Journalism is dead, long live journalism!

Nothing speaks more eloquently about the death of journalism in the Internet age as the front pages of today's New York Times and Washington Post, both covering the Greek crisis (and the gumption of the Greeks, which I salute) with the exact same Reuters photo.

Afluenza, anyone? A pool on the 17th floor for a few million

Dad in pool, boy bomb-diving, girl dipping toes in the water, older boy approaching and mom in a radiant yellow summer dress and straw hat, a scene that could be anywhere except for the skyline of Manhattan reflected in the floor-to-ceiling windows at the pool's side.

Then you realize you are looking at "Residence 17E" of a luxury apartment skyscraper that is being advertised in the inside cover of this morning's New York Times Magazine—which, of course, you still get delivered in print to your door.

Let's move there, you say. After all, the apartments go for a mere "$3.5M up to $25M." The M does not stand for the Spanish imperial coin maravedí, but for a million good old, greenbacks from Uncle Sam.

But then you realize: it's on the West Side of Manhattan. Their view is of New Jersey. Oh, please!

Santa Claus shows us the fine line between truth and lies

Today's news included a Christmas item about a letter in the JFK Library in which the president wrote to a child assuring her that Soviet nuclear testing at the North Pole would not affect Santa, with whom the man in the White House claimed to have spoken on the telephone the day before.

Forgive me if I stop to point out at just how many levels this letter exemplifies the myriad of ways in which children of the 1950s and 60s, of whom I was one, were lied to blatantly, nonchalantly and unnecessarily. Some of these lies continue today, at some level, to children of the new millenium.

"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus," looked upon today as a heartwarming story, is the quintessence of the American mythmaking. The 1897 New York Sun editorial, in which Francis Pharcellus Church replied to a letter by Virginia O'Hanlon, was an antecedent of the John F. Kennedy letter.

Let me begin by pointing out the crass commercial motive behind the Sun editorial's profession of a broad nonconfessional "faith." It was no accident that Church prominently cited the bias of O'Hanlon's father, another lie: "If you see it in The Sun, it's so."

Church was selling his newspaper and, along with it, the singular and fundamental philosophical flaw in American society's thinking: the notion that facts are truths to be believed, especially if an authoritative source says so.

Facts are not truth. They are only realities observable within certain contextual circumstances. Almost everything we "know" about physics ceases to be certain, for example, at the quantum level. Facts are only tenable claims, not truth.

Church did O'Hanlon no favor, really. Look up her life and you learn that within little more than a decade she ended up in a short-lived marriage in which the man deserted her before her daughter was born.

Skepticism is warranted. We should not base anything on fact alone; or if we do, we must remind ourselves that the facts are dependent on how perception occurs. Even myth, which is not factual but not necessarily untrue, must be handled with care lest it become an actual falsehood rather than an intuitive inkling of truth.

This is where the gratuitous and arrogant twist of Kennedy's mendacity gets me. He did not have to tell the girl that he had spoken to Santa. It was true enough that Soviet testing of nuclear weapons would not hurt Santa Claus.

In a broader arena, there is little doubt that during the Cold War era the Soviet regime was harsh and repressive. But was it necessary to tell children Superman fought "for truth, justice and the American Way," when that Way featured blatant injustices such as racism and patent falsehoods such as fairly rewarded hard work?

As a child I once wrote a letter to the pope asking that the assassinated Kennedy be canonized. Today, the Irish name summons the indelible image of a young president bidding an infatuated young woman to perform oral sex on an aide in the White House pool. So much for Camelot; King Arthur was a frat boy.

Ah, back to work on serious stuff, like how wrong anti-Islamist prejudice is!

Lately, I’ve been coming across astounding venom against Islam, not from the usual suspects such as Tea Party yahoos and right-wingers, but from allegedly intelligent people such as atheists, Christians duty-bound to be compassionate and tolerant and supposedly enlightened Westerners.

There are three avenues of the demonization of Islam.

Atheists claim that Islam is evil—yes, “evil”—because it is a religion and all religious people get into or cause conflicts. This presupposes that atheists are all sterling pacifists fit to lead a Quaker meeting, a claim just slightly demolished by the 100 million deaths tolled by one Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin and one Mao Zedong, both atheists. And no, the Inquisition, Spanish or English (the Inquisition functioned in Britain, too), didn't even come close in 600 years of existence.

Another typical argument views Islam as the religion of Al Qaeda. Or of the Palestinian “terrorists”—for more on how much the overused T-word bothers me, click here. This is where the atheist criticism of Christianity makes (some) sense, as does (some) Arab criticism of Israel. Quite a few historical figures and institutions have abused the faith in the Prince of Peace, or the God of Abraham, for decidedly nefarious purposes (e.g., the Inquisition, noted above, and Israel's behavior under militarist conservatives).

