Jeremiah in the Box

My adds to the will-not-die Rev. Jeremiah Wright hoopla are:

Forget his arrogance; he has the ego and vanity of many ministers.

Non-Blacks looking for an excuse they want to dress up as a reason not to vote for Barack Obama hide behind it.

Having grown up in church and been active in the polity and politics of many of them, I have known and know many clergy. With just a little distance, we can easily see the colossal egotism that many exhibit.

Often, they use it too good effect far beyond just feeling grand themselves. They influence congregants to good behavior, people who would not take direction, much less scolding, from anyone else.

Moreover, with the lack of challenges to their statements day to day and on their preaching day, they understandably fall into such patterns. They can view themselves as speaking for their deity and perhaps as consistently correct in a confused world.

This particular preacher is toward the fringe of his profession. He has come by it honestly, with decades of speaking his truth, what he likely would call God's truth, before hundreds or thousands at a time. He is clearly positive that he's clever, and as so many ministers, that he's irrefutable.

It's not really noteworthy that so many TV talking heads, print media folk and bloggers have gnawed on this bone that they use to connect Obama's candidacy with Wright's rhetoric. All that's left in the ugly stub, an artifact that hints at unpleasant aspects of America.

We can even set aside Hillary Clinton and John McCain's long associations with bigoted preachers such as Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell. They like to say that's different because they didn't sit in the pews for decades. Well, it's also different because they praised those ministers mightily while Obama did not do so for Wright. They also have exhibited selective oversight and never once criticized their religious mentors and aides. When Obama does what they never had, they are ready with too-little-too-late.

Among the many commentaries on why voters as well as media want to gnaw on this particular bone, I favor The Chicago Sun-Times' Mark Brown's It's gut check time for white Americans. Brown is white and he's right on Wright.

The Wright affair has such resonance in this campaign because Wright has shown himself to be the kind of black person that white people don't like. He brings out our prejudices. Yes, I said "our" prejudices.

Part of it is Wright's ignorance and part of it is his arrogance and part of it is that he talks louder than white people would prefer and part of it is that he uses the sing-song cadence they associate with other black ministers they have grown to hate over the years such as Jesse Jackson.

Obama is none of those things (OK, maybe a little arrogant at times), so Wright has been brought to the forefront as a substitute punching bag.

Brown's town has the same deeply rooted race prejudice as Beantown. He knows from observation that "An opponent has trouble attacking the black candidate, so they find somebody connected to the candidate and attack them."

I have heard local self-identified liberals say it's not race at all that causes them to find these associations to discredit Obama. Yet, they let similar and worse links to Clinton and McCain slide. In a rare flash of fairness from me, some voters surely have manufactured reasons not to vote for the woman, but oh no, not because of her gender, but for something "real." Both types of excluders try unsuccessfully to disguise their emotions.

Brown is not kind to those who would feign objective concern as a way to avoid voting for the Black candidate. Writing of his own upbringing, he notes, "I know firsthand that when you get that prejudice in your system, it doesn't just go away on its own. It's stored away."

He calls simple racism on this, adding:

If somebody tells me they're against Barack Obama because he's on the wrong side of the issues...I can understand. But if they tell me they're against Obama because he went to Wright's church, I can see that for what it is.

Amen.

Jeremiah Wright in a jack in the box that keeps popping up. He'll pump up his own ego to keep the attention coming. A lot of other ministers would do the same. More important, the MSM will keep turning that crank to make sure he pops up again and again.

I think of the saintly and sinful people whom could connect me with in my life so far. Were I to run for public office, I could hope for the blinder treatment that other candidates have gotten and not the spotlight of guilt by association that the media, and even candidate Clinton, shine on Obama.

I'm with Brown on this one. I can see it for what it is.

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Tags: massmarrier, Mark Brown, Chicago Sun-Times, racism, Obama, Clinton, Democrats, Jeremiah Wright

50 Bullets...Oops

When I was a kid, doctors could fix anything and cops were the good guys. Of course, for doctors, the most serious anything was swollen tonsils, which a needle squirting penicillin in my gluteus would fix it. For cops, my mother ran Red Cross chapters, which meant they were always around, taking first aid or water safety courses, working on fires and other disasters, or just because they were my cousins.

Πάντα ῥεῖ, as Heraclitus wrote — everything is in flux.

As an adult with a family, I have come to recognize that there are many things doctors can't fix. If most of us were as lame at our jobs as doctors necessarily at doing theirs, we'd be on the street in a flash. There's too much to know and too many variables out of their control. I never robbed my son of the illusion their F.P. could fix them, even though I was prepared for that.

Likewise, with police officers, I have learned that their virtue varies. One of my own cousins, a Maryland trooper once split a motorist's skull with a blackjack in a pique. This unjustified assault brought no punishment when the magistrate said he'd rather believe that a state cop felt threatened by an unarmed, tipsy, seated driver than the testimony of bystanders.

When I lived in Manhattan, an old city detective I came to know tried to get me to piggyback on his weekly visit to West 13th Street butchers who'd fill up my trunk with large amounts of beef and pork, a perk he'd availed himself of for decades.

Here in Beantown, we have had many cases of corruption and worse. I am still stunned by last year's pre-dawn death on I-93 in Dot of Michelle Vibert. A Boston cop plowed into her small car stalled on the right lane fog line with his gigantic Ford Explorer. The troopers who responded did not check him for alcohol, investigated only 40 minutes 7.5 hours after the crash (without closing the highway), and treated the dead victim as the sole cause. The shameless state-police report led the Suffolk DA to avoid changes against Thomas Griffin. The troopers said that sure he was at the Purple Shamrock bar for hours, but oh, no, he never drank. He swerved from the middle lane to the right one and smacked into Vibert's car without seeing or avoiding it, but he was not impaired. He was speeding, but all that much.

Of course, cops watch out for their own, a natural if immoral tendency. Judges far too often let cops get away with assault or murder that would earn the rest of us a hard fight in courts and the likelihood of jail and permanent criminal records.

How much slack should we leave for those who may put their lives on the line to protect us? Is it an infinite amount?

Last week, in extreme affronts to reason and justice, three NYC detectives who gunned down 23-year-old Sean Bell in September 2006, were acquited of all charges by Justice Arthur J. Cooperman, who said he didn't believe the prosecutors had presented enough evidence. This included Det. Michael Oliver, who reloaded his gun and fired 31 shots in the 50-shot sustained volley.

In terms of justice, his fiancé (and the two other unarmed young men shot by the cops) may see some money in her civil suit and the feds are still looking into civil-rights violations. However, the judge's assumption clearly was that cops are demigods, above the very laws they are to enforce.

Many citizens are outraged at such unconstitutional, institutionalized murder, but not astounded that this happened yet again. Mildly mitigating the murder and trial is the racial component. Bell was Black, as were two of the three detectives.

In the short-term, we're likely to hear more of this in the Presidential campaign, writes Robert Lovato in the current Black Communicator. He notes that this is another risk for Barack Obama. Still singed by his comments about the bitter social conservatives, Obama remains on the spot where we expect him to carry a civil-rights flag that the other two main candidates long ago dropped. As Lovato puts it:

Failure to use his rhetorical gifts to speak forcefully to and about real black and non-black anger about the Sean Bell verdict may re-animate doubts about commitment to that part of his base that is not white middle and working class.

Beyond Obama, all of us need to raise our voices and point at the abyss of our country’s institutional racism as was painfully and transparently reflected in the Sean Bell verdict. We might want to start by pushing Obama, Clinton and McCain-and the mainstream media- to speak honestly and continually about what the 50 bullets in Sean Bell say about justice in the 50 states of our tattered and bloodied union.

I've long ago given up on finding a fix-it-all doctor, but I do know some Boston cops who are brave and honest and honorable.

I too am looking for Obama to speaker louder, stronger and more clearly for civil rights, in the Bell instance among others. Come the battles and debates for the November vote, the call for justice will not be coming from John McCain. It needs to be more than a mumble from the Democratic nominee.

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Tags: massmarrier, Sean Bell, Lovato, racism, Obama, civil rights, Democrats, Black Commentator

Blackjack Barack?

Pennsylvania may be a breath of foul air for this campaign. It's brought the nastier notions of race to the fore. Hillary Clinton can't seem to stop talking about her strength in a few huge states among middle-aged white voters, as though that's all you need to know.

