of admitting aloud that they have sinned “through my own fault” parishioners will now add “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.” (more…)

So where do you get a few more dozen politicians like Senator Russ Feingold.  How refreshing to listen to a politician who is not afraid to announce understandable positions on important issues. I listened critically. I wanted to be able to say that I found at least minor fault with him on at least some issues.  But it was not to be, at least not regarding this speech, which he made on June 14, 2006 as part of “Take Back America” conference.

Here are several of the major points made by Feingold:

[I]f you need a smoking gun on this — I hope you’ve seen this document.  The administration had, two months after 9/11, on the State Department website with the president’s name on there, a list of 45 countries where al Qaeda was operating. It included Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Ireland, the United States. Guess what country wasn’t even on their list? Iraq wasn’t even on their list . . .

Well, we must stand up to this. We must be clear that we care about fighting the terrorist network that attacked us. But we also have to be able to say when they got it wrong, and they got it wrong on Iraq. Iraq was a mistake . . .

We also have to show that we’re willing to stand up not only to these strategic mistakes and the seemingly endless misleading statements and the incompetence, we also have to stand up for our values, for our Constitution, for our Bill of Rights, and for the rule of law. That has to be part of this. The last time I checked, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution were not repealed on 9/11.

And finally, on the issue of censuring the president:

Those who say how come your censure resolution isn’t moving — we’ve got two and a half years, and it is very important to remember that, because however this happens, if we don’t do it, our kids will look at that history book and they’ll say, “You know, they’re saying the president can do whatever he wants. Let’s look back what happened in 2006, what did they do?” And there will be a blank slate.

To read the transcript of Senator Feingold’s speech, click here.  To watch the 21-minute video, click here. 

Pope John Paul II, now deceased, was conflicted regarding the proper scope of science.  He saw science as “a pathway in which many have traveled away from faith.” According to Monsignor Albacete, the pope urged us “to look beyond our intellectual ideas because reason, which limits man to the visible world, will kill faith.”

The extent of that ambivalence was revealed by an article released today by the Associated Press:

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking said Thursday that Pope John Paul II tried to discourage him and other scientists attending a cosmology conference at the Vatican from trying to figure out how the universe began.
 
The British scientist joked he was lucky the pope didn’t realize he had already presented a paper at the gathering suggesting how the universe was created.

“I didn’t fancy the thought of being handed over to the Inquisition like Galileo,” Hawking said in a lecture to a sold-out audience at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. John Paul died in 2005; Hawking did not say when the Vatican meeting was held.

Yes, our sense of curiosity might ultimately destroy us, but do we know enough to know that to any degree of certainty?  What is the true “conservative” position, unlimited science or limited science? If the scope of science should be limited, how should it be limited and by whom? By non-scientists such as the pope?  If limited completely, what could serve as an alternative to science?  We are naturally curious animals, you see. (more…)

This afternoon I started feeling a bit guilty.  You see, since this blog was founded a few months ago, I’ve been posting that many people who claim that the Bible is the most important book in the world don’t actually read it and they know very little about what’s in the Bible.  I made these claims based on repeated personal experience.

Then this comes along.  As demonstrated during an interview with Stephen Colbert, Republican Congressman Lynn Westmoreland, a man who twice in 2005 attempted to require the display of the Ten Commandments on public property, does not know the ten commandments.  He doesn’t even know four of them.

To see the vigor with which Westmoreland wants to force something with which he is not even familiar on the public, go the Library of Congress site and enter the word “commandments.”  You’ll see the following activity in which Westmoreland was involved:

• On April 14, 2005, Westmoreland submitted a Resolution directing the Speaker of the House of Representatives to provide for the display of the Ten Commandments in the chamber of the House of Representatives
• On June 30, 2005, Westmoreland co-sponsored a proposal to amend the United States Constitution to provide that would allow the display of the Ten Commandments on public property, including in public schools.

Based on my own experience, I believe that this level of Bible ignorance is par for the course among those who most fervently want to impose their religious views on others.  It’s not often, though, that such abject ignorance is captured in such a dramatic way.

I’ve written before of the importance of springing “pop quizzes” on public figures.  Only good things will result.  When public figures are cross-examined to see whether they are competent to speak on a topic, the public will know who should be respected and who is just a big bag of hot air.

The Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) supplies high school LGBT rights groups around the United States with a wealth of useful information, tools, and event and activity guides. For the last few years, I’ve appreciated the planning guides GLSEN provides as a source of brainstorming and public-relations hints. But looking through a GLSEN binder of open forum topics and public speaking tips recently, I came across an unusual and off-putting suggestion:

“Do NOT compare the LGBT Rights movement to the Civil Rights movement.”

