They that is Evil have tried to slip one beneath the shadows of the intense media coverage of Tom DeLay's indictment, Judith Miller's prison release ('bout time on both counts) and John Roberts’ Supreme Court confirmation. The MTA is now enforcing its “no beverage” policy on the subway trains, although they relented and now permit beverages on the platform. “If you have a steaming hot coffee on the 5 or 4 train at 8:30 a.m., I hope to hell a cop gives you a summons, you have no right to do that,” said MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow according to Chuck Bennett at amNewYork.
I’m all for fluid-exchange safety, but abstinence is definitely the wrong way to go. Let them outlaw the real problem, which is the unenforced backpack rule. Chest- or belly-high, they swing around from left or right mercilessly, flinging molten java onto the seated, elderly woman who is accompanying her ferocious-looking son to his sentencing hearing with the hope of leniency because she has no one else to look after her.
And the headphones. Not only does everyone else have to hear bad music in low-fidelity despite laws to the contrary, the noise contributes to the din that keeps the PA announcements unintelligible.
Besides, the MTA is missing an extraordinary marketing opportunity. “MTA-Approved” containers offer additional licensing monies for the notoriously cash-strapped and underfunded agency (results may vary according to the context of the financial report). Selling beverage hats through Starbucks is a natural alliance, since they were expected to introduce a mainlining system early next year anyway.
No, the reason the MTA chooses to punish the addict has nothing to do with safety or even carryover from the Rockefeller drug laws. Nobody wants to be held responsible for the obvious negligence in the subway car design, the failure to include adequate cupholders for an increasingly mobile commuter population. They’re willing to pander to the noise-generators and the noise-impaired by installing LED displays for announcements, but try and juice up for a morning of tax-revenue-generating activity and you deserve a summons. Someone in this city has got to get their priorities straight.
And yes, Tom DeLay sucks too.
Friday, September 30, 2005
Too Many Indians, One Too Many Chiefs
It's not hard to imagine why New York's senators voted against Roberts' confirmation as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. But could they have been seriously attacked from the Left if they'd voted to confirm? With confirmation a foregone conclusion, there was an opportunity to give him a full pass and then at least claim that W owes them greater consideration on the next nomination -- with the unveiled threat that they'll really go after the nominee if the Democrats' cooperation in the Roberts confirmation goes unrewarded.
As it is, everyone knows that whoever Bush II nominates will be opposed by the Democrats just out of mindless reflex unless it is someone the Democrats propose. Given that laughable idea, the Democrats should have recognized that Roberts is absolutely the best they could have ever hoped for as the nominee for chief justice from this administration. At the very least, he has proven willing to give uncredited advice to a cause he does not relish, and he talks consistently and passionately about the integrity of the legal process and the roles therein. There is a very good chance that as chief justice he won't be strong-arming anyone toward his views. That he emphasized the importance of precedent was a signal that he was not Clarence Thomas. For that matter, you've got to allow the possibility that the decisions he makes will be mostly determined by the facts in the cases as they are presented instead of his views on larger issues.
Now all the senators get is the right to say they fought the good fight and opposed the right-wing assault on women's rights and liberalism in general. They achieved nothing except to prove their causes more irrelevant. Perhaps they can reflect on the experience and muster enough backbone and savvy to do what they were supposed to do in the first place.
Next time, try winning the fucking election so you determine the short list.
"They hate us for our freedom..." This is no time for the Lame Game.
As it is, everyone knows that whoever Bush II nominates will be opposed by the Democrats just out of mindless reflex unless it is someone the Democrats propose. Given that laughable idea, the Democrats should have recognized that Roberts is absolutely the best they could have ever hoped for as the nominee for chief justice from this administration. At the very least, he has proven willing to give uncredited advice to a cause he does not relish, and he talks consistently and passionately about the integrity of the legal process and the roles therein. There is a very good chance that as chief justice he won't be strong-arming anyone toward his views. That he emphasized the importance of precedent was a signal that he was not Clarence Thomas. For that matter, you've got to allow the possibility that the decisions he makes will be mostly determined by the facts in the cases as they are presented instead of his views on larger issues.
