tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58405433875172583602024-03-14T09:30:06.191-05:00sunspark says...(the blog for liberal random thinkers)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.comBlogger127125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-31248110201658535132018-01-19T08:03:00.002-06:002018-01-19T08:03:42.631-06:00New PSA Brings Powerful Visuals to #MeToo<!-- AddThis Button BEGIN -->
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<span data-offset-key="6sla2-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Since Alyssa Milano resurrected Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement this fall, the number of (mostly female) celebrity survivors of sexual abuse and harassment has grown phenomenally and the number of (all male) celebrity perpetrators of these alleged crimes and incidents has grown with them. From Harvey Weinstein and Louis CK to this week’s allegations by Eliza Dushku against Hollywood stuntman Joel Kramer, it’s clear that those who were once “victims” of these actions are willing to be victims no longer and that there has been a huge cultural upheaval in Hollywood and the nation. And now a group of young female filmmakers from LA has gotten together to add a visual component to the outcry: ten women directors have created a #MeToo PSA.</span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="eg5f6-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">While our mic is still hot and our stories are being heard, it is a pivotal time to reshape our culture. Our goal with this content is to keep the momentum of this movement going as long as we can until real systematic changes are actualized. This is just the beginning. -Kristen Laffey, producer </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="avf4d-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">The goal of this project, produced by one of the directors, Summera Howell, is to reach out to women who are survivors of the experiences portrayed onscreen and let them know they are not alone. Most of the directors too are survivors and have used their talents to work through their trauma. Says Howell, "As more women came forward to share their stories, I felt compelled to create a safe space for artists (including myself) to work through their trauma and to reach out to other survivors. #MeToo has given women a space to use their voices, and we're privileged to put images to those words." </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="f5rm8-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">AWD member Kayden Phoenix, another director on the project, adds, “I volunteered for this campaign because it's imperative to stand united. By staying quiet, predators are still out in the loose and that's dangerous. We have a voice and maybe me doing this will help the future and the past sexually harassed victims find theirs. We're strong regardless, but we're unconquerable because we stand together, in solidarity.” Fellow director Rachel Fleischer agrees: “The ways in which we as women are affected by these experiences are profound, layered and complex; they can only be fully revealed over time. Making work like this is part of uncovering those layers in the hopes that we can not only heal, but bring about real change.” </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6v0vl-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">The #MeToo movement has obviously brought a great deal of attention to the issue of sexual harassment far beyond Hollywood. In the days immediately following the start of the hashtag, Twitter reported over 1.7 million tweets with #MeToo and 85 countries with at least 1000 of them. It is a worldwide problem that is now having a worldwide spotlight shone on it, and with each new revelation it remains starkly within that spotlight. </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="ft2ot-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">The PSA, however, is not about celebrities. It focuses on the 1.7 million, everyday women who find this happening to them all the time in one way or another, women of all races, cultures, ages and body types being abused by men who feel privileged to do so. It shows various scenarios from a classroom to a parking garage to a sidewalk, a home, a park, a church, an army barracks, etc. The message is clearly that this can happen anywhere, that “safety” is a fallacy. The world is a trap for women as long as men feel free to act in a predatory manner, and the PSA shows this in all of its ugliness.</span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6t14g-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">To ensure verisimilitude, the creators of the PSA made certain to commit to authenticity of story-telling. Each segment was directed by a woman who knows of the issues involved. For instance, the piece about harassment on a military base is a veteran, the piece showing lesbians debased by a group of disgusting men is LGBTQ, etc. In this way the women can use their art to protest not only how they have been treated by men but how they have been treated by an industry that, to a large extent, doesn’t see them at all.</span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="79gln-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Greta Gerwig is a favorite to be nominated for Best Director this year for </span></span><span data-offset-key="79gln-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Ladybird</span></span><span data-offset-key="79gln-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">. If she is, she will be only the fifth woman in history to do so. Others include Lina Wertmuller (</span></span><span data-offset-key="79gln-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Seven Beauties</span></span><span data-offset-key="79gln-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">), Jane Campion (</span></span><span data-offset-key="79gln-0-5" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">The Piano</span></span><span data-offset-key="79gln-0-6" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">), Sofia Coppola (</span></span><span data-offset-key="79gln-0-7" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Lost in Translation</span></span><span data-offset-key="79gln-0-8" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">) and Kathryn Bigelow (</span></span><span data-offset-key="79gln-0-9" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">The Hurt Locker</span></span><span data-offset-key="79gln-0-10" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">). Bigelow is the only one who has actually </span></span><span data-offset-key="79gln-0-11" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">won</span></span><span data-offset-key="79gln-0-12" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> the award. This year marks the 90th Academy Awards. That will mean that, if Gerwig is nominated, 445 men will have received the nod against only five women. It’s clear that the industry still has a strong blind spot when it comes to female directors, even this year, when one of the top grossing films (</span></span><span data-offset-key="79gln-0-13" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Wonder Woman</span></span><span data-offset-key="79gln-0-14" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">) was directed by Patty Jenkins. The Golden Globes didn’t even give Gerwig a nomination.</span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="svpd-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">The entertainment industry frequently dismisses the lack of women working professionally on sets by claiming there simply aren’t enough experienced women to hire. This is yet another reason this PSA is important. Says director Katherine Voigt: “It was inspiring to see all of these badass professional women come together to create this important piece… Women are rooting for each other in this industry, and working in an environment like that makes you feel like your dreams are possible.”</span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="dq8bl-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Special thanks to Summera Howell for much of the information in this article.</span></span></div>
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-22640377385235096802017-12-10T01:25:00.004-06:002017-12-10T01:44:21.902-06:00Female Filmmakers Finding Their Voices<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7pBUYoRpig7htkMRqf7oD9ZmBzmDCkIJ4bsBXp9QeYyMfjp4CtSmmDGrCR18Gh31jUGUTKynFFVPsR5TC6KfdjbiypS1Q16UVruE87CvpPNjA-M-J8O5po5bh4pEd_pftXAQTLxZWD9M/s1600/lain+alone.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="443" data-original-width="590" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7pBUYoRpig7htkMRqf7oD9ZmBzmDCkIJ4bsBXp9QeYyMfjp4CtSmmDGrCR18Gh31jUGUTKynFFVPsR5TC6KfdjbiypS1Q16UVruE87CvpPNjA-M-J8O5po5bh4pEd_pftXAQTLxZWD9M/s640/lain+alone.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span data-offset-key="531se-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Every day it seems the government in Washington does something new that targets women, whether it is health care or birth control or Neil Gorsuch or a tax bill that skews very much against middle class households, many of which are headed by women. But in 2017, women have begun fighting back. Trump’s inauguration was greeted with nationwide marches protesting his election and political beliefs. Over the summer, Bill Cosby finally came to trial for one in a series of rapes he allegedly perpetrated, a trial that, though it resulted in a hung jury, has been scheduled for re-prosecution. And, most significant of all, the year’s fourth quarter saw the rise of the #MeToo movement and the subsequent outing of sexual misconduct by Harvey Weinstein, Garrison Keillor, Al Franken, Charlie Rose, Louis CK, Jeffrey Tambor, Roy Moore, Kevin Spacey, Dustin Hoffman, Brett Ratner and many others, including several U.S. congressmen.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="eibo-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">It is a rising tide of empowerment for women across the country, and it comes in a year that has also seen important films made by female directors like Katherine Bigelow, Patty Jenkins, Dee Rees, Sofia Coppola, Valerie Faris, Angela Robinson, and Greta Gerwig, whose “Ladybird” is in line for possible Oscar nods both for best film and best director.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="av7tb-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Lain Kienzle, a young Brooklyn filmmaker, is seeking to ride this wave with a new short film called “The Mouse and the Lion,” a story set in 1920s Virginia and about a young woman who, after the death of her abusive husband, finds a stranger collapsed on her door step in the middle of a blizzard. As he regains his strength, their growing bond unearths secrets each would rather keep hidden.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="4rtdn-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">“It’s about moving on after an abusive relationship, and reclaiming your identity and power as a woman,” Kienzle said. “It was a time of real upheaval in the world and in the US in particular. A lot of men had left to fight in the war, which was much more technologically advanced than any war previous. So a lot of the soldiers came home with what was named </span><span data-offset-key="4rtdn-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">shell shock</span><span data-offset-key="4rtdn-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">, but we now know as PTSD.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6phc3-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">“And while the men were gone, women were taking on increased roles at home and professionally, so when the men came back, the women didn’t necessarily want to go back to how things were with a newfound taste of freedom.”</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="euad7-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Kienzle feels that, despite what is happening in Washington, right now is a very important and positive time for women.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6sdsj-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">“I think this has been brewing for so long that it was kind of inevitable. I think women in general are exhausted. We’re all tired of being told to smile, or patted on the head and sent on our way. We’re tired of watching male director after male director allowed to make movies that bomb and still have lucrative careers. I think having an administration that clearly doesn’t support women, and watching a few brave women speak out about abusive industry titans in such an assertive way really opened the floodgates.”</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="fjeg0-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">I think having an administration that clearly doesn’t support women, and watching a few brave women speak out about abusive industry titans in such an assertive way really opened the floodgates. — Lain Kienzle</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="7sn1s-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Being overlooked for being female was a significant part of Kienzle’s early career. After significant festival success even as a high school student in Lake Forest, Illinois, Kienzle moved on to study film and TV production at NYU, and has been working in the industry ever since graduation. She has worked in various capacities for several television programs including “Quantico” and “Blacklist,” as well as her current job, script supervisor.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="7vc1a-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Traditionally, that role has been largely filled by women. In old photos from Hollywood studios, there’s always one woman by the camera, and that’s the script supervisor. And that’s still very much the case. I don’t think I’ve worked on a single movie where the director, cinematographer or assistant director were women. So a lot of times, it’s these men standing in a circle, and I’m trying to interject from just outside the circle.
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<span data-offset-key="7iapv-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">This, however, has not meant that all or even most directors have held her back.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="9bi3m-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">A lot of directors love their script supervisors and really make them creative partners. And a lot of directors I’ve worked with do value what I do. A lot of actors immediately want to meet the script supervisor because that’s the crew member who’s going to save them in a lot of cases. So for me, it feels more like a way for women to really work their way into a position of power and get close to the action. That said, I’ve been told by men to “go back behind monitor where you belong” and “I’m a man and I know women do this action all the time, so that’s what the character’s going to do.
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<span data-offset-key="5m9mf-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">With her own film, Kienzle is tearing down those norms.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="cu78i-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">“The other thing that’s really important to me,” she said,” is that we’re not only empowering women narratively, but professionally. Our team is majority women, and we’re making it a point to hire a diverse and female heavy crew. We’d like to really put our money where our mouth is and support women and underserved communities of filmmakers in all aspects.”
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<span data-offset-key="3bem-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Serving this underserved community and seeking to create more opportunities in the industry for creative women is precisely the goal of </span><a href="http://cinefemme.net/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;" target="_blank"><span data-offset-key="3bem-1-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Cinefemme</span></a><span data-offset-key="3bem-2-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">, an LA-based organization founded fifteen years ago and now headed by Michelle Kantor.</span></div>
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DUSTY SAUNDERS</div>
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Members of Cinefemme: Jenny Payne, Michelle Kantor, Rory Gory, Lagueria Davis</div>
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<span data-offset-key="5uquk-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">“We are witnessing a galvanizing moment in history where for the first time, women's voices and stories are being heard and believed (and reported en masse by the press),” Kantor said, and that plays directly into the mission of Cinefemme, which was “founded on the belief that there is a much-needed shift that needs to occur in the hearts and minds of our global culture in challenging the socioeconomic systems that perpetually marginalize our voices within the mainstream by excluding women from directing jobs, having inherent bias in terms of investment, and not updating the Equal Pay Act to close the wage gap.”</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="cdbch-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Kantor’s co-founder of Cinefemme agrees that this is a key moment in history for women in general. Katrina Parks, whose films focus on women’s history, said, “I definitely feel like the election of arguably the most misogynist President has caused a lot of internal soul-searching, and that can be connected to activism. It feels good, but it’s important to ask ourselves as women how did this happen. Clearly a lot of women voted for Trump. So, what is it inside women that makes them reject other powerful women? And what of the women who support the patriarchy by not standing up and defending people when they should? We are getting to the point as women where we are going to reject that kind of self-sabotage that can play into things.”</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="51kk-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">I definitely feel like the election of arguably the most misogynist President has caused a lot of internal soul-searching, and that can be connected to activism. —Katrina Parks</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="cgot4-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">At this moment especially, all of these women agree that it is critically important that women’s voices are heard and listened to. As the only non-profit on the West Coast that exclusively incubates and fiscally sponsors women's projects</span>, Cinefemme occupies a very important niche in the movie-making industry. Kantor wants Hollywood to recognize that, by telling all of its stories through the lens of a man’s point of view, it is skewing the way our culture is seen.</div>
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<span data-offset-key="ai9iv-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Parks’ current documentary, </span><span data-offset-key="ai9iv-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">The Women of the Mother Road</span><span data-offset-key="ai9iv-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">, examines some of these missing stories, in this case the stories of the many diverse women whose lives were lived along and impacted by America’s Road, Rt. 66. “When we think of Rt. 66,” she said, “we typically think of Jack Kerouac or a man behind the wheel with a woman as a passenger, maybe with a bunch of kids in the back, so I wanted to expand that representation.” She found tales of archeologists, anthropologists, artists, waitresses, politicians, and many others, over 75 stories in all about women whose lives centered on Rt. 66, and it is those stories that are now being told.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="23jvk-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">“The female auteur has altogether been lost in the cinematic narrative,” Kantor said, “and we choose to instead revere alleged pedophiles like Woody Allen and Roman Polanski. I would rather put my dollars and attention on the overlooked and underserved artistic minority...which may in fact be a majority waiting to come out of the shadows.” </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="qufv-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Organizations such as Cinefemme have to exist, and have to grow stronger, in order to correct a fundamental flaw in the system that stems from long-standing perceptions that are not, in fact, true. Jenna Payne, Cinefemme’s treasurer and program director, points out that new statistics show that, in almost every category, women auteurs have as great or greater returns on investment as compared to their male counterparts, yet the Powers That Be in Hollywood don’t seem to see these studies. “And it’s much worse for women of color,” she points out, which is why Cinefemme makes it a point to seek out a diverse group of women each year to sponsor.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="c7ujo-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">One such woman is Kayden Phoenix, a young Latino filmmaker currently working on the creation of what she terms the world’s first Latina superhero,"Jalisco." Being young, and having what she calls “the luxury of having a unisex name,” Phoenix has not yet experienced noticeable discrimination because of her gender of which she is aware. “It might just be my being naïve,” she said, “but I don’t see myself as different than males.” Nonetheless, Phoenix celebrates the current feminist political climate. “I’m so happy males are being held accountable. It’s too bad the females that spoke out decades and years ago have been overlooked and shunned.”</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="e52qu-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Kantor pointed out that young male filmmakers have inherently come from a place of privilege, and are often the ones chosen to be mentored by established men in power who are inclined to bring up those who remind them of themselves. “I forget who said it, but the quote ‘Don't let the song within you die unsung’ springs to mind. We need to empower women to get their creative works into the cultural narrative. Until all women of talent and ambition, who may not necessarily have the privilege of inner connections or wealth, have a chance to see their dreams of being a director realized, then I won't stop working on this issue. We need these voices in our lives, we need these stories to be told, and we need women to do it. We are losing out on incredible creative works by not recognizing and funding the works of female artists.”</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="a8vfj-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">We need these voices in our lives, we need these stories to be told, and we need women to do it. We are losing out on incredible creative works by not recognizing and funding the works of female artists. ---Michelle Kantor</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="4tmqp-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Payne notes that one of the most significant projects Cinefemme offers, Dinner With Dames, seeks to provide a solution to this issue. “The hot topic of diversity in film has many people pointing fingers without offering many practical solutions,” she said. “Cinefemme invites Hollywood to tackle the gender diversity issue by sitting down for dinner with up and coming female writers, directors, producers, and other skilled department heads.” The goal, of course, is to find a way of getting around the “old boys’ network” and level the playing field.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="bpdme-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">With women like Lain Kienzle, Katrina Parks, Kayden Phoenix, Michelle Kantor, whose documentary, </span><span data-offset-key="bpdme-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">Red Star</span><span data-offset-key="bpdme-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">—about her parents’ daring escape from Iron Curtain Czechoslovakia (her father </span><span data-offset-key="bpdme-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">scuba-dived</span><span data-offset-key="bpdme-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> across a river!)—is in the editing stages, and Jenna Payne, who is working on a short film fictionalizing the life of her moonshining great-grandfather, out there working on telling the stories they want to tell, it seems that the next generation of female filmmakers is well on the way. But Kantor knows it isn’t enough. As it is with all non-profits, funds are not easy to find, and Kantor is concerned about the effect the new tax bill might have. She has hope, through, that 2018 will bring with it an angel or two who will help her to sponsor far more than the 7-10 women at a time she can handle now.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="dghs7-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">“Our mission at Cinefemme is to get as many of these women telling the stories they want to tell in the mainstream, ultimately creating a mindset shift in our culture through empathy, and bring about greater equality for all of us. We do it by supporting each other, by challenging the narrative myth that there isn't enough, and by choosing inclusivity over elitism. When we are successful, we bring other women up with us, and we praise our male allies who wield their power for good. This is the road to success, for all women and men in society, and we will do it together. And we will all be better for it.”</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-26567570058818170432017-10-30T12:14:00.004-05:002017-12-01T12:37:11.415-06:00The Only Solution to a Trump/Russia Coup Is to Replay the 2016 Election<div data-block="true" data-editor="7sgg7" data-offset-key="ds3mr-0-0" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box !important; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Roboto, helvetica, sans-serif; padding: 0px !important; white-space: pre-wrap;">
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<span data-offset-key="ds3mr-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">The following is never going to happen...but it should.</span><br />
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<span data-offset-key="ds3mr-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">I was struck by the juxtaposition of two news stories today. The first was the story of the indictment against Paul Manafort for what was termed a “conspiracy against the United States.” The second was a story that Donald Trump’s approval rating as President had dropped yet again, this time to 38%, a Nixonian level and an apt one: it was the nation’s 37th President who was the last one to conspire so brazenly for his own benefit against the greater good of the country. The difference between Trump and Nixon, though, is simple: while Nixon conspired against some of his fellow Americans, Trump conspired against </span><span data-offset-key="ds3mr-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">all</span><span data-offset-key="ds3mr-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> of us, if the allegations against Manafort and others yet to come are proved. It’s as simple and blunt as this: he committed treason, using a foreign power to steal the Presidency of the United States.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="36nka-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Richard Nixon was forced to resign his office in order to avoid impeachment for his crimes. As the nation’s reaction to his pardon by Gerald Ford showed, though, this did not seem quite enough to Americans at the time: we wanted him to pay even more dearly for despoiling the greatest office on earth. Ford’s pardon robbed us of our chance to see him on trial, to hear more of the truth, and Ford paid dearly for that, being denied an elected Presidency of his own.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="cbcdd-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">What, then, would be the current outcome of this horrific mess, should it all play out as it well may, with indictments following indictments, with verdicts that prove that collusion with our enemy did in fact occur and that Trump’s campaign knew about it, with the possibility of an indictment against the President himself? We know our timid, self-aggrandizing Republican Congress, too happy with their current majority status, will do nothing about him, so that role goes to the courts, but what then? It would be an unprecedented situation in the history of this country: an election that was stolen by foreign conspiracy, by treason. There is, quite simply, no Constitutional remedy for it. Every single part of Trump’s White House is tainted by connection to him since none of them would be there had he not done what he did; thus, ordinary Constitutional law does not apply. This was, in all reality, a coup. It calls for something extra-Constitutional.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="7g5f1-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Proof of conspiracy would call not only for the removal of Donald Trump but the negation of the entire 2016 Presidential election. Period. There can be no halfway solution to this terrifying situation: if a person or party is allowed to steal an election and then be forced out of office, leaving his entire cabinet and platform intact, the coup still remains in effect. No: the situation is unprecedented. As in South Korea last year, when its president was indicted and forced out of office, a new election must take place as soon as possible. Until then, the result of 2016 must be negated completely. All Trump appointees must be removed from office, up to and including Justice Neil Gorsuch, as they are all, in legal terms, fruits of the poisoned tree. It all must be replayed.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="5468o-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Until it is, though, we will need a President. And the Constitution does come into play for that. Paul Ryan, as Speaker of the House, is next in line for the office after the White House is returned to mainstream America. A new election could likely be held within several months, and Ryan is certainly capable of holding things together for that amount of time without creating any new crisis. The election couldn’t be done in the same way we usually hold them, with endless primaries and conventions, etc. But why does it need to? Let it be done in the style other countries use: candidates can throw their names into the ring, have six weeks to campaign followed by a debate and an election, followed by a run-off between the top vote-getters. It’s not rocket science; we make it way too complicated (which is why we make it so expensive). </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="e40lq-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">This solution may seem absurd. But once again I point out: a coup of the highest office of the United States of America may have occurred. If so, surely </span><span data-offset-key="e40lq-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">there is no potential solution that should be dismissed as absurd</span><span data-offset-key="e40lq-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">. And one that wipes out the coup entirely and then relies on the American democratic system to replace it, I would argue, is not absurd at all; it is elegant. Within months, we would be up and running again, all of this behind us except whatever trials remain.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="8bv62-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Therefore, if the Russian conspiracy is proved, we </span></span><span data-offset-key="8bv62-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">must</span></span><span data-offset-key="8bv62-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> replay the 2016 election. It is the only reasonable action we can take. It is the only truly democratic and </span></span><span data-offset-key="8bv62-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">American</span></span><span data-offset-key="8bv62-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> action we can take.</span></span></div>
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-8491791733425716382017-09-28T23:37:00.000-05:002017-09-28T23:37:18.521-05:00How the Democrats Can Defeat Roy Moore: Run Luther Strange<div data-block="true" data-editor="b8jkp" data-offset-key="2cj9e-0-0" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box !important; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Roboto, helvetica, sans-serif; padding: 0px !important; white-space: pre-wrap;">
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<span data-offset-key="2cj9e-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Somewhere deep in the heart of Alabama there are voices being raised in shock and agony, echoing that of the Chicago Tribune’s Rex Huppke, who opined in his column that the victory of Roy Moore over Sen. Luther Strange in the GOP senatorial primary signified what happens when the “sane vs. crazy” elements of America face off in today’s political world: “the latter, in Alabama, prevailed.”</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="3sg7c-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">There is no doubt whatsoever that Roy Moore is what might generously be called a “loose cannon.” He is a man who believes that homosexuality should be against the law and that “Putin is right” with his opposition to gay marriage. He believes “it was the Providential hand of God” that put Trump in the White House. He believes there are communities in America today under Sharia law. (”Up in Illinois. Christian communities.”) He professes not even to know what DACA </span><span data-offset-key="3sg7c-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">is</span><span data-offset-key="3sg7c-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">. He believes 9/11 happened “maybe, just maybe, because we’ve distanced ourselves from the one that has it within his hands to heal this land” and we because upset God by “legitimizing” sodomy and abortion. And of course he famously joined with Trump in questioning Barack Obama’s American birth.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="40are-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">This is the man Alabamans would send to the Senate. As Huppke said, “When Alabama Republicans cast their ballots in the state's U.S. Senate primary Tuesday, a majority of them thought: ‘Yep. This conspiracy-theory-believing religious zealot who was twice suspended when he was chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court is the best man to send to Washington!’”</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="4n43i-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">And there are Democrats in Alabama suddenly thinking: </span><span data-offset-key="4n43i-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">hey! maybe this provides us with an opportunity to steal a Deep South Senate seat! </span><span data-offset-key="4n43i-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> They are thinking, with logic on their side, that only 262,000 people voted for this jackass in a GOP primary with another 218,000 GOP voters against him. Compare that the the 505,000 who voted for Richard Shelby in the primary just a year ago. The Dems can certainly be justified for thinking: </span><span data-offset-key="4n43i-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">the GOP has a highly polarizing, unpopular candidate! We can get the sane GOP voters to side with us and claim this seat!</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="e40g9-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">WELL, STOP IT!</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="c3m10-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">That kind of thinking did not work so well in the Clinton vs. Trump race, and it won’t work here either. There might be a tiny possibility that the Dems could succeed and manage to walk away with what surely ought to be a safe GOP seat, but it simply isn’t worth risking placing Roy Moore into the Senate for at least the next three years when the Democrats possess the power to stop him. And they do. The solution is simple.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="4opaa-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Although Doug Jones is a moderate candidate who has had some success in Alabama and might engender some support, especially with the backing of Vice President Joe Biden, who intends to campaign for him, and although he’d undoubtedly be a strong senator, </span><span data-offset-key="4opaa-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">the Democratic Party must immediately urge him to withdraw from the race and replace him on the ballot with Luther Strange</span><span data-offset-key="4opaa-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">. There is little to no chance that Strange would enter the race as an Independent and practically hand the seat to the Dems, despite his own distaste for Moore and his lunacy. But if the Dems approached him and offered him their ballot spot, no strings attached, he’d be a fool not to take it. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="bpjek-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">In a general election, with anyone in the state voting, adding Democratic votes to the returning Luther Strange votes would certainly be enough to overwhelm Moore’s support. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="c6i38-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">I know, I know: this would be a bitter pill for Dems to swallow. Strange, in his tenure as Alabama Attorney General, opposed gay marriage, abortion rights, transgender rights, Obamacare, and most of what the left holds dear. He was one of 22 Senators to sign a letter urging Trump to pull out of the Paris Agreements. Why on earth should we fight to keep him around? And the answer is simple: </span><span data-offset-key="c6i38-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;">Roy Moore</span><span data-offset-key="c6i38-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">. Consider what you wouldn’t give right now to have pretty much </span><span data-offset-key="c6i38-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">any</span><span data-offset-key="c6i38-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> other GOP President in the White House than Donald J. Trump, and you get what I mean. Loose cannons are dangerous. Loose cannons with bully pulpits are more so.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="cdt5t-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Senator Luther Strange is a terrible thing for Democrats. Senator Roy Moore would be a terrible thing for America. It is the </span></span><span data-offset-key="cdt5t-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">responsibility</span></span><span data-offset-key="cdt5t-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> of the Democratic Party to stop this insanity because the GOP as it is currently constituted simply cannot. They had the President and the Senate Majority Leader campaigning for Strange and look what happened? Moore beat him in August and again in September. America simply cannot afford to allow Moore to win again in December, and if he faces a Democrat in Alabama he will. If he faces Strange and Democratic voters choke down their disgust and vote for their current senator, Roy Moore will finally be able to go to the place he belongs: the same dung heap where all of the political caricatures of the past have retired.</span></span></div>