Wait, what? The battle for LGBT rights mirrors the Civil Rights movement in a variety of ways. The reactionary backlash and lack of logic behind opponents’ arguments read exactly the same, complete with desperate biblical references. Take for example this judge’s ruling in Loving v. Virginia, a pre-Civil-Rights case on interracial marriage:

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

Indeed, and Almighty God also created Adam and Eve, not, as the social conservatives say, Adam and Steve. The slow social acceptance and increase in violent hate crimes look much the same, too. So what differentiates Gay Rights from Civil Rights, again?

Well, nothing really. It just ruffles a lot of (black, evangelical) feathers to make the comparison. Apparently GLSEN doesn’t want to alienate anyone, even if it means sacrificing an excellent logical illustration.

(more…)

A few years ago, a play written by Tony Kushner (”Angels in America”, “Munich”), titled “Homebody/Kabul” was staged in America. It tells the tale of a frustrated British housewife, who tries to overcome the monotony that engulfs her everyday life by escaping into her perceptions of Afghanistan, a mystical land which she claims accounted for the ‘dawn of civilization’. Her perceptions of the country are based on travel book, which obviously presents a white-washed picture of the country. 

Though the play was staged after the 9/11 attacks, it was written well before it. Hence, there are no references to the attack, but there are plenty of references to the Taliban. Nevertheless, once the housewife (named ‘Ms. Homebody’) travels to Afghanistan, she disappears. Her husband and daughter, who follow her to Afghanistan in search of her, are shocked to find an Afghanistan completely different from the one their wife had talked to them about. It is a country steeped in poverty and utter misogyny.

Though I have read reviews of the play, it has not been staged anywhere in the vicinity of my country (India), and hence, I haven’t seen it. But I urge anybody lucky enough to be living in America make use of any opportunity you have to see the play (note that I said “lucky enough to be living in America”; an interesting precursor to what I’m about to say), as this play deals with tendency of many people (particularly liberals) to become cynical of their culture, and idealize other cultures in comparison, without understanding all aspects of the other culture they’re talking about.

Cynicism is an attitude which you wouldn’t find among most people in India. Almost all Indians are “proud” of their country, although one-third of its population lives in abject poverty.  Except for in the field of architecture, it has made no particular progress in any other field in the past 2000 years. Though they may claim that they are proud to live in a country which has “preserved” its traditions for thousands of years, the way I see it is, they are proud of the country simply because they were born here. In contrast, there is a minuscule minority (of which I believe I am a part of) which associates the country’s unchanging traditions with cultural stagnation, and is horrified at the state of the economically backward sections in the country, and more so, the apathy of rest of the population and the administration towards them.     

I’ve always insisted that you’ve never seen poverty until you visited a third-world country, and a walk through the roads in my city would be a perfect illustration of this. The sight of famished old and young people incapable of working, begging for a living, mostly ignored and left to die, is very common here. As is the “who cares” attitude towards them. When I also read statistics pointing out that half of the Indian population is uneducated and does not have access to electricity or running water, I conclude that this place has to be hell on earth. (more…)

In a short article called “The Myth of Secular Moral Chaos,” Sam Harris asks this simple question: What does the New Testament actually say about morality?  As a warm-up, he describes Old Testament morality (sometimes cited and approved in the new testament):

Human sacrifice, genocide, slaveholding, and misogyny are consistently celebrated. Of course, God’s counsel to parents is refreshingly straightforward: whenever children get out of line, we should beat them with a rod (Proverbs 13:24, 20:30, and 23:13–14). If they are shameless enough to talk back to us, we should kill them (Exodus 21:15, Leviticus 20:9, Deuteronomy 21:18–21, Mark 7:9–13, and Matthew 15:4–7). We must also stone people to death for heresy, adultery, homosexuality, working on the Sabbath, worshiping graven images, practicing sorcery, and a wide variety of other imaginary crimes.

When I told a fundamentalist relative that such writings disturbed me and that they did not inspire me, she said: “You shouldn’t read so much of the Old Testament and focus on those things that trouble you. Instead, you need to read more of the New Testament.” Although she claimed that the Bible was “perfect and without any contradictions,” apparently (for her), the New Testament was more perfect than the Old Testament. Harris has also heard this claim, from Christians, that Jesus is kinder and gentler than the Old Testament God.  Harris therefore checked the New Testament: (more…)

It is good to occasionally get an insider’s peek at the inner cogs of government clanking away. One such peek is being offered by ThinkProgress, an impressive site that has obtained a “Confidential Messaging Memo” from Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), to his caucus on how to deal with Iraq.  Here is the bottom line, our new Iraq strategy:

1. Exploit 9/11. The two page memo mentions 9/11 seven times. It describes debating Iraq in the context of 9/11 as “imperative.”

