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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Saturday, May 30, 2009

And Now For News That Really Matters 

...in what is considered to be a stunning upset, viral Intertubes sensation Susan Boyle finished second in the finals of "Britian's Got Talent", a Simon Crowell creation that answers the unasked question of what the love child produced by a dalliance between "The Ed Sullivan Show" and Crowell's own "American Idol" would look like. One more time, for those who didn't get all the relevant handouts at the beginning of class, real life demonstrated itself to be nothing like the movies...but that, after all, is why we go watch movies in the first place, isn't it?

Ms. Boyle probably need not worry about What It All Means, though. If the history of "American Idol" is any measure (which it may or may not, given differences in the contests and whatever pop culture disparities that may exist between Mother England and the former Colonies), there is a certain hope for someone who doesn't win one of Crowell's contests. Jennifer Hudson, who has had a tragic recent history, finished seventh in the third "American Idol" season, and went on to win both a Best Supporting Actress Oscar and a Grammy Award. Kellie Pickler, who finished sixth in Idol's fifth season, is making a name for herself on the Country/Western music scene. And then, of course, there's Bucky Covington, Chris Daughtry, Kimberley Locke, and Josh Gracin (Stay With Me is a song you don't play if the kids aren't yet asleep), all of whom found commercial success after being booted from American Idol...

If her original gazillion-YouTube-hit version of "I Dreamed A Dream" (or, for that matter, her smoky version of the classic torch song "Cry Me A River") is any measure, Susan Boyle will do just fine. She should be able to dream a dream that is far more positive than the lyrics of that song that made her so famous...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:28 PM 3 comments

Thursday, May 28, 2009

"Kodak Moments" And War Crimes 

...I have to confess that I don't have any particular desire to see any more detainee torture photographs of the sort that the ACLU is digging for. I've seen enough already...

I get it already, OK?

People in the employ of the United States of America did things to other people in a captive, controlled setting that a previous generation of people in the employ of the United States of America tried, convicted, and either executed or imprisoned a yet another group of people (hereafter known as "the losers") for having committed the same or similar outrages against Americans who where held in a captive, controlled setting...

The pictures we have already had the distinct displeasure of seeing have been enough to ruin the careers of several enlisted personnel and - in some cases - the wrong officers, and at the same time have failed to cause either Congress or the Obama administration to take any sort of meaningful gander at the responsibility that either Pentagon or Bush administration officials bear for having ordered what far too many experienced military personnel have immediately identified as a somewhat crude but quite realistic approximation of the sort of SERE training that they have themselves been subject to, albeit in a much shorter and more protected way...

To be perfectly honest (and perhaps to plunge me forever in the fiery brimstone sea of those who are insufficiently progressive), I can't honestly see a reason to see any more 'detainee torture' pictures. Anyone who wasn't already offended by the past Abu Ghraib photos has a particular political mindset that probably isn't going to be tipped off top dead center by the revelation of alleged rape photos. Anyone who was - like me - outraged by that first set of photos will only be kept inflamed by the new photos, assuming they represent the sort of images that the Daily Telegraph claimsto have, but we really shouldn't be any more fired up by the revelation of new pictures than we should have already been by the previously released pictures, because the purport depravity of these contested photos (if the Daily Telegraph is to be trusted, and I can't honestly think of a reason why it has earned that right) is really, honestly only one casual step farther beyond what we've seen already...

War Crimes were committed, and they were committed not by a few rogue elements but by military personnel operating under the direction of higher authority that extended all the way to various offices in the White House. It may be that new photos of Americans raping babies would finally tip the scales in this ongoing conversation, but there doesn't appear to be any such pictures and the shots that are purported to exist won't, in the first case, ever end on TV and, in the second case, therefore won't matter in the larger national discussion...

But even if they do, I keep finding myself circling back to the First Principle of this whole discussion: If what the American people have already seen isn't enough to send them streaming into the streets clamoring for redress from those people who did bad things in our names, those American people aren't paying all that much attention to the subject anyway...

All the existing evidence points to the proposition that war crimes were committed at the direction of Bush administration officials at the highest levels but that only low-ranking minions were actually punished. That hasn't mattered, though, at the national level - regardless of who is in charge - and all we are left with is the grim fact that a host of even more brutal prisoner treatment than we have actually seen in the past is just another "Kodak Moment" and not some sort of turning point....
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:42 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

On How We Should Finally Have An Honest Talk About Diabetes 

...I am the parent of a type I diabetic teenager who was originally diagnosed at about the same age as Sonia Sotomayor. I have spent the last eight years fighting two wars: one with the outside world that still - after years of advancements and improvements in the manner in which insulin-dependent diabetes is treated - views those who are so "afflicted" as being somehow fragile and less than fully capable of performing as fully successful human beings, and another with my own child who has suffered beat-down after beat-down as he discovered that he couldn't become a soldier and couldn't get a commercial pilot's license and couldn't do just about any damned other thing that little boys have said for eons that they wanted to be as they worked through the issues of "what do I want to be when I grow up"...