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-91642986114349271392017-05-24T19:15:00.001-05:002017-06-01T00:54:12.663-05:00"Valkyries: Badasses on Bikes" Is One Sweet RideLast week, on consecutive nights, I went to two theatrical events in Chicago. On Thursday, I had the pleasure of seeing "Aladdin" at the Cadillac Palace, a lavish musical derived from the Disney film, one that won me over from its opening number and kept building from there in sheer entertainment force. But the previous night's more low-key experience, played in a black box theatre to a house of perhaps fifteen souls on a cold, rainy evening, possessed every bit of the charm, the joy, and the emotional heart of the far more expansive Broadway in Chicago production. In a tiny theatre, Gorilla Tango Theatre's one-hour long homage to a real-life NYC lesbian biker club, "<b>The Valkyries: Badasses on Bikes</b>," reminds those who seek it out that theatre need not be expensive spectacle to be worth the trip.<br />
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The play, a new one written by Camille Smith, concerns a group of lesbian friends (and the trans lover of the group's leader), who have decided to start a biker gang in order to accomplish some altruistic purpose they have not yet decided upon. In a series of short scenes, we learn about these people, the joy they find in their togetherness, their shared and individual histories, and some of the pain in their lives. We also discover that, most of the time, first impressions are only skin deep (though, yes, there are always exceptions), and family is, or anyway ought to be, family, whether you're born into it or you've chosen it as your own.<br />
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Katy Johnson holds the story together with a bittersweet performance as Deena, the leader of the group, who is trying both to establish this new biker gang and to navigate the deepening chasm growing between her and her pregnant sister Kelly, a dour Kate Souza, pouring unspoken—and spoken—pain into their relationship over Deena's love for her transgender boyfriend, Quinn (North Rory Homeward) and the loss of their parents. The struggle between the sisters, as well as its effects on the relationship between Deena and Quinn, form the ongoing pathos of the piece, and all three central players here shine. Homeward, a transgender actor in his first onstage transgender role, easily captures the frustration of someone caught between two impossible choices: Quinn cannot make a strong stand either way despite Kelly's apparently transphobic attitude for fear of driving a stake between the sisters and having his lover come to blame him later. There are many small, subtle acting choices all three make that add much to the unfolding drama.<br />
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But the play is a true ensemble play, and its other players are every bit as important. The bar at which the bikers meet is run by Marie, (a dynamic, feisty Marie Treadway). Marie is basically a "take no crap" lesbian, and her huge character, to which Treadway gives her heart, her soul, and at one point pretty much all of her breath, often dominates the stage, and creates a large amount of the comedy of the piece. Another comic focal point is the character of Bella (Cat McKay), a free spirit, devil-may-care young woman whose attitude might best be summarized as "life is meant for me to have fun." And right now her fun involves a woman she has her eyes on, Evie (Elodie Sinetra), whom she is sure <i>must</i> at least be bisexual and who is in a completely self-destructive relationship with prototypical frat-boy, self-involved goon Jake (played to the hilt by Nate Curlott, having a great time being a total jerk). The secondary plot of the story is Evie's coming out, and one scene in particular between her and Jake somehow manages to be hilarious, frightening, and full of pathos all at the same time.<br />
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By the time the gang discovers its <i>raison d'etre</i> and the light and sound crew have tons of fun with a motorcycle ride through Chicago, the play has done more than its share to inspire and entertain. This may not be a play with a huge name, but it deserves to be seen. It plays on Wednesdays at 8 PM at Gorilla Tango Theatre, 1919 N. Milwaukee Ave, Chicago 60647 until June 28. Do yourself a favor: instead of seeing a movie some night, see this play. You won't be disappointed.<br />
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-8046160392808503322017-04-14T19:15:00.001-05:002017-04-14T19:15:24.393-05:00Once More With Meaning: A Deconstruction of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 6<div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="drr75-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; line-height: 27px !important; padding-bottom: 10px !important; padding-top: 10px !important;">
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<span data-offset-key="drr75-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Fans of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the cult hit that celebrates its 20th anniversary this month, disagree about a lot of things regarding what, for many of them, is the Best Show Ever Made. (Full disclosure: I am part of that camp.) Ask about their favorite episodes and some will say "The Body" while others argue for "Hush" or "Tabula Rasa" and more will sing the praises of "Once More With Feeling" or other episodes in the seven season canon of the series. Ask about their favorite Buffy boyfriend and you'll have a huge fight on your hands between Angel and Spike. (No one is likely to expend much breath over Riley.) Ask about their favorite villains or monsters, and you'll get all sorts of answers.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="drr75-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">But there is one thing on which “Buffy” fans have, for fourteen years, agreed on as if with a single voice: Season 6 of the show was a low point for the series. Heck, in a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, star Sarah Michelle Gellar herself discussed her distaste for that season: “I’ve always said that season 6 was not my favorite. I felt it betrayed who she was.” For a long time, I shared that opinion. It was, after all, Buffy’s own: she spends much of Season 6 loathing her own behavior. She keeps secrets from her friends. She isn’t present emotionally for her little sister Dawn. She can’t sense the deep needs her friends Xander and Willow have until it is far too late. She can’t seem to find a way to “adult” in any variation of the term. She finds herself in a torrid sexual affair with Spike, an erstwhile nemesis who is still, according to </span><span data-offset-key="drr75-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">both</span><span data-offset-key="drr75-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> of them, “evil.” And she simply can’t shake her feelings: even after he attempts to rape her, she still trusts him to care for Dawn. Her decision-making in Season 6 is, in a word, miserable.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="5vfi0-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Fans find </span><span data-offset-key="5vfi0-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">a lot</span><span data-offset-key="5vfi0-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> miserable about Season 6, starting with its Big Bad. While other seasons gave us The Master, Angelus, Adam, the Mayor, and Glory, all worthy supernatural opponents, Season 6 has Buffy face off against a “Trio” of nerds who failed at everything they tried to do in high school and now have joined together in all of their elaborate nerdness (nerdity?) to try to get some revenge. Even Buffy, in one episode, describes their efforts as “lame.” Interestingly, many fans have even more trouble with the one supernatural Big Bad of the season, Dark Willow. Her power is as great as the Hell-god Glory’s the previous season—perhaps greater—but many fans simply can’t get past adorable Allyson Hannigan as the bringer of doom. And some don’t feel the threat is great enough until the very end, since she is hunting the Trio, who sort of deserve it. Other fans point to the overall depressing tone of the season, noting that creator Joss Whedon was busy with two other programs (”Angel” and the new “Firefly”) and was not involved in direct oversight of “Buffy” that year and thus was not around to insert his trademark wit. (For the record, Whedon disagrees with Gellar about the effectiveness of Season 6 as well as his own involvement.)</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="61ev1-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">However, a two-day binge watch of Season 6 now, a decade and a half after it first aired, reveals something that was not readily apparent the first time through, when we were reeling along with the characters from what was happening in Sunnydale. Watching it now, it’s easy to see that there are several major themes working through this season, and ultimately every one of them ties together. Beyond that, something else becomes obvious: far from lacking wit and cleverness, this season, above all others, is a total deconstruction and self-examination of the entire series that, in the end, blows it all up and puts it back together to set up a grand finale.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="dm1k5-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Among the themes that weave their way through the episodes of Season 6: </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="4ubqd-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;">The hell of being alive</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="2p9bg-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">At the end of Season 5, Buffy, who had learned cryptically that her “gift is death,” finally understands that, in order to save the little sister who doesn’t even exist when the season began but, due to memory manipulation, seems to her to have been present all of her life, she needs to sacrifice herself. It is the </span><span data-offset-key="2p9bg-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">second</span><span data-offset-key="2p9bg-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> death with which the Slayer gifts the world, the first occurring near the end of Season 1 at the hands of The Master. Season 6 begins, appropriately enough, three months later, and Buffy’s friends have taken over the slaying with the help of a robot who looks like Buffy, an effort to fool the demons and vampires into believing that she is still around. But Willow, now a powerful witch, can’t get past the pain of believing her friend must be residing in some unknown hell dimension, suffering because of the sacrifice she made for them. Thus she casts a spell that pulls Buffy back from the grave. From the start, it goes wrong: demons scatter the friends as they work the spell and Buffy is left to claw her way from her own coffin, an image we’ve seen so many times in the series: the dead rising.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="epj8c-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">As we learn, Buffy was not in a demon dimension at all, but in heaven. Returning to earth, she asks a single question in the first episode in which she appears: “Is this hell?” It’s a question that plagues her throughout the season. In the musical episode “Once More With Feeling,” she sings about it directly: “There was no pain. No fear, no doubt, till they pulled me out of Heaven. So that's my refrain. I live in Hell 'cause I've been expelled from Heaven.” It’s a hell without emotion: Buffy can no longer </span><span data-offset-key="epj8c-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">feel</span><span data-offset-key="epj8c-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="556j2-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Now, through the smoke she calls to me To make my way across the flame To save the day or maybe melt away I guess it's all the same</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="8mc28-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">It is in this state, desperate to feel </span><span data-offset-key="8mc28-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">anything</span><span data-offset-key="8mc28-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">, that she turns to Spike, who is everything she hates, for physical solace. Their initial liaison is nothing like the tender love-making she had with Angel or Riley: it is a tornado, a boxing match, an unleashing of emotions so primal that, when they finish, the abandoned building in which it happens literally falls down around them. And she says it is “the most perverse, degrading experience of my life,” but she does it again...and again because she needs to feel. She is addicted. Which brings me to the next theme.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="2gpr0-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;">The power of addiction</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="d8o07-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Buffy learns it through her escapades with Spike: there are times when the need for something is so great that it overwhelms common sense. Dawn also discovers the power addiction has during the season, as she continues the shoplifting that she began in Season 5, bragging to a friend about how much she has stolen and eventually getting to the point where, in “Entropy,” she and Buffy literally can’t shop in downtown Sunnydale because she’s been banned from so many shops. Indirectly, her shoplifting helps bring about the dancing demon Sweet in “Once More With Feeling”: Xander actually calls him for a lark, but it is Dawn who may determine the moment by wearing the charm she lifted from the Magic Box. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="ffpfs-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Another character dealing with a form of addiction is Spike, who simply cannot get past his emotional need for Buffy. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="fr8ds-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">I know I should go But I follow you like a man possessed There's a traitor here beneath my breast And it hurts me more than you've ever guessed If my heart could beat, it would break my chest But I can see you're unimpressed</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="psat-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Eventually, his obsessive pain is so great that he risks death to return his soul in order to be with her properly.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="8tttj-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">The single greatest example of addiction, of course, is Willow, whose addiction to magic is front and center for much of the season. She finds herself in so deep that she ends up visiting a warlock to get herself hooked up with serious dark magic, the scene so like an addict seeing her fixer that it is impossible to miss the metaphor. She’s in so far that she nearly gets Dawn killed. Eventually Tara gets her to stop cold turkey by leaving her, and that proves to be her wake-up call. Late in the season, the two lovers finally reunite and all seems joyful and happy until a stray bullet meant for Buffy hits and kills Tara, and Willow’s intense rage and pain send her completely over the deep end, turning her into the witch monster Dark Willow, whose addiction to power is so great that she can no longer distinguish her friends or even herself, and she can’t see the value in human life at all.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="bno5t-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;">The critical importance of friends</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="9c7lh-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Like Dark Willow, every time anyone goes it alone in this season, things go completely awry. Willow with her magic, Buffy with her secrets, Giles with his returns to England, Dawn with her shoplifting, Xander with his wedding fiasco: going off on your own never leads to anything good. Anya, too, makes a poor decision when left to her own devices, getting back into the demon business (though her ability to teleport does indeed come in handy in the season’s climax). Even within the Trio, Warren (clearly the one making all of the decisions) makes many bad calls when he is not tempered by his cohorts, up to and including the bullets that trigger his own destruction. Though people continue throughout the season to undervalue their friendships, it is clear again and again how important they are.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="75nhp-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">The first images we have in the season are of the Scooby Gang banding together to fight the vampires none of them could fight alone. The only moments of calm during the season come in those rare moments when two or more people are allowed just to sit and talk (though Buffy’s birthday party, as usual, turns into a near-disaster). Very little, really, is joyful in this season. Sex, as we’ve noted, certainly isn’t. Xander and Anya’s wedding devolves into a riot before the groom walks off (alone). Pretty much all social gatherings involve at least one character who is depressed and needing comfort or terribly angry at someone else. Working together, as the Scoobies do in the first episode of the season and as they’ve done all along, just seems to vanish. It isn’t until everyone comes together to stop Dark Willow that they seem to remember that they are a team. Anya holds Willow off with a spell. Giles fights her with powerful good magic. Xander and Dawn work together to move what remains of the Trio away from her.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="b6ut-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">In the end, Dawn actually joins in with Buffy to hold off the supernatural monsters Willow has called into creation to keep the Slayer busy while she destroys the world, and it’s left to another friend, the usually feckless Xander, to save the day by placing himself in harm’s way and desperately (and successfully) seeking whatever small grain of humanity might remain with Willow’s darkness.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="b61vl-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;">The meta</span><span data-offset-key="b61vl-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">-</span><span data-offset-key="b61vl-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;">cognition of </span><span data-offset-key="b61vl-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">“</span><span data-offset-key="b61vl-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;">Buffy the Vampire Slayer</span><span data-offset-key="b61vl-0-5" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">”</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="ev7nk-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Season 6 is, without a doubt, the most meta season ever put together by a show that was not self-consciously meta in the first place. (”Community” fans, you don’t count.) From the beginning, this season is a complete and complex deconstruction of the entire series that has preceded it.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="5le41-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Let’s begin with the Trio. Positioned at first to be the season’s Big Bad (and they would have been without a doubt the lamest such villain of all seven seasons), what they are, in truth, is a “trio” of high school losers who think that, by joining forces, they can become winners. Call it “Revenge of the Geeks.” My husband, watching Season 6 for the first time, made this observation: “They are the show’s fans.” (Now I took some umbrage with that, pointing out that </span><span data-offset-key="5le41-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">I </span><span data-offset-key="5le41-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">am a fan, but he just said that was a proof, not a refutation.) But he’s essentially correct: in previous seasons, “Buffy” aimed high and higher, eventually finding the level of god for its Big Bad. It’s a bit difficult to continue a steady rise at that point. Further, Buffy had, at the end of Season 5, as already noted, died, a fact that had to be dealt with. All of which made Season 6 a very interesting year. Instead of simply trying to continue the unimpeded growth in power and evil of the Big Bads, the show turns its figurative cameras inward, dissecting itself, exploring exactly what made it work, and rewiring some of the narrative threads almost as blatantly as it did a year earlier with the introduction of Dawn.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="a58p0-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">The Trio works because they are relatable. We all have known (or are) people like that. And as the season wears on and they reveal that, yes, they do have some talents, but their clear ineptitude will never allow them to succeed, we start feeling sorry for Jonathan and weak-willed Andrew, who falls under Warren’s spell. Warren, though, is another matter: he is a </span><span data-offset-key="a58p0-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">malevolent</span><span data-offset-key="a58p0-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> geek. It was clear when he was introduced (in the Season 5 episode “I Was Made to Love You”) that he has a misogynistic and sociopathic streak. Season 6 allows him to play more fully with both, and eventually leads him to murder. But until Warren’s darkness takes over, the Trio are basically everyman. And it is, in fact, as if Whedon and his partner in crime Marti Noxon have unleashed a group of fans into the Buffyverse just to see what kind of havoc they might cause. And the answer, apparently, is a lot. It is the annoying kid of havoc, as Buffy observes, rather than the apocalyptical kind: “You three have, what, banded together to be pains in my ass?” But in its varying odd types, it is also revelatory.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="36oif-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">In one signature episode, “Gone,” the Trio accidentally turns Buffy invisible. Far from being irritated by this development, though, the Slayer discovers a newfound freedom in her lack of reflective matter. It’s as if for the first time all season she can breathe. Unobserved, she glides from place to place like a ghost—which in fact is what she feels like anyway—to make little things work better in her life and to have a bit of fun with her newfound status. But what </span><span data-offset-key="36oif-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">she</span><span data-offset-key="36oif-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> doesn’t see is what her sister sees easily: her own desire to slip away from a life she never asked for in the first place.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="docja-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">The Trio expand the meta element in other ways as well. One example is quite literal: they plant cameras everywhere the Scoobies hang out to watch them. Thus, within the show, we have characters (the aforementioned fanboys) </span><span data-offset-key="docja-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">watching the show</span><span data-offset-key="docja-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="8ut5n-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Beyond the Trio, though, this season is full of meta riffs on what this series has been and continues to be. “Once More With Feeling,” the musical episode that serves as a mini-climax to the first third of the season, uses the motif of a demon who forces everyone to reveal truth in songs to create commentary about characters, secrets, the show itself, and even the very songs they are singing. In one lyric, for example, Willow notes, “I think this line’s mostly filler.” Anya, after the duet she and Xander sing, complains, “Clearly our number is a retro-pastiche that's never going to be a break-away pop hit.” And Buffy, at one point, critiques everything from her wardrobe to the show’s basic demon-hunting tropes: </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="epju6-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Well, I'm not exactly quaking in my stylish yet affordable boots, but there's definitely something unnatural going on here. And that doesn't usually lead to hugs and puppies.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="am3v6-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">The entire episode, a bit of a meta joke in itself, is one revealing comment or busted secret after another. By the time it’s finished, the demon Sweet observes, “there’s not a one who can say this ended well.”</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="aehfv-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">The ultimate expression of this theme lies in the episode “Normal Again,” in which Buffy imagines that her entire universe is actually the insane dream of a lunatic in an asylum. Several times during this episode she questions her own reality, wondering which is more likely: a teenager in an asylum unable to cope and living in a fantasy, or a superhero “chosen one” fighting vampires and demons. The episode is structured so that it is just barely possible to believe that the alternative reality is, in fact, the truth. In this exchange, the asylum version of Buffy listens to her doctor and her mother, who is now dead in her Sunnydale life, deconstructing her “fantasy”:</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0912966/?ref_=tt_trv_qu" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box !important;" target="_blank"><span data-offset-key="ffvrf-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Doctor</span></a><span data-offset-key="ffvrf-1-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">: A magical key. Buffy inserted Dawn into her delusion, actually rewriting the entire history of it to accommodate a need for a familial bond. </span><span data-offset-key="ffvrf-1-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">[to Buffy]</span><span data-offset-key="ffvrf-1-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> Buffy, but that created inconsistencies, didn't it? Your sister, your friends - all of those people you created in Sunnydale - they aren't as comforting as they once were, are they? They're coming apart.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0840133/?ref_=tt_trv_qu" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box !important;" target="_blank"><span data-offset-key="e4nl0-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Joyce Summers</span></a><span data-offset-key="e4nl0-1-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">: Buffy, listen to what the doctor's saying. It's important.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0912966/?ref_=tt_trv_qu" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box !important;" target="_blank"><span data-offset-key="3vna9-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Doctor</span></a><span data-offset-key="3vna9-1-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">: Buffy, you used to create these grand villains to battle against, and now what is it? Just ordinary students you went to high school with. No gods or monsters, just three pathetic little men... who like playing with toys.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="54a70-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">The comment about Dawn’s sudden intrusion upon the landscape of the series and how her presence seemed to have shifted the “comfort” factor of the “fantasy” is a direct reference to a fanbase controversy about that character that was still raging at the time. And the comment about the villains is about as self-aware as any comment can possibly be. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="7ovp6-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">A final area in which Season 6 is turning its cameras inward is in the characters’ individual and collective relationships with life. For the first three seasons, the main characters are in high school, which creates both a comfortable boundary and a fundamental theme (high school is hell). In season 4, Willow and Buffy move on to college, leaving Xander behind. The focus becomes the college campus, especially with The Initiative. Season 5 moves back home with Buffy, once more spreading things out and moving the focal point to the Magic Box. It is in this season, too, that the Scoobies begin to fragment. Xander proposes to Anya. Willow and Tara are deeply in love and nesting. Dawn is in the picture and they are fighting a god to keep her alive. Joyce dies. Buffy dies. It is a painful, sad year despite some emotional highlights. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="1cg66-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">For five years, with Buffy to lead the group, there was always some kind of cohesion. Now, though, first without Buffy and then with a “broken” Buffy, the whole group seems lost, and entire episodes and parts of episodes are dedicated to the mundane and important realities of living life: getting a job, getting a loan, trying to hold on to your family against society’s odds, getting a haircut, making meals, fixing leaky pipes, cleaning dishes...in a word, </span><span data-offset-key="1cg66-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">adulting</span><span data-offset-key="1cg66-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">. Buffy, for one, is lousy at it. Willow isn’t much better, seduced as she is by the Dark </span><span data-offset-key="1cg66-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; text-decoration: line-through;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Side</span></span><span data-offset-key="1cg66-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> Magicks. Anya is </span><span data-offset-key="1cg66-0-5" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">almost</span><span data-offset-key="1cg66-0-6" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> good at it, but she’s emotionally immature and easily sent over the edge by Xander, who </span><span data-offset-key="1cg66-0-7" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">isn</span><span data-offset-key="1cg66-0-8" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">’</span><span data-offset-key="1cg66-0-9" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">t</span><span data-offset-key="1cg66-0-10" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> good at it. Basically, Tara is the only one who’s any good at it, and she doesn’t last the season. She does, though, seem to understand that life isn’t a game you play all the time. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6i0j0-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">“Buffy’s” penultimate season breaks down its previous rules and situations and sets its fans up for one final ride. Buffy dies without another slayer being called, opening the door for the 7th seasons’s concept of Potentials. The two couples created in Season 5 are decoupled, reuniting the Scoobies as the central force of the show. Dawn’s whiny, self-centered shoplifting days appear to be behind her. Giles seems to have returned for good. Spike regains his soul. It’s a new day in Sunnydale.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="etquj-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Ultimately, Season 6 might come down to something that is said, again, in “Once More With Feeling.” Spike stops Buffy from dancing herself to death and sings to her: </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="7vsa4-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Life's not a song. Life isn't bliss, life is just this. It's living. You'll get along. The pain that you feel can only heal by living. You have to go on living. So one of us is living.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="5b71u-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">It’s a reflection of a line Buffy herself had told her sister before she sacrificed herself so Dawn could live, a line that Dawn echoes, a line that can serve, if any one line can, for the fundamental theme of this pivotal season: “Dawn, the hardest thing in this world...is to live in it.”</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="75c2l-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">This is why “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is such an important program and Joss Whedon such a brilliant writer and producer. In a show about a “chosen one” who slays monsters and demons and vampires he managed to create something completely universal, something that speaks to anyone if they let themselves immerse in it. I’m of the opinion that there are only two types of people in the world: those who love “Buffy” and those who haven’t watched it yet.</span></span></div>