2. Attack opponents ad hominem. The memo describes those who opposes President Bush’s policies in Iraq as “sheepish,” “weak,” and “prone to waver endlessly.”

3. Create a false choice. The memo says the decision is between supporting President Bush’s policies and hoping terrorist threats will “fade away on their own.”

To summarize the above summary:

1. Lie
2. Demean people who disagree
3. Do not consider whether the presence of the US military in Iraq is causing more problems than it is solving.

You can read the complete pdf version of this confidential memo here

None of these Republican tactics surprise me (this is actually a comment on my low expectations for our current leaders).  The above ideas certainly don’t inspire me.  They aren’t the sorts of ideas that give me any confidence that there is any end game in Iraq.  In fact, point #1 is downright evil given the lack of any connection between 9/11 and Iraq.

It’s a good thing our current leaders are God-fearing people who regularly say the pledge of allegiance.  Think about how much worse this Iraq strategy memo would have been had it not been written by people so strongly guided by God and Country.

Why does it seem so easy for comedians to conduct satisfying interviews of politicians and so difficult for mainstream reporters?  For example, check out Jon Stewart’s interview of the RNC’s Ken Mehlman.   Stewart’s recent interview of Mehlman powerfully painted members of the current administration as a pack of lying conniving hypocritical thieves.  

To contrast, the mainstream media usually stumbles out of the gate.  Even when mainstream reporters ask clear questions, they receive heavily spun non-answers which they often treat as answers.  As we all know, these heavily spun non-answers reported by mainstream reporters are not valid perspectives regarding important issues. Such spin-doctored statements are actually filler–opportunities for politicians to claim that they answered questions that they didn’t answer at all. 

What Jon Stewart does on the above video clip is satisfying because he repeatedly indicates to the audience that Mehlman is failing to answer his straightforward questions.  Yes, Stewart does his work as only a good comedian can do, by rolling his eyes, smirking, joking and being sarcastic.  But his work as an interviewer is effective because the audience is constantly being reassured that the questioner (Stewart) is aware that the interviewee (Mehlman) is not really answering his questions.  Stewart’s questions, e.g., about the metric of success in Iraq or the identities of the oil executives with which Dick Cheney secretly met, deserve real answers. How strange that we get more dependable and important information from five minutes comedian interviews than from reams of newsprint and hours and hours of Meet the Press. 

I’m not just picking on Republicans.  Democrats are equally evasive (there are only a few exceptions, e.g., Russ Feingold and John Murtha).  What would 99% of democrats really do about Iraq?  We don’t know, because they won’t give real answers to those questions.  Would Democrats continue ANY domestic spying if they took control of the country?  We just don’t know.  They won’t answer the questions of mainstream reporters. They give the same sorts of psuedo-answers employed by the Republicans.

How can this be?  Reporters are not stupid.  Editors are not stupid.  Why are the interviews conducted by mainstream media so unsatisfying?

My suspicion is that mainstream news reporters find it impolite to label unanswered questions as such.  They shouldn’t be so polite.  When I ask my children whether they’ve cleaned their room and they answer that they are hungry, I remind them that they haven’t answered my question. If they continually evade my question, I clearly indicate that I am aware of this.  When mainstream reporters ask politicians clear questions, the reporters routinely accept non-informative responses to be “answers.”  I would suggest a new approach for the mainstream media, a Stewartesque approach.

From now on, when a politician fails to answer a clear question, the reporter should report that the politician failed to answer the question.  ”When the Iraqis stand up , we’ll stand down” is not a real answer to a timetable for troop withdrawals.  It’s empty rhetoric.  If the front page is full of articles that particular politicians won’t answer clearly-stated questions (presenting a clear list of the questions) the readers would be up in arms.  They might demand change.  They might get involved.  They might demand real answers.    (more…)

This post by Amy Ephron succinctly sums up a horrible situation:

There are so many things that are wrong with Guantanamo, it’s hard to know where to begin. It’s a complicated issue and it’s a bit like defending the wrong side. Unless you look at it from the human rights angle, as a 6th Amendment issue, not to mention the Geneva Convention… Or simply from the point of view of, “We’re going to lock you up forever, we’re never going to charge you with anything, no one in your family will ever know what happened to you, you’ll never any contact with the outside world again but we’re going to give you prozac, so, you won’t mind.”

Of course, you wouldn’t know of any problems from the official U.S. government website regarding Guantanamo. In that fine newspaper, this is the only hint of what’s really going on out at the “naval base”:

During the past year Naval Base Guantanamo Bay has become the host to the Detainee Mission of the War on Terrorism following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

[Emphasis added].  How much does anyone from the government care about what really goes on in Guantanamo and when?  Not enough to even update the official Guantanamo website.  Well, actually, that’s not accurate.  The June 9, 2006 edition of the Guantanamo Bay Gazette reports a recent event: that several of the people who run Guantanamo voluntarily lost weight as part of a weight loss contest.  Good for them!