Of course, Hillary regularly uses the false argument that because she'd had the strongest showing in the primary in populous states, Barack couldn't win them, or the election, in November. That would have any validity at all only if he faced both her and John McCain in the big election. Barack only has to beat the Republican, not another Democrat at the same time.

Metaphorically though, Hillary's ruse has some power. If the traditional white workers in big states just can't smudge the oval for a Black man, that's a serious problem, both for Barack and for the nation.

Over at Black Commentator, Martin Kilson, Ph.D., analyzed the Pennsylvania vote.

He also produced the accompanying chart of voting-bloc breakdowns.

Kilson is a serious scholar, a retired Harvard professor, the first African American tenured there. He doesn't deal with sensationalism or alarmism.

Instead, he notes that the Clinton campaign is not afraid to use the "'toxic issue' of race" freely. "The Clinton campaign calibrated many aspects of its campaign message—the style and modality of its political appeal—with a keen eye to the demographic layout and attributes of voter blocs in Pennsylvania," he writes. Many of us may call her cynical and opportunistic, while she may simply see repeatedly using the race card as smart politics.

Kilson is willing to believe with Obama, who said after the recent voting, "There's going to be a clear contrast between the economic message of the Democrats and the Republicans...the party is going to come together after the nomination is settled." Obama expects Democrats to go for him over the disastrous Republicans.

Thousands of American GIs dead and perhaps as many American contractors; coming up on a trillion dollars pissed away; our dollar and economy in the crapper of failed economic fantasies; a bloated and growing government that eagerly strips all of us of our fundamental liberties...who wouldn't jump at a chance for another four or eight years of that!

The fact is that among those who do not want more of a Bush LITE should be those voting for Hillary in Pennsylvania and California. The on-the-one-hand of Obama and McCain is a stark contrast indeed. If we lived in a nation of the rational and reasonable, the November margin should be 98% for the Dem. It's more likely to be 55% to 45%.

Meanwhile, Kilson notes that the MSM love the story of Hillary's successful racial campaigning...and the results of high white-voter percentages. Yet, he adds that Barack's percentages in the Black communities and huge turnouts of the same type he gets from younger voters, seem to interest big media much less:

Had they paid just some attention to African-Americans' societal and civic agencies—especially in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh—they would have recognized something then clearly know nothing about. Namely, they would have recognized the serious and masterful role performed by Black clergy and churches, Black schoolteachers associations, Black academics, Black professional groups (lawyers, doctors, dentists, nurses), Black business groups (shopkeepers, barbers, hairdressers, artisans, funeral directors, banks, technologists of all sorts, etc.) in producing record-breaking Black electoral participation in the Pennsylvania primary election.

Race continues to be an issue, but Hillary seems to have overplayed this card. Her presumption that because older white women and white guys in general would rather vote for her she should be the nominee is not supportable. There is no corollary for the general-election vote. In fact, Barack's getting more votes, delegates and states backs up the argument that such simple-minded and old-fashioned political truisms are not longer true.

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Tags: massmarrier, Kilson, Pennsylvania, racism, Obama, Clinton, Democrats, Black Commentator

Vermont (I'm So Confused) State

It apparently goes without saying — civil unions are not marriage equality. So, Vermont went without saying what to do.

After a plethora of public hearings and studying the matter for nearly a year, the Vermont Commission on Family Recognition and Protection said that the nation's oldest civil-unions did not meet the states' fairness and equality requirements. The 2000 enabling legislation needs, needs, well, they won't say.

"They all hide behind each other," said Karen Loewy, GLAD attorney and co-counsel in Goodridge at an SSM symposium in Rhode Island last month about various states' politicians. Such prescience.

The 11-member commission released its report yesterday. You can see a PDF file of it here. Do look for clear statements of why marriage is the only equalizer. Don't look for a conclusion that the legislature create equal marriage. Do look for study results that point to marriage equality as the only solution to fix the problem. Don't look for a demand or even suggestion that this occur.

As unbelievable as it seems after the study, testimony and particularly the commission's own findings, they could not bring themselves to state the obvious. Cue Loewy's comment yet again.

Instead (see page 28) for the barnyard cackling that plunges into silence and torpor with four recommendations:

• More study. Study the Massachusetts SSM experience.
• More study. Study the Vermont tax system to see if they can massage civil union provisions to replicate the ease and benefits of marriage in tax preparation and payment.
• More review. Hit the research on families and kids in various marriages to see if there is some consensus on what is best for kids.
• Fire drill on civil unions. Try to do the legislature's job on existing civil unions. Second guess what to do about existing ones instead of leaving it with lawmakers, as it is now.

That's right, boys and girls. This commission was so terrified of stating the obvious that it stopped inches short. Anyone reading the 35-page report can only conclude that there is one solution that fixes the numerous clearly stated problems with the pioneering civil-unions legislation. SSM is the solution, one answer to all the questions the commission asks.

After the eight hearings and all the study, this quivering group did not have the collective courage to finish the job.

Yet this delay will not take the pressure off to align the state's equality and anti-discrimination laws with the civil unions one. "You can absolutely expect us to be back in 2009 pushing the issue," responded Beth Robinson of the Freedom to Marry Task Force.

This report is an amazing illustration of ill-logic and cowardice. I'll pummel the pages and look for Leonard Link's analysis. I'm sure more will follow.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Vermont, same sex marriage, civil unions, marriage equality

Crucial Health News for "The Others"

Sometimes "It's a matter of life and death" is neither melodrama nor self-pity nor hopeless regret. Instead, in some cases, seemingly simple things people can do make all the difference for others.

Last week's multi-cultural lunch launch at the old Sears showed what good-headed, good-hearted progressive types can do...particularly when backed up with working capital. Moreover, the New England Newswire's health coverage project involves several long-term lefty leaders.

The short of it is that four grants are combined into seed funds to provide key health issues and resources to a slew of underserved communities. Particularly to those who do not easily understand written or spoken English, that's huge.

New England Ethnic Newswire has been perking for two years. The health angle is new.

A major player in this latest effort is former Senator Jarrett Barrios. On paper, he's the president of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts foundation, one of the health project sponsors. Those of us who have seen him fighting for marriage equality or other progressive causes know he'd be more than that. In fact, he made it happen, say the reps for the other sponsors, The Boston Foundation, Partners Healthcare, and MetroWest Health Care Foundation.

In turn, each told of how a very wired Barrios called, said his foundation was kicking in $25,000 to start this effort and encouraging them to do the same. They said they agreed after hearing about the project. Barrios added with a laugh that they probably were thinking they'd have agreed to anything to get off the phone with him. (Enjoy the still, pensive pic of him here.)

The key idea is to piggyback on the existing newswire, kind of an Associated Press for smaller broadcast and print media, whose audiences are not served or not served well by larger MSM. Particularly for the many and varied non-English speakers, having any understandable access to important health information is a big leap.

Barrios said that he became aware of this issue as a senator. Some of his constituents told him they did not have access to health-care information and processes. They were sick or worse because of simple ignorance. Some were literally dying because they did not know what was available or if they could afford access to what they or their families needed.

The existing newswire covers the range of diverse area communities, which you can see on the partners page. That would be from Chinese to Portuguese to Polish to Haitian to Korean to Irish to India to Spanish to Armenian and on. Already in other news areas, these media share important stories that the others can run.

(On the main site, click Channels at the top to get a sense of what's on offer.)

This works in large part because they consider themselves partners and not competitors. Consider the different audiences for such papers as The Jewish Advocate, The Brazilian Journal and The Boston-Bay State Banner.

The health project adds regular and special coverage. In addition to health-related stories each will report, the newswire (Newz on their cards) will provide more pieces like editor Mary Thang's Understanding Drug Labels When You Don't Read or Speak English. She writes some health articles already and will be doing more.

A star at the lunch was Eduardo Amaral de Oliveira, Newz' heath reporter. (Shown at right with his notes in hand.) A native Brazilian, he is already turning out a stream of news and investigative features on health. For example, a recent piece was on a B.U. doctor, Milagros Abreu, who has seen that over 1,000 Latino families who had never had health insurance got it.

He too is passionate and impatient about the many in this area who are underserved. He notes that media often do not find essential issues about knowledge of and access to care as exciting as sensational angles. For example, he broke the piece on the Brazilian doctor whose Framingham basement liposuction ended up with a dead patient. Many media outlets contacted him, "but all they wanted to ask about was the immigration status" of those involved.