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-78664877967630256542017-03-21T10:11:00.003-05:002017-03-21T10:11:25.528-05:00Gorsuch, McConnell, Trump and Russia: Creating a Constitutional Crisis<div class="content-list-component text" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: NotoNashkArabic, ProximaNova, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial; padding: 0px; width: 715px;">
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The Neil Gorsuch confirmation hearings opened yesterday with hours of opening statements by senators that, depending on your interpretation, either foretold a week of tough questioning for the candidate or signaled a Democratic Party in disarray without a unified plan of how to deal with him.</div>
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I’ll tell you how to deal with him, and it’s easy:</div>
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<strong style="box-sizing: inherit;">Don</strong>’<strong style="box-sizing: inherit;">t.</strong></div>
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Go ahead: ask him all of the questions you want. Find out what his agendas are, to the extent that he will tell you, since SCOTUS nominees are notoriously tightlipped about anything remotely significant during their confirmation hearings. Ask him about his independence from Trump. Ask him about women’s issues, a topic highlighted this weekend with the notorious letter from one of his former law students. Ask him about his rulings that would overturn years of settled jurisprudence allowing federal agencies to interpret their own rules. Ask him about Citizens United. Ask whatever you want.</div>
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And then, if you are a patriotic citizen of this country, <strong style="box-sizing: inherit;">filibuster his nomination</strong>.</div>
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I am not suggesting that Neil Gorsuch is not qualified to be on the Supreme Court; by all accounts he is. However, there are at least two excellent reasons to table this nomination at this time:</div>
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First of all, this is a nomination that never should have existed, and we all know that. It is the result of what will in all likelihood be seen by historians as one of the most cynical exercises of partisan politics in American history: the hijacking of a Supreme Court nomination by the Republican Senate under Mitch McConnell from Barack Obama. After President Obama selected a highly qualified, GOP-friendly candidate in Merrick Garland, McConnell orchestrated an unprecedented denial of service: a refusal to hold hearings or even meet with the nominee, with no legitimate reason, eventually acknowledging that what he wanted was to roll the dice and hope Trump won the election and could appoint someone more right wing. An action this brazen should not be rewarded, and if it is, it will taint the Supreme Court forever. It will no longer be the impartial arbiter of the law; it will merely be another partisan branch of the government, subject to the whims of the electorate.</div>
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Gorsuch may be a perfectly decent man and an excellent judge, whether I agree with his rulings or not, but there simply should not have been an opening for him at this time. The odds are that this President will have at least one or two more opportunities to nominate him, and that is when he should be considered. Not now.</div>
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The second reason is more complex and yet, I suppose, at the same time it is just as fundamental to the Constitution and to who we are as a people and a nation. The Constitution gives the President of the United States the power to nominate Supreme Court justices. Right now, that office is held by Donald J. Trump. But there are legitimate and serious questions about how he got there, and those questions are now under investigations by the FBI and other intelligence agencies. Soon, it seems likely, there will be reason to appoint a Special Prosecutor. And if, as does not appear <strong style="box-sizing: inherit;">unlikely</strong>, we discover that Donald Trump made his way into the White House by procuring the assistance of a foreign government—not just <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">any</em> foreign government, but our long time enemy, Russia—well, then we have a conundrum: a President whose very election was an act of treason.</div>
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Suddenly we are thrown into a Constitutional crisis. We can impeach Trump, yes. But that makes Mike Pence, his Vice President—a man who is only in that office <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">because </em>of Trump’s treason—the President. Do we run the entire election over? How exactly <strong style="box-sizing: inherit;">do</strong> we handle something like that? The Founding Fathers didn’t give us guidelines for it; we’d be in wholly new territory. But one way or the other, one thing is <strong style="box-sizing: inherit;">absolutely clear</strong>: if Donald J. Trump is only President of the United States due to collusion with Russia, he should NOT have the ability to appoint someone to the Supreme Court and thus affect an entire generation of American lives.</div>
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Therefore: for either of these reasons or both of these reasons, <strong style="box-sizing: inherit;">filibuster this nominee</strong> if you love your country, senators. If you do it for the second reason and Trump is found innocent of the charges being levied against him, you can always revisit Gorsuch later. But you can’t <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">undo</em> the appointment once you confirm it. Stop it now, in its tracks. It’s your patriotic duty.</div>
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-80400304438127898232017-03-10T10:47:00.000-06:002017-03-10T10:47:13.091-06:00Transgender in the Age of Trump: A Personal Reflection<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I remember when I was about three years old, watching my mom change my little sister’s diapers, I first realized that there was an anatomical difference between what my parents referred to as “girls” and “boys.” I understood that they considered me the latter, but it had never made any sense to me until that moment.<br />
<br />
We were a Catholic family in 1960. I was precociously aware of things little children usually are not, like the way that parents responded to male offspring as opposed to female ones. I was the oldest “son,” and I was constantly told how important that position was in the family even as a toddler, probably because even as a toddler I already had two younger siblings with another on the way. Intuitively, I understood that what I knew about myself was not something I could share, so I kept it hidden.<br />
<br />
But I knew how to pray, so every night I prayed that the extra part that stopped me from being like my sisters would vanish by morning and I would be able to just be one of them. It never did. Neither did my compelling understanding of who I am. I tried my hardest to bury it, to live the life my body dictated I “had” to, but ultimately I simply couldn’t. At age 40, I transitioned, almost four decades after I first understood that I needed to.<br />
<br />
Transitioning thrilled me: I was finally getting to be myself. It was also a terrific risk; I was a high school teacher and that had never been done before. But I got lucky and my school supported me, making some history along the way. I recall a lot of fears and concerns in those early years along with my joys, but mostly the joys. And four years later, my son, who had struggled with emotional issues all his young life as a girl, came out as TG, and I got to experience the thing from a parent’s perspective. It was a lot harder watching him go through it than going through it myself. He was the first in his school too, and we fought for any kind of acceptance; it took until his very last choral concert before they finally let him wear a tux instead of the silky white shirt the girls wore.<br />
<br />
That was the early Bush era. I thought those days were history.
I mean, the Alliance group at my school, in recent years, has had a significant contingent of genderqueer and TG kids in it. Some were open about it in the hallways too. A couple had changed their names officially with the school; others were waiting for college. It seemed to be a completely new level of acceptance.<br />
<br />
But then came the backlash.
It didn’t start with North Carolina, but that was certainly the most noticeable place to point to. And then “bathroom bills” became the focal point of anti-LGBT measures across the country, as if the vicious “religious” conservative groups finally gave up on gays and needed a new marginal group to lash out at and had just discovered us: someone smaller and weaker. But, thank goodness, Obama was President. He stopped them in their tracks by letting schools across the country know clearly that they needed to protect trans kids and pushed for trans protection with all of the authority of his office.<br />
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But now he’s gone and we have The Orange One.<br />
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It’s no shock that he has acted the way he has in stripping rights from us. Most of us were shouting that he would do this long before the election. He owed us nothing; he owed the “religious” conservative people a lot. And he’s a bully by nature: he has already attacked other marginal groups, most notably immigrants and Muslims; we were clearly on his radar.
The loss of the Gavin Grimm case is particularly disappointing, as it removes the chance to undo some of the damage he has done. A positive SCOTUS decision could have cemented protections for our kids into the law. Perhaps a quick Appeals Court review will put it back there this session. Perhaps. And perhaps my cat will become a youtube singing star.<br />
<br />
The thing is, though, that two different dynamics are going on with trans people in this Age of Trump:
On the one hand, we’re definitely down from where we were and where we ought to be. We’ve lost Obama and Biden, who were our champions. We’ve already lost protections under the law. We continue to see more and more erosion in states that see us as “other” and buy into the “predator” myth. (The latest example is New Hampshire, which abandoned its long-standing claim of supporting individual freedom–”Live Free or Die!”–to screw over trans people this week.) We are stuck (at least for now) with an Attorney General who hates us and a Vice President who doesn’t believe we even really exist. (We’re just sick people to both of them.) And maybe Betsy DeVos is on our side, but she clearly isn’t strong enough to stand up to the triumvirate of Trump, Pence, and Sessions. And who knows about Bannon? I don’t know where neo-nazis stand on transgender people, but I suspect it isn’t good.<br />
<br />
But despite all of this, and the prognosis for so much more damage that these self-righteous bastards now in power can cause, there is something else happening as well that is potentially very positive and far reaching. If you google images for trans kids, you find hundreds of loving family photos along with photos of protests for their rights. You have to scroll through pages and pages of them before alighting on a single one that is anti-trans. (It’s a stupid one too: some idiot advocating prison time for parents who put kids on harmless puberty blockers.) The overwhelming feeling is one of love and support.<br />
<br />
Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts (Boy Scouts!!!) have shifted their policies to allow trans members. The military allows trans service people. Pro-trans children protests routinely make the news. Trans actors, characters, and personalities are more and more visible in films and television. Some, like Jazz Jennings and Laverne Cox, have become well-known. Jazz Jennings even has a doll that looks like her. A TG doll!
<br />
<br />
There is even a kind of positive shift in the most horrible things, like the brutal hate-murders of trans women: these unconscionable crimes were often either unreported or unnoticed just a few years ago. Now they are national news. And the killers, if they are caught, a few years ago might have gotten off with a light sentence; now it’s a hate crime. Some day we may see the horror stop altogether, but that will require a shift in national attitude: of course there are going to be a few a**holes who act this way when their churches, their friends, their congresspeople, their freaking President, tell them we are less than nothing.<br />
<br />
In all, the first two months of the Trump era have clearly been a huge step backwards for trans rights in America, as they have been for almost everything decent and good about America. But there are signs that hope is not lost; it resides, as it always has, in the hearts and souls of the people themselves. And so far, it appears that the more he throws at them the more they want to fight back.
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-78392891628228430262017-02-16T15:12:00.002-06:002017-02-16T15:17:22.795-06:00Can a Trumpocalyptical Meltdown Lead to an Election Do-Over?<div data-block="true" data-editor="22epc" data-offset-key="f460t-0-0" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box !important; color: #1b1a1a; font-family: Roboto, helvetica, sans-serif; padding: 0px !important; white-space: pre-wrap;">
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<span data-offset-key="f460t-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">The simplest answer to my title question ought to be “No.”</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="ct01j-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Of course not. There is no provision in the Constitution for re-doing a Presidential election. When it’s done, it’s done. And there is no doubt whatsoever that the 2016 election is done. Thank whichever Powers That Be that you believe in. No matter what your views may be about the Electoral College v. the Popular Vote, we all know which one counted more in the minds of the Founding Fathers, and that one made Donald Trump the 45th President. Done. Over. </span><span data-offset-key="ct01j-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">Fini</span><span data-offset-key="ct01j-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">. Stick a fork in it.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6m1in-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">But...</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="cq4g3-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">We are living in weird, “unpresidented” times. They began with the simple fact that the mechanism by which Alexander Hamilton meant to </span><span data-offset-key="cq4g3-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">prevent</span><span data-offset-key="cq4g3-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> a populist autocratic despot from entering the White House has somehow </span><span data-offset-key="cq4g3-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">put</span><span data-offset-key="cq4g3-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> one there. Strange. But November 8 proved to be the beginning of the strangeness, not the end. Since then, of course, we have all had ringside seats to the nearly daily news blasts that have revealed, among other things, that</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="8nrsv-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">The Russians hacked the US election with the intent to swing it to Trump;</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="anr7-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">James Comey, who simply couldn’t sit on an important and allegedly relevant piece of information like the Weiner emails, knew about the hacking and decided not to reveal it before the election;</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="4l1hc-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Trump’s campaign was “constantly” in touch with the Russians;</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="4kbs8-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Vladimir Putin himself was allegedly involved in the hacking;</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="4mndt-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Trump’s chosen National Security Advisor, Retired General Michael Flynn, held phone conversations with the Russian ambassador before Christmas in which he told him to tell Putin not to retaliate for President Obama’s sanctions because Trump would lift them: a clear violation of the law;</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="d5nmo-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Flynn then apparently lied about this to Vice President Pence;</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="ivub-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Trump may well have known about these calls all along</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="ae7t5-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">And that is merely the tip of </span><span data-offset-key="ae7t5-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">just one iceberg</span><span data-offset-key="ae7t5-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> in what seems to be a sea of them, a huge glacial mountainside that has collapsed into the Washington ocean and broken up into great floating fragments of scandal. Trump’s White House is, less than a month after his inauguration, awash in them. One of the most notable, of course, is the constant and obvious use of his position for personal profit. He is charging the government a fortune to cover rent for his wife’s security in Trump Tower, and now he wants to add a floor or two for the Defense Department. A member of his campaign signed off on a deal in December with the Russian oil company </span><a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/1/25/1625039/-Does-Donald-Trump-Now-Hold-a-Significant-Stake-in-Rosneft" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;" target="_blank"><span data-offset-key="ae7t5-1-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Rosneft</span></a><span data-offset-key="ae7t5-2-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> for many millions that go to...</span><span data-offset-key="ae7t5-2-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">someone</span><span data-offset-key="ae7t5-2-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">. Just </span><span data-offset-key="ae7t5-2-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;">who</span><span data-offset-key="ae7t5-2-4" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> is hard to tell because the actual money goes to some shell companies. But it doesn’t take a lot of deep thought to guess who might own those shell companies, especially when there is evidence that </span><span data-offset-key="ae7t5-2-5" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">suggests</span><span data-offset-key="ae7t5-2-6" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> collusion...</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="19qfu-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Just this weekend he added another scandal when he brought Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to his “Winter White House” at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. At a lavish dinner in one of the resort’s public dining areas—Trump loves a spectacle—the President received a secure message that North Korea had launched a ballistic missile. Instead of leaving and dealing with this national security matter in private, as he should have, though, Trump proceeded to have his staff bring him charts and computers and other information so he could handle it </span><span data-offset-key="19qfu-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">right at the table, </span><span data-offset-key="19qfu-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">while guests provided extra light with their cell phones. (Remember this was </span><span data-offset-key="19qfu-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">in public view</span><span data-offset-key="19qfu-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">. Also remember the bitching and moaning that Trump did for months about Hillary Clinton and her “insecure” email server. BTW Trump is also using a private email server.)</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="1f66m-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Donald Trump is a national disaster waiting to happen. Or maybe, with one of the many scandals already simmering, it’s already happened and we’re just not aware of the full extent. Whatever, it doesn’t take a seasoned prognosticator to imagine this President not serving out his full term. Bets were being taken before he was ever sworn in. According to the Constitution, that would leave his Vice President, Mike Pence, in charge. Easy peasy.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="1f1n0-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">But that is exactly what I’m wondering about: is it so easy?</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6iddb-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">As I said at the outset, we are living in </span><span data-offset-key="6iddb-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;">unprecedented</span><span data-offset-key="6iddb-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> times. The framers of the Constitution could not have foreseen—clearly </span><span data-offset-key="6iddb-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">did not foresee</span><span data-offset-key="6iddb-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">—this moment in American history. (That much, as noted, can be ascertained by Trump’s ascendency using the very device that was designed to keep him out.) So bear with me a moment as I go on a little thought journey:</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="1vii6-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Imagine with me that Trump’s Russia scandal continues to grow. (With the New York Times and Washington Post both determined to get to the bottom of it, plus the US intelligence communities all more eager to help due to their treatment by Trump, that seems not only possible but likely.) Imagine that, as it grows, we discover so much about it that even the GOP no longer can ignore it. In fact, it becomes such a conspiracy, clearly implicating some of </span><span data-offset-key="1vii6-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">them</span><span data-offset-key="1vii6-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">, that normal congressional exploration or even impeachment proceedings are not enough. The Democrats call for, and are granted, a Special Prosecutor.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="8l7hc-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">We have not had one of these appointed in a long time, so let me remind you: they have awesome powers, and I use the literal meaning of the word there. They can subpoena </span><span data-offset-key="8l7hc-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">anyone</span><span data-offset-key="8l7hc-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> and charge </span><span data-offset-key="8l7hc-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">anyone</span><span data-offset-key="8l7hc-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> with </span><span data-offset-key="8l7hc-0-5" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">anything</span><span data-offset-key="8l7hc-0-6" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="anclr-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Now imagine further that the Prosecutor’s investigation shows that, during the 2016 election campaign, Trump knowingly colluded with the Russians to steal the election. This is more than simply an impeachable or even a treasonous offense. This goes to the heart and integrity of the American electoral process itself. </span><span data-offset-key="anclr-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">What possible remediation could be made?</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="efmm8-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Making Pence President continues to reward the theft. There is </span><span data-offset-key="efmm8-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;">no</span><span data-offset-key="efmm8-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> Constitutional remedy for this. Hence we would need to find or create an </span><span data-offset-key="efmm8-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">extra</span><span data-offset-key="efmm8-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">-Constitutional one. And there are only two reasonable possible solutions:</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6gbk1-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Declare Hillary Clinton the winner of the 2016 election, or</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="77u3k-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Stage the entire Presidential election again.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="9igaa-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Staging it again might not be as impossible as it sounds. For one thing, we don’t *need* a two-year run-up to a Presidential election; most countries manage to get by with a whole lot less. For another, our current system of primaries is not sacrosanct: we have invented it and honed it over time; it didn’t even really exist at all until about fifty years ago. A single national primary day could easily handle it all, with a run-off day scheduled if needed. And finally, the work of a Special Prosecutor is a thorough thing. It requires time. Assuming one might be appointed, say, this spring, his/her work wouldn’t likely be completed for at least a year. Tacking a Presidential election onto already scheduled Congressional/Senatorial elections in 2018 would not be particularly hard. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="e1j7t-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Even if, as the result of an impeachment, Pence becomes President, a Special Prosecutor should still be appointed. Once that happens, floodgates will open. Where they lead us we cannot know. But one thing is certain: it will be unprecedented. Or maybe “unpresidented.”</span></span></div>
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-37451599956222611892017-02-11T15:26:00.002-06:002017-02-11T15:27:47.575-06:00Dear White People...Get a Grip!Hello, 59-year-old white woman here...<br />
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Apparently there is a huge new controversy about a TV show debuting in a couple of months on Netflix, a show based on the 2014 indie film "Dear White People."<br />
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Now I saw the movie and am looking forward to the TV series (though I'm not so sure it will be as effective without Tessa Thompson in the lead: she had the perfect comic snarkiness for the role). Frankly, I loved the movie. It was very funny and at the same time a pretty important values lesson. It's not a "comfortable" movie; it's not supposed to be. It's about racism in America in what was alleged to be a "post-racial" era (2014, during Obama's Presidency). The main character, the ironically named Sam White, has a radio show on the college station during which she makes such pronouncements as "<span style="background-color: #fcfae7; color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Dear white people, this just in: Dating a black person to piss off your parents is a form of racism."</span> Her comments are generally humorous but always within her snark there is an element of anger: <em>why at this time in history do I still need to tell you people this stuff?</em><br />
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In the trailer for the TV show, Sam calls out frat partiers dressing in blackface, which were the actual events that stimulated the movie in the first place. In this Trumpian era, when the KKK and neo-Nazis have somehow been elevated into the mainstream, when we can already see civil rights being rolled back for immigrants and LGBT+ people by Presidential fiat, when our nation's public schools are now under the control of someone whose goal is to make them more Godly (sounds great for minority students who don't fit within the fundamentalist Christian mainstream, doesn't it?), when we've followed the most diverse cabinet ever with the least diverse one in several Presidencies, when the majority of white America truly does not understand why a movement like BLM is needed and thinks it is some kind of domestic terrorist thing...when it is 2017 and we are seemingly more divided into a "white America" and a "black America" than we've been in decades...my God, <strong><em>why would we NOT need a show like this?</em></strong><em></em><br />
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Just look at the response from the right to the show's very existence: there is actually a movement to #boycottNetflix because of it! Because of a paid streaming network's television program, one that most of the country doesn't even have access to and those <em>with</em> access may never have even known about, let alone watched. (Now, of course, with the controversy, the right ironically has guaranteed better ratings for the show.) All of which leads to the simple and obvious question: WHY? What causes such an emotional and outsized response? What is the right afraid of? If the show's depiction of white people is so incredibly wrong, it should sink under its own misinformed weight, shouldn't it? Or are they afraid that the show is actually revealing an ugly truth that they'd really just rather not talk about?<br />
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You know what? <strong>We need to talk about this truth.</strong> We need to talk about why race relations in this country are so totally screwed up. We need to talk about why, the second a black man was elected President, it so freaked out the white establishment that they decided to abandon any pretense of governing and make limiting him to a single term their one and only agenda. Not only that, but a significant part of the country joined them in feeling this way. Why? For all the "post-racial" talk, we quickly learned that what we actually had was a country in which racism simmered just below the surface and had, perhaps for decades, been waiting for something to cause it to boil over. Well, it's boiling over, people. And if a <em>satire</em> like "Dear White People" can help us to examine it, GOOD! Because something definitely needs to help us. We don't seem to be doing it on our own.<br />
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-58262583667189203832016-12-20T17:56:00.004-06:002016-12-21T11:01:28.815-06:00Why the Left Can't Stop Trumpism<div data-block="true" data-editor="2rbj9" data-offset-key="13jb4-0-0" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box !important; color: #1b1a1a; font-family: Roboto, helvetica, sans-serif; padding: 0px !important; white-space: pre-wrap;">