Oh, yeah.  And we’ve got several dead prisoners this week.  Let’s see if those deaths show up in the next edition of the Guantanamo Bay Gazette.

On June 8, 2006, the House passed telecommunications legislation “that will leave many consumers worse off, facing cable rate hikes, declines in service quality, inadequate consumer protections, and reduced access to competitive Internet content and services.”  The Act, H.R. 5252, is oxymoronically called the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act.

In one of the most contentious battles over the legislation, the House rejected a “network neutrality” amendment offered by Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) that would restore federal rules that prevent telephone and cable companies that own broadband networks from discriminating against content and service providers in favor of their own commercial offerings.

For more on this sad development from Freepress.net and Consumer’s Union (publisher of Consumer Reports) click here.

Today’s Associated Press report on the deposition testimony a former FDA commissioner sheds further light on the FDA’s extended and shameful failure to approve “Plan B,” the morning after pill.  According to the recent testimony:

The Food and Drug Administration had intended to allow over-the-counter sales of Plan B last year but delayed the move while determining how to limit those sales to women 17 and older — a process that should have wrapped up by now, the agency’s former chief testified.

Former FDA commissioner Lester Crawford, in a sworn statement, said he had reserved the right to decide whether to loosen the sales restrictions on the prescription-only emergency contraceptive pills. His account of that unusual and perhaps unprecedented move, given in a deposition over a lawsuit against the FDA, confirmed earlier testimony given by two senior agency officials who said he’d shut them out of the decision-making process.

But Crawford said his Aug. 26, 2005, announcement that the agency was delaying its decision on Plan B wasn’t a move toward denying over-the-counter sales. Instead, it was a bid for time to work out how to enforce restricting nonprescription sales to women 17 and older. Girls 16 and younger would still need a prescription.

It is now more than two years since the FDA’s controversial decision denying Plan B emergency (EC) contraception over-the-counter status.  Why is it important that EC is available?  According to Planned Parenthood,

Emergency contraception pills contain hormones that reduce the risk of pregnancy if started within 120 hours of unprotected intercourse. The sooner EC is administered after unprotected sex, the better it works, making timely access critically important.

The FDA, stocked with Bush appointees, has refused to approve Plan B for over the counter status, contrary to the recommendations of virtually all major medical and health care organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.  Further, EC meets all of the FDA’s own requirements for over-the-counter status.  The FDA’s stalling was repugnant back in 2004 and it remains repugnant today.

Just to make clear:  Plan B is not about abortion.   It’s about preventing pregnancy.  Oh, I know there are people out there who work hard to confuse these two concepts, people who claim that a person causes an abortion if that person completely prevents an egg that might be fertilized from implanting in a uterus.  I’m a bit old-fashioned in my thinking, though.  I prefer to think that there can’t be an abortion unless there is first a pregnancy.  In my old-fashioned way of thinking, then, Plan B has nothing to do with abortions because Plan B prevents pregnancies. 

The above-described deposition testimony is further evidence that the official position of this administration is to encourage numerous unplanned pregnancies, especially among teenaged girls younger than 17.  Yes, this means that this administration wants to force raped women to carry their rapists’ babies, especially those women who lack easy access to a doctor.  Every year, an estimated 25,000 U.S. woman are impregnated by their rapists.  Ninety percent of these rape pregnancies can be prevented with the prompt use of the morning after pill. 
In light of the health care cuts authored by this administration, this administration’s unconscionable birth control policies will force unwanted babies on women without properly providing for the medical care of the women or the babies. 

If men were able to get pregnant, our government would have passed laws 30 years ago allowing Plan B to be sold out of vending machines in every supermarket, every tattoo shop, and every restaurant or tavern.  If men could get pregnant, even Justice Scalia would have been able to latch onto that penumbra of Constitutional rights guaranteeing men’s access to the a male version of Plan B. It would just be that obvious.

I’ve always been a fan of Val Lewton films, and I recently discovered a “new” one which can be enjoyed for reasons which go beyond the Lewton trademark cinematography and low-budget creativity. The Ghost Ship (dir. Mark Robson, 1943) was pulled from theaters almost immediately after its release due to a copyright dispute, and has only recently become available on DVD.  It’s not the greatest Lewton film: indeed, the dialogue seems at times to have been written by Ed Wood’s only slightly smarter brother. But the theme expressed in The Ghost Ship is as relevant today as it was in 1943: the madness of authoritarianism.