Instead, he notes that the questions about immigrant and new citizen health care is much more complex, going beyond language as well. It's "culture, family and education," he says.

Several speakers discussed how serious and pervasive these problems are. Allison Bauer, senior program officer for the Boston Foundation cited the report The Boston Paradox: Lots of Health Care, Not Enough Health as a good reference point. Barrios elaborated on the cycle in which, "You cant get access and they can't get to you to make their programs and policies a success."

As the launch wrapped up, I developed the uneasy feeling that this was all well and good, but what if Amaral de Oliveira suddenly disappeared? Is he such a linchpin that the coverage would collapse?

Frank Herron, Newz' editor, said they were covered. As important as the health reporter's pieces are, between the other media's contributions and Thang's, they'd be steaming along.

Want to Help? It turns out that there is a pressing need for volunteer translators for Newz. Professional services, particularly for medical and health topics are pricey, too pricey for current funding. If you can work in any of these languages, drop Herron an email.

By the bye, in addition to Barrios, another chum connected with this effort is Susan Ryan-Vollmar, the former BayWindows and South End News editor in chief. She's the BCBS foundation's communications director, still doing good but in a different location.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Ethnic Newswire, Jarrett Barrios, health care, immigrants, foundations

Battle of the Lefties: Today's Podcast

Showtime in Second Suffolk and showtime at Left Ahead! For our weekly podcast, we bring on Sonia Chang-Diaz to kick around strategy, integrity, progressive goals, race and culture.

Two years ago, she came damned close to unseating long-term State Senator Dianne Wilkerson. It was a bizarre race with sticker campaigns — the incumbent also had to use stickers because she didn't bother to get the 300 signatures to be on the ballot — as well as a confusingly similarly named Republican on the ballot, Samiyah Diaz. Wilkerson was under clouds of personal, tax and campaign finance irregularities. Yet, she eeked a victory apparently based on past service and promises of getting her act together.

Sonia joins us at 2:30 p.m. today, Tuesday, 4/15. You can grab the stream then or pick up the archive anytime afterward.

Voters seldom will have such a clear choice between candidates when the platforms are not the big issue. Both take progressive stances on gangs, education, health-care, homelessness and other big concerns for the diverse district. As one might expect, Wilkerson hasn't bothered to update her website, which has a list of legislation she has co-sponsored but no platform. Chang-Diaz put her neck out with strong positions. What she needs to add are some specific proposals and goals.

The demographics are very important here. The district includes heavily Black, Latino and Asian-American sections. Two years ago, the predominately Black areas seemed to have swung the primary for Wilkerson.

We don't have a left vs. right wing fight here. Listen in to see how Chang-Diaz intends to differentiate herself and build on her high profile after her first run.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, senator, Sonia Chang-Diaz, Dianne Wilkerson, Left Ahead!, podcast

Bloggy Despotism: 2 of 2

In my years of newspaper and magazine work, I was a writer. Sometimes I was the editor-in-chief, but I was never on the dark side, publishing and advertising. That's the purity standard largely underpaid writers use to feel superior.

Yet this blog thing I've been doing for four years muddles all of that.

Ryan, Lynne and I share Left Ahead! That's largely a podcast site, with occasional commentary from each of us. I write on other of my blogs on non-political topics, as well as sometimes contributing to Blue Mass Group, Political Cortex and such.

This one differs though. I am the publisher in that I moderate comments and have a policy about what's acceptable. Occasionally, I censor and reject.

[Part one of this post deals with more general issues of speech related to blogs and the press.]

I started moderating here early to control obscenities and rantings from anti-gay and anti-marriage equality types.

A few commenters have asserted an absolute right to have their flaming messages on my blog. Of course, they don't have that right and it's not a privilege I'm about to give them. Those absolutists pretty clearly fall into that authoritative class I've discussed, such as here and here.

Asserting rights does not create them or make them real, no matter how many times you claim them, how loudly you demand them or how many times you assert them. Iterating claims at high volume doesn't make you right; it makes you loud and repetitive.

The glib response to a commenter unhappy with a blog's policies is that they can have their own blog or print messages on paper and hand them out to passersby. I'll turn to the standard use of Liebling's "freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." (See part one of this post for more on that.)

On the other hand, I don't block fair criticism of me or my ideas or events and trends. I think of last year's column that lumped libertarians and neoconservatives in a post about some magazine gift subscriptions. That earned several strong comments here and a bucket of criticism on Reason Magazine's site as well as others.

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Iterating claims at high volume doesn't make you right; it makes you loud and repetitive.

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I use one current example, because it illustrates several of the issues. Since I instituted the commenting policy and readers have come to realize that 1) I moderate comments, and 2) I reject nasty and obscene comments, I have few that I need to reject.

Some people seem a bit obsessed and impatient though. Occasionally, commenters have left the identical comment many times within an hour. Others have even posted on their own blogs or others' that I was afraid to publish their comments when those didn't appear in a minute or two.

Well, it isn't in my policy, but the truth is that I do other things. I may not see or get to moderate a post until an hour or as much as a day or more after the electrons arrive. It's a bit like my cell phone. It works for me, not the other way around. When I'm home, I may or may not have the cell on my person and even then it's set to vibrate. I am perfectly capable of letting the land line or cell ring to voice if I'm doing something. My parents are both dead now. There is absolutely nothing that requires my immediate response.

My recent complainer:

1. Commented on the post criticizing the unsavory white supremacist Hal Turner. I don't agree with the claims, which parroted Turner's stance, but I published that.
2. When I responded to his assertion that Turner was too smart to face charges and that he stayed with court decisions in his threats, the commenter returned within a half hour to repeat the assertion. In addition, the winger gotcha lingo included, "Hal Turner has not broken any laws. Brandenburg vs. Ohio is key. Get over it. Until America turns into Canada Hal Turner will continue to utilize his freedoms." That comment used the identical legal link and added nothing to the ideas, so I didn't publish that.
3. Next, the commenter apparently did not see his original comment, just my reply. I assume that was a problem with his browser cache settings, because I saw both. Then he asked why I would reply without the original. I'll set that down to technical unsophistication. It too added nothing and likely would have made the commenter look even sillier. I didn't publish that.

These were much milder than many I got of marriage-equality issues. They also are much easier on the ear and eye than those that BayWindows got on the same story.

They published the following two letters (see the last two on that page for the authors):

Subject: hit piece
What a piece of trash you wrote. Keeping sodomites out of public schools and the perverse lifesyle they promote is a good thing for a real man to do, such as Hal Turner. He’s not anti-semite either. He is against corrupt jews who srew this nation and everyone in it out of everything and shove this fagot shit down our childrens throats. I am a concerned father and will definitly do what needs to be done to protect my children from the filth that pours from papers like yours and the sodomites you promote. You think you’re protected and safe pretending to hide behind your journalism? Think again. I wouldn’t be surprised if some concerned people who are tired of your political bent-overness were to teach you a lesson. I’d be happy and would chear because another sodomite got taught a valuable lesson, don’t fuck with straight people, go back in the closet where you belong.

Subject: Hal Turner
Please refrain from using the term "anti-semite", because its a supremacist slur demanding a special consideration somehow distinct from "racist" I know you believe youre god’s chosen race, but in the real world you get no special consideration above the rest of us. The term is also strongly linked to supremacist jewish extremists like the JDL. Keep your garbage behind closed doors if you must spew it.

Over the past several years, I have gotten tired of deleting such posts and would not have published them. I can understand BayWindows' letting those commenters show their viciousness and stupidity. In contrast, I think we have all seen and heard that type of stuff. I don't know that more of it informs us.

I see the advantage in eyeball hungry group blogs, like BMG, permitting instant comment posting. They do police after the fact and remove objectionable comments. On many such sites, commenters must register with a verifiable email address to comment at all, and repeat abusers of the site lose their posting privileges.

Instead, I moderate but allow anonymous comments. As close as I get to ID'ing anonymice is checking the stats log to see where they connected for the comment. I really don't have the time or interest to track these characters to specifics beyond location.

For example, my most recent disgruntled commenter logged into an ISP in Sarasota, Florida for each message. The comments came late afternoon or early evening. I might reasonably infer that this was a retiree suffering from the winger talk-radio self-righteousness disease, but that's on scant evidence. Although I do note from familial experience, my own tolerant mother turned into a Limbaugh dittohead at the end of her life following hormone treatments and other drugs that altered her personality.