A third line of attack blames Islam for the Arab world’s decidedly oppressive social attitudes toward women—which, we enlightened Westerners have not completely chucked (witness U.S. Republican Party stalwarts on the subject of “legitimate rape” in that distant galaxy during the 2008 election eons ago).

Sure, Osama bin Laden and pals invoked one similar version of Islam,by definition,  a religion of peace. And sure, there are many conflicts in which belligerents invoke God. Finally, sure, the Arab world is very different from ours and I, personally, wouldn’t choose their customs.

But, if you are so rationalist, atheists, shouldn’t you be able to think your way to distinguish between hate-filled extremists and mainstream adherents to a faith?

Also, fellow American, if you are so hell-bent on decrying Islam on “terror,” what's our excuse, given our Jeffersonian and Wilsonian ideals, for the uniquely dehumanizing institution of Southern slavery or the recurrent denial of self-determination to nations such as Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua, just to name a few?

Finally, Westerners, where is your enlightened thought when it comes to realizing that all cultural attitudes, customs and traditions—yes, even ours—are not exactly absolute philosophical truths (which have yet to be proven to be in anyone’s possession), so that what we find shocking isn’t ipso facto wrongheaded?

Dig for answers in your brains, your consciences and your anthropological understanding.

Bathos should be banned in Boston

Let’s put a stop to the Boston bathos. It’s cheap and meaningless. Yes, the Marathon bombing was a dramatic crime, with pain and sadness and now sheer puzzlement at why it came about. However, it was not the crime of the century: the century is young and so far 9/11 casts a long shadow on it.

So let's not inflate the significance of every last detail and every last bystander. Certainly, let's not create "sacred" public space (isn't that unconstitutional, anyway?).

Death is one of the most common human experiences. Maybe we should learn to talk about it normally. Let's stop spending our lives pretending death doesn't exist. Let's -- gasp! -- tell the children.

Death and taxes, said Ben Franklin. Love and death, said Woody Allen (at the very end of "Sleeper"). Certainties. Inevitable. Painful.

Significance inflation is a phenomenon I date back to the death of Princess Diana.

Remember the sea of white wrapping paper in front of Buckingham Palace? (One should take the wrapping off when leaving flowers; the flowers will wilt and bio-degrade on their own, but the wrapping is just more fodder for landfills.)

In the United States, 9/11 and the phony "war on terror" brought us instant “heroes” -- just add tears and stir.

Getting shot while in uniform makes you very unlucky. It’s sad for the family and as a human being it’s a loss to all of us. But it’s not heroic unless there was actual heroism involved. Heroism involves  valor, prowess, gallantry, bravery, courage, daring and fortitude.

The MIT guard shot dead, mostly as part of a misdeed going sour, was surely a decent person, but nothing in what happened suggests heroism on his part.

Lastly, let’s not canonize pretty young women when they unknowingly happen to be at the wrong place and the wrong time. Joan of Arc was young, and some say beautiful and courageous, but she actually sought out the struggle that got her martyred. To be a martyr is to give witness to a conviction or faith to the point of death; it involves a conscious choice.

The death of the young bystander was, again, bad luck. A fluke. I was painfully embarrassed by maudlin public display put on by her mother.

In sum, now that the adrenalin is down, let's be sensible.

Let's rebel against living on automatic!

Have you noticed how cops, nurses and sales people have all been trained to use the passive-aggressive crowd-control phrase "you need to" when what they really mean is "I command you to" (or "do as I effing say!"). Next time, consider responding with a thoughtful examination of the statement, with reference to, say, Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

It's the rebellion waiting to happen. 

In our globalized, corporation-run world, all workers who feed you, or clothe you, or deal with your aches and pains, or protect you, or provide you the necessary paperwork to go on going on, have been trained (under penalty of death?) to keep you -- the customer/citizen/patient -- anesthetized, pliable and, most important, willing to pay the price for the goods and services that some middle management technocrat just knows you need.

It's irritating, to say the least.

Borrowing from medicine, let's call it "The Protocol Society," an entire society run mindlessly by providers of services or goods who follow a detailed plan, or protocol. In medicine it serves to ensure a standard, and correct, treatment regime for every particular diagnosis by personnel without advanced medical degrees.

Nurses have an exact list of insanely repetitive questions to ask new patients and teachers in some school districts have their activities prescribed down to 15-minute increments. Everybody has a script and endless checklists ... and don't get me started on customer "service" representatives and salespeople!

The basic idea is that rather than educate people on taking time to think through what matters in their work, it is easier to outline a set of prescribed steps that can be performed by rote. This way it doesn't matter if the teacher failed math or the nurse is squeamish or a cop is a bully. Follow the protocol and everything will be all right.