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<span data-offset-key="13jb4-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Now that it is final and there is no more hope for deus ex machina salvation from Trumpism, the left is being forced to come to grips with the fact that we are stuck with something that, mere months ago, seemed inconceivable: a government entirely in control of the right wing and ready and eager to rip apart everything that is precious to us.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="cd4hv-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">So, progressives wonder, </span><span data-offset-key="cd4hv-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">how do we fight them?</span><span data-offset-key="cd4hv-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> Some ask </span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/center-for-community-change-action/senate-republicans-were-w_b_13745176.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;" target="_blank"><span data-offset-key="cd4hv-1-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">questions</span></a><span data-offset-key="cd4hv-2-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> like, “Now, in the era of Donald Trump, Democrats are wondering: Should we draw from McConnell’s playbook and use every effort to block Trump’s extreme platform?” and others</span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/never-normalize-why-trumps-presidency-is-illegitimate_us_58585770e4b0d5f48e165210" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;" target="_blank"><span data-offset-key="cd4hv-3-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> tell us</span></a><span data-offset-key="cd4hv-4-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> that “Opponents of Trump should be at least as aggressive in challenging the political legitimacy and moral authority of his presidency as Republicans were in disrespecting President Obama, whose political legitimacy and moral authority were beyond reproach.” They look on in stunned disbelief as the North Carolina legislature executes a perfectly legal though perfectly immoral and unAmerican power grab right in front of their eyes. They react with sarcasm and anger to Trump’s Cabinet of Cognitive Dissonance. And they tell Democrats to filibuster every single SCOTUS candidate, every single appointment, every single law that Trump sends their way. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="piob-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Here is the essential problem with all of this: </span><span data-offset-key="piob-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;">it’s a waste of time</span><span data-offset-key="piob-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">. It’s as much a waste of time as hoping for the Electoral College to save us (as it had every right and probably a Constitutional </span><span data-offset-key="piob-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">obligation</span><span data-offset-key="piob-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> to do but was </span><span data-offset-key="piob-0-5" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;">never</span><span data-offset-key="piob-0-6" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> going to). And there is a simple reason for this: progressives will never do any of this because </span><span data-offset-key="piob-0-7" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">progressives are wimps.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="aao95-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">That’s right. I said it. I’d worry about those being “fighting words” if I were saying them about conservatives, but not progressives. Here’s the thing about the Left: </span><span data-offset-key="aao95-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; text-decoration: underline;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">we always like to think we should take the moral high ground</span></span><span data-offset-key="aao95-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">. Give us two choices and we can be counted on to take the one that feels more </span><span data-offset-key="aao95-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">honest</span><span data-offset-key="aao95-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> and more </span><span data-offset-key="aao95-0-5" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">philosophically correct</span><span data-offset-key="aao95-0-6" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">. We don’t get down in the gutter and brawl; it’s gauche. We complain when we see the GOP cheat and lie and change the rules midstream and complete power grabs like North Carolina...not because we didn’t think of it first but because we sincerely think they are </span><span data-offset-key="aao95-0-7" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">morally wrong </span><span data-offset-key="aao95-0-8" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">for doing these things. In this way the “man on the street” Trump voter is completely correct in stating that we think we are “better” than they are: we </span><span data-offset-key="aao95-0-9" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;">do</span><span data-offset-key="aao95-0-10" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> think we’re better than people who’d stoop so low. And doesn’t it feel good to do the right thing? </span><span data-offset-key="aao95-0-11" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;">Doesn’t it?</span><span data-offset-key="aao95-0-12" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> Aren’t we happier right now because, as a collective, we fought fairly?</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="crvp6-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">One of the oft-repeated axioms of the campaign, originated by Michelle Obama and spoken by Hillary Clinton in umpteen rallies, was “They go low, we go high.” We reveled in that moral superiority. But do you know what happens when they go low and we go high? </span><span data-offset-key="crvp6-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;">We get cut off at our ankles.</span><span data-offset-key="crvp6-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="94jm9-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Does anyone actually believe that the Republicans, having won a three million vote plurality in the popular election and lost the EV by a mere 70,000 votes over three states, would have </span><span data-offset-key="94jm9-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">accepted</span><span data-offset-key="94jm9-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> the results? Does anyone think Trump would have </span><span data-offset-key="94jm9-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">conceded</span><span data-offset-key="94jm9-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">? No, we’d be mired up to our knees in lawsuits and recounts, and, once it came out that the freaking </span><span data-offset-key="94jm9-0-5" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;">RUSSIANS</span><span data-offset-key="94jm9-0-6" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> had helped their opponent win the race, they’d all be seeking some way to do the entire election over. And they wouldn’t rest until they got it. </span><span data-offset-key="94jm9-0-7" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">Because the GOP plays dirty</span><span data-offset-key="94jm9-0-8" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">. It’s what they do. It’s why there is no Justice Garland. It’s why we never passed an infrastructure bill or a massive jobs bill under Obama. It’s how they justified threatening to shut down the entire US government to get their way. They play dirty.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="9fqbi-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">We don’t. We </span><span data-offset-key="9fqbi-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">pride</span><span data-offset-key="9fqbi-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> ourselves on playing by the rules. We see ourselves as the good guys. Isn’t that nice? Well, here’s the thing: I hate the game the GOP plays as much as anyone does. I wish they too would play by the rules...and in the case of NC not only the rules but the </span><span data-offset-key="9fqbi-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">spirit</span><span data-offset-key="9fqbi-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> of the rules. But if you stubbornly insist on playing by the rules when you know that the other players are cheating their asses off, </span><span data-offset-key="9fqbi-0-5" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">you are a fool</span><span data-offset-key="9fqbi-0-6" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">. And you are doomed to lose every time. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="9trtk-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">We like to think that not only are we a moral group, but an intelligent one. But in this case, at this time, those two characteristics are, sadly, at odds with each other. In today’s politics, the only </span><span data-offset-key="9trtk-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic;">intelligent</span><span data-offset-key="9trtk-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> thing to do is to play the game </span><span data-offset-key="9trtk-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;">the way it is being played</span><span data-offset-key="9trtk-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> until such a time as some kind of balance is reached and both sides begin playing by the rules again. In today’s politics, you </span><span data-offset-key="9trtk-0-5" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">cannot</span><span data-offset-key="9trtk-0-6" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"> be both moral and intelligent and play the game to win.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="bi995-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">Thus I say that those who ask our Democratic leaders to fight as if they were Republicans are wasting their time. Because </span></span><span data-offset-key="bi995-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; font-weight: bold;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">they won’t do it. </span></span><span data-offset-key="bi995-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box !important;">They are far too steeped in their concept of honor to play to win. And that is why we are destined to lose.</span></span></div>
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-44573286193032907282016-11-20T03:12:00.001-06:002016-11-20T12:18:45.737-06:00We Can Still Elect a Woman President. It Just Can't Be Hillary.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span data-offset-key="7abe2-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">I am going to make a radical proposal. But first:</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="5r8eh-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">A lot has been said recently about the role of the Electoral College in American elections.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="a8vi3-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">One current poll shows a majority of Americans seem to favor getting rid of it altogether and allowing a direct election of the President, as happens with all other offices (though, predictably at this moment in history, the more vehement supporters of that choice are Democrats). However, as many writers have pointed out, there were historical justifications for the decision by Alexander Hamilton and others to create this rather bizarre secondary voting system.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="b5m2l-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">One often-cited reason was to make sure that larger, more populous states did not run roughshod over smaller ones (and, yes, slavery was a consideration in that). But that was only one of the reasons. An even greater one, and the one that Michael Signer, mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia, argues about, is this: “the Electoral College was primarily designed to stop a demagogue—a tyrannical mass leader who preys on our prejudices—from becoming President.” In his </span><a href="http://time.com/4575119/electoral-college-demagogues/?xid=fbshare" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank"><span data-offset-key="b5m2l-1-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">recent article</span></a><span data-offset-key="b5m2l-2-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> on </span><span data-offset-key="b5m2l-2-1" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold;">time.com</span><span data-offset-key="b5m2l-2-2" style="box-sizing: border-box;">, Signer cites Hamilton’s Federalist Papers, which explored the need for the Electoral College. He shows that Hamilton and the other Founding Fathers distrusted the notion of democracy to an extent: they worried that, as Hamilton wrote, a candidate with “Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity” might overwhelm the less-informed populace and win the election. In short, as Signer writes, the main purpose of the Electoral College is to prevent the rise of a demagogue to power.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="dq8e8-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Signer spends considerable time in his article defining the term “demagogue,” which was actually used by Hamilton in the Federalist Papers as a justification for the College. Having written a book entitled </span><a href="http://michaelsigner.com/demagogue/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank"><span data-offset-key="dq8e8-1-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Demagogue: The Fight to Save Democracy from Its Worst Enemies</span></a><span data-offset-key="dq8e8-2-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">, he is somewhat an expert on the concept, and he notes that he did not believe, at first, that Trump was one, but was convinced by his campaign that he more than fit all of the requirements. I encourage you to read his article.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="679fk-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Signer is hardly alone. As early as last March, an article appeared in the </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/03/17/if-no-one-else-stops-trump-the-electoral-college-still-can-its-in-the-constitution/?utm_term=.c619fde5be0f" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank"><span data-offset-key="679fk-1-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Washington Post</span></a><span data-offset-key="679fk-2-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> exploring the possible role of the Electoral College in overturning a Trump victory. And in recent days we have reports of efforts by Democratic electors out of Washington and Colorado to lobby their GOP colleagues to follow the moral imperative to change their votes. We’ve even had reports of a couple of GOP electors who have expressed the possibility of wavering.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="vatg-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Now this is, as </span><a href="http://www.denverpost.com/2016/11/15/colorado-presidential-elector-seeks-block-donald-trump/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank"><span data-offset-key="vatg-1-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Colorado elector Michael Baca</span></a><span data-offset-key="vatg-2-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> is the first to admit, unlikely to work. “This is a longshot; it’s a pipe dream,” he acknowledges. But, as he tries to start what he and his Washington state colleague Bret Chiafolo call their group of “Moral Electors,” he says, “We cannot just rip up the Paris climate accord. We cannot have a climate denialist (in the White House).”</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="9hs71-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Contrary to the liberal version of the pipe dream though (and the one that I’d love to share), this scenario, even if successful, would never put Hillary Clinton into the White House. See, here’s the thing: even if they could somehow manage to convince enough electors (and that number is a nearly impossible </span><span data-offset-key="9hs71-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold;">37</span><span data-offset-key="9hs71-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box;">) to vote against Trump, they will </span><span data-offset-key="9hs71-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">never</span><span data-offset-key="9hs71-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> convince them to vote </span><span data-offset-key="9hs71-0-5" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">for</span><span data-offset-key="9hs71-0-6" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> Hillary. And this is where the compromise Signer outlines in his article, the one that Baca and Chiafolo are working on, comes in.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="ceh5m-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">All they want is to throw this thing to the House of Representatives. To do that, they need to deny any single candidate 270 votes. And an elector is technically free to vote for </span><span data-offset-key="ceh5m-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold;">anyone</span><span data-offset-key="ceh5m-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> he or she chooses to vote for. Once in the House, the choice will be the top three vote getters. Two of these would be Republican, but one would not be Trump. And the argument goes this way: all Democratic state houses would agree, in a compromise, to vote for the lesser GOP evil, which—if only six others did—would effectively dump Trump.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="a7vrn-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">All of which is basically a summation of theoretical constructs that have been making the rounds.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="8kk4e-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">But I did not place an illustration about the Electoral College at the top of this article, nor is my headline about it. I have a different agenda.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="1i1ob-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Every one of those theoretical articles has, thus far, proposed that any “faithless electors” vote for someone like Mitt Romney or John Kasich. With all due respect, I submit that they lack imagination. This was, much of America hoped, going to be the year we finally got a woman President. Then a badly run campaign and the rise of a demagogue got in the way. But those voters who felt disenfranchised by the Democrats across that great swath of middle America are already, if they are looking, seeing that they are not getting what they voted for in Donald Trump. </span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Did they ask for a White Supremacist/sexual predator to be ensconced in the White house as a policy maker? </li>
<li>Did they ask for a transition team full of lobbyists from a man who promised to “drain the swamp?"</li>
<li>D<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "roboto" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">id they expect a treasury department staffed by Wall Street insiders?</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "roboto" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Did they want an end to Social Security and Medicare?</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "roboto" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Did they want to see transparent efforts to skirt nepotism laws and set things up to enhance personal wealth?</span></li>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "roboto" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">If they did, I suppose they are deliriously happy, but I doubt most of them did. So maybe they would be open to REAL change? You are not going to get it from Romney, and you are not going to get it from Kasich either, though he is certainly better than the others.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="e4nuq-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">But the GOP can have its cake and eat it too if the electors back someone completely out of left field: </span><a href="https://www.collins.senate.gov/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank"><span data-offset-key="e4nuq-1-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Maine Senator Susan Collins</span></a><span data-offset-key="e4nuq-2-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="almen-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Collins has been known since 1996 as a solid, reliable moderate Senator. She has the 2nd-highest approval rating (78%) in all of the Senate in a state that is increasingly purple. Her ability to reach across the aisle is well-known, as is her ability to bring people together (which is desperately needed right now in this country). In fact, Susan Collins may be the single voice that the GOP has who is capable of righting </span><span data-offset-key="almen-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">their</span><span data-offset-key="almen-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> sinking ship while the Democrats attempt to figure out how </span><span data-offset-key="almen-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">theirs</span><span data-offset-key="almen-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> is suddenly foundering. And despite their current governmental prospects, nothing has changed about the future prospects of the Republican Party. Or do they </span><span data-offset-key="almen-0-5" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">really</span><span data-offset-key="almen-0-6" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> believe that those middle American voters are </span><span data-offset-key="almen-0-7" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">Republicans</span><span data-offset-key="almen-0-8" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> now?</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="daou6-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">OTOH, with a President Collins, they suddenly would have the bragging rights to the first female President. They would have a moderate leader who can get things done and can quash their most heinous inclinations. They would have someone who could actually find ways to fix the things that are wrong that would attract bipartisan support. They would have someone who could conceivable redefine their party in a way that could truly capture those middle American voters for life. And they would have (not a minor point) someone whose personal life is scandal-free.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="1umi3-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Collins has never made an attempt for the White House, but that does not necessarily mean she would reject the opportunity. She made some very strong statements in August about Trump’s illegitimacy, saying that in his campaign “Donald Trump kept appealing to the worst instincts rather than the best part of the American people -- that he was inflaming prejudices, looking for scapegoats, and worsening the divisions that are in our country.” In the end, she proclaimed,</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="evcku-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Donald Trump does not represent the values or the heritage of the Republican Party, and we should not be afraid to say that, and indeed, there is a risk to the Republican Party if Donald Trump is perceived as embodying our values. We are an inclusive party. We are not a party of prejudice. We are not a party that wants to sow the seeds of division. We need to heal this country.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="98pu9-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">It seems clear that she represents the GOP’s best current chance of remaking itself as a party that can remain viable and attractive well into the coming decades.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="3ibsu-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">I am a very liberal Democrat, and I should wish for </span><span data-offset-key="3ibsu-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">anything</span><span data-offset-key="3ibsu-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> other than this, but I also am an American. As such, I have long stated that this country needs two strong parties that exist in the real world. The GOP has not existed in that world for a long time, and is about to take the country over the cliff with it. But it has an opportunity, however minute, to change things.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="232s4-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">For that to have even this tiny chance of happening, though, we (the sane people of the country) have to take action. And we should </span><span data-offset-key="232s4-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">want </span><span data-offset-key="232s4-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box;">to do so. Our choices are simple: </span><span data-offset-key="232s4-0-3" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold;">do nothing</span><span data-offset-key="232s4-0-4" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> and get Trumpism. </span><span data-offset-key="232s4-0-5" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold;">Try</span><span data-offset-key="232s4-0-6" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> and </span><span data-offset-key="232s4-0-7" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">probably</span><span data-offset-key="232s4-0-8" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> get Trumpism...but </span><span data-offset-key="232s4-0-9" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">just maybe</span><span data-offset-key="232s4-0-10" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> make things better. And a sane, reasonable, center-right GOP </span><span data-offset-key="232s4-0-11" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold;">would be better</span><span data-offset-key="232s4-0-12" style="box-sizing: border-box;">. Much better. But this sort of thing doesn’t just happen by osmosis. A candidate out of nowhere doesn’t materialize on everyone’s tongues without some social media groundswell. The </span><span data-offset-key="232s4-0-13" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">only</span><span data-offset-key="232s4-0-14" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> way to get electors even to </span><span data-offset-key="232s4-0-15" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">think</span><span data-offset-key="232s4-0-16" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> about voting for Susan Collins is to make some noise about it.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="1oq12-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">So share this. And like it. And hashtag it (#GOPelectorsvoteCollins). And talk about it. And get the message out however you possibly can:</span></div>
<span data-offset-key="9mrpr-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;">I am a very liberal Democrat, and I should wish for </span><span data-offset-key="9mrpr-0-1" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">anything</span><span data-offset-key="9mrpr-0-2" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> other than this, but I also am an American. As such, I have long stated that this country needs two strong parties that exist in the real world. The GOP has not existed in that world for a long time, and is about to take the country over the cliff with it. But it has an opportunity, however minute, to change things.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="8bkm4-0-0" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span data-text="true" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Electors, on December 19, vote for Susan Collins for President.</span></span></div>
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-49790397741313538952016-11-11T02:37:00.001-06:002016-11-11T02:37:53.513-06:00Trumped Up Change<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="dh52a" data-offset-key="di017-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
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<span data-offset-key="di017-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Those who voted for Donald Trump came in at least three significant categories. First, there were the ones who were the most visible face of his campaign, those whom Hillary Clinton called "deplorable," the ones shouting racist, sexist, and xenophobic chants and wearing obscene t-shirts and assaulting those who did not look quite like them (as in: were not white). Second, there were those in the great swath of counties across America who are <i>not</i> racist or misogynist or homophobic, etc., but voted for Trump because they felt that their country had forgotten about them and they needed it to change. Finally, there were those more educated voters who voted for Trump because, though he is awful, they just couldn't stand Hillary. </span><br />
<span data-offset-key="di017-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span data-offset-key="di017-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">I'm not interested right now in the first and third categories. It's the "change" voters I wish to address, for I think that there is no doubt whatsoever that they will see a change in this country. I just firmly suspect it will not be the change they wanted to see.</span><br />
<span data-offset-key="di017-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span data-offset-key="di017-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">It's Day Three and I'm still wishing that something in my life would just seem *funny*; I have not felt such uncategorical and insoluble despair since the days immediately after 9/11. And it strikes me that what I despaired for then is what I despair for today: a cataclysmic event that has altered the very fabric of my country in ways that I cannot fully comprehend yet, but I know will be irreparable and will leave me in a place I simply don't recognize, a place that has changed, but much for the worse.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="l5es-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">My reaction to this event is the opposite of my reaction back then: in 2001, I found myself masochistically glued to the TV set, watching everything I could about the disaster, my insatiable need to learn and understand it overwhelming everything else. This time, I have not watched TV at all. There is no point anyway: it has, in the fifteen years since 9/11, become so absurdly fragmented and partisan that one really <i>can't </i>get impartial news that way. And anyway I find that I just don't have the emotional strength for the post-mortems. We didn't have eighteen months of non-stop coverage of combative, destructive, outrageous preliminaries before the World Trade Centers were taken out, before a plane blew a giant hole in the Pentagon. Osama Bin Laden was evil as hell, but he didn't hold endless rallies in which he encouraged his followers publicly to beat people up while we watched on the nightly news. We didn't have to watch daily coverage of new nightmares. No one in Al Qaeda ever tried to grab a woman by the pussy. It was a much simpler time. We lived in a country back then where it was actually possible to rally at about a 90% approval rate around a President whom most of us disliked. He had been placed in office barely ten months early by a hugely controversial Supreme Court decision after losing the popular vote. His first seven months in office were, to put it mildly, weak and ineffectual. He was intensely disliked by Democrats and hardly liked by his own party. And then: on 9/12 the whole country was behind him. The whole country believed in him.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="64rro-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">We knew then, of course, that the world had changed. We knew that life as we had known it would never be the same. And it wasn't. Under the over-reactive PATRIOT Act, we became a nation of paranoids. Spying on pretty much everyone became something we learned to tolerate. Insane delays for security at airports became a normal part of flying. We <i>still</i> have to remove our shoes because one idiot tried to turn his into a bomb fourteen years ago. And there were repercussions. The USA—stronghold of freedom in the world—violated the Geneva Conventions and didn't seem to care. Regular people learned to be suspicious of everyone, especially anyone looking like a Muslim, even though (to his everlasting credit) President Bush explained time and time again that the Muslims were peaceful people and that 9/11 was the work of extremists, not of regular, rational people. But it was a new world. It was the age of "24," when Keifer Sutherland foiled one attempt after another to destroy our country every season, for our entertainment. It was the age of black sites. It was the age of Gitmo.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="4a70r-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">When Obama was elected in 2008, I thought that too might have been the start of a new age, a dividing line in the history of the country where one could *feel* the difference between the "before" and the "after." It was another time when things would <i>change</i>. I was right about that, but not in the way I'd imagined in those joy-filled days of Hope. How could I have known the politically-fueled racism that the GOP would intentionally stir up against him so that they could de-legitimize him and make it impossible for him to get anything done? How could I have known the intensity with which those fires would be fanned across the country? Throughout his two terms, even at his highest approval ratings, there remained a staunch core of arch-conservative internet trolls whose posts caricatured him in racist cartoons, who spouted hatred and vitriol in unprecedented ways, who were, in short, the ugly underbelly of America.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="udjo-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">And it didn't take long before that underbelly exposed itself in the form of the Tea Party, which the GOP welcomed into its ranks. Their rallies were "populist" and claimed to be about taxes and other economic issues, but you'd never know that from the racist dog whistles on the signs they carried. Between them and the trolls, the GOP had plenty of outside help to further its agenda of simply blocking any and all bills the President sent to Congress, and what had <b>started</b> as a "do-nothing" Congress just grew worse and worse. And so did America, its internal divides starting to unravel. But it was not until this election season that they overflowed into pure venom.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="2d2t5-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Trump's campaign ripped open the wound, inviting the ugliness into the open where we could see it oozing out. Hillary unwisely (though accurately) referred to it as "a basket of deplorables": and though, as i said above, most of Trump's support was not this seething open sore of America, the most <i>visible</i> part of it was, a part that he was, shockingly, encouraging, giving them a voice where before, out of basic human decency, they'd held their tongues. But his victory means that basic human decency has suddenly become a notion as quaint as sock hops and <i>actual</i> tea parties.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="512la-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">And so America has fundamentally changed once again: today we live in a country where it is suddenly perfectly OK to say and do all of the things that the Trump crowds did in their rallies. School kids have already been bullied by kids in Trump hats for being black or Muslim. Middle school bathrooms have been spray-painted "Whites Only." A gay college student was beaten by a Trump supporter who told him "We have a new President now, Fag." A group of people of color were seated on a New York bus when some white 20-somethings got on. One young woman told them they should be sitting in the back now. A teenager was hit in the face by a beer bottle. Buildings have been defaced with Nazi symbols.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="5d163-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">And the man isn't even in office. It's only Day Three. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="2jlll-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">As I said, there is nothing about any of this that is funny. I can't even find anything funny in reports that Sarah Palin is being considered for a Cabinet post. It's Day Three. Day 1500 is a VERY long way from now. That is a lot of time for a lot of potential changes. I hope there's someone left to commemorate it.</span></div>
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-56286672996813029872016-11-09T20:41:00.000-06:002016-11-09T20:41:30.942-06:00Choices: What Should Progressives Do Now?<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have been trying all day long to figure out how to respond to the aftermath of the ugliest election I have ever had the misfortune to witness. Like most people, I was stunned by the results. Even Trump himself didn’t see it coming, and those whose job it is to predict things like this were utterly blindsided. I watched in shocked silence until I could watch no longer; then I thought perhaps I could just sleep until 2020, but that didn’t work, as I awoke in early afternoon completely cognizant of the disaster that likely awaited me online.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since then, I think I’ve been going through the five stages of grief, with the clear emphasis on depression. I admit it: I spent a very long time crying. I don’t usually cry over politics, and I wasn’t doing that today either. This was not politics. This was something far beyond politics. I’ve said it before and many, many others have as well: what Donald Trump represents is not politics as usual. There is a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reason</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> why no major newspaper in the country endorsed him. There is a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reason</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> why even conservative papers called him an existential threat to the country. (If we ever needed proof that the era of newspaper endorsements is over, this pretty much does it.) His election validates his xenophobic, misogynistic, racist, bullying, anti-LGBTQ, anti-science, petty, vindictive, venomous campaign in all of its facets. One cannot cast a vote for him without simultaneously endorsing the way he has run his campaign and the fact that he has given voice to the ugliest part of the ugly underbelly of America. He was actually endorsed by the KKK, for Christ’s sake. And this is a man my fellow Americans just decided was fit to be President.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I cried. I cried for myself as an LGBTQ person, a woman, a progressive, and an American. I cried for my country, which clearly has divisions within it that are deeper than any of us ever realized if nearly half of it actually believes this man is its salvation. I cried for the world, on which his policies will without a doubt have a terrible and potentially irreparable impact. I cried for my children, and for all children born and unborn, for whom life—which might have become much better under another progressive regime—is about to enter an era in which it is likely to become very dark indeed. I even cried for the people who foolishly supported this buffoon: if he does even half of what he says he will, their lives, which were on the verge of finally improving under the recovery Obama authored, may be flushed down the toilet forever.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, I don’t really expect him to do most of what he said he would. That’s the real joke on those people: they have no clue what they elected and neither do we. The one thing, though, that we can count on is this: he will pass his insane tax plan because that will personally benefit </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">him</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. And it won’t make one iota of difference that it will cause those who supported him to sink further into the mire. As to the ACA, who knows? Maybe the GOP will do what they said and repeal the thing. Or maybe, now that their bluff will actually be called, they will realize what a huge bloody mistake doing that would be, since it would suddenly throw twenty million people off of the insurance rolls as well as returning us to the good old days when companies could take pre-existing conditions into consideration. They may well decide to take that one more slowly. It wouldn’t be the first time they suddenly decided there was good in something they’d previously called a disaster. And as for SCOTUS, well, who </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">really</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> knows what kind of person he’d appoint? </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What we do know is this:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The GOP and their voters are fully responsible for </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">whatever</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> happens now. As far as I’m concerned, I hope for some kind of heavenly intervention in which absolutely everything works perfectly, he comes around on climate change, the economy somehow booms, his followers (happy now that things are going so well) realize that they were wrong to blame others for their own prior failings and offer olive branches to blacks and Muslims, and all is right with the universe. If that happens, I’ll be perfectly happy to shout how wrong I was to worry from the highest mountaintop. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’d say that has </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">far</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> less chance of happening than, say, Trump being elected in the first place. So I’m left with a few alternatives:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Leave.</span></div>