The plot of The Ghost Ship concerns the progressive madness of Will Stone (Richard Dix), captain of the Altair, and the realization of, and triumph over, this madness by Tom Merriam (Russell Wade), third officer of the Altair. At first, the captain seems a pleasant fellow, although he does seem to have an obsession with cleanliness and some extreme ideas about authority, including one memorable dinnertime speech when, speaking of the crew, tells Merriam “I have the rights over their lives”. Strongly stated but perhaps not unreasonable, thinks Merriam: after all, a ship’s captain must be a figure of authority, because he is ultimately responsible for the ship and the lives of everyone on it.

As the plot develops, however, it is made clear that the captain’s authoritarianism is a manifestation of his progressive insanity. Further, challenges to his authority only exacerbate his condition. Stone interprets his “rights” literally, and a remarkable number of the ship’s crew meet their deaths in circumstances which implicate him. As the bodies pile up, however, the remaining crewmen refuse to acknowledge that anything is wrong; in fact, Merriam finds himself shunned after unsuccessfully bringing charges against the captain.  

A leader who demands blind obedience, who causes the deaths of others and refuses to consider that this might be wrong, who apparently hypnotizes those around him so they do not react to his crimes, who exists in isolation with no checks on his behavior: does this remind you of anyone? Always a recipe for disaster, in Germany in the 1940’s and in America in 2006.

I don’t think the political implications of The Ghost Ship are accidental. Its script was adapted by Donald Henderson Clarke from a story by Leo Mittler: the latter was a film director in Austria before emigrating the U.S. I can’t find much information about him, but judging from his surname and national origins I would guess that his departure from Austria was necessary to ensure his continued existence. So Mittler would have had personal experience with the madness of authoritarianism, and he expressed it in this screenplay.

Interestingly, Mittler’s most notable contribution to Hollywood may be that he wrote the story which was adapted for the screenplay Song of Russia (dir. Gregory Ratoff, 1944). This film, a lavish but otherwise innocuous melodrama involving a romance between Robert Taylor as an American conductor and Susan Peters as a Soviet pianist, was later denounced by HUAC as pro-Soviet propaganda.

OK, now that we’ve had our tussle with a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, and before the GOP brings up another proposed constitutional ban to flag burning, it’s time to take up the real threat to American values which MUST be stopped and pass a constitutional ban against foreign teams winning baseball’s World Series.

People, we invented the game, it’s ours and we call it “America’s pastime” for good reason. Baseball is an American game and nothing has upset our country’s freedom and system of values more than the allowing of a CANADIAN team to win the World Series. Since the abomination of a foreign team winning the World Series, we have had several major conflicts involving the senseless deaths of US soldiers, a major oil crisis, corporate scandals where investors have lost billions, multiple attacks on US soil by foreign terrorists, massive unemployment, jobs moving overseas (and that’s a “good thing”), domestic terrorism by vigilantes which profess to “protect life and our values” and use dynamite to kill innocents and don’t get the death penalty from a professed law and order conservative administration, citizens are imprisoned for years without charges or seeing an attorney, and we have our phones tapped 24/7.

The assault upon our American system of values MUST be stopped and the only way to do it is to incorporate a ban on foreign teams winning the World Series into the US Constitution. The continued threat of foreign teams winning the World Series cannot be overestimated. CIA sources have indicated that satellite intelligence has uncovered scenes of baseball being played in remote parts of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Korea. The threat to us is real, Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are training religious extremists to play baseball so as to have an entry into the major leagues and threaten us with the continued tragedy of foreign exploitation of baseball by taking the World Series Championship out of the US, AGAIN.

It is suspected that the entry fees would be paid from drug profits from the $7 billion annual illicit Afghan heroin trade which the US has ignored since it invaded Afghanistan in October of 2001. The North Koreans are suspected of having stolen genetic material from the South for experiments with gene therapies and radiation with the goal of making the perfect baseball player so as to dominate the game and win the World Series. Eerie photographs of glowing North Korean baseball players on unlit fields at night have been leaked to Robert Novak for release when the GOP needs an electoral boost in November. The axis of evil must be stopped and the only way to stop them is an amendment to the US Constitution banning foreign teams from winning the World Series.

The amendment would allow the foreign teams to play in the World Series but, they can’t win. The Commissioner of Baseball, former UN Ambassador John Bolton, would have a ceremony awarding a participant’s trophy to the foreign team and the real trophy would be awarded to the US based team regardless of the results of the still best of seven series. It is only by protecting the firm basis of our core American values by amending the US Constitution to ban foreign teams from winning the World Series that we may hope to remain the “City on the Hill,” shining brightly for all to see. It is only by amending the US Constitution to ban foreign teams from winning the World Series that we can save America from continued assaults by terrorists and their ilk which hate us because we are free. It is only by amending the US Constitution to ban foreign teams from winning the World Series that we can keep America safe and free for ourselves and our posterity. To those which would oppose an amendment to the US Constitution to ban foreign teams from winning the World Series, I say that you give aid and comfort to the enemies of America.