Take the HMO worker on the phone who asks you, toward the end of a litany of inane questions, "Are you considering doing harm to yourself or others?" Here you were, trying to get a medical appointment and you were being put through the wringer simply because instead of Stage 3 Cancer, you had a loose (but let's say rather painful) hangnail.

"Frankly," you reply, "I'm considering using my special powers to send my arm through the telephone cable to strangle you if you ask me one more silly question."

Have to give him credit, though. Without a change in inflection he responds by asking if you know his location.

It reminds me of my favorite Somerset Maugham quote, which made me howl with laughter the first time I read it in Cakes and Ale years ago:

The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried phrase-making to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.

Apply that to work activity instead of talking.

Help! I'm surrounded by assholes!

"Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes." -William Gibson

 The quote was passed on this morning and it summarizes my life perfectly. Upon conducting a mental census of the people I have known most of my life, I realize I omitted observing the Gibsonian rule before commending myself to antidepressants to help me swim up to the surface of occasional joy or even a pleasing numbness.

What was I thinking?

I can't go through the names and memories of anyone I knew from the ages of 1 to 10 without finding preening self-centeredness, projections of absurd ambitions onto me, bossiness, meanness, trickery.

If they weren't bad then, time has taken care of that: the silence when it became clear I wouldn't play banker says it all. If their idiocy wasn't evident then, it is now, by God.

If they weren't uncaring, the way they peeled off in stormy times has spoken volumes. If their occasional contacts out of the blue to ask for a favor didn't broadcast it, my silent telephone in grief would. If their busy-ness didn't always work to exclude me, I might see their true character in my presence.

It wasn't me, after all. I was surrounded by assholes for so long that I didn't realize they were assholes.

Stunning. How could I have been such a fool!

"Tea Party" folks, I hear ya ...

Somewhere between 1959 and 1979, the world changed for people who kept their noses clean and did what they were told. They were going to be Daddies and Mommies, make a living in some way similar to old Dad, buy a house, have two kids, a dog, a white picket fence and two cars, hopefully send the kids to college. Then came 1968.

The year that Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy were killed, that the Tet Offensive proved the Vietnam war was unwinnable, that segregationist and Goldwater-sympathizing George Wallace lost and election alongside "Clean Gene" McCarthy's children's crusade, that Czechoslovakia showed Soviet Europe was faltering, that ... so on and so forth.

An emblematic year of much more than the year, containing developments that came before it and after. Those who lived through it were never the same, just as those who lived through 1945 weren't and perhaps those who lived through 2001 may have been irrevocably changed.

For many of us it was the gateway to experimentation with hallucinogens and sex and philosophies that the Jesuits didn't teach.

For others it was a hugely confusing and disappointing time. This latter group, which includes some of the nicest people I have ever met, found that the factory and the church closed and Mom ran off to find herself and with other men have children named Granola and Sunshine.

They got angry.

Nothing they had learned fit. Dating wasn't as expected. Marriage wasn't even common for a while, until eventually it became the place for a minority of children to be born. Forget about the white picket fence. And God sure didn't rain thunderbolts on the bad people!

Not even Reagan and the two Bushes could set things aright. So that's why they think they're the "Tea Party."

I don't blame them. I just wish they could accept my sincere sense of pained understanding. Nothing turned out quite the same for anyone else, either. Neither Carter, nor Clinton nor Obama could take us back to Camelot. I hear ya.

What if DSK didn't do it?

Since I've already offered a plausible scenario showing that Dominique Strauss-Kahn could have raped the maid in the hotel (see here), it's only fair to consider the opposite. Again, this is speculation: I have no "inside" information and I have read the story mainly in The New York Times and a few snippets elsewhere.

The odd thing here is that innocence is harder to imagine.

The only scenario that leaves DSK completely innocent would presume that the maid was actually attracted to an unknown, portly, late-middle-aged man of whom she must see dozens every day and actually asked to give him oral sex. There is one woman I know who finds DSK irresistible and, if the maid is from francophone Guinea, perhaps she recognized him from some French celebrity magazine and made a play to become a mistress — or wife no. 4. A maid can dream, no?

Not likely. See Maureen Dowd on that here.

I'm sure there are many inconsistencies in the police evidence, probably minor details, but the defense is prudently keeping its information until trial; or perhaps they are negotiating with what they have. We don't know.

In France, as I understand it, many suspect that Nicholas Sarkozy, or someone acting on his behalf, had something to do with this. However, that's a tough row to hoe. How did the Sarkozista conspirators know that DSK would go to New York? Was the mystery woman whom he wanted to impress with his suite (see my previous post) in on the conspiracy? How did they locate the precise maid who would clean the precise room and convince her?

Assuming unlimited resources and a few magic wands, yes, it could be a conspiracy. But it's not likely.

Everything we in the public know is that something of a sexual nature happened involving DSK and the maid. The only plausible exculpating story, with variant endings, is still a bit unsavory. Here goes.