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<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well, it’s a lovely thought. And I </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">have</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on several occasions considered expatriate retirement. It is, however, easier said than done. And it </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">feels</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> wrong to leave others to fight (if fighting is actually possible this time) while I run away.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<ol start="2" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><ol start="2" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">OTOH: If indeed ACA </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> gutted, my daughter and her husband may be </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">forced</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to leave for medical reasons. Should they do so, I will probably follow them; they should not have to expatriate themselves alone.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stay depressed.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It would be easy. The future as Trump has painted it is a completely depressing one. And any future influenced by LGBTQ-hater Mike Pence is even worse. I suppose I could easily just hide from the world for a couple of years, hoping for a 2010-like election in ‘18.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do what I can to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>fight</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is by far the hardest choice because it forces me to act as if I believe that there will be a real democracy post-Trump, and in all honesty I am not sure I believe that. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<ol start="2" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><ol start="2" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If I can get past that core issue, though, doing whatever I can to continue the fight for progressive causes in the face of what will likely be the heaviest opposition they have ever had would be the most positive thing I could possibly do. And, as a retired person, I could probably do a lot.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of these, the only one that makes any sense to me is the third one (unless I am forced into leaving by a repeal of the ACA, as noted). It will not be easy to do. (Hell, it won’t be easy to drag myself out of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bed</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in the morning in Trump’s America.) But it’s the right thing to do. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This does not mean I’m not angry. I’m very angry. I’m angry as hell at anyone who cast a ballot for this horrific person despite seeing so clearly what kind of man he is, especially those who justified their terrible decision-making skills by saying “Hillary is just as bad” because </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it doesn’t take a freaking genius to know that there is a fundamental difference between messing up on some emails and the vast number of things Trump has done</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Hell, Trump is about to go to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">trial</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on two of them! So, yes, I am </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">really</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> angry at those people. And I’m angry at the people who voted third party not because they sincerely believed in Johnson or Stein but because they detested Hillary. Again: these people are fools, and if they live in some of the very close states that Trump won (Florida, anyone?) they helped tip the election to him. And I take that personally because he stands for everything I hate.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, yes, I’m angry. But I’m going to channel that anger into action. I won’t be able to do it right away—I’m not stable enough yet—but by next week I’ll be looking for as many places to give my time and treasure to as I can. And I urge those of you who hurt as much as I do to do the same. We can cry over this debacle; it’s OK. But now we need to look ahead to 2018 and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fix it</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-45178629037961003432016-09-16T13:20:00.000-05:002016-09-16T19:51:09.960-05:00The Danger of False Equivalence<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<a href="http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/BB90/production/_89461084_clintontrump2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/BB90/production/_89461084_clintontrump2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: xx-small; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(photo bbc.com)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How is it possible, this close to an election between one of the most qualified people ever to seek America’s highest office and an orangutan with a bad haircut and a worse attitude, that polls not only show the race is close but actually give the orangutan a chance to win?</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-b77a6657-3427-b4ae-0298-8f2374bfd890" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How is it possible, after eight years of among the </span><a href="http://www.alternet.org/culture/five-worst-congresses-american-history" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">worst, most ineffective Congresses</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in the history of the United States, featuring a Senate that </span><a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/03/20/mcconnell_says_republicans_won_t_vote_for_supreme_court_nominee_after_election.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">prides</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> itself on </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not doing its job</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with an approval rating in the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">single digits</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, that polls continue to indicate that voters are willing to keep these clowns in office?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How is it possible, given the unequivocal fact that Donald Trump has, from the very second he declared his candidacy, done everything he could to undermine every standard of decency previously adhered to by Presidential candidates, even to the point of tearing down the veil that had masked the racism and misogyny of his party for decades and placing it front and center, that he has not already been relegated to the garbage heap of history?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How is it possible, as we actually </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">watch</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the “deplorable” behavior of his supporters again and again for ourselves, that anyone anywhere has any doubt that the adjective fits perfectly?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are some who would provide a two-word answer to these questions—</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hillary Clinton</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">—and others would nod and understand: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of course</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, only in a contest against someone as horrible as Hillary could these Twilight Zone occurrences be happening. Only a candidate this outrageously bad could keep Trump in a race that should have been over before it began. Only a nominee with more baggage than a Dahmer/Manson ticket could have this kind of impact.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">real</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> two-word answer is far different: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">false equivalence.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">False equivalence</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is what happens when you are led to believe that two things should be given equal weight in your considerations as you come to any given decision, while those two things are not in any way actually equivalent. For example, let us consider the matter of climate change. John Oliver, on his HBO program </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last Week With John Oliver</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, debunked the usual cable TV false equivalence in this issue dramatically last year. While today’s media tends to have one “expert” present each “side” of an argument, Oliver pointed out that, in the case of climate change, where 99/100 scientists agree that it is real and caused by humans, this one vs. one presentation creates a clear misconception for the viewer: a false equivalence. So he did the truly “fair and balanced” thing: he had </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">99</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> scientists argue against </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in favor of man-made climate change.</span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cjuGCJJUGsg/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cjuGCJJUGsg?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This year’s political race is only close because of false equivalence. When people say, as the vast majority of Americans do, that we are choosing “the lesser of two evils,” they have succumbed to a meta-message about Hillary Clinton that has been carefully nurtured for two and a half decades by those with something to gain in order to create the notion that she is untrustworthy, when the truth is diametrically opposite to that. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Did I mention before that Hillary Clinton is one of the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">most qualified people ever to seek the Presidency</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? That is not </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">my</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> opinion. No less a personage than President Barack Obama said it at the DNC:</span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/83fZZsmPFPk/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/83fZZsmPFPk?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But Obama didn’t just pull that notion out of his ears either. In March, 2015, Dan Payne of WBUR penned</span><a href="http://www.wbur.org/news/2015/03/19/hillary-clinton-presidential-qualifications" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> an article</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in which he argued:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She may be the most qualified candidate for the presidency in a generation.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Despite ceaseless attacks on her that continue to this day, in 2014 she was named — for the 13th straight year and 19th time overall — by the American people as the most admired woman in the world, according to the Gallup organization.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Forbes magazine ranked her as one of most powerful people in the world nine times. She has been named eight times to Time magazine’s most influential 100 people on the planet.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He quoted former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among several others: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“She would be the most qualified person to enter the White House in modern history. She’d be the best qualified person we’ve seen — with all due respect to President Clinton when he went in, President Obama and President Bush and everybody else.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now we can argue all we want about whether being well-qualified will make you a good President. What we </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">can’t</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> do is argue that her opponent is qualified in any way, shape, or form.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But back to the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hillary Issue</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the matter of false equivalence:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why DO so many people—a large majority of Americans—seem to feel that this is an election between two bad choices? The </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lesser of two evils</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s easy to see the evil in Trump. Only his “basket of deplorables” can’t see it, and honestly that should disqualify him right there. But why do so many people feel Hillary is just as bad? And they do: not just uneducated people, not just Republicans, but perfectly educated Democrats as well. So many of them repeat </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ad nauseum</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> their concerns about all of the investigations (</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">she must have done </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">something</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) or the Foundation (</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pay to Play!!!</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) to Benghazi (</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">let it rest, for God’s sake! Eight GOP-led hearings and zilch!!!</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) to emails (</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">again, nada: oh, she needed to be more careful...is </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the sum total of all they have after </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">25 years</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of digging for dirt????</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). Seriously: they repeat these things again and again </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as if (A) they have actually read about them</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (which in most cases they have not, and </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(B) they </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mean</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> anything at all </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(which they simply </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">don’t</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WHAT???</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> You say. They don’t mean anything?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well, no. First of all, they are all lies propagated by the GOP as parts of a concerted 25-year-long effort (a very successful one, I must acknowledge: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">nice work, guys!</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) to smear and discredit Hillary Clinton because a successful independent woman threatens them. It began when Bill was running for President—before that, even. And it has not let up. I’m not going into all of the details here; </span><a href="http://www.dailynewsbin.com/opinion/field-guide-to-defending-hillary-clinton-against-fake-scandals/24710/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it’s been done</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> far better </span><a href="http://bluenationreview.com/hillary-clinton-is-one-of-the-most-ethical-and-most-lied-about-political-leaders-in-america/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">elsewhere</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. But the fact is that those who really know her agree that she is one of the most </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/28/hillary-clinton-honest-transparency-jill-abramson" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">real</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">honest</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> people they’ve met. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Besides the fact that they are untrue on their face, let’s just play a little game, shall we? </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What if they </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">were</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> true? </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Hillary Clinton made an error in judgement that led to the deaths in Benghazi, and further that the 2% of her Secretary of State meetings that were related to her Foundation (which FYI included heads of state and a Nobel Prize laureate) were somehow linked to those donations, and even further that she actually </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">did</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> know there were some not-really-classified-but-sort-of-classified emails on her server. Well, let’s see: people do make mistakes, even egregious ones. That’s bad, it’s true. But I seem to recall President Reagan allowing hundreds of Marines to die in Beirut. President Bush (W) oversaw </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>39</b></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/politifact-prior-to-benghazi-were-there-13-attacks-on-embassies-and-60/2179435">embassy attacks</a> with </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>87</b></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> deaths while he was in office (not to mention a tiny thing we refer to as 9/11, which </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/the-bush-white-house-was-deaf-to-9-11-warnings.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">he </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">was</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> warned about</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). I suspect these things were all errors in judgement. And, oh yeah, the Foundation: since no moneys were actually paid </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the Clintons from the Foundation, the “worst” that could happen would be donations to help fight world AIDS. Yes, I can see why that would be terrible. And then there is the email: well, in that case she definitely would have </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lied</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to us, right? And that would </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">have</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to be disqualifying, right?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But...what about the dozens of lies Mitt Romney told leading up to the election in 2012? And what about Trump, who can’t even </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">open his mouth</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> without lying?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And, yeah, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what about Trump</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While people are so worried about fake scandals and ridiculous health issues regarding Hillary (so a 68-year-old woman who works </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">every single day</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in the hot sun with no breaks contracted pneumonia and, while trying to work through it, felt faint: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">duh!</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), they are taking their eyes off the ball regarding Trump.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">very same time</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as all of this, the </span><a href="http://occupydemocrats.com/2016/09/11/just-washington-post-uncovers-massive-corruption-trump-foundation/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Washington Post was exposing the Trump Foundation</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ultimate</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in Pay-to-Play...for real. While the Clinton Foundation is a real charity with an </span><a href="https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=16680" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A rating</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (higher than well-known charities like </span><a href="https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=4509" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Susan G Komen For the Cure</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or even </span><a href="https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3277" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">American Red Cross</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), Trump’s version is an in-house money-laundering schemee that allows </span><a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/trumps-foundation-deserves-to-be-a-bigger-scandal.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">multiple shady financial dealings</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This is a perfect example of the media creating a wall of false equivalence in the 2016 election, as in: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">oh, see, both of them have issues with their foundations.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Baloney! Clinton’s “issues” lie in the minds of those inclined to believe the long-standing meta-message about her created by the GOP and </span><a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/7/6/8900143/hillary-clinton-reporting-rules" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">intentionally</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> perpetuated by the press</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in search of a good story: that she is a double dealer. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">media</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is complicit in this</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It has its own specific set of rules to use in handling Hillary stories and has had them for years. (Example: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Assume that she is acting in bad faith until proven otherwise.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am not kidding. Nor am I making this up. Read the article above.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) While most of America sees the media (because Fox tells them to do so) as too liberal and biased </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">towards </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hillary</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reality—clearly shown in </span><a href="http://www.politicususa.com/2016/06/18/chart-exposes-media-bashes-hillary-clinton-promoting-donald-trump.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a recent Harvard University study</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of election-year news coverage—shows the opposite. And here, on foxnews.com of all places, is </span><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/09/07/hillary-clinton-and-undisputed-media-bias-against-her.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a well-argued story articulating the press bias </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">against</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> her</span></a>, imagining what might have been the uproar had <i>she</i> done what we know Trump has done<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In other words: we keep hearing exaggerated (or completely fabricated) evils about Hillary while Trump’s </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">real</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> evil gets a free pass.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a man who has risen to his position in life through manipulation of the system, lying, cheating, making deals with anyone and everyone who will do so (even </span><a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/23/donald-trump-foreign-business-deals-national-security-498081.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Muammar el-Qaddafi</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), declaring bankruptcy whenever things don’t go his way so he can start anew (which leaves those he borrowed money from in the lurch), </span><a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trumps-business-plan-left-a-trail-of-unpaid-bills-1465504454" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">failing to pay his bills to small businesses</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> who then </span><a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/ent-columns-blogs/jose-lambiet/article91353232.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">needed to sue</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to recover from him, </span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-racist-examples_us_56d47177e4b03260bf777e83" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">discriminating</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in renting and hiring throughout his career against black people, and a slew of other less than savory avenues </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that are not mere innuendo or lies driven by someone’s agendas but actual, verifiable FACTS.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a man whose personal life has been dominated by his three well publicized marriages. (Please consider what a field day the GOP would have had if Hillary Clinton had had three children with three different husbands.) </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a man who, in </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">one single town hall</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> last spring, told </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">71 verifiable lies</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, according to a running total by </span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-fact-check_us_56fc375fe4b0daf53aee9175" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Huffington Post</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Don’t feel like trusting Huffington Post (even though they </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">listed</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the lies)? Fine. Trump was the near-runaway lying champion on the politifact.com candidate fact checking metric in the primaries. (He’d have blown out </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">everyone</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> if Ted Cruz and Ben Carson had not been running as well.) A wonderful </span><a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/jun/29/fact-checking-2016-clinton-trump/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">pre-convention article</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on politifact compared him to Clinton and showed that he lied 60% of the time, while she did so 13% of the time, and (throughout the entire campaign) she only told </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">one</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> lie they rated “pants on fire” as opposed to his </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">30</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This is </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">equivalence</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a man who has engaged one of the most zealous, extreme political people in America to run his campaign, Steve Bannon, the head of Breitbart.com, who has recast that already deeply right wing site into an alt.right-friendly web space. Bannon was once charged with domestic battery, though the campaign says </span><a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/stephen-bannon-domestic-violence-charges-trump-campaign-227445" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it is unclear whether Trump knew about that before he was hired</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. That is, however, the least troubling thing about him: Bannon is, if anything, even more of a loose cannon than Trump himself. His vitriol for the left is well-documented and knows no bounds. His is a philosophy of expedience: he does not care what or whom he supports in order to destroy the left; he only wants it destroyed. The </span><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/the-radical-anti-conservatism-of-stephen-bannon/496796/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Atlantic’s exposé on Bannon </span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">explores him in more detail, and it concludes: “</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trump is not his idea of a good president of the United States. Trump is his guillotine.” All Bannon wants from Trump is to cut the head off of America, and he knows that is what he will get.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a man who has, from the moment he opened his campaign, made it a safe space for what Hillary Clinton </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">correctly</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> called the nation’s “basket of deplorables.” Not that long ago (that is, pre-Trump), these people, with their ugly hatred, their xenophobic attitudes, their open racism, etc., were the dark underbelly of America. We knew (if we were honest) that they were there, but they remained unseen, unheard, where vermin ought to be. They rose up only to populate the anonymous spaces of comment sections on the internet and faceless ultra-right wing websites. And we were glad to keep them that way. But Trump has allowed them into the light. He has made it acceptable for them to display their venomous feelings and ideas and their ignorance to the world, and it is going to be impossible to push them back into the shadows. Because of him, even if he loses, even if he is slaughtered, we are stuck with them forever.</span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/R9YPYRaeTW0/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R9YPYRaeTW0?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br /></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What the heck is going on? Does anyone remember that the leadership of the free world is at stake here? Or have we </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">actually</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> entered the Twilight Zone? </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is the inevitable result of the conditioning we have been getting in moral equivalence since Fox began its “fair and balanced” campaign three decades ago. Instead of real journalism, today’s media has fed us a steady diet of “he said, she said” for years, no matter what the issue, as if </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">truth</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> no longer actually matters or even exists, as far as they are concerned. No wonder we have newscasters who, like Brian Williams, can’t seem to quite figure out what the truth is. We have entire networks, like Fox, where truth and opinion are so intertwined that separating them is impossible. But </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">truth</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> does exist. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reality</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> does exist. It is </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a malleable thing. It is not flexible. It is not subjective. And in this election, at this moment in time, it tells us one thing with great clarity:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is no moral equivalence here.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #343c40; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are not “two evils.” There is one. And his name is Donald Trump. We vote for him at our own peril. And Hillary Clinton, an excellent, well-meaning, hard-working, dedicated, experienced politician who has been the victim of decades of concerted distortions, lies, and exaggerations based on misogyny, politics, ambition, and just plain old meanness? She may not be the second coming of Lincoln or anything, but she’ll be a good President. What else do we need?</span></div>
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-58505487155539451122016-07-20T03:19:00.000-05:002016-07-20T03:48:06.866-05:00An English Teacher's View of the Trump Plagiarism Issue<div class="MsoNormal">
I have just retired from a nearly four-decade career
teaching English. When I started, back in the 70’s, I was barely older than the
students in my senior classes, so of course I was a stickler for the rules just
to get them to take me seriously. <o:p></o:p></div>
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One of the requirements to pass English 4 was a research
paper, and English 4 was required for graduation. This provided some leverage
as I taught my students about the many different ways one can plagiarize. I
remember creating overhead projection demonstrations on those flimsy plastic
sheets that you drew on with marker; in the end I had a multiple page prototype
PowerPoint presentation on how to avoid plagiarism…in about ten colors. It took
two full days to go over the lesson; I wanted everyone to know I took it very
seriously so that they would, too. I was a 22-year-old teacher who should be
watched out for, dammit.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3LX_HmyKg8pXK_iRJlnZ5NnA-IF0hf-_U3tc_ykgWsXLy5eSHi2N4vrcHdsNp1e1Th5bJR80pP5AiqSZIfF9EHzZBJWl4pIL9ZsajRjFpoXyIadJ6Ni7_Mb95juLM3uAQmOySPJTXzdI/s1600/wikipedian_protester-774177.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3LX_HmyKg8pXK_iRJlnZ5NnA-IF0hf-_U3tc_ykgWsXLy5eSHi2N4vrcHdsNp1e1Th5bJR80pP5AiqSZIfF9EHzZBJWl4pIL9ZsajRjFpoXyIadJ6Ni7_Mb95juLM3uAQmOySPJTXzdI/s400/wikipedian_protester-774177.png" width="400" /></a><br />
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But I was nice to them. I assigned a fun research topic:
mythology. And I explained that it was something I’d taken classes on and knew
quite a bit about. I even mentioned some good books they might use. Weeks
later, over Christmas break, I had dozens of research papers with me to grade.