In fairness to the nameless posters, some people do not have and seem befuddled by IDs. However, they do have the option on my sites of typing in a name. Judging from the rejected comments I have seen here, the nastiest seem to feel their anonymity gives them freedom to insult and offend, or try to at least. Yet, that too is on slight evidence and they might be as hateful and crude if people knew who they were as well.

Some persist in asserting all manner of rights and truth with little or no reason or evidence. That's a tiny step up from the unsupported and unsupportable it's-only-common-sense ploy though.

Some Options

Blog to blog to blog shows considerable variation in comments. Some find traffic levels and volume of comments to be great virtues. Their pages are often full of the trivial, picayune, and unpleasant. If there are strong ideas and original thinking, they are hard to find among the others.

A very few blogs attract and publish well written discourses and rejoinders. Their readers click there for just such insight and debate.

The range of blogs uses various methods for publishing and controlling comments, such as:

Wild Electrons: Those of us from the pre-WWW days of the Internet recall the prevalence of the BBS (Bulletin Board System). These live in archives, but also in a forum here, there, almost everywhere. Consider as an example, the Democratic Underground discussion groups.

Now, as then, these are often uncensored or barely censored. Anything you post on one of these is fair game and may elicit ridicule, personal insults, and lots of hair splitting from the many who don't have ideas of their own. Typically, it takes considerable abuse of others or raw language or violent verbiage to get the forum to ban you from commenting.

Likewise, several newspapers that added such readers comment areas have begun heavily moderating them or even scrubbing them entirely. Numerous other blogs big and small ask for reader help in identifying loony commenters early. For example, Huffington Post puts a Flag as abusive choice under each comment. That doesn't delete a comment, but does send a message to a human to examine its content.

Some blogs use this for post commenting. You're free to post until you blow it badly enough, often enough.

Gatekeeping: A lot of blogging software has the option to require registration. This is not infallible, but does provide a level of control.

Typically, a reader needs to provide a verifiable email address, as well as type in the verification characters to leave a comment. Abusive commenters can be banned, based on their registration information. Sneaky ones can get another disposable email address from a free provider, like Hotmail or Yahoo, and register with a different user name and email address. This will delay their getting banned again, but most of these characters won't be able to restrain their ranting and other abuse for long. Plus, it's trouble to get another address, so they may stick with less particular blogs for their comments.

Anal Retentive: Depending on the blog, I use several styles, up to the most restrictive one for this blog. Others allow anonymous commenting or pick up Google/Blogger ID for those signed into those, or OpenID. One of my WordPress blogs moderates the comments, that is, sends me the comment for approval, rejection or marking as spam. Once I have approved a comment, that person can leave them in the future without approval. That latter option has backfired a couple of times when seemingly rational commenters came back in a hostile mood.

This blog does not require registration, but does notify me of each comment. I can publish or reject those.

It is also set up with word verification — those seemingly random character strings to type into a box to send the comment to me. This is just to prevent automated system from leaving spam with bots.

What Obligation?

I don't know anyone who thinks a newspaper is obliged to publish every letter to the editor it receives. I see numerous examples here and other blogs of people who are indignant if their comments do not appear, or even if they do not appear immediately, or in the case of my latest fellow, if redundant ones with so-there interjections don't also appear after an initial one.

It is true that electrons are virtually free. A Blogger site has no monetary cost and a self-hosted one is generally in the range of 30¢ a day. Other than the time cost, there is no additional price to let ranters rant and nitpickers pick.

The small irony here is that my messages about not seeing all their posts...immediately...seem to be from right-wing commenters. Traditionally, these favor unregulated capitalism and would like the owners to control output. That should mean the blogger determines what goes on the blog pages.

Yet, the other traditional winger attitude is that any right they claim is supposed to be absolute. That attitude includes free speech, in that everyone should listen to what they have to say and any media, including papers or blogs, are obliged to publish their thought.

The conflict, I find, is easily resolved in favor of the publisher.

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Tags: massmarrier, newspapers, comments, blogs, BayWindows, free speech

Bloggy Despotism: 1 of 2

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

That splendid portmanteau quote does serve many purposes. While often misattributed to H.L. Mencken and a few others, it actually is from press critic, journalist and gourmand A.J. Liebling. It appears on page 109 of the May 14, 1960 New Yorker in The Wayward Press: Do You Belong in Journalism?

Scholars and plain folk are prone to cite that as a reference to being able to publish and advance your ideas. In context, Liebling was covering the American Newspaper Publishers Association meeting and riffing on what we would recognize now as a situation of media mergers and failures. He was calling for Congress to raise the capital gains tax so that publishers wouldn't see selling out to competitors as a wise use of capital for high returns at low taxes. That would act to keep multiple news sources in more cities.

He went on though to decry the trend toward monopoly newspaper towns as far as journalists were concerned. "As to the freedom of the individual journalist in such a town, it corresponds exactly with what the publisher will allow him," he wrote farther down the column.

Liebling, who died in 1963, did not know of computers, much less an Internet or World Wide Web or blogs. However, there's little doubt he would have ridiculed and railed against the sensationalist sameness of MSM today, as he did in his New Yorker columns. He also most certainly would have liked the easy access to many opinions and news sources.

While writing in most blogs falls short of literature and great writing, so do nearly all articles in even our best newspapers. It's always a thrill to find good writing, original reporting and keen insights.

Moreover, as with our situation today, the false claims of the ANPA executives did not convince Liebling. For one, he cited D. Tennant Bryan, publisher of the Richmond, Virginia, newspapers and outgoing president of the association. Bryan "denied that there was a danger of a growing monopoly of news outlets in the growth of single-ownership cities." As the publisher put it, "This danger is minimized by the fact that most Americans today have within easy reach not only their hometown papers, but papers published elsewhere, news magazines, and news broadcasts."

Liebling detailed how difficult it really was to find such papers, which would also no longer be timely when you got them. In many towns, such alternatives were simply not available.

Instead, he noted that multiple and varied news sources were not the final answer, but essential. "Diversity — and the competition that it causes — does not insure good news coverage or a fair champion for every point of view, but it increases the chances."

...as do even mediocre blogs, I add.

So long as you don't consider hours spend researching and writing blog posts, the threshold to this self-publishing is about as low as it gets. While finding blogs you want to read and that have consistent winning (to you) entries can be difficult, it's much easier than hying to an out-of-town newspaper stand or major library to do the same sampling.

The second part of this will deal with my own censorship or editorial judgment, depending on one's view.

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P.S. If you like food, wine, Paris and writing, Liebling's Between Meals is essential reading. I'll do a post later about my annual Liebling picnic, involving a bottle or two of Tavel. Liebling considered that the only rosé worth drinking, an opinion apparently shared by Louis XIV. North Point Press republished Between Meals a few years ago. You can get it through online or booksellers with doors as well as at libraries.

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Tags: massmarrier, newspapers, news, blogs, Liebling, competition, monopoly

What Right to Incite?

Tainted by journalism school, as well as the WWII parents' generation love of the Bill of Rights, I'm a big First Amendment guy. The ...no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press... part is a predictable button for me.


What might inspire the feds to come down heavy on someone who openly and specifically calls for the assault or murder of an American citizen? Would this be terrorism in the definition by the Office of Homeland Security — Might the feds look beyond the "Islamic" terrorists, as in the current, "The arrest and prosecution inside the United States of a small number of violent Islamic extremists points to the possibility that others in the Homeland may become sufficiently radicalized to view the use of violence within the United States as legitimate."?

Considerable sweet justice would be manifest when Homeland Security, that darling of the right would prosecute such terrorists. How else then but as terrorists are we to view those who would create wanted posters or publish photos and locations of Americans and say others should target them for death? What is more obviously terrorism than that?

Such prosecutions would be the equivalent of nabbing Al Capone, not for his murders and racketeering, but for income-tax evasion.

Smell a Rat?

Of course, free speech is not an absolute right, beyond Congress being forbidden from legislating against it. For one example, inciting to riot is criminal, even if the speaker does not take part in ensuing violence.

With some misgiving, I link to The Hal Turner Show, the source of the current controversy about the Lexington diversity program and calls for harming the school superintendent there. An earlier post on this blog avoided citing him by name and some background on the diversity effort preceded it. You can also search in the box at the top of the page for Lexington for related posts.