Let's imagine that DSK asked the maid for oral sex in exchange of $1,000-plus, or some other sum impressive to us ordinary mortals. He probably had a roll of Benjamins with him. They agreed. This is still illegal sex for money, but in New York City it's probably not worth dragging someone off a plane, the perp walk, etc., and whatever one thinks of the practice — it's not legally rape.

This is plausible. The idea of a man forcing his penis into an unwilling woman's mouth — just one good bite away from serious, perhaps irreparable, damage — strikes me as highly implausible. That part has to have been legally consensual.

But then, as often happens among accomplices, a disagreement occurred. Perhaps she was not proficient at oral sex or perhaps she demanded more for continued sex in bed. "I will scream rape!" she threatened.

He laughed at her. "No one will believe a tramp like you." A scuffle ensued.

Or ... ending no. 2:

She felt humiliated, even with the money, and she decided play her trump card. We know from the NY Post, that Rupert Murdoch rag, that the maid may have AIDS. "I have AIDS and I have just passed it on to you with that little 'love bite' you liked so much," she says with a madwoman's laugh.

Faced with a death sentence that only could be called poetic justice, he was stunned, terrified, then angry and the Wrath of Strauss-Kahn (my phrase!) emerged. A scuffle ensued.

This could be plea-bargained out of court and prison. At least, I wouldn't be surprised if it was.

Why would Strauss-Kahn have done such a stupid thing? A plausible explanation for one man's folly

Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest and arraignment for allegedly raping a hotel maid, if based on fact, raise the ultimate question: Why? Here's a fact-free, but plausible, scenario that may explain it all, based on having grown up around people like DSK.

The United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and many other organizations some of you may never have heard of, are multinational, taxpayer-supported bureaucracies that largely serve as repositories for cabinet ministers and presidents in waiting, such as DSK. They have their own country clubs, their own pension systems, their own little social and political tax-free bubble, distinct from the coarsely jostling rabble in Congress, Parliament or the National Assembly.

So now think, a crown prince from one of these bureaucratic principalities gets a $3,000-a-night suite at a top hotel in New York. What for? He's only staying one night. What does he need several rooms for? OK, so he has finagled to pay only $525 for the room, which isn't bad for New York City.

But still, why was he there at all? Enter the scenario.

Let's suppose that DSK had someone to impress. Given the man, let's imagine it was a woman. Again, given the kind of man, it was not a bimbo. He likes high-grade, spirited women of accomplishment. His affair of 2008 was with a 50-year-old economist who was unquestionably top notch; attractive, yes, but no Gennifer Flowers.

DSK goes to NYC, gets an impressive suite: the appropriate priapic accoutrement for his tryst. But then ... then, this woman of accomplishment calls saying that she has a meeting that she cannot miss for professional reasons.

"Sorry, mon cheri, kiss, kiss, kiss ... I shall miss you," she murmurs into the phone.

Then imagine the Wrath of Strauss-Kahn! Hear his internal rant: I am the Managing Director of the IMF, the future president France and (whatever else) ... ! How dare this bitch do this to me!

He goes about his business, just one more among a million lonely men in New York City. He doesn't want to pay for a prostitute. To pay? They should be paying him for sleeping with the great Strauss-Kahn!!!

Eventually, as he comes out of his bath, a deus ex machina character appears on the stage: a youngish, presumably attractive woman who is in a position of servitude with respect to the great DSK.

I'll show them all what the Great Strauss-Kahn can do when he is insulted by bitches (which to him all women are at this point).

From there it is a short step to grabbing his club and attempting to drag a woman to his cave.

This is all merely my imagination and I do not claim that any of it is factual or true. But wouldn't it just begin to make sense, assuming what I am assuming?

The unasked question: Why do they hate us?

What's truly amazing about the response to the death of Osama bin Laden in the USA is the total absence of even a wisp of American self-appraisal in the face of the reality that people abroad hate the United States and everything they think we stand for. There's a total lack of intellectual curiosity and a total lack of honesty from those who should know better.

Nowhere have I heard or seen a reporter ask -- and I say so as a journalist who knows what real reporters should ask -- "Why did Osama hate us?" or "Why do his followers, sympathizers and distant fellow travelers hate us?"

In Latin America, the entire Osama episode is a funny joke.

Seen from their perspective, ten years ago the invulnerable, all-powerful Pentagon let two people armed with box cutters cut a hole in the headquarters of the U.S. armed forces. Now our public is angry at Pakistan for not realizing that Osama was among them? As if our government hadn't sent approved student visas to the 9/11 suicide attackers weeks after the attacks!

Ever heard of incompetence, fellow Americans? And I mean our own.

But back to the central issue here: Why are we as a nation so stupidly, stubbornly, embarrassingly incapable of demonstrating the slightest capacity to look at things from any point of view other than our own? How can such a narcissistic nation possibly aspire to lead the world?