Somewhere in the middle of the stack, I read one <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I had read before</i>. I even knew which one it was. I compared the two
just to be certain, but yes: they were exactly the same. (Turned out they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">both</i> copied it from the same source!) In
the end, I caught thirteen cases of whole or partial plagiarism: thirteen
seniors who did not graduate with their class that June.</div>
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And that was that: suddenly I had gained the reputation of
someone who catches cheaters. Over the years, I caught many more, most of whom
were just stupid enough or full of enough hubris (or both) to think they could
get away with it. Or maybe they were just desperate enough that they felt they
had to try. Every case ended the same way, though, even if it wasn’t a paper
that caused automatic failure: a zero for the work. Over the years, I added a
discussion with parents, and then a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">more
difficult</i> topic if they wished to redo it, among other things, but the
bottom line was always that initial zero. And it never mattered whether the
paper was copied in whole or in part. They all knew that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">any</i> plagiarism is still plagiarism. <o:p></o:p></div>
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A facebook friend dug up a wonderful old song by Tom Lehrer
in which he discusses plagiarism in academia called “Lobachevsky”:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CEl-nwhwDjQ" width="420"></iframe><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5840543387517258360" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5840543387517258360" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>This is the most basic lesson any writer learns: don’t copy
other writers’ work without giving credit. So how the heck has the Trump
campaign managed to screw it up <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">twice</b>
in the first two days of the RNC?<o:p></o:p></div>
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First, of course, came the celebrated Melania misfire, in
which she stole a significant portion of her speech from Michelle Obama’s 2008
DNC speech. Such things, in the world of politics, are not unknown. President
Obama himself took lines from a 2006 Deval Patrick speech in 2008. When the
situation was discovered, though, he apologized to Patrick, who accepted it.
Compare this to the Trumps, who came up with at least seven or eight separate
excuses (including <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Little Pony</i>) to
deflect blame, even though Melania’s first reaction was to clarify that she
had, indeed, written the speech. (It turns out that what she had done was <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">rewrite</b> the speech, but let’s not
nitpick.) As of this writing, (late Tuesday night), they still have not even
admitted there <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i> any plagiarism.
Their surrogate lapdog Chris Christie went so far as to attempt to redefine what
plagiarism means, claiming that since the speech was only 7% someone else’s
words, it was fine.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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No. It wasn’t. Plagiarism is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">any</b> unattributed content. It's kind of like pregnancy: you can't plagiarize just a little because even a little is plagiarism.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which brings me to our next guest, Donald Trump, Jr. As The
Daily Show noted in its Twitter account late Tuesday night, he took a couple of
key lines directly from a conservative magazine. The author of the article he
used, F.H. Buckley, tweeted later that Trump had permission to use the lines,
and that’s a good thing. But perhaps it’s beside the point.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Trump was delivering a speech in the immediate aftermath of
Melania’s debacle the previous night. You’d think that the one thing that the
campaign would make <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">absolutely certain</b>
would be that nothing with even the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">appearance</i>
of plagiarism occurred again after that. Yet it happened. And, once again, it
happened within the family. If Trump had permission to use the lines, all he
had to do was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">attribute them</i> within
the speech and all would have been fine. Instead, he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">delivered them as if they were his own</i>, which is the textbook
definition of plagiarism. And thus, permission or not, he managed to embroil
his family and his father’s campaign for the second straight night in a
plagiarism issue.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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No wonder Trump prefers to speak off the cuff. Can’t
plagiarize someone if you’re making crap up as you go along.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But here’s the ultimate thing: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had my last case of plagiarism late last winter. A girl
was under the gun and copied an essay from the internet. I explained to her (as
I’d done so often before) that she was probably lucky in the long run that I
had caught her. Anyone who gets away with this stuff is likely to try it again.
In high school, it’s a zero and maybe a chance to do it over. But in most
colleges, it’s a violation of academic honesty that can get you expelled. And
this is my point: we hold college students to this very high standard. Why
should we not hold someone aspiring to be President to the same one? Trump
himself has not (yet) plagiarized anything, but the response of his team has
been extremely discouraging. As Trevor Noah wondered tonight, what can we
expect of this group when they actually have real power if this is how they act
over something like this? Trump has been pushing envelopes since he declared for President over a year ago, seeing just how much he can get away with. The lesson he has learned is that he apparently can get away with <i>anything</i>. Remember this?<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iTACH1eVIaA" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
He truly believes there is <b>nothing</b> he can do that is <i>too far</i>. And why shouldn't he? It has proven true so far. And here is just one more example of standards he is willing to break down because it is expedient to him to do so. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s always been clear that Trump is a petty tyrant. This
convention is making that more and more obvious by the day.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-55403570911356080432016-07-14T01:44:00.001-05:002016-07-14T01:44:44.702-05:00The GOP Has Jumped the Shark, and How That Affects LGBT YouthIn 2002, as a junior in high school, my oldest child told me that he was trans.<br />
<br />
This was a child who had been through one personal and gender identity after another for years; who, after a dozen years as Caitlin, had suddenly decided to be called Angel; who had self-identified as everything from heterosexual to bisexual to lesbian and back again over the years. But this one–the biggest one of all–came as a shock to me. I probably should have seen it coming, I suppose: I mean the kid was clearly desperate to find the right identity and this one <i>was</i> hanging there, low fruit, in plain sight, since <b><i>I</i></b> am trans, having transitioned in 1998. But I didn't expect it. And I didn't react well, either, both because the copycat thing seemed too much and because I knew how <i>hard</i> it was being transgender and I did <b>not</b> want that for my child.<br />
<br />
But there you go. He was and is.<br />
<br />
In 2002, despite knowing that one of his mothers was trans, his school had no real experience with transgender teens. They had no idea at all how to handle him. He let them know going into his senior year, and they provided social workers and counselors, etc., but there were no policies for bathrooms or any such thing. (He just used boys' rooms when he could get away with it or held it.) They would not even let him sing the tenor parts or wear a tux in choir, and you'd think choir would be pretty understanding. He spent a great deal of his senior year hating every minute of being there.<br />
<br />
I think of him back then these days when I read about the retrograde efforts by the GOP to roll back the clock on LGBT rights, especially those concerning trans people. Whenever they pass or try to pass "bathroom bills," whenever right wing activists hassle transpeople in public because of these laws and the publicity they create, whenever another state joins the lawsuit against the administration for trying to be human to high school students who happen to be transgender, whenever yet another transperson is beaten or murdered for the crime of being who they are, I think of my son struggling to figure out who he was and to be accepted for that person.<br />
<br />
When I saw the 2016 draft GOP Platform, it made me sick. It's vile. And it's an anagram of that word as well: it's <i>evil</i>. There is no point for several of its provisions but to foster hatred and fear, but then again that is what today's GOP has come to stand for, when it comes right down to it. They are no longer about <i>governing</i>; they are about making people fear and hate others so that they elect GOP representatives who then can reshape districts to keep themselves in office perpetually. And if, while spreading that fear and hatred, they cause some gays, Muslims, transpeople, lesbians, immigrants, black people, Latinos, etc. trouble, well, so what? Collateral damage to inconsequential people. And I say that without hesitation because, if there is one thing that the Donald Trump campaign has proved, it is that a giant segment of the GOP is absolutely, unapologetically, intransigently prejudiced against anyone who doesn't look like them and share their backgrounds and sexualities. And now they have written their hatred and fear right into their official platform, including their staple "eliminate gay marriage" platform despite having lost that battle in the Supreme Court, as well as the thoroughly discredited "pray the gay away" camps and (apparently) even Trump's insanely xenophobic wall.<br />
<br />
Basically, the GOP–in case it is not obvious to anyone paying attention–has jumped the shark.<br />
<br />
The phrase refers to a TV show that, as it ages and its novelty fades, tries to renew audience investment by attempting some grand gimmick: a marriage, perhaps, or a child, or something really strange (like "Grey's Anatomy's" musical episode). It derives from a season five "Happy Days" episode in which Fonzie literally did jump a shark on waterskis. Most TV shows don't recover from such contrivances, or at least never regain their former popularity. One has to wonder what will become of the GOP after this year of shark-jumping:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>It has seen itself become a complete laughing stock with a seemingly endless series of televised debates among bickering candidates who each made the others look more like cartoons. </li>
<li>It has watched in stupefied horror as the most cartoonish of all captured its nomination. </li>
<li>It has been stuck in a dangerous political game since the death of Antonin Scalia, refusing to fill his empty seat and hoping it doesn't come back to hurt them in the end. </li>
<li>It has desperately and unsuccessfully attempted to handle its embarrassing candidate with kid gloves, and many of its stars will not even attend its convention. </li>
<li>It has doubled down on its most absurd positions, including doubting both evolution and human-caused climate change.</li>
<li>And how, the Turn Back the Calendars Platform, the one that seems more like a Sunday School platform than a US political one, the most intolerant platform put forth by a major political party in this country in at least half a century.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
My son is now 31 years old. The school he graduated from, like the school I just retired from as a teacher, today has several transgender students among the members of its GSA and policies in place to accommodate them. But I remember how hard it was for him, the pain in his face and (too often) the tears in his eyes when he came home from school and spoke of yet another incident. Fortunately, he had some friends he could laugh with and one friend in particular who understood and empathized with what he was going through. I don't know if he would have made it otherwise: he wasn't strong enough to do it alone. And that's what I think about with all of this insanity: the kid in the school or the adult in their world who can't do it alone but <i>is</i> alone, and is reading each day how much a major party in this their country hates and fears them and wants them gone, wants them to disappear. How do they make it?<br /><br />And I remember the day my son was finally allowed to wear that tux to a choral concert. It was the last one of his senior year, the last one of high school. And seeing the joy in his face as he lined up with the other boys...he's had a lot of darkness in his life before and since, but that moment is indelibly etched in my mind as one of the good ones.<br />
<br />
Someone please explain to me who would have gained if it had never been allowed to happen due to hatred and fear. Because I already know who would have suffered.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-22226679876259241992016-07-12T16:26:00.000-05:002016-07-12T16:26:04.525-05:00Why Arguing Politics On FB Is a Waste of Time<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: red; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: x-small;"><i>I couldn't resist: I let myself get sucked into a conversation with one of my very right-wing FB friends. After a ton of posts and one lengthy sign-off post from me eaten by the net at 2 AM, I wrote this and posted it today. You know they were just happy to see me check out. I think you'll be able to get all of the context by my responses.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "helvetica";"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "helvetica";">A
few points before I leave this thread, not because I am afraid to continue or
because I know I've lost or because I can't argue against the overwhelming
truths set out by A--- and his ideology, but simply because I actually detest
these conversations. I only join them once in a while because I had forgotten
how awful they are, and then I am quickly reminded of that: they are awful and
they are endless and they are often nasty.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">It didn't take A--- long to get nasty. In the
posts T--- deleted this morning, he denigrated the intelligence of liberals in
general on several occasions, suggesting (and in fact <i>stating</i> more than once)
that we obviously are uneducated "dolts" (I don't remember many of
his exact words, but I recall that one) who have not read nor understood any
economic principles and have no grasp of history or current politics or the way
Washington actually works. He <i>kindly</i> walked us (me) through it, step by step,
so that our poor little liberal brains could drink in the fruits of all of his incredible
Libertarian learning, become blinded (I suppose) by the Power of the Light of
Truth, and finally understand that we've never actually <i>grown up</i>! Or at least
maybe we would recognize that the real world and our little fantasy universe
are two different places. Or something.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">The problem, A--- (and R---, and T--- too), is
that we <i>are</i> grownups. We <i>are</i> educated. <i>Quite</i> educated. And we know what
we are talking about. We happen to disagree with you, and (unlike you) we
actually have the real world evidence to back up our claims. As I have already
noted, conservative economics were attempted in the perfect cauldrons of
Louisiana and Kansas, whereas liberal economics were attempted in the perfect
cauldron of California. Guess which is now one of the strongest, most thriving
economies in the <i>world</i> and which two are bankrupt? What the GOP loves to call
the laboratories of the states has proved the point beautifully. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">And you can say–and you'd be accurate–that
today's GOP has nothing to do with real conservativism. It is a party
consisting of a bizarre salmagundi of ultra right wing anti-government idiots,
religious fanatics, uneducated southern bigots, Wall Street executives, and a
lot of in-betweeners who don't <i>think</i> they fit with the Democrats because Fox
News has told them over and over for thirty years that the Democrats promote, I
don't know, Satanism or something. It is a party that simply doesn't work
anymore, which is why it is about to nominate Donald Trump. I am far from the
first to say this, but it is a party whose patron saint, Ronald Reagan, would
not stand a hope in hell of being nominated today because he could never pass
its litmus tests. And Lincoln? Forgettaboudit! You say the party needs to
nominate a true conservative, but such a candidate (even if he–because OF
COURSE it would be a "he") could manage to win the nomination, would
be *slaughtered* in the general. The closest to the ideal right now for the GOP
is Cruz, and I think he'd lose worse than Trump.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Conservatives like to argue that this is a
"center-right" nation with no evidence to support that claim. Maybe
it was in Reagan's time, but this nation just elected a black man president <i>twice</i> by majorities. Sounds more center-LEFT to me. And, despite the bleating
about Obamacare because of legitimate issues with it and the endless nastiness
from the GOP and Fox, all surveys show that, when you divorce its provisions
from the <b>name </b>"Obamacare," almost everyone <i>wants</i> them.
"Center-right" my eye. But you are definitely correct about at least
one thing: the majority of this country has at least this much in common with
England (as witnessed in the Brexit vote): they are easily-led sheepul, on both
sides.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">As to why I am exiting (Kexiting?) this
conversation:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Basically, it's pointless. You are all <span style="color: blue;">True
Believers</span>. </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Your arguments (at least at times) pretend to be based on truth, but
in fact they are based on faith. Supply-side economics <i>is</i> a faith-based
system at its core: we give the rich more money and <i>of course</i> they will create
new jobs that will help the economy. Except...they DON'T. They just don't. No
recession or depression in US history has ever been broken that way. The only
way out has ever been through the Keynesian method of large influxes of money
to stimulate the stagnant economy. Fortunately, after the Bush Economic Crisis,
we elected a Keynesian. And perhaps, if Congress had allowed him the $1.3
trillion that he wanted, the stimulus would have been enough, with
infrastructure job creation programs, etc., to make the deep and immediate
impact he wanted and hoped for. But even half a trillion dollars shy of that,
it was able to stop the recession, right the ship, and begin what is now over
75 straight months of job growth (which I think is a record, isn't it?)...<i>without</i>
the help of any new government jobs at all. Unheard of. Not only that, but Wall
Street is thriving and he has cut the deficit by far more than the stimulus
package he asked for: a win-win-win for conservatives, if you ask me, not that,
while they count their profits, they'll ever acknowledge it. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Still,<span style="color: blue;">True Believers</span> </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">cannot be argued with. I
can cite facts until the cows come home (and I really could: facts and reality
do, as the meme holds, have an oddly liberal bias) but that would have no
impact whatsoever on a<span style="color: blue;">True Believer</span>. </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">It's as useless as arguing about abortion
or LGBT issues with a fundamentalist: no matter what you say, no matter how
logical and scientific you can be, the answer will ultimately come down to
something like "You just don't understand how to read the Bible as well as
I do." And how does one argue with that?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">So I sit here, honed by a lifetime of dealing
with my conservative brothers, armed with facts, figures, history, current
events, and reality, and much more just a click away. I fully acknowledge that
none of what Liberals desire is perfect–whatever is? Everything comes with a
price. I simply argue that the price of what we want is far more tolerable than
the price of what you want. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">You guys have denigrated democratic socialism
as an unworkable concept. T--- went so far as to opine about how hard it is
right now for the people of Europe. Well I'd like to point out that this year's
World's Happiest Countries list contains seven European nations–most of them to
one degree or another socialist–in the Top 10 (the exceptions being Canada, New
Zealand and Australia). Even though they have been hit by a recession, they are
still feeling, overall, well taken care of and safe and happy with their lives.
