"Can't go back in the box..."
Can't go
back in the box
Gay Pride's seat-belt shock
The Gay Pride Parade is today. A chance for one group of people to strut their stuff, another to recoil in horror, and the rest of us to go about our business as best we can.
Myself, I feel a pang of sympathy for the gays, viewing them from a Jewish perspective: as another loathed minority trying to get through the day.
In contrast, the religious right's point of view - to repress gays by any means handy and hope they go away - seems futile and mean.
I hold out more hope for the right to be re-programmed toward tolerance than for gays to be cured of their sexuality. Being gay may or may not be genetic, but hating them is certainly learned behavior. When my son was about 3, we went to the Gay Pride Parade, though not intentionally. We lived a block off the route, and I took him along with me on an errand to the hardware store, forgetting that a quarter million people were packing the streets.
With the sidewalks jammed, I scooped my little guy and held him in my arms and we watched the passing carnival - muscle boys in tiny swimsuits, transvestites on roller skates, gay celebrities sitting on the back of open convertibles. My young son's eyes goggled in alarm. "Daddy," he said, pointing, "those men ... they're not wearing seat belts. It isn't safe." He was so upset that the only way to settle him down was to go to a cop, grimly holding back the crowd, and inform him of the infraction. He looked at me as if I was insane.
I cherish that moment because it shows that kids reflect what we teach them. The glitter boys and prancing fairies meant nothing to him. But sitting on the edge of a car without a seat belt was an emergency. There was a time when fear and hatred of gays was drilled into young people the way seat belt safety is now. A chunk of the country would like to go back to those years, when homosexuals could be safely reviled and brutalized, when there were no gays, but fags, who could be happily kicked behind the school by people who could tell themselves, "They had it coming.'' It boggles my mind that anyone would want to go back to those days, and in the name of Christ, yet.
Presto-chango!
Sen. Barack Obama phoned Friday to yell at me for something I wrote. I asked him why we had to deal with distractions such as flag burning amendments and Republican assaults upon Democratic integrity. He said it was part of an intentional effort to shift public attention away from what's important.
"I think the American people are recognizing that we don't have a plan, so what happens is they're going to gin up a series of distractions,'' he said. "Their basic strategy [is] to try to make Democrats the issue or try to bring in issues like flag burning to keep people from focusing on 130,000 troops over there in Iraq, and whether the American military and volunteer army are being decimated by politics."
What would he rather talk about?
"It would be wonderful to talk about this new Social Security proposal,'' he said. "After six months of trying to scare the bejesus out of the American people, saying this thing is bankrupt, they issue a proposal that does nothing to solve the huge problem of insolvency.'' I'm hard on Obama, but only because I have such high hopes for him. HIs timing is perfect. The Republicans are going to turn the nation's stomach to conservativism by the time they're through trying to recast the nation in their image, and Obama is well-positioned to be a major figure in our tempestuous history.
Scared of freedom
Is liberty really "the universal longing of every soul," as Secretary of State Rice told an audience in Egypt this week? Or is that belief merely our gosh-darn American presumption leading us astray again?
Because, frankly, when I look over the swoop of human history, I don't see much pining after liberty. I see a lot of "let's go kill those guys and take their stuff." I see quite a bit of "let's roll at the feet of that king." But not much "let's promote liberty so that each of us can breathe free."
Surveying our world today, people seem to leap to put on the chains of some religion or drug or cause. Even in America, the supposed land of liberty, too many people are eager to yank the leash the moment somebody tries to use that liberty to do something they don't like.
That's what makes liberty so scary for some people - it not only leaves you with the unpleasant task of taking control of your own life, but it allows others to make decisions that, well, bother the heck out of you.
Freedom is frightening to many, while oppression, like drugs, brings some measure of comfort and pleasure to those under the yoke. Why else do you think all those Russians are still mooning after Stalin, a half century after his death?
When warm weather comes ...
I divide New York men at this time of year into two types: those who read Irwin Shaw's "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses" and those who haven't. It is a classic short story about Michael, a man with a wandering eye for beauty, and his wife, Frances, who is sick of it, and culminates with a speech about what men of a certain age think of as they navigate their way through the voluptuous hot weather sidewalks. In case you are groping around the back of your mind for the passage, here it is:
"When I think of New York City, I think of all the girls, the Jewish girls, the Italian girls, the Irish, Polack, Chinese, German, Negro, Spanish, Russian girls, all on parade in the city. I don't know whether it's something special with me or whether every man in the city walks around with the same feeling inside him, but I feel as though I'm at a picnic in this city. I like to sit near the women in the theaters, the famous beauties who've taken six hours to get ready and look it. And the young girls at the football games, with the red cheeks, and when the warm weather comes, the girls in their summer dresses . . ."
And sorry if the "Polack" in the above offends you, but Shaw wrote it, and I wasn't about to edit him. If it helps, my grandfather was born in Bialystok, and whenever I am stolid, steadfast or strong, I think of it as the Polish part within me manifesting itself.
Speaking his heart
Why should White House adviser Karl Rove apologize for painting Democrats as a bunch of fawning cowards who wanted to "offer therapy and understanding to our attackers" after 9/11? The shame isn't so much that he said it, but that it's what he and his Republican pals truly believe.
Those yellfest TV talk shows have created a generation of political morons who equate recognizing anything of value in your opponent as weakness. The most liberal Democrat acknowledges that Bush was right to take out the Taliban in Afghanistan, or should. Though one has to wonder: If Bush had put America's muscle into finding Osama Bin Laden, instead of uprooting Saddam Hussein, then we'd have him by now, and not be embroiled in an endless war. And then Karl Rove wouldn't feel the need to distract us by questioning the sanity and patriotism of half the nation.
by Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times
© 2005 Daily News, L.P.