Honestly, I wonder if there is anyone out there -- it's not on the radio, TV, in the newspapers, or in the blogosphere -- wonders why they, people other than Americans, hate us so much. I do.

News about jobs unveils America´s real religion

Every month at about this time, just a day before the Bureau of Labor Statistics unveils what it calls "The Employment Situation," we have a friendly office pool (we each bet 25 cents) on the unemployment rate and the net employment gain or loss figure. As a glass-half-empty kind of guy, I won a few of these bets when we were in what Paul Krugman calls the "oh-God-we’re-all-gonna-die period" of the recession, but I've been losing steadily as things get better.

I thought we'd hear 9.3 percent unemployment last Friday (March 4). It was 8.9 percent.

I didn't reveal any of this in my professional reporting (my job is to write "just the facts, ma'am"), but I did note how folks were cheering a 0.1 percentage point decline from 9.0 percent -- which most people don't know is not statistically significant.

A whoop also went up for the net 192,000 jobs added to the economy in February 2011 (I'd bet 50,000) -- even though one group calculated that even at that lofty rate the labor force won't get back to pre-recession levels until 2019 .

Never mind the details. The net job gain was announced with the words "job creation" in the press. These words go to the heart of this post.

If you believe the economic mythology of most major newspapers -- even the Wall Street Journal, which knows better, indulges in it -- new jobs are "created" every time this sort of things happens.

Way back when John F. Kennedy was a senator running for president, Sister Catherine Agnes had something to say about this -- and it still resonates with me today, even as an agnostic: the only being who makes something out of nothing (e.g., creates) is the one we humans call God, Allah, etc., whose existence I, of course, seriously question. Yet here are the major newspapers telling us that someone -- "employers" -- creates jobs, not in heaven, but right here in our own back yard.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all the saints and angels! (Sister's curse.)

This lauded economic Creator is also called an entrepreneur, a venture capitalist, an investor ... whatever. He (it's usually still a he) inhabits the pantheon of the real religion of the United States, which is not Christianity (sorry, Religious Right), but ... drum roll ... the worship of Money, Wealth, and all the Power and Sex it can get you.

Just a thought to ponder as you rush to encourage the Creator by spending your cash as fast as you get it to fuel the economy.

Good ol' Kafka University tells me I never graduated

Imagine that you're an established professional of many years. You get nostalgic for the days of yore and go to your alma mater's Web site, find that unlike every other school, they don't sell bumperstickers and other alum stuff. Then you see an offer of a free alum card ...

I can't resist a freebie. With this card I can go use the gym for free. Of course, the trip there would cost a bit, what with the two-hour flight (or was it three?) from my present lair to the haunts where I wrote faux-beat poetry.

But then, a kindly soul in the alumni office tells me that there doesn't seem to be a record of my graduation. I knew there was a reason they wouldn't admit me to MIT's PhD program in rocket science!

All these years I thought I was at least a university graduate. Do note: in Canada, my spiritual homeland, we go to "university," not merely "college." And in Montreal they have (had?) something called Collège d'Enseignement Général Et Professionnel, that everyone calls merely CEGEP (say-JEHP), so that a B.A. or B.S. takes five years, not four.

That's one way to keep youth unemployment down, eh?

Anyway, by now we've exchanged the requisite correspondence and thanks to VG and AR (you know who you are) I have just had my Dustin Hoffman moment: I'm a graduate!

OK, so it's 35 years later, but who's counting when you're having fun.

Kafka University prepared me well for life. I've had my identity stolen years before anyone knew of such a thing (try to imagine a Social Security Administration staffer showing you your record, then asking, "Are you sure that's not your mother?").

I am a walking, talking opposite profile of The Unknown Citizen, of whom W.H. Auden wrote

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint

Yet my record keepers at Kafka University, along with the denizens of various bureaucracies through which I have traversed, unwillingly likely share the view Auden's citizen-keepers

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

Familial Love

Much as my upbringing and the "family values" people made me despise the word "family," the celebration of my son's marriage this weekend culminated in an experience of familial love such as I probably never felt before. The tribal, invidious elements were absent and instead I felt bathed in the love that others felt for one whom I love.

Loving one's child is, at its root, narcissistic. One's offspring begin life as repositories of wish-fulfillment impulses: he will fly where I merely jump up, she will be the beautiful person I have never been. And so on.

Yet a child, of one's blood or of another's, in one's home or in one's classroom or in any of the contexts in which children find themselves relying on adults, with all the unreasonable and one-sided demands that children unwittingly make, is the first lesson in truly loving, truly letting go of self for another, not merely out of duty, but with pleasure.

What adult does not die to save a child with a smile on his or her face? This is at the core of the sometimes harsh and fierce human species.