(We are #13–not bad at all, but shouldn't we be #1 if we are so
"exceptional"?) Again, you make these blanket statements based on no
evidence. I deal in facts, though I know that your immediate reactions, as</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"> <span style="color: blue;">True
Believers</span>, will be to see something totally wrong with these facts.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">As to the implementation of the ACA: would
Obama's giving in to any of the unpalatable suggestions brought to the table by
the GOP have earned him even one single GOP vote? I think we know the answer to
that. He gave moderate Susan Collins exactly what she wanted and *she* voted
against it. Lockstep: it is how this congress has worked. In the end, he
adopted a plan conceived in full in a right wing think tank and look what has
happened. If Bush had decided to adopt it, they'd have loved it. If Romney or
McCain had won and adopted it, they'd have loved it. But Obama won and adopted
it, so it is anathema. And instead of trying to fix the things they found
objectionable about it, they spent the next seven years on pointless bills to
repeal it...again and again and again. I know, I know: this is the GOP, not the
true conservatives. But be fair: they are the one party in this nation that
speaks loudly for the nation's conservative interests. Libertarians, Greens,
etc. are fringe parties. It would be nice to see them grow in their capability
to challenge the bigger parties, but until that happens, if it ever does, they
simply act as spoilers in tight elections. (Cf. Ralph Nader.)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">So, OK,</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"> <span style="color: blue;">True Believers</span>: sit there in your make
believe ideologically pure world where you can pretend that the GOP has nothing
to do with you and that someday a Perfect Conservative will arise from the
depths into the light and right all of the wrongs of this our great nation. He
won't be like Reagan, though. That's clear: the guy raised taxes, sold arms to
our enemies, made secret deals, used tons of executive orders, and generally
did lots of other stuff that disqualifies him as a "perfect"
conservative. But he'll come. He has to. It is written...somewhere...isn't it?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Take care.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #7f7f7f; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 9.0pt;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #7f7f7f; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 9.0pt;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: red;"><i>Addendum: I did check back, out of curiosity, to see what the first reaction to this would be. I was told that at least I was right about the conversation's being pointless because I would go on believing what I believe and "we will go on KNOWING what we know."</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #7f7f7f; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 9.0pt;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: red;"><i>Point proved.</i></span></span></span></div>
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-53158362531863434152016-07-06T17:41:00.001-05:002016-07-06T17:41:38.573-05:00Hillary and the no-good, terrible, very bad day...<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
So in case you are wondering, not that you are...</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
My initial thoughts about the FBI statement about HRC are these:</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px; margin-top: 6px;">
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="line-height: 19.32px;">According to any reasonable interpretation of statutes, Comey (a Republican, remember) is correct: she committed no crime.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 19.32px;">I'm disappointed that she was not more forthcoming about things during the last year. There was no reason to be disingenuous or dishonest; she must have known what they would find.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 19.32px;">I'm impressed that after digging so hard for 25 years the GOP finally found a "scandal" with at least *some* degree of sticking power. At the same time it doesn't surprise me a bit that they are not at all satisfied and are already "re-investigating" the thing.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 19.32px;">I rather hope that, whenever the Democrats take the House back, they run an investigation into the incredible abuse of power and taxpayer dollars that this House has made doing these various "investigations" (excuse me: witch hunts).</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 19.32px;">I'm blown away by the fact that Trump could not even run with a small victory for a whole day, destroying it within hours by doubling down on his previous praise of Saddam Hussein.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 19.32px;">I like Hillary. I always have. I think she is and has been the victim of concerted GOP smear campaigns since 1991 and that what even Democrats believe about her today results from the incredible effectiveness of these campaigns: repeat something often enough and it becomes "fact."</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 19.32px;">That being said, though, I have to admit that a very large part of me would like to see the Dems turn to Biden at the convention. A Biden/Warren ticket would energize the entire party and might possibly sweep all fifty states, taking back BOTH houses of Congress at the same time. Hillary, through "extreme carelessness" and through a quarter century of hate and misogyny, can't do that. It is impossible to argue with a Hillary hater: for them, it is a matter of faith. No evidence, no argument, NOTHING, is good enough. And here is the greatest proof of the truth of that statement: they are willing to allow Donald Trump to become President simply because they hate her so much. They have actually managed to talk themselves into believing that a self-centered, arrogant, racist, misogynist, impetuous, unpredictable blowhard with no core belief system whatsoever is better for this country than the woman who has been called, by people on both sides of the spectrum, possibly the most qualified person ever to seek the office of President.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 19.32px;">That says it all. Some say they just won't vote, but they know that's a copout; they know sitting it out is a vote for Trump.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 19.32px;">So, bottom line: I wish the FBI had completely exonerated her, as she has been exonerated in every other so-called "scandal." This time, it appears, she screwed up somewhat. Not to the David Petraeus level. Not to the George Bush level of destroying millions of emails before any investigation could be made (and let's face it: if she had something to hide and were really as twisted as the haters believe, she *would* have). But probably, being unused to *actually* having some blame in something she was accused of, she reacted badly.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 19.32px;">Do I like this? No. It was a test and she failed it. But I ask myself how Trump would have handled it, and I know with certainty that no one would ever have gotten anywhere near that server while any emails still existed on it. And *whatever* he told his followers, they would simply accept it, and the sheepul at Fox News would move on, and that would be it. Hillary is running for President. Trump is running for Emperor. He's said it himself: he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and they'd still vote for him. HRC, on the other hand, couldn't get away with jaywalking...</span></li>
</ul>
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-36933637783270194522016-06-22T18:35:00.000-05:002016-06-22T18:35:29.160-05:00Pulse is the LGBT Community’s Challenger<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like all members of the LGBT community, I awoke a week ago Sunday stunned at the news from Orlando. I felt much the same as I had felt the morning that the Challenger exploded, way back in 1986: slapped in the face by a reality that had always been a possibility but that I had stopped worrying about because everything was going so well. And just as I had on that horrific day my first reaction was stunned catatonia: I sat staring at news stories, trying to fathom the immensity of it, trying to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">understand</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, as if one can understand horror and hatred.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-b3d6c80b-7a77-1046-76c3-97213c39775f" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It had been just the previous Thursday when I stood scant feet from President Obama as he delivered his eighth LGBT Pride Reception address, a beautiful few hours in the White House spent meeting LGBT folks from all over who were there to do what I was there to do: celebrate the incredible gains that we’ve made under this administration. The conversations there were full of hope and promise and not </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">whether</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> but </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">when.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Could that have been just that Thursday? Two days before the universe collapsed?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 1986, I must have watched that endless loop of the shuttle exploding a hundred times. There was a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">teacher</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on board. A teacher like me from </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New Hampshire</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, where I grew up. It was personal. It was too much to handle. It was too much to believe.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was a different world.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sunday, I didn’t need video to confirm the stories. The scene has become sickeningly familiar to us all. And yes, it’s still very personal. I’m not young–obviously, if I remember the Challenger–</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and I am not Latina, but in a different life I might have been someone who went to a club like Pulse. I’m transgender. I like enjoying life. And 100+ young LGBT people who had gone to do just that were mowed down because...why? The shooter hated them? He was a self-loathing closeted gay man? He was a secretly radicalized Muslim who </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">really</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> hated the fact that he was gay and somehow blamed all LGBT people for it? What?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Catatonia slowly turned to deep sadness. I read stories about the victims: two men who were to be married who will now instead be buried; a soldier who challenged the insane DADT rule; a young nurse who will never be able to fulfill her promise; students, dancers, single parents, journalists, salespeople, beauticians, Disney World employees, out of towners just there for fun...so hard to read. So many lives, so senseless. So horrible.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And then deep sadness morphed to plain old anger. It started when I began thinking about how the news was reporting this tragedy. The more they </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">didn’t</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> say “LGBT,” the angrier I grew. The more they latched onto the “radical Islam” angle and called it “terrorism” instead of a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hate crime</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the more my anger grew. The more I saw people sharing sympathetic memes and rainbow ribbons on facebook–people whom I know to be NRA supporters and therefore complicit in the fact that this guy could legally purchase a military-grade weapon at a shopping plaza gun store without even any needed background check–the more my anger started becoming fury. The more I started hearing that this was about </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Islamic</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> hatred and we needed to get rid of the Muslims, as if it were not the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Christian right</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in THIS country that fosters the environment that gave this shooter the notion that LGBT people are somehow </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lesser</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and are valid as targets and that if he in fact </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> one he </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">should</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> hate himself, the more that fury became </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">livid</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The President said–as he has said so many times now that he might as well play a recording– that we need to decide what kind of country we are. That’s the problem: we </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">have</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> decided. We are a country that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">doesn’t care</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> if gunmen, every couple of months or so, blow away large groups of businesspeople, gay people, medical people, moviegoers, or even </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">school children</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, because we need to hold on to our precious right to own what are, in civilian terms, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">weapons of mass destruction</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is who we are. Or anyway, that is who the cowards who populate Congress are, as they showed us once again on Monday night, voting down two easy-to-take gun laws even though they had about 90% support from the populace. And I am utterly furious about it. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because I thought we were finally safe, you know? I thought that all of the asinine laws that the GOP keeps passing were the last, worst gasps of a dying breed of dinosaur passing out of existence. I had forgotten that within all of the ugliness that the right espouses also lies the real potential for actual violence. Until now.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 1986, no one was even watching the launch of the Challenger. Such launches had become so easy and routine that, as I said, they were sending </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">civilians</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> up. Only the brand new 24-hour CNN, with nothing else to fill its time, covered the launch live. And only they had the video that immediately (in 2016 parlance) went viral. It was a huge event not only because of its inherent newsworthiness, but because of its shattering of a kind of innocence: suddenly we were all reminded, so violently, of what we of course already knew: the dangers inherent to space travel.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pulse has reminded us, so violently, of the dangers inherent to being LGBT in this country. Where we had started to become a bit complacent–overconfident after so many victories, maybe?–now we once more need to look over our shoulders. Where two gay men kissing in the street was starting to feel (as it should) </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">just fine</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, now, thanks to this shooter, it will come with the shadow of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what if there’s someone like that guy watching?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Where many of us gather together, there will always be slight trepidation. Because that is the kind of country America is. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And that really pisses me off.</span><br />
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-59429571119102061842016-06-22T18:33:00.001-05:002016-06-22T18:33:42.925-05:00Welcome to My Life: An Open Letter to America from the Nation’s First Transgender Teacher<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>A brazen bit of name and place dropping:</b></span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-33ba6b29-7a72-eb39-b406-e73de73c9ae4" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the White House last week, President Obama spoke of the strides his administration has accomplished for LGBT people as well as the fact that there are still so many things left to do. It was his eighth LGBT Pride Reception, and as I stood just feet from him, I found that that word, “pride,” was a thing I felt deeply. I know he has ”evolved” on LGBT issues; I have no problems with that, for it’s what thoughtful people do. In the end, through their own soul-searching, they get it right. I felt pride in a President who has gotten so much right.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A lot of my friends were saying that they felt proud of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">me</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I’m not sure why. What I had done required no soul-searching at all. They tell me it was “brave” of me to transition back in the 90s, before people understood transsexuals and before there were any other examples of anyone doing what I was doing as a teacher, but I wonder how brave it can be to do the only thing in the world that you actually </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">can</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> do. In 1998, I knew I had only two choices laid out clearly before me: transition or die. There was no third option; I could not go on living as I had been. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>In the beginning:</b></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not that it was an easy road. At the time, we had a couple of gay math teachers and a gay English teacher. There were a few others, but they weren’t out, and the ones who </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">were</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> out didn’t talk about it. And then I came along. I’d been working in the English Department for fifteen years when I lost the battle against gender dysphoria. I mean I had known all my life of course–since I first noticed that there was a physical difference between girls and boys (and I’m a fairly bright person with five siblings, so that was at about age three)–but I had long abandoned hope of ever actually transitioning. When I was growing up (the 60s and 70s) doing that was unheard of and, as I later discovered when I </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">did</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> hear of it, very, very expensive. So my daily childhood prayer </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(Dear God, just let it be gone when I wake up)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was slowly replaced by something more like an unattainable fantasy.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not that I didn’t </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">try</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> once in awhile. I had to: I’d been harboring a deep secret that had rendered me “the weird kid” in my neighborhood and school. I needed at least to make the token attempt to bring it into the open, even if I was terrified of what might happen. There was a “Dear Abby” column once, a woman writing for advice because her son was going to become a woman. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What can I do, Abby? How can I even face my friends?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Abby kicked her butt: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Your child is a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">transsexual</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and will be facing a very difficult life. It’s a one in a million chance, but there you go. All you can do now is to love and support your </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">daughter</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and stop thinking about yourself.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (I loved Abby.) So I took the letter to my Mom and just gave it to her to read. I stood there while she did, waiting for her response. Finally, she looked up, stared at me for a long moment, and said, “Honey, you aren’t one in a million.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I never tried after that. She’d proven that she just didn’t see the problem, or didn’t want to discuss it. Either way it was over; she’d shut it down. (Ironic footnote: later, after transition, I asked her about that. She had no recollection whatsoever of the conversation.)</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyway, I just gave up, allowing a “male” personality to take over my daily life so I could live it. And I lived it as well as I could for the next 28 years. I went to college according to a sort of checklist. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(What would a guy do? Well, join a fraternity. Check. Though it was a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">scholars’</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> fraternity… Get a girlfriend. OK...so I spent the whole of freshman year trying to find one. What did I know of that? I’d never really had one before except for a brief relationship with a girl my sister set me up with in high school; I had agreed mostly as a kind of beard. Speaking of which: grow a beard. Check. In May I finally found a girlfriend. Check. Decided it was so hard to find her, I’d just marry her. Did.) </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I basically abdicated running my life to this second personality I had invented; it was the only way I could live. And yet I told myself I “had it all under control.” Ha! I’m not sure what kind of “control” there is when you are thinking about something every minute of every day. Still, we are capable of incredible self-delusion. And anyway I didn’t really give a crap about my life; I just wanted to live it as well as I could, get through it, and get it over with. I told myself I was thirty when I was 28. I called myself middle-aged when I was in my lower thirties. I was in a rush to move things along.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We ended up with three children, though the last ten years of our marriage was mostly a friendship. And during those ten years, my mind was coming apart at the seams: I’d met a transperson–ironically through my wife–and just meeting him had opened so many doors I couldn’t shut again that by 1998, terrifying or not, I knew I needed to take a leap. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The actual transition part:</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"You can’t do that here!"</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Everyone told me this wealthy, conservative suburb was the last place I’d be able to make this sort of thing work. But I thought: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Might as well try.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> One of the gay math teachers, when I told him what was going to happen, said, “Well, I guess that takes the pressure off of us!”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As far as my research, the school’s research, and the research of the myriad news outlets that covered my transition could tell in those pre-internet days, I was the very first school teacher in America who had ever transitioned on the job without stopping, remained in the same assignment, and made it work. I just left in June as Mr. and returned in the fall as Ms. on a day when TV news trucks lined the streets in front of the school. Both Chicago papers did feature stories about me; the Tribune offered me the cover of its glossy Sunday supplement for an interview. Oprah, Jerry Springer, and Rachel Ray wanted me on. I was the talk of all of the TV news and talk radio stations. But I granted no interviews: I had little children and, in those days, I was afraid of violent reprisals. I didn’t want my children caught in the crossfire should anything happen. Nothing ever did, but of course violence against transpeople is an ongoing concern even today. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had plenty of support from the school and from the students and parents I knew, so things went surprisingly smoothly, give or take a bump or two in the road. The few harassments I had were quickly dispatched by the administration and never happened again. It wasn’t perfect, but it was far better than I had hoped: I lost my marriage and several long-time friends, my father and one sister wouldn’t have a relationship of any kind with me for the next seven years, and some old-boy colleagues just couldn’t figure it out. But most of my friends and family, as well as my children, were still with me, and I still had my career, so, all in all, I thought I’d fared very well despite the anguish, the tears, the pain, and the difficulties. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But that was 1998, and the world is a totally different place now. I see it around me, in the news, in the lives of my students, and in the life of my own transgender son. Today I just introduced myself to you. In future blogs, I’ll discuss some of these changes and how they’ve come about, and what current political issues might mean for the future of LGBT–especially trans–youth and adults in the US.</span></div>
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-49834453596361296992016-05-28T20:15:00.000-05:002016-05-28T20:15:33.468-05:00An Open Letter to Bernie Supporters Who Say They Hate Hillary and Won't Vote For Her<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 16.08px;">Do you have any idea what kind of damage a single Trump term could do to this country and to the world? If you actually value any of the ideals that you say you value and are not just giving them mouth-honor because, hey, it's fun to imagine a world where all of the most progressive causes are realized, you would never, not for one instant, consider doing ANYTHING that could conceivably lead to that man's election. With potentially three *liberal* SCOTUS seats to be replaced? Forget EVERYTHING that you've been wishing for, campaigning for, and dreaming about for these past months; it will be gone. You'll be fantasizing about the good old days of Reagan and W. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br style="line-height: 16.08px;" /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 16.08px;">And speaking of them: don't kid yourself by thinking we can somehow get through a single term of Trump and, because it will be so bad, the country will easily swing left then. Reagan pushed the Overton Window so far to the right that freaking NIXON seemed like a Democrat! In fact, at the start of this campaign it was so far to the right that it was generally acknowledged that REAGAN HIMSELF could not run and win as a Republican. And it's 35 YEARS later! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 16.08px;">Take heart in the fact that eight years of Obama/Biden has slid the window considerably back toward the center from the right, where they found it. It may even be slightly *left* of center right now. Take heart in the fact that Bernie's run has given it a gigantic *shove* to the left that will impact the Democratic Party–and its nominee–in the fall. Take heart in the knowledge that, if Hillary is the nominee, she will be running on a platform crafted as much by Bernie's people as by her own, and she will likely need a VP who will appeal to his supporters to guarantee their votes a lot more than she needs anyone to guarantee any state. Take heart too in this: 90+% of what you think you know about Hillary Clinton is the result of a quarter century of carefully crafted smear campaigns run against her almost constantly by a right wing that never liked or accepted her because she didn't fit their mold of what a First Lady should be. There is a reason why, once they find something that they can sink their teeth into, like Benghazi (which THEY have cleared her on now five times) or emails (on which they conveniently overlook the fact that the last four Secretaries of State have had private servers), they don't let it go: they know because they are good at this stuff that the more they keep dragging it up, the more people will believe there is something there.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 16.08px;">In the debates, </span><a class="" dir="ltr" href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpolitifact.com%2F&h=CAQH1wwiV" rel="nofollow" style="cursor: pointer; line-height: 16.08px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">politifact.com</a><span style="line-height: 16.08px;"> rated her slightly ahead of Bernie as the two most honest candidates. Trump was dead last, even behind the man he calls "Lying Ted Cruz." He cannot be trusted with the Presidency. He cannot be allowed to have that office. Period. If the Dems nominate a two-headed orangutan, vote for THAT orange-haired candidate instead of the one the GOP have on the ballot. But don't do what so many people did in 2000 with Nader. Back then, the argument was that there was "no difference" between Gore and W. Right. Tell that to the families of the soldiers killed in his illegal wars. Tell that to the middle class that no longer exists because of his economic policies. Tell that to our children and grandchildren, who are facing a planet that is rapidly becoming unlivable because the guy who literally wrote the book on climate change was kept out of the White House even though he won the popular vote by a partisan SCOTUS just beginning to flex its activist wings. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 16.08px;">You've seen the damage a bad GOP president with a 5-4 majority can do. You REALLY want to see what an even WORSE one with a 7-2 majority can do? Then go ahead: vote Green. Or sit it out. Do it. And while you are watching Bernie's dreams go sinking into the muck over the next four years, knowing they were so close in 2016 and will NEVER be that close again, remember just how much you "hated" Hillary Clinton.</span><br />
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-79995086752242600652016-05-26T13:18:00.001-05:002016-05-26T13:18:02.578-05:00No PARCC you'd ever want to visit: a repost of an anonymous blog<div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-8464121706156837571" itemprop="description articleBody" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em;">
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<i>The following blog was written by an anonymous 4th grade NYC public schools teacher who defied his or her confidentiality agreement to show the world what a complete farce these tests actually are. I have signed no such agreement, but I too believe them to be asinine. They create an environment in which schools across the country are almost <b>forced</b> to teach to tests that are, by design, above the heads of their students. These are <b>extremely</b> flawed tests that take up <b>significant</b> educational time for our children, all for the increased profit of a testing corporation. This must be stopped. We have become utterly test-crazed in this nation at a time when, internationally, it is becoming more and more clear that FEWER standardized tests create better education, that flooding kids' lives with one test after another just dilutes their impact. And this one, with its intrinsic flaws and ludicrous premises, must be aborted now before it is so entwined within our school systems that getting rid of it becomes impossible.</i></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 24pt;">The PARCC Test: Exposed</span></b></div>
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<b style="font-size: 12pt;"><i><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The author of this blog posting is a public school teacher who will remain anonymous.</span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">I will not reveal my district or my role due to the intense legal ramifications for exercising my Constitutional First Amendment rights in a public forum. I was compelled to sign a security form that stated I would not be “Revealing or discussing passages or test items with anyone, including students and school staff, through verbal exchange, email, social media, or any other form of communication” as this would be considered a “Security Breach.” In response to this demand, I can only ask—whom are we protecting?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">There are layers of not-so-subtle issues that need to be aired as a result of national and state testing policies that are dominating children’s lives in America. As any well prepared educator knows, curriculum planning and teaching requires knowing how you will assess your students and planning backwards from that knowledge. If teachers are unable to examine and discuss the summative assessment for their students, how can they plan their instruction? Yet, that very question assumes that this test is something worth planning for. The fact is that schools that try to plan their curriculum exclusively to prepare students for this test are ignoring the body of educational research that tells us how children learn, and how to create developmentally appropriate activities to engage students in the act of learning. This article will attempt to provide evidence for these claims as a snapshot of what is happening as a result of current policies.</span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">The PARCC test is developmentally inappropriate</span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">In order to discuss the claim that the PARCC test is “developmentally inappropriate,” examine three of the most recent PARCC 4th grade items.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">A book leveling system, designed by Fountas and Pinnell, was made “more rigorous” in order to match the Common Core State Standards. These newly updated benchmarks state that 4th Graders should be reading at a Level S by the end of the year in order to be considered reading “on grade level.” [Celia’s note: I do not endorse leveling books or readers, nor do I think it appropriate that all 9 year olds should be reading a Level S book to be thought of as making good progress.]</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The PARCC, which is supposedly a test of the Common Core State Standards, appears to have taken liberties with regard to grade level texts. For example, on the Spring 2016 PARCC for 4th Graders, students were expected to read an excerpt from Shark Life: True Stories about Sharks and the Sea by Peter Benchley and Karen Wojtyla. According to Scholastic, this text is at an interest level for Grades 9-12, and at a 7th Grade reading level. The Lexile measure is 1020L, which is most often found in texts that are written for middle school, and according to <a href="http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/guidedreading/leveling_chart.htm" style="color: #336699;"><span style="color: blue;">Scholastic’s own conversion chart</span></a> would be equivalent to a 6th grade benchmark around W, X, or Y (using the same Fountas and Pinnell scale).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Even by the reform movement’s own standards, according to <a href="https://lexile.com/using-lexile/lexile-measures-and-the-ccssi/text-complexity-grade-bands-and-lexile-ranges/" style="color: #336699;"><span style="color: blue;">MetaMetrics’ reference material on Text Complexity Grade Bands and Lexile Bands</span></a>, the newly CCSS aligned “Stretch” lexile level of 1020 falls in the 6-8 grade range. This begs the question, what is the purpose of standardizing text complexity bands if testing companies do not have to adhere to them? Also, what is the purpose of a standardized test that surpasses agreed-upon lexile levels?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">So, right out of the gate, 4th graders are being asked to read and respond to texts that are two grade levels above the recommended benchmark. After they struggle through difficult texts with advanced vocabulary and nuanced sentence structures, they then have to answer multiple choice questions that are, by design, intended to distract students with answers that appear to be correct except for some technicality.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Finally, students must synthesize two or three of these advanced texts and compose an original essay. The ELA portion of the PARCC takes three days, and each day includes a new essay prompt based on multiple texts. These are the prompts from the 2016 Spring PARCC exam for 4th Graders along with my analysis of why these prompts do not reflect the true intention of the Common Core State Standards.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">ELA 4th Grade Prompt #1</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Refer to the passage from “Emergency on the Mountain” and the poem “Mountains.” Then answer question 7.</span></b><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Write an essay that explains the differences in the structural elements between the passage and the poem. Be sure to include specific examples from both texts to support your response.</span></b><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The above prompt probably attempts to assess the Common Core standard RL.4.5: <i>“Explain major differences between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the structural elements of poems (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) and drama (e.g., casts of characters, settings, descriptions, dialogue, stage directions) when writing or speaking about a text.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">However, the Common Core State Standards for writing do not require students to write essays comparing the text structures of different genres. The Grade 4 CCSS for writing about reading demand that students write about characters, settings, and events in literature, or that they write about how authors support their points in informational texts. Nowhere in the standards are students asked to write comparative essays on the structures of writing. The reading standards ask students to “explain” structural elements, but not in writing. There is a huge developmental leap between explaining something and writing an analytical essay about it. [Celia’s note: The entire enterprise of analyzing text structures in elementary school – a 1940’s and 50’s college English approach called “New Criticism” — is ridiculous for 9 year olds anyway.]</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">The PARCC does not assess what it attempts to assess</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">ELA 4th Grade Prompt #2</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Refer to the passages from “Great White Shark” and Face the Sharks. Then answer question 20.</span></b><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Using details and images in the passages from “Great White Sharks” and Face to Face with Sharks, write an essay that describes the characteristics of white sharks.</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">It would be a stretch to say that this question assesses CCSS W.4.9.B: <i>“Explain how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">In fact, this prompt assesses a student’s ability to research a topic across sources and write a research-based essay that synthesizes facts from both articles. Even <i>CCSS W.4.7, “Conduct research projects that build knowledge through investigation of different aspects of a topic,”</i> does not demand that students compile information from different sources to create an essay. The closest the standards come to demanding this sort of work is in the reading standards; CCSS RI.4.9 says: <i>“Integrate information from two texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably.”</i> Fine. One could argue that this PARCC prompt assesses CCSS RI.4.9.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">However, the fact that the texts presented for students to “use” for the essay are at a middle school reading level automatically disqualifies this essay prompt from being able to assess what it attempts to assess. (It is like trying to assess children’s math computational skills by embedding them in a word problem with words that the child cannot read.)</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">ELA 4th Grade Prompt #3</span></b></div>