Now all the senators get is the right to say they fought the good fight and opposed the right-wing assault on women's rights and liberalism in general. They achieved nothing except to prove their causes more irrelevant. Perhaps they can reflect on the experience and muster enough backbone and savvy to do what they were supposed to do in the first place.
Next time, try winning the fucking election so you determine the short list.
"They hate us for our freedom..." This is no time for the Lame Game.
Wrong: NYT's Editorial "Leveling the Freedom Center"
The NYTimes thinks that the Freedom Center should not have been kicked out of the WTC, and that the memorial is a great place to celebrate free speech and consider the lessons we can derive from 9/11. And I was under the impression that the NYTimes itself is that place, but I'm pretty sure there is little agreement about those lessons except the one about the unthinkable.
The memory of 9/11 is not about freedom. It is about going to work on a beautiful day and stepping into a mass murder. Nobody can actually get their mind and heart around that twisted day, but as often as they need to they must try. If we can be strong enough, our best selves do not want to be anaesthetized to the notion that every day may begin our last walk. Changing the focus may not dishonor the dead, but it dishonors the living.
Hijacking the memorial to promote the discussion and inevitable debate of the meaning of freedom is tasteless. Worse, it would be hypocritical to deny voice at the site to those who claim terrorism is simply one of very few weapons available to poor populations who are fighting for self-determination -- just one big Tea Party.
If it was really necessary to seal our grief and horror into a happy public monument, why didn't we solicit a proposal from Disney? Because a half-million square feet of retail space will work for those who want it, as it always has. Everyone could use a new pair of shoes.
The memory of 9/11 is not about freedom. It is about going to work on a beautiful day and stepping into a mass murder. Nobody can actually get their mind and heart around that twisted day, but as often as they need to they must try. If we can be strong enough, our best selves do not want to be anaesthetized to the notion that every day may begin our last walk. Changing the focus may not dishonor the dead, but it dishonors the living.
Hijacking the memorial to promote the discussion and inevitable debate of the meaning of freedom is tasteless. Worse, it would be hypocritical to deny voice at the site to those who claim terrorism is simply one of very few weapons available to poor populations who are fighting for self-determination -- just one big Tea Party.
If it was really necessary to seal our grief and horror into a happy public monument, why didn't we solicit a proposal from Disney? Because a half-million square feet of retail space will work for those who want it, as it always has. Everyone could use a new pair of shoes.
NYT's Judith Miller Released from Prison!!!
I hope the next time Judith Miller considers offering confidentiality to anyone in a viciously assertive self-serving Administration such as the current one, she'll remember how long it took her source to release her after the cat was out of the bag. I've got to figure that a hidden camera with live images of a New York Times reporter in lockup was way too effective a fund-raising tool to put it aside out of conscience.
Thursday, August 11, 2005
BREAKING NEWS -- Someone Is Killing New York State's Lottery Winners
It sounds like a movie script, but it's deadly serious. It seems that a disproportionate number of New York State Lottery grand-prize winners (including the multistate "MegaMillions") have been dying unexpectedly or even mysteriously. Investigators are still gathering data, but an unidentified source says that the pattern emerged while the FBI was tracing deposits that had been funneled into bank accounts suspected of being conduits for terror financing.
Gov. George Pataki issued a statement declaring that winning the NY Lottery does not raise the risk of accidentalal death or dismemberment any more than the grand prizes of other states' lottery games.
Attempts to reach previous lottery winners by telephone went unanswered except in one instance of a gurgling sound that was abruptedly disconnected.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Boy Scouts, Campers and The Summer of Sudden Death
There must be something more than coincidence to explain the recent spate of high voltage tragedies befalling the Boy Scouts. Rather than picking off the stray child or reckless teenager, the usual M.O. for Nature and the summertime elements, horrifyingly spectacular death has targeted the adult volunteer leadership and incinerated them with the speed of, well, lightening. Still, that organization has won the legal right to exclude homosexuals from their leadership, so God couldn’t possibly be angry with them.