We kill many other species for food, to gain room for ourselves, even for sport. (Don't fool yourselves, self-righteous vegetarians: vegetables and fruits are also living species we kill.) From there we take it to tribalism, totemism, group selfishness and war: my people are better than yours, my family deserves more than yours.

Even if at the core of all the human family lies the strife deemed necessary to survive, there's no question that the good feeling of being nurtured and protected by one's family, clan, nation and planetary unions can be expansive and peaceful. This is what I gained this weekend.

But She's a Commoner!

William, William, William! What's gone wrong with that boy? The Prince of Wales marrying a commoner ... why it's the end of the British Empire!

Did the heroes of the RAF fight the Battle of Britain in those dark years when the Empire's future seemed measured in months rather than a thousand years, just so some rapscallion prince could go run off with the first lass who held his hand in college?

No offense to Kate Middleton, but it's not done. William's great-uncle had to abdicate the crown when he got similar ideas.

Before Kate considers lying in the royal matrimonial bed, she should think of England, as Queen Victoria's contemporaries were so fond of advising.

As to Prince William, he should heed my advice and consider a marriageable royal. I have assembled a suitable list from among the 44 nations that still have a monarchy.

Consider one of the following:

Princess Maria Laura

• Princess Maria Laura of Belgium, six years William's junior, the oldest daughter of Prince Lorenz, Archduke of Austria-Este and Princess Astrid of Belgium. She is currently eighth in line to the Belgian throne. Just look at her, her face is made for one of the classic old royal paintings -- or the coinage of a country or two. Do I see a new dominion for the King of England, Scotland and France?

Princess Alexandra

• Princess Alexandra of Luxembourg is the fourth child and only daughter of Grand Duke Henri and Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of Luxembourg. Her given names would be a mouthful: Alexandra Joséphine Teresa Charlotte Marie Wilhelmine. But then, but imagine those petite and pouty lips saying them --  breathy and slow. She seems to hide passion behind a demure exterior. But granted, at 19, she may be a bit immature for William.
  
  
  

  

  Princess Madeleine

  
  
• Princess Madeleine of Sweden, Duchess of Hälsingland and Gästrikland, has the distinguishing characteristic of having been born only 11 days before William. She is the second daughter of King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia and was featured by Forbes Magazine as one of the "20 Hottest Young Royals" in 2008. A keeper. 

Princess Iman

• Princess Iman bint Al Hussein of Jordan, the daughter of the late King Hussein and reigning Queen Noor, comes with a crown already. Plus William and Iman would have loads to talk about: the princess attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 2002 and served in the Jordanian army soon after.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• HRH Princess 'Azemah or HRH Princess Fadzillah of Brunei, just a few years younger than William are daughters of the famed Sultan, so imagine the dowry! And they seem to be party girls, too. Not to worry, those guys are their brothers.

My matchmaking research is done. All William has to do is heed the call of the Empire.

The Pew Uncharitable Mistrust-sowing anti-Hispanic Center Is at it Again

The Pew Charitable Trust's "Hispanic Center" is at it again, spreading venomous misinformation about Hispanics in the name of high-minded "research," in a report titled After the Great Recession: Foreign Born Gain Jobs; Native Born Lose Jobs. In fact, the title is wrong and most economists would disagree with it.

Consider the comment from the Immigration Policy Center, whose research, along with that of others, shows the very different reality that "immigrant and native-born workers are not interchangeable, nor do they compete with each other for some fixed number of jobs in the U.S. economy." There is a mountain of research to show this.

This is not a first offense for Pew, either.

In early October, they published a report titled Latinos and the 2010 Elections: Strong Support for Democrats; Weak Voter Motivation. Yet Pew's own data show that 66 percent of Latino registered voters talked about the immigration policy and six-in-ten (58 percent) of them said they were absolutely certain they would vote. Where's the weak motivation?

Then they followed up with this one: Illegal Immigration Backlash Worries, Divides Latinos. What's their "division"? Some Hispanics would like the immigrants to pay a fine. Still, they all agree on helping them stay in the United States. To which I'm sure Pew would say: Don't bother me with the facts, Cuate.

If I had a dime for every newspaper editor since 1980 who wanted me and other Hispanics I've known to write the "Hispanics are Divided" story, I'd be rich! Even better is the one about Hispanics and African-Americans at each others' throats: another story that has no evidence behind it.

Pew, like Anglo newspaper editors, loves to hire some pliant "Chico" to get ethnic cover for their anti-Hispanic bull.


Pew's reports, including these, almost always have a Spic Hispanic name in the byline. In one, they were so desperate they credited "C. Soledad Espinoza, Intern." We're publicizing high-falutin' research by interns now, Pew?