Thank you, and good night.

In May, 2005, I was among the more than 2,500 media reformers from across the country who attended the National Conference for Media Reform in St. Louis.  The conference was sponsored by Freepress.  The presenters included Amy Goodman, Phil Donahue, Bill Moyers, Robert W. McChesney and George Lakoff.  It was an extraordinary event.

Much of the information presented at the conference was disturbing.  The thing has haunted me the most since the conference was that most people get most of their news from local television newscasts.  Consequently, what passes for “news” on local television newscasts is still an extremely important source of information upon which voters rely.

Most Americans’ main source of information is not national network news but local television news. According to the Pew Research Center, 57% of Americans regularly watch local television news, outpacing all other media sources by a margin of almost 2 to 1.

Combine this heavy reliance on local newscasts with the definition for “news” that was widely accepted by those attending the conference: ”news” is information that one can use to become a better participating citizen. 

Since attending the National Media Reform Conference, I have often thought of the many reasons I don’t respect local television news.  In short, it largely consists of simple stories with shock value or entertainment.  More specifically, our local “news” specialize in providing us with the following types of information:

• The personal lives of entertainers;
• TV show promos;
• National news presented as short sounds bites of people dissing each other rather than discussing anything of substance;
• National news presented uncritically by local stations acting as official stenographers for those in power.
• Sex crimes sex crimes sex crimes;
• Repeated displays of aviation crash scenes;
• Repeated reassurance that “we” are winning the “war on drugs,” based on yet another drug bust;
• The many dangers lurking in city neighborhoods, especially shootings, robberies and car accidents, where dysfunctional people of color are repeatedly put on the screen in such a way as to reinforce problematic stereotypes in the minds of suburban viewers;
• Lots of formula pieces:  lots of live reporters on highway overpasses, and stock footage of large piles of salt, to mark the season’s first snow storm;
• Perhaps a ten-second clip (per newscast) reaffirming that dysfunctional and tragic things occur in foreign countries;
• Comprehensive sports footage and commentary, typically ten times more of this than national news;
• Several lengthy weather teasers and then weather ad nauseum;
• And, of course, coverage of a something like a hotdog eating contest or a short report on a snake with two heads, followed by the banter that ends the highly ritualistic “newscast.”

Based on recent investigation, we now know that local news has also been doing a marvelous job feeding us fake news–corporate-sponsored “video news releases” — segments promoting commercial brands and products. See attached article. 

It’s surreal that sooooo many people I know, people who also despise the local news, continue to watch it as their major source of political and cultural information.  One big problem is that almost none of the “news” presented by local television newscasts is information that one can use to become a better participating citizen.  The main problem is that local newcasts are almost completely lacking in usable information.  They work well as rituals (we know most of the outcome before we even watch), which is why so many people tune in.  In my view, people watch local newscasts for reasons other the need to be informed.

The other big problem is the bait and switch.  If local television shows were called “the nightly pretend news where it leads if it bleeds, featuring no real news analysis, no investigative news, nothing offensive to any viewer or advertiser and where entertainment rocks,” I’d be less bothered.  Calling it “news,” however, leads many people to believe that watching a corporate-serving concoction of made-up and heavily-filtered stories prepares them to weigh in on serious issues of the day and further prepares them to march into the voting booth with confidence.  In 2004, that confidence took the following form: “Yes, I’m prepared to vote.  After all, I’ve been watching the nightly newscast with Brin and Jennifer and I know that we had to invade Iraq because of the 9/11 attacks.”

I plan to attend the next National Conference for Media Reform.  It will be held on January 12-14, 2007 in Memphis, Tennessee.  I highly recommend this conference to anyone else concerned about media reform.  For those wanting to know more about media reform, click on the “Media” links on the right column of Dangerous Intersection homepage.

Why do so many people fight the idea that humans evolved from simpler life forms?

Perhaps, this resistance is the natural consequence of the “chain of being,” the long-time teaching that God and the Angels are the most superior forms of existence, humans inferior to them, and “beasts” and plants more inferior still, with rocks at the very bottom.

[The 1579 drawing of the great chain of being from Didacus Valades, Rhetorica Christiana]

Even though biology does not recognize a status hierarchy among living things, the “chain of being” schematic nonetheless lingers in the minds of some people, especially among people who fail to appreciate the immense biological record uncovered by dedicated scientists, the importance of the scientific method and the elegance of evolutionary theory.