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/322699p-275661c.html
back in the box
Gay Pride's seat-belt shock
The Gay Pride Parade is today. A chance for one group of people to strut their stuff, another to recoil in horror, and the rest of us to go about our business as best we can.
Myself, I feel a pang of sympathy for the gays, viewing them from a Jewish perspective: as another loathed minority trying to get through the day.
In contrast, the religious right's point of view - to repress gays by any means handy and hope they go away - seems futile and mean.
I hold out more hope for the right to be re-programmed toward tolerance than for gays to be cured of their sexuality. Being gay may or may not be genetic, but hating them is certainly learned behavior. When my son was about 3, we went to the Gay Pride Parade, though not intentionally. We lived a block off the route, and I took him along with me on an errand to the hardware store, forgetting that a quarter million people were packing the streets.
With the sidewalks jammed, I scooped my little guy and held him in my arms and we watched the passing carnival - muscle boys in tiny swimsuits, transvestites on roller skates, gay celebrities sitting on the back of open convertibles. My young son's eyes goggled in alarm. "Daddy," he said, pointing, "those men ... they're not wearing seat belts. It isn't safe." He was so upset that the only way to settle him down was to go to a cop, grimly holding back the crowd, and inform him of the infraction. He looked at me as if I was insane.
I cherish that moment because it shows that kids reflect what we teach them. The glitter boys and prancing fairies meant nothing to him. But sitting on the edge of a car without a seat belt was an emergency. There was a time when fear and hatred of gays was drilled into young people the way seat belt safety is now. A chunk of the country would like to go back to those years, when homosexuals could be safely reviled and brutalized, when there were no gays, but fags, who could be happily kicked behind the school by people who could tell themselves, "They had it coming.'' It boggles my mind that anyone would want to go back to those days, and in the name of Christ, yet.
Presto-chango!
Sen. Barack Obama phoned Friday to yell at me for something I wrote. I asked him why we had to deal with distractions such as flag burning amendments and Republican assaults upon Democratic integrity. He said it was part of an intentional effort to shift public attention away from what's important.
"I think the American people are recognizing that we don't have a plan, so what happens is they're going to gin up a series of distractions,'' he said. "Their basic strategy [is] to try to make Democrats the issue or try to bring in issues like flag burning to keep people from focusing on 130,000 troops over there in Iraq, and whether the American military and volunteer army are being decimated by politics."
What would he rather talk about?
"It would be wonderful to talk about this new Social Security proposal,'' he said. "After six months of trying to scare the bejesus out of the American people, saying this thing is bankrupt, they issue a proposal that does nothing to solve the huge problem of insolvency.'' I'm hard on Obama, but only because I have such high hopes for him. HIs timing is perfect. The Republicans are going to turn the nation's stomach to conservativism by the time they're through trying to recast the nation in their image, and Obama is well-positioned to be a major figure in our tempestuous history.
Scared of freedom
Is liberty really "the universal longing of every soul," as Secretary of State Rice told an audience in Egypt this week? Or is that belief merely our gosh-darn American presumption leading us astray again?
Because, frankly, when I look over the swoop of human history, I don't see much pining after liberty. I see a lot of "let's go kill those guys and take their stuff." I see quite a bit of "let's roll at the feet of that king." But not much "let's promote liberty so that each of us can breathe free."
Surveying our world today, people seem to leap to put on the chains of some religion or drug or cause. Even in America, the supposed land of liberty, too many people are eager to yank the leash the moment somebody tries to use that liberty to do something they don't like.
That's what makes liberty so scary for some people - it not only leaves you with the unpleasant task of taking control of your own life, but it allows others to make decisions that, well, bother the heck out of you.
Freedom is frightening to many, while oppression, like drugs, brings some measure of comfort and pleasure to those under the yoke. Why else do you think all those Russians are still mooning after Stalin, a half century after his death?
When warm weather comes ...
I divide New York men at this time of year into two types: those who read Irwin Shaw's "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses" and those who haven't. It is a classic short story about Michael, a man with a wandering eye for beauty, and his wife, Frances, who is sick of it, and culminates with a speech about what men of a certain age think of as they navigate their way through the voluptuous hot weather sidewalks. In case you are groping around the back of your mind for the passage, here it is:
"When I think of New York City, I think of all the girls, the Jewish girls, the Italian girls, the Irish, Polack, Chinese, German, Negro, Spanish, Russian girls, all on parade in the city. I don't know whether it's something special with me or whether every man in the city walks around with the same feeling inside him, but I feel as though I'm at a picnic in this city. I like to sit near the women in the theaters, the famous beauties who've taken six hours to get ready and look it. And the young girls at the football games, with the red cheeks, and when the warm weather comes, the girls in their summer dresses . . ."
And sorry if the "Polack" in the above offends you, but Shaw wrote it, and I wasn't about to edit him. If it helps, my grandfather was born in Bialystok, and whenever I am stolid, steadfast or strong, I think of it as the Polish part within me manifesting itself.
Speaking his heart
Why should White House adviser Karl Rove apologize for painting Democrats as a bunch of fawning cowards who wanted to "offer therapy and understanding to our attackers" after 9/11? The shame isn't so much that he said it, but that it's what he and his Republican pals truly believe.
Those yellfest TV talk shows have created a generation of political morons who equate recognizing anything of value in your opponent as weakness. The most liberal Democrat acknowledges that Bush was right to take out the Taliban in Afghanistan, or should. Though one has to wonder: If Bush had put America's muscle into finding Osama Bin Laden, instead of uprooting Saddam Hussein, then we'd have him by now, and not be embroiled in an endless war. And then Karl Rove wouldn't feel the need to distract us by questioning the sanity and patriotism of half the nation.
by Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times
© 2005 Daily News, L.P.
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/322699p-275661c.html