If you’ve been out of the country and somehow missed these events, google “Boy Scouts” with “tragedy” yourself. Even though I can sound glib talking about them, describing the scenes themselves will just burn images into my brain, and there has been way too much smoking-brain smell lately.
I can’t ignore the 13-year-old who also caught enough of the lightening bolt that he was brain-dead by evening. Provenance may have problems making precision strikes, but it is worth noting the boy was kept alive for a day so his organs could be harvested for donation. I hope his parents can hold on to the thoughts of all the lives that were saved because their son had lived long enough to die doing what he loved. Me, I can’t stop thinking that someone up there loves hunting human flesh.
Ironically, the heat wave sickened dozens of scouts who were waiting for God’s hand-picked leader in America, President Bush, to arrive. Apparently the situation would have gotten lethal if someone in the Administration hadn’t realized they needed to get those boys out of harm’s way – proof that at least one person in the Administration has learning from being burned. I suspect it was a closeted homosexual who knows when macho stops being fun, and who’s also learned a thing or two about skin cancer. The problem was probably made worse because the last guys that tried to put up a large tent for shade were resting comfortably in cold storage, or at least in peace.
No, I don’t think that God has it in for the Boy Scouts, and I’m sure he loves America and all of its inhabitants albeit somewhat unequally. I do think that once in awhile He gets pissed off enough at the quality of our leadership that He let’s us see who we are and what we’re up against. Leadership should not come to those simply willing to take the job, but to those with the ability to take the job and to take the job seriously.
The facts aren’t all in about the dance camp counselor who drove herself and five teenagers 100mph into and under a dump truck on a two-lane highway in the Catskills, but Irina Mironova was a poor choice for a driver considering her license had been suspended by the state of Florida two months earlier. License or not: Anyone who drives such a road at that speed at anytime, let alone with someone else’s children in the car, is someone you want to steer clear of [intended] and not someone you hire. That is usually not an isolated behavior and is something that ordinary hiring prudence could have uncovered if the camp’s owner had thought it important.
I am probably being unfair however, since the camp owner’s 16-year-old son was also minced in the car. No, I’m afraid that I stuck this onto the Boy Scout story because I had to mention it (it’s the local horror of the week) and because I didn’t want think about it longer than necessary. Listen, can’t you hear it? The sound that seems to come from upstairs saying, “Bring me human flesh. Just make it look like an accident.”
If you’ve been out of the country and somehow missed these events, google “Boy Scouts” with “tragedy” yourself. Even though I can sound glib talking about them, describing the scenes themselves will just burn images into my brain, and there has been way too much smoking-brain smell lately.
I can’t ignore the 13-year-old who also caught enough of the lightening bolt that he was brain-dead by evening. Provenance may have problems making precision strikes, but it is worth noting the boy was kept alive for a day so his organs could be harvested for donation. I hope his parents can hold on to the thoughts of all the lives that were saved because their son had lived long enough to die doing what he loved. Me, I can’t stop thinking that someone up there loves hunting human flesh.
Ironically, the heat wave sickened dozens of scouts who were waiting for God’s hand-picked leader in America, President Bush, to arrive. Apparently the situation would have gotten lethal if someone in the Administration hadn’t realized they needed to get those boys out of harm’s way – proof that at least one person in the Administration has learning from being burned. I suspect it was a closeted homosexual who knows when macho stops being fun, and who’s also learned a thing or two about skin cancer. The problem was probably made worse because the last guys that tried to put up a large tent for shade were resting comfortably in cold storage, or at least in peace.
No, I don’t think that God has it in for the Boy Scouts, and I’m sure he loves America and all of its inhabitants albeit somewhat unequally. I do think that once in awhile He gets pissed off enough at the quality of our leadership that He let’s us see who we are and what we’re up against. Leadership should not come to those simply willing to take the job, but to those with the ability to take the job and to take the job seriously.