Those who oppose evolution tend to be the same people who go around dissing organisms traditionally plotted lower on the chain of being diagram.  A good example would be the (lack of) respect given to sponges.  You can almost hear the fundamentalists spitting and hissing as they utter something like the following: “How dare those evolutionists claim that we come from sponges!” 

To me, however, this reasoning does not reveal a scientific dispute, but only ignorance regarding the intimate biological relationship between humans and sponges.  I find the harsh anti-evolutionary rhetoric of fundamentalists to be, essentially, anti-spongist. Since one can further trace human ancestry all the way to bacteria, I find such reasoning also anti-bacterialist.  It makes me want to shout: You anti-spongists!  You anti-bacterialists! 

The remedy for this attitude problem of fundamentalists is that they need to take the time to honor and appreciate the complexity of “simpler” organisms.  It turns out that sponges aren’t so simple.  They are incredibly complex.  They are a most honorable ancestor for humans.  Those who allegedly oppose evolution need to appreciate the following, for instance: (more…)

The puzzle goes like this: young student actor Wiley Wiggins, star of the trippy, philosophical film Waking Life, walks into a bar. There he finds University of Texas Professor of Philosophy Louis Mackey, who muses on two kinds of human suffering: those that suffer from an “overabundance of life”, like Professor Mackey himself, and those who suffer from a scarcity of it. Mackey then poses a question about our world that often seems full of failures and underachievers: “Which is the more universal human characteristic: fear or laziness?”

When Professor Mackey asks this, he refers of course to those of us filled to the brim with abandoned aspirations, high goals to greatness that we somehow never meet. He means also those of us who live unfulfilling, humdrum lives with little exploration or adventure. The subject of the suburb’s despair, this middleclass rut, appears countless times in contemporary sitcoms, novels, and cinema. The depression associated with it runs the gamut, appearing in a wide range of films from One Hour Photo to Brokeback Mountain. The same idea even appears in the civilians in V for Vendetta, nuclear family dullards who dream of revolution but don’t seem to possess the true drive to carry it out.

The message sent by modern media seems clear: we cannot climb the ranks we wish, or live the way we want. Jonathan Franzen’s novel The Corrections looks at this modern phenomenon through the eyes of an aging baby boomer, which I’ll paraphrase in the interest of length: We place in our children all of the high hopes and dreams that we never achieved ourselves. Only after our children grow up and fail to make us proud do we resign to simply hoping that they end up happy. In Franzen’s view, this cycle seems to go on for generations upon generations of underachievers.

So what element of the human condition makes us so prone to settling for less than what we once aspired to reach? To paraphrase Mackey, do we disappoint ourselves out of fear of the unknown or just insufficient motivation? Which makes us so pathetic? Fear or Laziness?

A trick question, the student of evolutionary psychology might say. “Fear and laziness” really just refer to one unified trait: self-preservation. The natural desire to keep oneself safe from harm or loss compels us to remain in the cramped confines of our present situation. Like a domesticated animal, we stay where we know we’ll find food, shelter and security rather than scouring the unknown. It doesn’t make sense to venture into uncertainty (fear), and it certainly doesn’t seem worth it (laziness).

Or maybe I have over-simplified the human condition by comparing all of us to house pets. Perhaps we don’t even have an entire class of quitters or cowards at all. Could these complaints of a scarcity of life indicate not that middleclass people have settled for less than ideal lives, but instead that humans have in their nature a fundamental refusal to find anything satisfactory? Even as many Americans enjoy the highest living standards in human history, depression and reported frustration seem to skyrocket. I think this begs a new question entirely: which human characteristic truly dominates: fear, laziness, or discontentment?

Today, the Boston Globe reported that NASA is “canceling or delaying a number of satellites designed to give scientists critical information on the earth’s changing climate and environment.”  The paper further reports that

The space agency has shelved a $200 million satellite mission headed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor that was designed to measure soil moisture — a key factor in helping scientists understand the impact of global warming and predict droughts and floods. The Deep Space Climate Observatory, intended to observe climate factors such as solar radiation, ozone, clouds, and water vapor more comprehensively than existing satellites, also has been canceled.

From this administration’s perspective, these cancellations were no-brainers.  This administration simply has no need to know such envornmental information.  Either global warming A) is not caused by human activities or B) is caused by human activities, but we’d rather not know it because we don’t want to do anything about it.

The money that would have funded these projects will now instead go to allowing astronauts to return to the moon, an enormously expensive project of questionable scientific value.  Primarily an opportunity for photo ops.