Warning: If you click to Turner, be aware that many of his posts and nearly all comments on them are hateful, anti-Semitic, anti-gay or white supremacist, and in some cases, mash-ups of bigotry.

A bizarre unknown in the Turner instance is whether he has FBI protection. It is certainly possible and now seems likely that Turner has been an FBI informant for some years. If so, that would go a long way toward explaining how he has escaped prosecution for calling for people to hurt or even kill others. The apparent fact that there is no evidence that he plotted with others to perform felonies may not be enough to shield him, as we have seen in other cases. It is harder if he has some deal with a federal agency though.

Details of the allegations and email evidence are here. Turner's response to the January charges was not to deny them, rather to say he was stepping back from the white-supremacist movement.

As we have seen nationwide and too often here in Boston, some FBI agents appear to find the Bill of Rights an inconvenience rather than a standard to uphold. Agents here have sent Americans to jail for decades for crimes they didn't commit and protected heinous gangsters from arrest and prosecution.

Tissue Paper Wall

The question of free speech versus the civil rights of others is often moot. We all want to be able to rant and rail and praise and muse aloud. In many nations, such speech is illegal. Yet, where someone's speech would lead to another's dying, there is no question.

Where the wall gets thin is in considering the laws and court opinions in various states and federal districts. For example, that inciting to riot is a concept that goes back to colonial times here. In many places that has come to mean roiling three our more people up to break the law, generally by hurting people and property. Yet, even here, some provocateurs have tried with varying degrees of success to defend themselves against such charges by claiming they were using metaphors or satire, that they didn't actually mean kill like you know kill or burn as in burn.

In such cases, the legal prosecution has often been civilly based, as it has with race-based civil-rights action against the Ku Klux Klan.

Perhaps the best current example of the courts' support for free speech in general is the mixed final rulings on an abortion doctor threat case involving the American Coalition of Life Activists. They published wanted posters of doctors who performed abortions in clinics. These poster had the photo, locations and other contact information for each, although with offers of $5,000 rewards "for arrest, conviction and revocation of license to practice medicine. "

After anti-choice extremists murdered three of the doctors and the site crossed off their images, Planned Parenthood sued and won over $100 million in damages. After numerous appeals, the verdict was watered down considerably. The 9th Federal District Court overturned the monetary award. It split the free-speech issues. The borderline and non-violent content of the group's website were protected speech. The calls to harm or kill physicians were not. Some of the speech was considered, in legal terms, true threats and others not.

Moreover, the group avoided some penalties because it had not directly threatened Planned Parenthood, and that it had not privately communicated its threats on top of the site's contents.

Planned Parenthood bills this as:

In a clear victory for all providers and recipients of reproductive health care, the U.S. Supreme Court rejects the appeal of hard-right, violent extremists seeking to overturn a federal court decision that forbids the American Coalition of Life Activists (ACLA) from issuing "wanted" posters that target doctors. The court's decision in Planned Parenthood v. American Coalition of Life Activists to deny certiorari leaves intact a lower court holding that such "wanted" posters targeting abortion providers are illegal threats of violence.

I would have found it a lot more powerful a win if the monetary award had remained. So, there's lots of room and reason for prosecution, criminal and civil in such cases. However, courts tend to favor free speech to a great degree. It is likely that various hate groups will cross these lines and face civil and criminal prosecution or both. Those cases will more fully codify what's allowable.

Cutting No Slack

Those who duck behind the First Amendment for hate speech seem often to be infected by that I'm-so-clever bug. Believing they are untouchable often leads to more offensive and anti-American speech. It is important to keep in mind that the aims here are almost always to take away others' rights and limit their freedoms.

For an extreme example, a federal judge in Chicago, was ordered by a higher court to rule on a copyright infringement by a white supremacist group. After she ruled against them three years ago, that same Hal Turner "said on his show that Judge (Joan) Lefkow was 'worthy of being killed,' adding that 'it wouldn't be legal, but in my opinion it wouldn't be wrong,'" according to the New York Times.

Shortly after, her husband of 30 years and her 89-year-old mother were shot to death in her home. It seemed certain their be a link to the supremacist group and calls for her murder.

A leader of the supremacist group, Matthew Hale had already been convicted with testimony from an FBI informant of plotting to kill the judge. In the double murder, a Bart Ross killed himself at a traffic stop in Wisconsin and had a hand-written confession to the case in his car. Other evidence corroborated his guilt. However, he was not with the supremacist group, rather a disgruntled loser in a law suit the judge had decided. There was no apparent link to any hate groups or individuals.

Others beyond Turner maintain the sensationalist justification for ideological enemies. As the NYT reported in part:

Sympathizers abound. "Everyone associated with the Matt Hale trial has deserved assassination for a long time," read an Internet essay posted Tuesday by Bill White, editor of The Libertarian Socialist News. "I don't feel bad that Judge Lefkow's family was murdered today. In fact, when I heard the story, I laughed."

While that should appall those of a humane bent, it too is protected speech.

Feigned Victimhood

I could fill this page with links to laments from wingers who liken any limits on hate speech and even calls for death to those they disagree with. They like to set up the straw man argument that any stricture will mean that storm troopers will burst into churches to haul preachers from their pulpits for speaking their religious tenets and emotional conclusions.

Those arguments have appeared in Canada, Europe and Australia as well as here. That it doesn't and won't happen and that such speech is also protected by numerous other laws does not stop those who lie with with tactic. The fact remains that there have always been limits on free speech, which in no small part accounts for the vigorous defense of free-speech by the ACLU and others.

So, we might wonder what some of our local anti-gay and anti-marriage equality types think of all this Turner/Lexington hooha. We turn first the simplistic comparison of stereotypical kids in the schoolyard. Doing the dozens and calling out each other's mom is not nice, but it's what we parents call age appropriate behavior. On the other hand, escalating to physical violence is out, by anyone's rules.

Here's where cleverness breaks down. Over at MassResistance, for one example, they trivialized the calls for violence against Ash. Somehow a non-threatening obscene call to the Mad Dad and KnowThyNeighbor's listing the public records of who signed the petition to repeal same-sex marriage here are supposed to be as bad as calls for death or assault.

For another, the Mad Dad himself stopped just short of saying people should hurt Superintendent Paul Ash. Instead, in his TV interview-ette, he said that Ash shouldn't be surprised, that parents would be extremely angry. He stressed extremely.

Over at MassResistanceWatch, Bud had the clear view on that:

And it should be no surprise that David Parker has not condemned the threats against Ash (after all, he held up in an elementary school until police arrested him) and justified the anger:

Should there be a show of force against this, yes. But violence at this time is not the answer," Parker said.

Hmm..."violence at this time is not the answer", er, David, violence is NEVER the answer.

And actually, that's the law as well as basic humanity. Free speech rights stop at trying to deprive others of their right to live.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Hal Turner, Mad Dad, Lexington, hate+groups, free speech, Joan Lefkow, MassResistanceWatch, MaassResistance

Uber Bigot for Lexington Nuts

I've been hiding from running anything about the New Jersey-based anti-Semite, racist winger with his own internet radio rant show. He made the national news in the past few days by falling in line with the extremists in Lexington who want to control the school system, the curriculum and library books. He went the tiny bit farther too, by calling for his readers to physically attack the school superintendent.

I research my stuff and did on this, reading the MassResistance screed and visiting the radio guy's site. I listened to his material and read his posts.

Warning: I would not recommend going to the radio site. He is a very disturbed bigot and hard to take.

However, Box Turtle Bulletin has all you need to understand this here.

Sociologists and psychologists will probably be analyzing the writings at MR and the taped comments from the Mad Dad. The latter now has been quoted as saying physical violence is not the answer, but he also said on camera that the call to attack Superintendent Paul B. Ash was understandable.

Ash is continuing his school diversity program that includes picture books for elementary school kids that mention and show that some families have two moms, some two dads, some led by grandparents, some adoptive and so forth. Mad Dad and the radio bigot are furious that the facts that there are homosexuals and that they can legally marry in Massachusetts are included.

The Mad Dad's view on tape uses justifications along the line that Ash "...has to expect that people are going to be extremely angry over what he's doing." Of course, the only ones extremely angry are the tiny set of extremists such as he.