The facts aren’t all in about the dance camp counselor who drove herself and five teenagers 100mph into and under a dump truck on a two-lane highway in the Catskills, but Irina Mironova was a poor choice for a driver considering her license had been suspended by the state of Florida two months earlier. License or not: Anyone who drives such a road at that speed at anytime, let alone with someone else’s children in the car, is someone you want to steer clear of [intended] and not someone you hire. That is usually not an isolated behavior and is something that ordinary hiring prudence could have uncovered if the camp’s owner had thought it important.
I am probably being unfair however, since the camp owner’s 16-year-old son was also minced in the car. No, I’m afraid that I stuck this onto the Boy Scout story because I had to mention it (it’s the local horror of the week) and because I didn’t want think about it longer than necessary. Listen, can’t you hear it? The sound that seems to come from upstairs saying, “Bring me human flesh. Just make it look like an accident.”
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Dave Itzkoff, Do You Know Where Your Father Is?
When I'm in the mood to be horrified by a coke-fiend father's depravity I can always google Joel and Lisa Steinberg. That's why reading Dave Itzkoff's morbidly unflinching grievances against his father ("Cocaine's Kid", New York Magazine 8/1/2005) is not merely for my uneasy voyeuristic pleasure, but because nobody else is this good and peculiarly honest when writing about themselves.
What at first glance appears to be a self-serving "tell-all" not worthy of the writer's skills is in fact a crime story replete with a murdered childhood, a zealous cop (adult Dave) whose efforts at justice have so far been thwarted, and a detective (author Dave) who is just unable to close the file and walk away.
To his credit, Mr. Itzkoff does not rig his writing to keep us from wondering what kind of person writes such material without changing the names, and he concedes his narcissism possibly as a caveat to the reader that all may not be what it seems. He does not waste his words, so when they don't resonate with the others they are potential clues, evidence out of place at a crime scene. Contemplating a name change and unlisted number in response to a bad therapy session whimpers next to the sound and velocity of his father's totaling the car after the same session due to one self-destructive behavior or another.
While the son is unwilling to see past his own experiences, it wasn't always so. Relating what seemed to be his last moment of unspoiled childhood, the boy asks his mother why his father did drugs. The writer's weak treatment of her response deserved exclusion of the Q&A from the article, but he suspects some truth to be found there. "If I knew that, maybe I'd be on drugs myself." Now at an age of responsibility, the son does not have the stones to ask the question again.
Mr. Itzkoff ends the article without resolution, more desperate about his father's mortality when his father seems happier than at any time in Dave's lifetime. He should re-check the witness list for new information before the case gets suddenly and permanently cold.
What at first glance appears to be a self-serving "tell-all" not worthy of the writer's skills is in fact a crime story replete with a murdered childhood, a zealous cop (adult Dave) whose efforts at justice have so far been thwarted, and a detective (author Dave) who is just unable to close the file and walk away.
To his credit, Mr. Itzkoff does not rig his writing to keep us from wondering what kind of person writes such material without changing the names, and he concedes his narcissism possibly as a caveat to the reader that all may not be what it seems. He does not waste his words, so when they don't resonate with the others they are potential clues, evidence out of place at a crime scene. Contemplating a name change and unlisted number in response to a bad therapy session whimpers next to the sound and velocity of his father's totaling the car after the same session due to one self-destructive behavior or another.
While the son is unwilling to see past his own experiences, it wasn't always so. Relating what seemed to be his last moment of unspoiled childhood, the boy asks his mother why his father did drugs. The writer's weak treatment of her response deserved exclusion of the Q&A from the article, but he suspects some truth to be found there. "If I knew that, maybe I'd be on drugs myself." Now at an age of responsibility, the son does not have the stones to ask the question again.
Mr. Itzkoff ends the article without resolution, more desperate about his father's mortality when his father seems happier than at any time in Dave's lifetime. He should re-check the witness list for new information before the case gets suddenly and permanently cold.
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