This keeps my streak going.  You can determine my position on almost every issue by simply figuring the opposite of President Bush’s.  The one exception:  The national no-call list.  Annoying telemarketers often disrupted my life before that truly a good law was enacted.  I need to give credit where credit is due.  You see, I’m not against Bush in a simple-minded sort of way.  Thank you, President Bush, for the no-call law!

The discussion this week about cognitive dissonance has gotten me thinking about creationism, a religious “theory” that virtually screams with cognitive dissonance.  Let’s look at how creationists game the gaps in the fossil record.  Let’s imagine we start with two fossils — we’ll call them A and Z to illustrate that they are widely separated in geologic time. 

“There’s no evolution,” says the creationist, “Look at that gap between your fossils.  Where is the transitional form between them?” 

So, we go out and find another fossil — we’ll call it M to illustrate that it is somewhere between A and Z. 

“There’s no evolution,” says the creationist, “Look, you now have TWO gaps [A-M & M-Z], so you’re missing TWO transitional forms.” 

So, you go out and find another fossil Q.

“There’s no evolution,” says the creationist. “Look, you now have THREE gaps [A-M, M-Q & Q-Z].  You’re now missing THREE transitional forms.  Your theory of evolution sure is a mess.” 

So, you go out and find five more fossils — C, F, G, R & W.

“There’s no evolution,” says the creationist, “Look, you now have EIGHT gaps and EIGHT missing transitional forms.  Your theory of evolution is nonsense.  How can you possibly believe your theory of evolution is correct when there are so many holes in your data?”

And so it goes.  To the archeologist, each new fossil serves as a bridge across one of the gaps in the fossil record; but, to the creationist, each new fossil creates an *additional* “gap” in the fossil record — or, rather, a new opportunity for obfuscation.

The Onion does it again.  All of you old-fashioned scientists should take a look and learn a thing or two.

A few years ago I had an extended conversation about gay people with an evangelical man in his mid-50s.  I thought that this conversation might be illuminating, in that this fellow is a decent fellow in many ways.  He would make a nice neighbor, for instance.  He works hard, pays his taxes, makes contributions to poor people, loves his children and abhors bigotry, at least when it involves blatant discrimination of African-Americans. On the other hand, he is deeply troubled with the “problem” of gays.  For purposes of this post, I will refer to him as “Donald.”

Here’s how the conversation went:

Do gays choose to be gay?  Donald is really perturbed that some people choose to engage in homosexual sex as a matter of sexual variety or perverted fun.  On the other hand, he does acknowledge that there are numerous gay people who have not chosen to be gay.  They were born or raised in such a way that they turned out “differently.”  Donald admits that they had no choice. They have innocently found themselves attracted to members of the same sex.  I asked Donald whether his God created them this way, and he shrugged.

Donald admits that many heterosexuals engage in sex that he considers degenerate or immoral.  This would include oral sex, anal sex or S&M for example.  Donald reluctantly admits that these people should nonetheless be allowed to marry.  People who do not want to have children or who physically can’t have children should also be allowed to marry.  According to Donald, the state government should grant marriage licenses even to those who are not truly in love with each other, although he doesn’t personally approve of this practice.

Gay people should fight their sexual urges, according to Donald.  They should be celibate for their entire lives.  Gay people who fall in love with other gay people should not ever express that love physically.  Donald claims that human beings do not need to have sex.  People can live “meaningful” lives without it, even if they feel strong urges to have sex.  
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We’ve recently raised a few issues regarding justifications for bigotry.  What especially rankles some of us is the often-heard argument that people should do something a particular way (recently, the issue is preventing gay marriage) because that is the way that it has been done in the past.  

What a ridiculous-sounding principle on which to base an argument! Ridiculous sounding, unless you are a lawyer arguing an important case.  In courtrooms across this country, multitudes of lawyers lawyers stand up every day with straight faces and proceed to argue to judges that a case should be decided a particular way solely because a previous and similar case was handled that same way.

In law, this principle that judges should rely on precendent is given the obscure and mysterious-sounding label “stare decisis,” from the Latin, “stand by the thing decided.” [Stare decisis et non quieta movere, meaning “to stand by the decisions and not to disturb settled points”].

There is the great power in this heuristic.  At least it’s an equal opportunity principle:  Analogizing to old cases is a technique that can be used by crafty opportunists, as well as good-hearted seekers of justice. 

Though we are tempted to scoff at this principle (of relying on precedent) when it is employed by bigots, we need to keep things in context.  That very same principle is the heartbeat of justice.  How strange, you might think, that such an amoral principle determines outcomes of important cases!  That’s the way it is, however.  I’ll flesh out this principle with some citations from real-life legal cases.  Though most of these case are Missouri cases (I practice law in Missouri), similar quotes can be found from cases from every other state and federal jurisdiction. (more…)