Life conspires against children who are type I diabetics, throwing up all sorts of roadblocks that are undoubtedly well-meaning but serve to reinforce in the minds of those children the whole idea that they may somehow be fragile or "special" in a bad way or somehow unworthy of consideration for certain fields of endeavor. A parent's job in the face of this mess is to fight back - both in the world of the child and in the larger world that the child faces - and state in the most aggressive terms possible that, yes, in fact, MY CHILD can do almost all of those things about the world has its timorous questions, and he can do them well and successfully. All the world needs to do in almost every case is give a little bit of space to his need to measure his blood sugar and not freak out when he starts poking needles in his body to inject the insulin that keeps him alive...

I have to confess that I am something of a militant parent in this regard and aggressively encourage my kid to do his blood sugar test and administer his insulin shot in as public a setting as possible any time we are eating out (it helps that I have willing teenage co-conspirator looking to freak people out for whatever reason I have forgotten over the years as to why 16-year-olds might want to freak people out). It is in this light that I am both profoundly respectful of the circumstances of Obama's first SCOTUS nominee and ready to pick up an axe handle to go looking for those who want to make her diabetes an issue. It is, also, in this light that I listened with bated breath to the NPR "All Things Considered" piece tonight about Sonia Sotomayor's type I diabetes...

In the world of my dreams, the nomination of a type I diabetic to the position of Associate Justice to the Supreme Court of The United States will highlight the fact that there are very many fields of endeavor that are not closed off to people who face a lifetime of dealing with this particular issue. In the world of my dreams, those winger Senators who have fought so hard against embryonic stem cell research will have a sudden moment of epiphany that reveals to them what that whole issue is actually all about. In the world of my dreams, my kid and a whole bunch of other kids living with the same circumstances that my kid faces every day will understand that there is still a life out there, perhaps not one that looks anything like the sort of action hero life that every kid wants to grow up to live, but the sort of life that actually matters at both the personal level and to the larger world...

To be honest, as the parent of a type I diabetic, I find it offensive that we even need to be having this conversation in today's world. It is beyond strange to me that this particular "affliction" should garner attention when we have no idea what medications treating blood pressure or heart disease or type II diabetes or any other sort of medical problem any of the other eight SCOTUS justices are now taking or were taking at the point of their confirmation hearings. It's time for an honest conversation about diabetes, rather than some SCLM treatment of the subject (and yes, tonight we will toss Huffpo into that mix). Sadly, we aren't living in a space where any particular honest discussion of that issue will happen...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:06 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Stare Decisis? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Stare Decisis! 

...in the dawning of this new era where we will be awash in chatter about why or why not Sonia Sotomayor should be confirmed as the newest member of SCOTUS, it is probably instructive to think back to an earlier confirmation discussion in which the concept of stare decisis became a kitchen table topic and how any sort of honor to that concept played out in a Supreme Court decision issued just today. This particular past discussion, one that took place just a very few years ago, provides just about all the ammunition necessary to defend against the right wing meme about activist jurists that is starting to crank up again now that they have an actual name to attack...

Way, way back in September of 2005, John Roberts sat in front of the Senate Judiciary committee answering questions regarding his fitness to become the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of these United States. During the course of his confirmation hearing, Roberts (with that metaphorical stack of Bibles looming just over his right shoulder), worked up a sweat trying to assure the Committee members that he was the sort of stand-up guy who would accord the utmost respect to previous SCOTUS decisions because of the well-understood value of making SCOTUS law-interpreting ensure "predictability, stability and legitimacy." In a rather under-reported decision issued today, Chief Justice Roberts and his merry band of conservative activist justices overturned a relatively recent SCOTUS decision that ruled that police could not initiate interrogation of a suspect after the suspect's assertion of the right to an attorney at an arraignment or similar proceeding...

This isn't Dred Scott we're talking about here. Nor is it the sort of discussion about stare decisis with regard to Roe v. Wade that both Roberts and Alito dissembled about so effectively a couple of years ago. This is directly about both one element of the building right-wing criticism of Sotomayor's recent reversals at the hands of the current SCOTUS and today's relatively under-reported reversal of Associate Justice John Paul Stevens very own majority opinion in that 1986 case. Today we heard all sorts of right wing talk about how members of the SCOTUS should rule on the facts and not on the basis of personal emotions or life experiences and should not have a history of being reversed by a higher court, while at the same time Tony Scalia was being revealed in his majority opinion to be deciding to overturn past SCOTUS precedent based solely on personal emotion rather than any sort of understanding of Constitutional precedent and, at the same time, reversing a Supreme Court decision whose majority opinion was written by a sitting member of the current Court...


I suppose I should gather from today's winger commentary that - shocking though this may be - that Associate Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is somehow no longer qualified to be a member of SCOTUS owing to his new-found history of having decisions to which he has been a party being reversed by the full court. It's a stupid idea on its face, but it shouldn't be surprising from the folks who were rightfully removed from majority status by the Amerocan people. We will, sadly, have to put up with all their nonsense for the next couple of months during this looming SCOTUS nomination battle, but today's Supreme Court ruling - with its profound lack of respect for precedent as well as its complete right-wing reset of the rights of the accused - sufficiently informs us as to the actual respect that Republic-Fascists have for the "rule of law"...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:53 PM 0 comments

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