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<li class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">In “Sadako’s Secret,” the narrator reveals Sadako’s thoughts and feelings while telling the story. The narrator also includes dialogue and actions between Sadako and her family. Using these details, write a story about what happens next year when Sadako tries out for the junior high track team. Include not only Sadako’s actions and feelings but also her family’s reaction and feelings in your story.</span></b><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Nowhere, and I mean nowhere in the Common Core State Standards is there a demand for students to read a narrative and then use the details from that text to write a new story based on a prompt. That is a new pseudo-genre called “Prose Constructed Response” by the PARCC creators, and it is 100% not aligned to the CCSS. Not to mention, why are 4th Graders being asked to write about trying out for the junior high track team? This demand defies their experiences and asks them to imagine a scenario that is well beyond their scope.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Clearly, these questions are poorly designed assessments of 4th graders CCSS learning. (We are setting aside the disagreements we have with those standards in the first place, and simply assessing the PARCC on its utility for measuring what it was intended to measure.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Rather than debate the CCSS we instead want to expose the tragic reality of the countless public schools organizing their entire instruction around trying to raise students’ PARCC scores.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Without naming any names, I can tell you that schools are disregarding research-proven methods of literacy learning. The “wisdom” coming “down the pipeline” is that children need to be exposed to more complex texts because that is what PARCC demands of them. So children are being denied independent and guided reading time with texts of high interest and potential access and instead are handed texts that are much too hard (frustration level) all year long without ever being given the chance to grow as readers in their Zone of Proximal Development (pardon my reference to those pesky educational researchers like Vygotsky.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">So not only are students who are reading “on grade level” going to be frustrated by these so-called “complex texts,” but newcomers to the U.S. and English Language Learners and any student reading below the proficiency line will never learn the foundational skills they need, will never know the enjoyment of reading and writing from intrinsic motivation, and will, sadly, be denied the opportunity to become a critical reader and writer of media. Critical literacies are foundational for active participation in a democracy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">We can look carefully at one sample to examine the health of the entire system– such as testing a drop of water to assess the ocean. So too, we can use these three PARCC prompts to glimpse how the high stakes accountability system has deformed teaching and warped learning in many public schools across the United States.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">In this sample, the system is pathetically failing a generation of children who deserve better, and when they are adults, they may not have the skills needed to engage as citizens and problem-solvers. So it is up to us, those of us who remember a better way and can imagine a way out, to make the case for stopping standardized tests like PARCC from corrupting the educational opportunities of so many of our children.</span></div>
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-79032829924721632722016-05-21T15:17:00.000-05:002016-05-21T15:36:19.226-05:00My Retirement Address: A Transgender Legacy<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At my retirement party last night, instead of going with the more normal antics of having a colleague speak for me, making jokes about me, my crazy quirks, my career, etc., I decided that I'd just speak for myself. After all, I've tended to be outside the norm all of my life. Why stop now? What follows is an annotated version of the speech I gave to my colleagues and to fellow retirees, some of whom retired before I even transitioned:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Several weeks ago I started to notice that someone was messing with all of the clocks.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Usually they move normally, you know, tick tick through the days, a little faster, sure, as spring gets here, but a few weeks ago I started realizing that entire weeks were passing in minutes. And I looked back 33 years and saw my 26-year-old self shaking Art Kleck’s</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.199999999999998px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">1</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> enormous hand and feeling that I was already a part of something warm and inviting in the very first interview with Bob Metcalf</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.199999999999998px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;"> 2</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how I got </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> so fast.</span></div>
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-1070ceba-d4f6-600e-9e4c-5c717d73fa17" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I knew right away I’d retire from this school in 30 or 40 years. I just didn’t know 30 or 40 years could go by so fast.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course there was another thing my 26-year-old self didn’t know that day as I continued my interviews with Jay Criche</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.199999999999998px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">3</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and Pie</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.199999999999998px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">4</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">–because I was coaching soccer back then–and others. I didn’t know that the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">me</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> who retired wouldn’t be a whole lot like the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">me</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> who was handling those interviews. And not just for the usual reasons like I’m older and maybe a little bit wiser and more experienced and a whole lot flabbier. Not even for the superficial reason that I had no clue back then that I’d be a redhead when I retired. No, this was something my 26-year-old self could only have considered as a possibility in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">his</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> deepest fantasies, because he had long since given up on the possibility of it ever happening. Yet somehow it did.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Before I transitioned, I started telling select colleagues about it. Partly because I was scared to death and needed to talk, and partly because I had come back to school that fall about 50 pounds lighter and looked like a walking skeleton and several people, including Brenda Perkins</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.199999999999998px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">5</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, told me they had been worried I had AIDS, so I guess </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sex change</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was, you know, a relief. I know it was to one of the two “out” gay men then on staff in the math department. When I told him, he laughed and said, “Well, I guess that takes the pressure of of us.” </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.199999999999998px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">6</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pretty much everyone, though, told me the same thing about transitioning. “You can’t do that in Lake Forest.” Which of course wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear. But I said, basically, “Why not?” I figured there were only two possibilities: they’d keep me on or they’d kick me out. Why should I kick myself out? As I told everyone: I’m going to give them the chance to do the right thing. 18 years later, it’s clear that they did.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.199999999999998px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">7</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you weren’t here then, I’ll just say that it was a crazy first day of school. Lots of news vans lining McKinley. Reporters grabbing kids to interview. Really nuts.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.199999999999998px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">8</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> And I stood at the front of my classroom in a skirt and top welcoming everyone in, and they came in and sat down, and there was whispering, and I quieted them, and I said, “Well, I guess you’ve probably noticed that a few things have changed over the summer.” General tittering. “Yes,” I said, “I moved the teacher’s desk to this side of the room.” And they all laughed, and that was that. Time to start poetry or whatever.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kristen Carlson</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.199999999999998px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">9</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> asked me last year what I hoped would be my legacy at Lake Forest High School, and I thought: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">gosh!</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Legacy</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. That’s a gigantic word. Am I leaving a legacy? Am I </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">supposed</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to? In what way? I mean, most teachers make an </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">impact</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, right? But then we retire, and I’ve been around long enough to know the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">actual</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> legacy we leave: three years later the last of our little freshmen graduate, and all we become is fading memories in the minds of former colleagues and students. We are not part of the bricks and mortar here; we are very important while we’re here but then we leave and become simply history. Unless we’re Dave Miller</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.199999999999998px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">10</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and they name theatres after us.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.199999999999998px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">11</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> But they’ve run out of unnamed theatres. Maybe they could name the RMA lobby after me? Is it a legacy when they walk all over your namesake? It might be a perfect one: I’ll get the space where everyone is tired and hungry and chatting with each other and just wishes to be entertained. Sounds just like a classroom. But I </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">have</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> directed 37 plays and musicals here. I’ve given a lot to our theatre program since the mid-80’s. But still I suppose not: if I have a legacy there, it lies in the kids who were once here and are now doing incredible things in theatre, like Ann Noble, recently inducted into our Wall of Fame, or Alex Timbers, Tony-nominated and highly lauded Broadway director. And journeymen like Jay Reed</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.199999999999998px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">12</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and Adam Pasen</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.199999999999998px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">13</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, once mainstays on our stages and now working actors in Chicago and LA. They are my legacy.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So maybe I should consider that my legacy lies in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">teaching</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? I mean that’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">logical</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">; it’s my job, after all. And I have tried over the years to be innovative and cutting edge, from my early 90’s adoption of technology to my now more than one-decade-old paperless classroom to experimental things like Capstone Projects</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.199999999999998px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">14</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and my current gradeless classrooms.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.199999999999998px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">15</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Overall, though, all of this simply facilitates the basic thing I’ve been doing all along, which is what we all do: interacting with kids, working with them in groups and one on one. That’s what has always made this thing worth it to me. I could spend entire days conferencing with kids about writing and be happy. I could spend entire days talking with them about literature and be happy. Hell, I could spend entire days </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">just talking to teenagers </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and be happy. And I know, because they’ve told me, that I’ve helped a lot of them. Is that a legacy?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, for individuals who have gone here, I suppose that things I’ve done in my classroom and in theatre have had some significant impact. But if I am truly honest, I guess the most impact I’ve had on this school has come from something far beyond my control: the pure accident of me being me. It’s been said to me enough times by now in notes from students and parents, in class evaluations, in emails, etc: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you don’t know how much it has meant just having you here.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> When I transitioned, everyone said what I was doing was “brave,” and I deflected it by saying that I didn’t think it brave to do the only thing that it was possible for me to do. But brave or not, I set myself up as a potential object of criticism and derision. That in fact did occur from some of the more conservative teachers at the time and some of the kids who didn’t know me. And for years Thor</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.199999999999998px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">16</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> had to work my schedule around parents who refused to let their kids be taught by the freak in the English Department. And yet: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you don’t know how much it meant just having you here</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was the first teacher to do this. In the whole country.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.199999999999998px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">17</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We were the first school to allow it. Even today, 18 years later, it’s </span><a href="http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/California-Catholic-school-lets-transgender-7466224.php" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">news</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> when it happens. And for almost two decades, matter of factly, Lake Forest High School has had a transgender teacher on its staff, a sign to every kid who was </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">different</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that different is OK. I’ll take that. Now </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a legacy.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You know, it’s funny: when I was 26, I was already calling myself 30. When I was 30, I was already calling myself middle-aged. I was on a fast track to live out my life as well as I could, as fast as I could, and then, whenever it happened, check out. But now, I’ll be 59 on the last day of school, I’m retiring, and I have an entire life ahead of me to live. And I’m looking forward to it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thank you.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">End Notes</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Art Kleck</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, principal of Lake Forest High School West Campus the year before I arrived (‘82-’83), moved into the Dean’s office at East Campus when the two consolidated in my first year. He was known, along other things, for the unusual size of his hands.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Robert Metcalf</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> served as LFHS’s principal </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> superintendent for the first several years of my tenure. He was a hands-on superintendent who spent his days hanging out in the hallways talking to faculty and to students, and he seemed to know every single one of them by name.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jay Criche</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, English Department Chair and director of plays and musicals, served as my initial mentor in both capacities. When he retired, the department paid tribute to him with skits and even with a song parody based on </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Man of la Mancha</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which combined two of his loves--musicals and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Don Quixote</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (though he never liked that particular show for reasons I never quite understood).</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Larry Piemontese</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, known as Pie to virtually everyone, coached soccer here for I don’t know how many years. I coached both boys’ and girls’ soccer for ten years at LFHS before giving it up to go full time into theatre.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brenda Perkins</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> replaced Jay Criche as English Department Chair and served in that role well into the 21st Century. Whereas Jay was the professorial type of chair, Brenda was a more collegial, earthy, get-your-hands-dirty type. Both were extremely effective. In addition, it was Brenda’s pregnancy leave in 1983-84 that created the opening (originally for one year) that got my foot in the door at LFHS, so I owe her a lot.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Interesting side note: it </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">should</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> have done that, but both of them were gone within two years.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve never really known </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">why</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. My suspicion, fueled in part by rather overt actions by the administration to find “reasonable” actions to take against me in the months before my situation became official (but when everyone understood and no one could legally say that they already knew), was at the time that their lawyers had told them that they simply had no other legal option. I’d been there fifteen years, I had tenure, and I had a trail of stellar evaluations (one from just the previous spring). But if they did support me out of legal necessity, they did so vehemently. From the first, the school was outspoken in its support for me. It defended me against any aggression, verbal or written. (Thank goodness there were never any that were physical.) In fact, it was a long time before I even </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">knew</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the extent of the support they were giving me against bigoted community members. I definitely thank them for that.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the middle of summer, I had pretty much insisted that the school send out a community letter acknowledging what was happening. We all knew that the press had had the story since March and had been sitting on it, waiting confirmation. I told the principal that there was going to be hoopla on the first day of school no matter what, but if she wanted to lessen it she had better get the mass uproar out of the way over the summer. She did, and the radio and TV talk shows and news were done with their feeding frenzy by the end of July. So what happened on the first day of school, predictable as it was, was far less of an issue than it otherwise might have become.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kristen Carlson</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is my current (and final) Department Chair. She has only been at LFHS a couple of years but has established herself as fair and attentive to the needs of the teachers.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dave Miller</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ran the theatre tech group at LFHS for...I’m going to go with an eon? He even directed a few shows himself. He was a certified icon until his </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">second</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> retirement. Yeah, that happened. I don’t understand it either.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They named the black box theatre after him...</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">while he was still working here!</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jay Reed</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was a major player on the stages in the early 90’s and has been working as an actor in Chicago since then. Recently he appeared in the lead role in Piven Theatre’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dead Man Walking</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adam Pasen</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was another major player--in the late 90’s--and has been working as an actor and aspiring playwright ever since. His hilarious play, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">BadFic</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a takeoff on the phenomenon of fanfiction, played to full houses in Chicago last year before he decided to take a chance and move to LA.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Capstone projects are massive end-of-the-year presentations that are designed by the teacher to take the place of a final exam by tying together everything the student is supposed to have learned and linking them to a student’s core interests. I’ve been doing them with my juniors since 2011 and they’ve been the best part of my year.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In my last two years of teaching, I decided to experiment with a Gradeless Classroom. Our former Director of Curriculum, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lauren Fagel</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and I worked out how this would occur, and I’ve been handling all of my courses in this framework ever since. It has been revelatory. Students find that working for themselves instead of for a grade makes them work harder than ever and learn more.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thor Benson</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, long-retired former Math Department Chair, has been the keeper of the schedule for a long time. I owe him a debt of gratitude for his behind-the-scenes work in the first several years of my transition.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As far as anyone could tell at the time. There was no real internet in 1998 and no WWW. I did as much research as the fledgling net would allow. I found a teacher in Minnesota who had only been allowed to return as a librarian. I found a teacher in Seattle who had been forced to take two years off and then been shuffled to another school in district where she did mostly clerical work. I found someone in the Detroit area who was in the process of transitioning and was under the impression that she’d be able to return in some capacity to her former school after taking the next year off. And I did find two Vancouver-area teachers who had been able to transition successfully in their own schools, though it was never clear about whether they had needed to take a break. In any case, it seemed clear that I was and would be the first teacher in the USA to transition without a break on the job. That is what the press was all about all summer.</span></div>
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<!-- AddThis Button END -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677340626530096796noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5840543387517258360.post-76623701041519645682016-03-26T11:58:00.000-05:002016-03-26T11:58:07.250-05:00Take Back the Toilets: North Carolina and the Right's Unhealthy Obsession Over Our Urinary Habits.<h2>
A Call To Action</h2>
Houston. South Dakota. Tennessee. Kansas. North Carolina. Arizona. Kentucky. Seattle. Pending in: Illinois. Massachusetts. South Carolina. Missouri. Minnesota. Mississippi. Washington.<br />
<br />
How many more states and municipalities have to pass or consider passing so-called "bathroom laws" and other transphobic legislation before American transgender people decide that enough is enough? With the rise of the Donald Trump right wing, it is easy to see that the new national pastime of the USA is openly expressing our fears and hatred. Thoughts that once were considered too cruel to express openly, the kind of thing that would demean the person who spoke them, are now part of common discourse. We are living in the dark underbelly of Freedom of Speech. America the Beautiful has transformed, seemingly overnight, into America the Fearful. Where our political speeches once celebrated all that was great about our country, today our politicians–at least on the right wing side–decry all that is wrong, and raise the spectre of further erosion of the American Way (whatever that might be anymore) by those they blame for its downfall: the President, the Mexicans, the Muslims, the gays, the blacks, women, liberals, and–more and more–transgender people.<br />
<br />
We're easy marks, transgender people. We don't have much of a political presence. We don't have a whole lot of visibility. Until Caitlyn Jenner, many people were hardly aware we even existed. And many of us feel a strong disconnect with Ms. Jenner, who represents a bizarrely elitist perspective that, politically, does not connect at all with the vast majority of us in life experience, and cannot manage to understand that many of the things she says are anathema to the masses of transgender people who are not wealthy ex-Olympian members of an absurdly famous family. She has not led a real life; she does not understand what a real life is.<br />
<br />
I doubt that she would ever worry about where she goes to the bathroom.<br />
<br />
But for the tens of thousands of the rest of us, these laws or proposed laws have a shocking impact. Due to the rising Fear of the Unknown, thousands of people are imploring legislators to mandate that we use only the rest rooms of the sex to which we were assigned at birth. Now let us put aside for a moment the complete <i>insanity</i> of a law that expects people to wander around with their <i>birth certificates</i>. Let's forget also the problem of the intersexed, whose sex <i>at birth</i> was questionable. Let's even overlook the sheer impossibility of policing such a law as well as the likelihood of the individual acts of violence it would undoubtedly inflict upon the transgendered and (quite likely) cisgendered people who don't quite "pass muster" according to someone's inner radar. Instead, let's just take this at face value: these lawmakers want every transgender person to use only rest rooms designated for the sex to which they were assigned at birth. Why? Well, as North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory said <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bathroom-panic_us_56f40300e4b0c3ef521820e3">last month</a>, speaking against the Charlotte LGBT non-discrimination ordinance that was swept away by this week's bill. "This shift in policy could also create major public safety issues by putting citizens in possible danger from deviant actions by individuals taking improper advantage of a bad policy." Ah, the old <i>deviant TG predators</i> thing. Except... A recent study undertaken to rebut Florida's effort to pass a bathroom bill <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2016/01/12/florida-experts-debunk-the-transgender-bathroom/207916">utterly debunks that lie</a>: in no state, county or city that has passed non-discrimination laws, it found, has such a thing occurred. This is not to say that people haven't done creepy things–goodness knows they have–but not as a result of laws that protect LGBT people.<br />
<br />
Still, there is that Fear of the Unknown. It is especially easy to promulgate in Donald Trump's America. We witness him whipping up fear of Mexicans and Muslims. We hear Ted Cruz leap on his bandwagon, wanting to patrol all Muslim neighborhoods–as if that were possible, <a href="http://www.politifact.com/texas/article/2016/mar/23/searching-ted-cruzs-muslim-neighborhoods/">as if there were even such a thing</a> as "Muslim neighborhoods" in the US. (Want to patrol mine? I have some Muslims living near me.) And as the smallest, least understood, least politically powerful minority in the country, the transgender community is the target for a <b>lot</b> of this kind of fear.<br />
<br />
To be fair, the people in whom this fear (and most of the others) are being engendered are those who are being called the "poorly educated masses," a class of people whose very existence is the result of a generation-long intensely focused movement by the GOP and the Christian Right that began in the 80's with the notion that you win long-term by winning locally. It started with school boards. What these people <i>don't</i> know can be directly attributed to that; look at any article about the things being taught to students in <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-brauchli/texas-and-textbooks_b_9543454.html">Texas</a> or Kansas, etc. This is not an accident: ignorant masses are easier to control, or so the theory goes. Unfortunately, as the GOP is discovering this year to its chagrin, you can't just <b>ignore</b> them year after year after year while promising them things in exchange for their votes. Even ignorant, uneducated masses have their limits. So now they are following Donald Trump, who pretty much speaks as if he is one of them (though of course he is not) and continues to whip up their fears.<br />
<br />
So the anti-LGBT fear coming from this large, ignorant group is in one way pretty easy to understand. And since we in the T part of the acronym are the hardest to comprehend, we are the most feared. And since <i>everyone</i> is just more and more <b>open</b> about who they are all of a sudden– celebrities coming out, athletes coming out, teens coming out, characters on TV coming out, no fewer than <b>seven</b> reality shows last summer about transgender people, etc.–the world in which these people have been living has undergone some pretty sudden and pretty shocking changes. And it doesn't help that some of the churches they go to damn us to hell.<br />
<br />
So there is fear. That does not pardon the legislators, who should know better, from passing inhumane, unconstitutional laws. But there it is. And this is a <b>call to action for all transgender people across the country. </b>I have been using women's rooms freely for almost two decades, as have a great many mtf's–and the other way around for ftm's. These so-called "bathroom bills" are designed to remove our rights. Now, of course, for a great many of us they could have no practical effect at all:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>If we look enough like our true genders, we are unlikely to be questioned in our preferred rest rooms.</li>
<li>If we have been self-conscious enough that we have chosen to restrict ourselves to gender-free rest rooms, there will clearly be no impact.</li>
</ul>
<br />
But for others–those on the margins, those who are androgynous, those who are genderqueer, those who are only beginning their transitions, etc.–these bills represent hell on earth. There is little that is more private than going to the bathroom. And being forced to do so in the wrong rest room can create an enormous amount of anxiety, not to mention the potential for confrontations that could escalate to violence. That is what this is about. When <i>we</i> make the choice to do something else, that's fine: it's our choice. When governments tell us we MUST do something, that's another matter altogether. So we need to do something, and what I think we need to do is this: we should just *show* the bastards what it is they are crowing about, what it is they *think* they want.<br />
<br />
Thus I say again<b>, this is a call to action</b>: the entire TG community nationwide should band together for a <b>National Pee-In</b>. It should be well publicized, so there is press and there are no surprises (and so local law enforcement is aware of the potential for any problems that might arise).<br />
<br />
On a designated day, announced in advance with a press release, every one of us, across the country, should intentionally and publicly use the rest rooms designated for our birth sex. Let's see how folks like lovely women in the men's rooms and big, burly guys with beards and tattoos in the ladies' rooms.
My prediction: it would change the tide of public opinion in a hurry. And if it doesn't, well, we could always do it again a few weeks later, and again until these morons get the point. We'll be uncomfortable a few times, but nowhere near as much as those who are trying to ban us from bathrooms will be.<br />
<br />
#takebackthetoilets #tgpeein<br />
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