Ash does not have to and should not expect that anyone publishes his picture, addresses, phones, along with instructions to hurt him. For people filled with such hate and illogic, this step to violence is not a big one. The MR site even tries to compare KnowThyNeighbor's publication of the public list of those who signed the petition to overturn same-sex marriage to the radio loon's call to assault.

It is bitterly amusing from here that both the pair who runs MR and the Mad Dad distance and differentiate themselves from the radio ranter. The difference is only one of degree, slight degree, and not of kind.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Mad Dad, Lexington

Blue Laws Up Here, Down There

In many ways, including marriage and booze laws, Boston and South Carolina have long been kin. While blues laws may actually have originated with a Connecticut minister, both other provincial places ran with them.

They mandated Sunday rest and worship. They heavily regulated drinking and anything else most people consider fun and adult.

There are some other associations that visitors to both notice. For example, a tour of Charleston's UU church shows a graveyard salted with Boston ministers. After the 1772 church switched to Unitarian in 1817 and got its first Harvard minister two years later, it has a series of Yankee preachers. They settled, traveled to Massachusetts in the summers, and when they died in either place, their bodies ended up there.

On marriages, we had similar laws and customs for many years. They didn't have our unique anybody-can conduct a marriage system, but otherwise, we both had civil contracts with a wide range of solemnizers.

My wife and I married in South Carolina, when we both worked for the Savannah newspapers. The solemnizer list was one step looser than Massachusetts'. A bank president who was a personal friend and news source to both of us performed the marriage under his power as (ta da) a notary public.

Very recently, we had another big legal split. We went for marriage equality and they went for both a constitutional amendment and a law forbidding same-sex marriage and civil unions. They'll have a lot of backtracking to do.

On booze, we had similar laws that bifurcated in odd ways. Both states had funky extensions of blue laws that meant drinking ended at midnight between Saturday and that Lord's day. Eventually we loosened those a bit, although in both, our bars close earlier than those in many states and cities.

With city options on licensing, we still end up with oddly 19th century restrictions. Boston may be the worst. It's a rare grocery, and a grandfathered one, that allows beer and wine sales.

In South Carolina, liquor stores and beer/wine stores were different, hard alcohol being the province of state controlled ABC stories.

Comically and mnemonically, they have long been red dot stores to the locals. Until 1997, the law required that they not advertise with signs. They had to have at least one red circle, up to three feet across. They could use the ABC for Alcohol Beverage Control, but everyone did and does know what a red-dot store is about. Even after repeal, this visual shorthand is still in play. Sleazy backroad booze stores have a red dot. Fancy mall parking-lot ones have a few. Big ones in middle-class and poor neighborhoods may be heavily dotted, so no one misses the point.

South Carolina also was one of nine states that had a minibottle law. That may or may not have been a step up from the brown bag days when you could bring a concealed bottle with you to a restaurant and buy mixers. The alternative decades ago was paying a couple of dollars to belong to a restaurant's "private club." With that, you got a key to your mini-locker where they kept a bottle or two of your own booze and brought it out when you dined there, again buying overpriced mixers or even just ice.

Both have been repealed, although you can still serve minibottles if you choose. There is tiny irony there, in that minibottles are heavy shots — 1.75 ounces instead of the 1.25 typical in airline minibottles. By restricting it to a full minibottle per drink instead of a shot pour, South Carolina ensured more booze per drink. The stated intention was to protect people from the horrors of free pours out of what are still called large bottles there.

This all came to mind this week as big news hit that South Carolina had repealed its prohibition of beer and wine sales on Sunday. Boston sort of beat them, but not really. Considering that virtually any food store can sell beer and wine down there, we are way behind.

I can remember blue laws down there from many years ago. Friends with babies complained about the absurdity of some — cloth diapers were okay on Sunday, but diaper pins were not. The beer air-curtain coolers and wine shelves had police-style tape across them reading that Sunday sales were prohibited.

WIS, a major TV station in the capital , Columbia, featured interviews with pre-drunk college students. A grocer also noted, "Our first customer at about 7:15 this morning. We have had 200-300 that have made alcohol purchases and it could have been more than that." The major daily, The State, made it news likewise. It quoted two 24-year-old students who bought a case of beer. "We’d usually have to get up and rush over here before midnight. Now we could relax, finish the game and take our time."

The change may be bittersweet to some. The rush to buy beer (and usually matching ice) before the stores closed Saturday evening was part of the game, as was estimating, in your diminished capacity, where you had enough beer for Sunday activities. That sport's gone.

Likewise, I remember an eldery fellow I lived next to in Columbia one year. He grew up, as many mill workers did, familiar with bootleggers. These weren't moonshiners, just entrepreneurs who stocked up for those who missed the sunrise to sunset red dot hours.

The modernization of the states drinking laws also eliminated the seasonal variance by changing the red dot hours to 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Before that, in poor neighborhoods, you could see old guys hanging around socializing until the official sunrise time.

My neighbor had trouble walking and used a cane. Still, he didn't ask me for a ride when the red dot stores were open. He waiting until later for the simple thrill of asking me to drive him to his favorite bootlegger. He paid maybe twice the going rate for a half-pint on Jim Beam. That was not much extra money, but apparently well worth the jolt of knowing he could still do something illegal and by implication vaguely dangerous.

Cross-posted at Harrumph!

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, Boston, Massachusetts, blue laws, alcohol, marriage

Helping on the Cheap

Thursday, I was in Harvard Square and took in the (lack of) interaction with the Spare Change News vendor. I buy these papers all the time and am astonished at how few people seem to do so.

I sat on a wall watching the clean, well-dressed Harvard types fairly leap sideways or hurry while they watched their shoes to avoid the vendor. He was a clean, not so well-dressed, homeless fellow.

Just in case you are unaware, the paper costs registered vendors a quarter each. They sell them for a dollar each (some of us give more), and get to keep the (ta da) change.

The publishing organization notes that there are 130 registered vendors, with up to 60 at a time selling issues to help support themselves. So, this is what so many here say street people should do — try to earn and don't beg.

The vendors are definitely not the dirty smellies so despised by the swells and nobs. I contend instead that there is no shame in any honest labor. This certainly is more honorable than how many college students ply their academic waters.

Spare Change News has a website. However, every biweekly hard-copy issue has from so-so to pretty damned good poetry, as well as news you sure won't find in the local dailies. Since it incorporated the WHATS UP insert and added color, I'm still adjusting to the look from the grittier older version.

If you are a checkbook liberal, you can donate directly to the Homelessness Empowerment Project. Then you can also buy Spare Change News to help the individual vendors or tuck your head and scurry by, like the church pledgers who don't also throw some bucks in the collection plate.

Back in the square, you would have thought the vendor was holding a severed infant's head the way passersby passed by. They avoided his gaze and seemed terrified to have any interaction with him. Perhaps they might have benefited by seeing my exchange of money for paper, mutual thanks and smiles. There, that didn't hurt me at all. Maybe they don't know that respect is free.

I do recall the limits of such street exchanges from my own youth, exchanges of the charitable sort. Right after college, I moved to Manhattan's Lower East Side, close to the main men's shelter. As most in the neighborhood, I became hardened, at least until I found my doppelganger. Those guys tended to be both dirty and smelly. They were between bottles of cheap alcohol and not aiming to support themselves, even literally.

Of course, it wouldn't harm the 20-year-old student in her Burberry top coat to buy a paper and have a brief contact with the vendor. My own prejudice flashed when I saw her hop sideways to avoid him. I thought of the privileged classist types who speak to waitrons, gas station attendants and other service people with churlish disdain. If that's what they have learned at home, it's no surprise they take it to college. It is distressing though that they have closed their minds and hearts when they are so young.

For you more humane sorts, remember to look a Spare Change News vendor in the eye. Disgorge a buck or more. It doesn't hurt you. It helps the vendor. It earns you good reading too.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Cambridge, Harvard Square, Spare Change News, homeless, self-help

The Speaker's Swamp

Salvatore DiMasi, Speaker of the Massachusetts House, chief overlord of the budget, preventer of all, welcomes you to the commonwealth. Perhaps that should be the common-quagmire.

Late and soon, much is made in the MSM and on barstools of Gov. Deval Patrick's failures to fulfill his dozens of big fat promises. Yet, let us gaze unblinkingly at DiMasi, awaiting his contrition and cooperation.