Somewhat more credible is the repeated credit given to Mark Hugo Lopez, the associate director of the anti-Hispanic Center. His boss, the center's director, has -- oh, surprise! -- an Anglo name.

So what's "Hispanic" about this center other than its target? (And I say "target" as in bull's eye on our backs.) And what is "charitable" or has anything to do with "trust" about what is little more than a classic inheritance tax dodge set up by the heirs of oilman Joseph N. Pew, Jr.?

Juan Williams, the Noose Media and the Stupidification of America

Never mind that Congress went off to campaign after cutting off aid to the poorest Americans and leaving the unemployed in limbo. Since last night, Washington is abuzz with the lynch mob firing of Juan Williams from National Public Radio, or the (drunken?) calls of Ginni Thomas, wife of the laziest justice on the Supreme Court, to sexual-harrassment whistleblower Anita Hill, or the latest nonsense by candidates for Congress who have not read the Constitution.

I have a brief memo, drawing on my 35 years in journalism, as a reporter, editor and publisher, for NPR Chief Executive Officer Vivian Schiller, who claims that "it is the ideal of journalism that we strive for objectivity":

Re: Juan Williams

There's no such thing as objectivity in journalism. We should try, however, to be fair.

Fox presents the world as seen from a right-wing prism, NPR does so with the lens of liberalish cultural sensitivity and MSNBC offers what passes for a "leftist" view in these United States.

The Washington Post lobbied hard for the construction of bridges that meant an economic boon to its parent company; its editorial staff preens as journalists, instead of gossipmongers and cheerleaders for whoever has power (in its majority black city), if white. The Washington Times lives in a Moonie world all its own (I double-dare you: juxtapose their front page with that of any two or three other newspapers for a week).

The question goes beyond political freedom of the press. There is a variety of opinions within the permissible range disseminated in this country.

Ever hear that the Soviet Union had no inflation in prices for basic necessities from 1927 to 1991? Or that Israel gets more U.S. foreign aid than all of Africa? Or that General Motors purposely destroyed once viable non-polluting mass transit systems in the United States?

No? Well, think about it: who owns the mass media? Even "free" blogs, like this one, exist at the pleasure of Mr. Google. Never mind the broadcast and cable networks, the newspapers, the wire services, held by a few neo-feudal newspaper families or by gigantic corporations or by modern-day robber barons.

This is why, when Congress left town at the end of September with a continuing resolution to fund the government -- except for a few billion in the TANF Emergency Fund and except for a permanent extension of unemployment insurance for the throngs that have been out of work for more than 99 weeks -- no one said anything.

The owners of the media don't give a damn about the depredation of our society, the fruits of which they partake of generously, if it doesn't sell advertising or air time. And the uneducated don't read and don't watch news.

I have waited and waited for someone to lift up their cry to the empty heavens. How can we sit by as the poverty rate rises, welfare is cut, and people are abandoned to live in cardboard "homes" without saying a word?

I kept my counsel precisely because I cover these things professionally in journalism. I'm not supposed to vent opinions. Or as one grizzled editor used to say (in my cleaned up version): if you cover the circus, don't make love to the elephants.

Enough! The words of Allen Ginsburg come to mind: "America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?"

It's Still Legal to Be Racist

The lesson no one seems to be taking away from l'affaire Shirley Sherrod is that in the United States it's still legal to be racist. The Constitution protects the right to think racist thoughts and express racist ideas; the only thing legislation since 1964 bars is acting on these thoughts or ideas.

Even in the so-called Fox News network's truncated and out-of-context video of Sherrod's statements, she was perfectly within her rights to express a dislike of whites. That's not what she was expressing in the full unexpurgated version, but if she had been, it would have been legal.

No civil servant, employer, supervisor, renter or seller, and so forth, may legally refuse goods, services or opportunities or rights to anyone merely on the basis that the individual is white, Christian, British, male or (in some states) heterosexual. That's the law.

However, you can caricature and even express a hostile disposition in your mind and in your speech against any legally protected group. Neither the civil rights movement, nor much less Congress, ever thought the government could ever actually change minds by law -- only actual external behavior.

The psychologist William James was fond of this approach: force yourself smile and you'll feel more lighthearted. It's a very American approach to social problems such as racism.

A Talibani and Jihadist West?

There's a growing tendency, among those of us who are non-Muslims and non-Jews in Western societies, to adopt a form of anti-Arab intolerance that mimics the reverse of the Taliban's and a pro-Israeli dogmatism that in some respects mirrors Al Qaeda's jihadism. Both have gained currency and a measure of respectability particularly since September 11, 2001.

Events on that date seem to justify, on one hand, sweeping negative generalizations about the Arab world, Islam and jihadism. What gets spewed as verities would be rejected out of hand if spoken by Arabs or Muslims of, say, the European world and modern rationalism.