Da Speakah hath shown us all, and particularly the governor, that he has and uses power, negative power. While he has allowed small and moderate victories, he has stymied all large efforts and all funding for them.

DiMasi's obstructionism is the sort of behavior that leads some to call for restructuring of the legislature to prevent such arbitrary and negative power. That's an understandable reaction, but too centered on a single mega-ego. We shouldn't try to queer the game for everyone just because we have one key player who cheats.

Many in Boston in particular and Massachusetts more generally love down and dirty politics like DiMasi plays. Hell, locals re-elected James Michael Curley as Alderman when he was in prison for fraud. In such ways, we are like Louisianans in our love of the scoundrel. Moreover, DiMasi isn't even a real crook.

He's just what old Southerners call a bank walker. He's so proud of himself that he strides beside the swimming hole while the rest of the guys are skinny dipping, lest anyone be unaware of his superior endowments.

So far in the 28 years he has been in the House here, he has not shown the other side — vision and strategy. He sure can obstruct, but then what?

As an early and continuous supporter of Patrick, I still have not lost sight of his own major shortcoming. He has been unable to get DiMasi and his old guard to stop the crap and get on with the business of the commonwealth.

The fault is not entirely of the old-style pols who have crippled our commonwealth. Patrick had a track record in his corporate and legal life of getting natural adversaries to agree to cooperate for greater goals and good. He was the mediator, the conciliator, the macher. He reasoned and schmoozed and occasionally threatened. He made things happen.

An alternative is for the DiMasi sorts to change. As it is, they subsist on sycophancy and showing control over others. As surely as the cartoon oil-swilling automaton, they need their fixes of obeisance and game playing. If the current cabal that blocks most progress and pretends that raising taxes to comparable levels with other states when we are in severe times is to change, it won't be a spontaneous event.

Clearly charming and charismatic Patrick does not have enough personality or other juice to rouse the old dogs off the porch. That's a real shame. If he were that powerful entirely on his own, life would be much easier and the future much more positive for all of us.

Let's look the beast right in the beady eyes. The old guys aren't going to give up to reason and honor and necessity on their own. They have hidden behind a no-taxes pledge for so long that their vision and brains have solidified. They don't really see the mess we're in, and are nowhere ready to take responsibility for fixing it.

We, the grassroots, the voters, netroots, MSM, everyone needs to kick the old dogs off the porch. We need to tell them, particularly DiMasi and other state reps, that it's past time to move. They know how to say, "No!" Having done that repeatedly, they have to provide the funding alternatives for the necessary.

They need to know if they won't act, they need to find a new porch and a new source of food.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, legislature, DiMasi, funding

More Horrors of School Diversity

The next piercing wail you hear may be that of a fifth panicked Lexington resident. Another lonely sentry walking the anti-gay and anti-marriage equality ramparts has peered over at diversity and equality. They seem to scare Shawn Landon.

We figured we had gone as far as possible humoring the two couples who sued the Lexington schools over diversity teaching. Last year and this, they lost soundly in two levels of federal court. They now hold the absurd fantasy that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal. I don't like gambling but that's something I could bet a lot against.

As the original Mad Dad case, Landon's personal panic comes from his not being able to control when and whether his child gets the same diversity programs the rest of the school system does. In a demand letter (email) to Superintendent Paul B. Ash, he tries to mandate notification prior to any such lesson so that he can remove his child and prevent exposure "to this horribly offensive material."

He fired the same dud shell that the other four parents did in their suit. He alludes to the commonwealth's parental-notification law, Chapter 71: Section 32A. Sex education; policy regarding notice to parents, exception.

Unfortunately to the five panicked residents, the federal courts as well as the schools have made it plain the law doesn't cover what the quintet want. It does require a school policy for curriculum which primarily involves human sexual education or human sexuality issues. What the U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First District decided and affirmed is that clothes-on reality is not sex. Particularly in a state that has legal same-sex marriage, saying there are homosexuals, that some of them are partnered, some of them are married and some of them have children is not sexuality.

On the plus side, all the screaming, letter writing and litigation have produced only five folk in town (2000 census of 8,432 families) who don't or won't get it. Moreover, a town with a long history of working for racial and cultural diversity also hosts Lexington C.A.R.E.S. that is far more representative of the community.

Yet, this small group insists that teachers cannot and may not mention families that at not exactly like their ideal ones. Indeed, they seem to be the very clearest examples of how diversity training can be useful. If you are ignorant of others and dislike whole sets of people for who they are, hearing that there are differences among us can only be helpful. Also, there is a deep irony in some who oppose diversity education, including the Mad Dad, claiming that teaching diversity is anti-family and anti-marriage. Of course, most of us see clearly that it is they who are those things. They would, were it in their power, limit families and marriages to only their definitions of them.

You can see this for yourself. Start with the public announcement from Dr. Ash. He seemingly thought that if he let parents know the diversity curriculum was in place and expanding that they would be prepared to take it in stride. That may have been true for all but these few.

Landon's exchanges with school officials were apparently produced for publication. They appear in their entirety at the MassResistance site.

MR Warning: A fair notice to those new to MassResistance. This is a drama queen site. Everything the pair who produces it doesn't agree with is horrific or terrifying or some other hyperbolic term. For their own reasons or rather feelings, they are strongly anti-GLBT. Wander around the larger site at your peril.

Dr. Ash's initial letter explains fully and plainly the advantages to students, parents, and the larger community of diversity education. Landon's email to his child's elementary-school principal uses the Mad Dad-style controlling lingo — "I will absolutely require prior notification to any discussion, education, training, reading or anything at all related (even remotely) to homosexuality."

Rather than point out he was blowing smoke and had no legal basis for such an outrageous demand, the principal forwarded it to Dr. Ash's office and told Landon she was doing so. In turn, Dr. Ash responded graciously by explaining the court decisions and offering to let Landon familiarize himself with the curriculum in a visit to the school. "(Y)ou will then know what will be taught and will be able to talk to your son or daughter about the topics at home."

Landon may look over the curriculum. However, he maintained the control posture in his reply email, which included, "Your complete rejection of my basic rights as a parent is nothing less than outrageous and discriminatory. It is entirely unacceptable."

This posture of asserting imaginary rights has failed for several years in this town on this very issue. It has met total defeat in courts through federal appeals. Yet, these realities do not deter this tiny sect of the disgruntled. Of course, they also don't seem to be bothered by covering their and their children's eyes and ears to the realities of the families all around them.

Within a short time, the U.S. Supreme Court will certainly refuse to hear any appeal on the original case. After the losses at the federal level, their effort with Landon to take the same rejected stance seems, at best, futile. Yet, the faint wailing continues.

In theory, the original Mad Dad can try a Massachusetts court assault on these tepid diversity programs. I can't imagine that the four or five of them can find a single judge to agree that saying there are gay people and married homosexual couples is teaching sex. If so, that would be the same judge who'd agree that saying man and woman is sex too — they come equipped with genitalia and who knows what they might do with them?

Related Posts: Use the box at the top and search for Mad Dad for more background on this. There is also a series on self-identified parents-rights types starting here.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Landon, Mad Dad, Lexington, U.S. District Court, U.S. Appeals Court, C.A.R.E.S.

By the Power Vested in Me

With the sloppy complicity of clerics, the folklore of marriage permeates our legal system, as surely as a drop of dye on a potato. I saw it again a week ago at the symposium, The Culture of Same-Sex Marriage in New England. I've subsequently calmed down (a little). Yet, the problem affects the drive for marriage equality and even the best hearted sorts can be factors.

The short of it is that many legislators and other politicians muddle religious ritual with civil marriage contracts, laws and regulations. Ministers and other clerics are often just as guilty. In fact, their rambling generalizations prime the wild cannons of the anti-marriage equality forces.

Pulpit Power

As far as I know, people do not bring charges or sue clerics for sloppy homilies or even lies from the pulpit. This should not be an issue, except for the fact that clerics may be underpaid but have an elevated social status. Many of us listen to them. We tend not to challenge their statements and misstatements. Lawmakers and Presidents alike may cite a religious sort in justifying a policy or vote.

The ongoing state-by-state and national campaigns for marriage equality often see the effects of this conflation of ritual and law. From lawmakers, gormless pronouncements about what God intends and the way it's always been invariably pivot on Christian sacraments. Even well-intentioned liberal clergy can play into this with their confusion about who has the power to marry couples.