Accompanying the smears and sheer nonsense about Arabs and Muslims, is a Gentile knee-jerk hypersensitivity to anything that seems remotely critical of Jews, Judaism or the State of Israel. Here again, the position would be laughable if it were Jews or Israelis somehow raising eyebrows about, say, Canada and Canadians.

Some of us feel entitled to declare that

• Sharia law should be banned or somehow rejected;
• the voluntary wearing of the burqa or the niqab is an affront to human rights; and
• any unashamed presence of Muslims in the USA or Europe is a jihadist slap in the face.

We forget, of course, that Sharia law is akin to Catholic canon law, the Jewish Talmud and the Methodist Book of Discipline. We ignore people who by choice are more traditional than ourselves.

We also make history revolve on the one incident that happened in two of our cities, ignoring the many similar and much more devastating incidents that happened in Arab cities and towns as Western powers (and Israel) engaged in fanatical pursuit of the holy dollar and holy petroleum. Our hurt matters, so theirs does not?

A similar and connected myopia concerns Semitic chauvinism, according to which we get illogical leaps, such as the notions that

• Germany and Poland were uninhabitable places after 1945 for Germans and Poles who happened to be Jewish;
• an act of piracy on the high seas that involves killing of unarmed civilians is a hallowed act of self-defense; and
• when Israel is responsible for espionage against its main financier, the United States, or for massive killings of Lebanese civilians who aren't even Muslim, Tel Aviv must be  defended axiomatically.

We trivialize the real sufferings and deaths of millions under Nazism whenever Holocaust history gets twisted to silence irritating comments that, examined closely, may bear grains of truth. We canonize the law of the jungle whenever we condone the military disregard for international law leading to deaths by any power, or any region, ethnicity religion or ideology.

We actually dishonor Israel, as some of its current and recent leaders have done, when we allow its rogue governments to prevail in the court of public opinion.

The swath of land between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean will not find peace until all of us admit our share of wrongdoings and follies, and begin to show tolerance for those of others with whom we disagree, or are even locked with in conflict.

We ought to lead to peace by example.

Mosque in NYC: Bushit Still Distorts 9/11

News that a mosque is planned to be built about two and a half blocks from Ground Zero in New York City have fanned the flames of the worst kind of intolerance and misinformation lingering from eight years of Bush propaganda. Even a usually sensible blogger cries foul, arguing that the plan "seems like tasteless nose thumbing at Americans and at worst, an attempt to replace our native cultures."

Lest you be confused, this not an Indian woman writing about "our native cultures." No, this is someone taking the easiest phrase out of the 2001-2008 ersatz thinking manual. Rule 1: when in doubt, trot out nativism. The same nativism used against every immigrant group since the Irish potato famine.

Oversight? Absolutely not. I tried to call the blogger to her senses (see comments here), but she continued to argue insane notions such as "The devastation of 9-11 was not committed in the name of Jesus or Yahweh, but to praise Allah."

That's right, fellow non-Muslims. Let's tar a billion and a half Muslims in the world because of the alleged actions of 18. Let's forbid the building of a mosque just to show them. Right? Wrong!

So little is really known about 9/11 and so much nonsense was justified in the name of that event, that most people forget that

• we never had actual evidence proven in court about who and what brought these events about, nor much less why, having instead to rely on the word of the men who stole the election of 2000; 
• there is no "war" on, since a war is a state of belligerency between two nation-states -- those who would like to try every Muslim in a military tribunal ought to ask the same for the Mafia, the KKK, the white-power militias associated with the likes of Timothy McVeigh, since they are equally as criminal and at war with American society and ideals as Al Qaeda; and
• we do have freedom to believe in anything or nothing at all in this country (and I, for one, would like very much to keep it that way).

In the particular case of the mosque in question, it is planned to be erected two and a half blocks away from Ground Zero. There is a Greek Orthodox church and other places of worship in the vicinity. The leader behind this project is a respected advocate of inter-religious tolerance highly praised and respected by a leading New York rabbi.

If we are going to decide that all mosques and Muslims are responsible for the crimes of 9/11, then

• Are all U.S. whites responsible for 300 years of kidnapping, torture and slavery of millions of African Americans?
• Do all Jews and all synagogues stand accused for the Israeli armed forces attacks on civilians during the Sabra-Shatila massacre of the 1980s, or the flattening of Qana just a few years ago or the humanitarian disaster of Gaza that still continues today?
• Is the rape of children by a relatively small proportion of priests irrevocably the fault of all Catholics, including the children, and all Catholic churches?

I could go on, but the intelligent reader will have gotten the point. Even if all 18 suicide attackers on board of the four airplanes that crashed on September 11, 2001, died with praises of Allah on their lips or their minds (which we don't know for a fact), it is hardly reasonable or logical to blame these actions on their religion and all fellow believers.

Let's stop the shouting and start reasoning together.

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