At the dawn of Goodridge, I noted here that Massachusetts was the ideal laboratory for same-sex marriage definition and development. Despite what many clerics clearly let themselves believe and no matter how many marriage licenses they have signed, they remain disconnected from the reality of marriage.

This makes it much easier for anti-gay and anti-marriage equality politicians to describe and discuss marriage as something performed under the authority of churches, temples and such. Depicted that way, marriage can become imbued with all manner of religious cant.

Instead, let us (and clerics) keep in mind:

• Throughout the country, state and local governments authorize marriages by licensing couples.
• Any of a large number of various categories of officials and clerics can solemnize the marriages, that is act as agents of the government by signing the licenses.
• State and local governments record the marriages, thus making them legal.
• Couples definitely do not need any ritual of religious marriage. In fact, a solid majority marry without it, at a town hall or before a justice of the peace for example.
• In the United States, churches and similar religious institutions do not have the power to marry anyone; that is reserved for government.
• Likewise, even if your religious institution forbids divorce or requires a religious dissolution, that has absolutely nothing to do with the legal divorce, which only the government controls and can grant.

Let's say it together, marriage is a civil contract.

How It Goes Wrong

Even at the symposium last week, I left wondering what effect Rev. Richard H. Taylor's vague comments had on the law students and professors in the room. He was an excellent example of laxity with which many clerics speak of marriage in general and same-sex marriage in particular. He's a great object lesson as well, because he has been involved in efforts for marriage equality, even while he blunders through his comments on the subject.

Moreover, he has a veneer of scholarship. He is a retired UCC minister who bills himself as a "church historian and activist for equality rights in RI," according to the symposium agenda. From what I could find, his scholarship resulted in a series of directories of Congregational churches in various U.S. regions. That's kind of academic and a nice intellectual stretch for a minister, but it does not make him a marriage expert in any terms.

In the symposium — seemingly law students and a few professors in the main — was the only extemporaneous speaker. He was loose and chatty, cartoony in appearance, quite extroverted, and very pleasant. He seemed gregarious and had all the traits of a good drinking companion. As a personal side note, he reminded me of my father, who had several graduate science degrees and a house with a stock of conversational goodies like a whale vertebra and a tanned human scalp.

The symposium centered both on Massachusetts SSM and the possibilities of it in Rhode Island. At his turn, Taylor spoke boldly and confusedly (and without attribution) of things colonial and legal. He even brought up a concept of Charles II in the colonial era of imposing Anglican priest control over marriage.

If he knew, he certainly missed a good opportunity to tell the future lawyers the background that included:

• Puritan New Englanders fled religious prosecution and intrusion in their government and private lives
• They feared clerical involvement in both civil and civic matters
• Their governors forbade ministers (and later when they arrived, both Catholic and Anglican priests) from involvement in marriages
• When clerics were finally allowed to say anything at a wedding, they could offer a prayer or homily, but certainly not solemnize the union. The marriage remained by statute the job of magistrate or other government official
• When colonies grew and expanded graphically, the need for literate people to attest to marriages and sign licenses, clerics finally were allowed to solemnize marriages — only as agents of the government

I was befuddled by his references to the Church of England. I had to do some additional work, as I have concentrated largely on Massachusetts and New England. There are a few sources specifically covering just the religious aspects. The Catholic Encyclopedia, for example, has a lot of colonial Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Neither of those, however, backs up Taylor.

From the panel table, he waved about Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford University Press 1991, by David Hackett Fischer, a Brandeis history professor). This has sections on Massachusetts and Virginia "Marriage Ways." This appears to be where Taylor got his concept, although it was the much more traditionally English Virginia colony rather than a New England one. It was certainly not Massachusetts, where no church has ever had the authority to legalize a marriage.

How It Goes Wrong

Like every cabby and waitress sincerely says, "I could write a book," every minister seems willing to make pronouncements about matters of faith and ritual. These are, after all, what they do and know.

Regular readers here may recall a similar waving of the hands pseudo-history from a high-ranking local R.C. cleric, described here. I have no doubt that Monsignor Kelley honestly believed the tales he told me of Massachusetts Catholicism's role in marriage here. He was wrong and showed no context of either history or law, but I'm sure he wasn't trying to deceive. Such clerical folklore passes around in seminaries, divinity schools and church gatherings. Repeated, it becomes real to those who say and hear it.

I used to get self-righteous about such attitudes and statements, but I eventually came to accept that many clerics are so close to marriage rituals that they muddle them with legal matters. Again, the unfortunate side effect can be lawmakers falling prey to the concepts and trying to regulate civil contracts in religious terms. The willingness to do so can intensify when voters who don't know or bother to think about such distinctions urge their legislators to vote this way or that to match their religious principles.

Yet, I saw in Taylor the disease that infects many clerics and by extension, many legislators. In confusing ritual marriage with the civil contract of civil marriage, they conflate religion and law in ways that hurt many, particularly GLBT couples. It bad enough that homosexual couples striving for marriage equality have to confront those who would deny them their rights in the name of rites. When they also have to overcome the effects of well-meaning clerics who speak in such terms of marrying couples, it becomes both a legal and a PR problem.

Ubiquitous Clergy

As a disclaimer, I must write that I know far more than my share of ministers. My family grew up in a very active church family (high church Wesley Methodist, back in the day before the United Methodists, who to me are just Southern Baptists who sprinkle instead of immerse). Moreover, as an adult, I became very involved in the polity of UU churches and chaired the board of an influential one, the Arlington Street Church (ASC). Back then, over 10% of the members were ministers. The UUA headquarters a quarter mile away called us the UUA chapel because so many of the minister employees attended. I keep regular contact with such as my friend from those days, Rev. Farley Wilder Wheelwright, the wise and delightful 91-year-old native Bostonian.

I'm not anti-cleric by any means. However, I have church/state and related debates with Farley as well as other ministers. I am a long-time member of the ASC, where Senior Minister Kim Crawford Harvie does understand. She married many of the original, post-Goodridge same-sex couples, and is herself married to a woman.

Often the issues hinge on the same anal retentive specificity and other hair-splitting. Most ministers I have known tend toward sweeping generalities. Close is good enough for many, while not for tech writers such as me. Quite simply, few challenge a minister or other cleric's assertions, no matter how off-base or vague.

Marriage is one of those hairs we split, except it shouldn't be. Many ministers let their loose lips speak words that might come from a right-wing lawmaker. They imply that they legally marry people, with the implication that they do so under the authority of their church or similar institution. Despite the words in the ceremony such as, "By the power invested in me by the commonwealth of Massachusetts..." they and the newly weds couples simply don't look at that just happened...and its implications. Hey, there was a marriage here!

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It is exclusively that license signed by an okay agent of the commonwealth that makes it a legal marriage. The ritual is the couple's business.

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Legal marriage in the United States and in Massachusetts since colonial times is and has been a civil contract. The government authorizes the license, records it signed by the solemnizer as evidence of the marriage, maintains the records, and is the sole dissolver of a marriage.

There are a long list of solemnizers here, which eventually came to include clerics. However, make no mistake. No matter who the permitted solemnizer is makes no difference. A wedding may be a grand affair in a cathedral led by the local archbishop, or and more typically, it might be a trip to town hall or a justice of the peace's living room. It is exclusively that license signed by an okay agent of the commonwealth that makes it a legal marriage. The ritual is the couple's business.

Most clerics believe that they marry people. Their doctrines claim they do, almost to a one. So, I don't hold a lot of hope that as a group, the clergy will suddenly awaken to the distinctions between ritual and civil contract, even when it slows the progress toward marriage equality.

It would help if each of us who attends some type of services regular has a little chat with the priest, rabbi, minister or whomever. Mention that it's right and righteous to keep it clean, while acknowledging that many couples like both the ritual and civil marriage in one wedding event, and how the cleric is key to that can go a long way.

A few clerics have made a pledge not to perform marriage rituals until same-sex marriage is legal in their states. I don't know that will have much effect. Wedding fees are such an important source of income to many clerics, and couples can always find another willing to provide the rites of their particular institution if one is "on strike."

It would be great though if all of them regularly said that legal marriage is the province of the government, while their own rites are for the couple, family and congregants. It won't hurt if legislators and the public hear that constantly and keep a perspective on marriage.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, same sex marriage, Virginia, folklore, Rev. Richard H. Taylor