September 7, 2009 -- The day started out crisp and a little frosty, like those days struggling to turn winter into spring often do, but as the morning wore on a bright sun blotted up the mist and cast a little mantle of warmth over the landscape. We were at our last stop on touring the Atlanta zoo, inside the elephant house, looking at the big beasts in their cement compartments behind iron bars when a couple of uniformed workers appeared to open big doors in the back of the cages and shoo them out into the open air. I felt a tug on my arm, looked down to see my son, not yet four years old, reaching up to be held. He insisted on being held until we reached our car to drive home. How could he know there was a deep, restrictive moat around the elephant yard, separating animals from visitors? For the next several days before he went outside our house to play, he stuck his head out the door and very carefully surveyed the yard. He knew there were elephants out there somewhere. He had seen them turned loose.
I know just how he felt. There are some pretty scary animals out there running amok. If you have been listening to Dick Cheney lately you know what I mean. Vigorously defending torture. Complaining that he couldn’t persuade President Bush to launch a military strike against Iran. Predicting dire consequences if we don’t follow his marching orders. The man has turned from taciturn to garrulous in a scowling, growling way. Invade Iraq. Attack Iran. Cheney sees the world as a bar with the U.S. under his helm looking for a brawl.
As part of the Cheney legacy, a couple of guys loose out there that we should all be scared of are the two PhD psychologists who designed the enhanced interrogation program our ex-vice signed off on (“vice” seems to be a good label for Cheney to carry the rest of his life no matter what else he does, like a run for president in 2012 as some deranged conservatives are suggesting) as documents now being released reveal. These are 11 abusive “enhanced” techniques like waterboarding, maintaining stress positions, forced nudity, sleep deprivation, exploiting phobias and other methods which the American Psychological Association has condemned and prohibited, and international law. The way it worked was a doctor and a psychologist were present while an interrogation was under way presumably to bring the prisoner back to life from the brink of death. Wouldn’t you like to have one of those medics as your primary care doctor? American Psychological Association President James H. Bray says doctors “must not monitor interrogations with the intention of intervening in the process, because this constitutes direct participation.” I agree with columnist Eugene Robinson writing in the Washington Post that this is “starkly grotesque.” At this rate medical schools will need new courses: Stress Positions 101or Survey of Common Phobias.
I would look out for Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota who says things like “Right now we are looking at reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom in this country” and who refuses to fill out her census form, according to NYT columnist Gail Collins, but the inflammatory rhetoric is when she urges people to be “armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax.” The state urges you to “Explore Minnesota” but they should add be sure to pack heat.
What is frightening about Mike Huckabee is how he could Jekyll/Hyde from a kind of affable, conservative though reasonable candidate for Republican choice for president to the guy he is today. Then he said things like “feed the hungry, provide a good education, a safe neighborhood, health care … earthly help to all of God’s children.” Now with a national broadcast spot he says a dying Ted Kennedy would have been denied care and told to “take a pain pill and ride it home.” Despicable. He sees the stimulus package as “anti-religious.” That must be the religion with Cut Taxes as the 11th Commandment. Steve Kornacki of the New York Observer writes that’s just “giving his target audience what they want.” The courage of their personal convictions does not build ratings from that 20 percent of the American public that laps up the milk of human bitterness from radical-right-wing broadcasters. Huckleberry Phloem.
To the list of life forms to look out for add Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, the driving force behind a Labor Day global warming denial rally with an expected draw of tens of thousands. It’s called the “Friends of America Rally” to be held in Holden, WV to protest the Waxman-Markey clean energy legislation. Tens of thousands in West Virginia alone is scary, as it is that that many people deny global warming. Verizon Wireless is catching heat for being a cosponsor, but let’s give them a break; they need a big crowd to photograph to use in those TV commercials.
The Betsy McCaughey you seen on TV trashing health care reform earned a "Pants on Fire" rating from the Politifact fact-checking Web site for her ludicrous claims about the reform bill. Some of her proclamations led to the Sarah Palin statement about rationed care and death panels. What makes her dangerous is her high profile role as spokesperson for an organization with an admirable name: Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. The fact that she has no professional training or experience and the organization does not have much of a track record of solid accomplishments, according to Rachel Weiner in Huffington Post, does not stop her from weighing in authoritatively. And ill informed people buy it. You might say her pitch is infectious. Or to put it another way we could give her an “FD”, a new rating by Canadian Simon College as below the usual “F” to denote “failure with academic dishonesty.”
This seems like a good idea to me. We could give Glenn Beck (and if you are not afraid of Glenn Beck you haven’t been awake lately, or let me check your pulse) a grade of “FG” for Failure Grotesque.
Would I add Patrick Buchanan to my worry list? Yes, if I thought he still had another shot at running for president. It is the way he thinks. In a post he made September 1st to his Web site entitled “Did Hitler Want War” he blames Polish generals for starting the whole thing over “a town the size of Ocean City, Md, Danzig,” which was 95 percent German. It had been given to Poland after World War I and Germany wanted it back. With a war guarantee from Britain the Poles thumbed their nose or made some other rude gesture at Hitler so of course peace loving Germany had to invade. Buchanan says Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, but his adversaries wouldn’t let him. I may be a little hard on the prickly pundit by paraphrasing, but anyone who thinks Hitler wanted peace, not war bears watching in my book. What’s next, Stalin the Compassionate Conservative?
Well, then, is human nature basically good or evil? Jane Smiley, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and essayist took on that subject in a post on Huffington. “There can never be such a thing as a free market, because it is human nature to cheat, monopolize, and buy off others so as to corner the market. Free market for sale: lives, children, bodily organs, endangered species, the air we breathe, and the planet earth.” That is certainly comforting to hear. I want to thank you for that, Ms. Smiley. She goes on to say “don't tell Greenspan that he's an item of corrupt vermin skittering around the old boy's club.” And “plus c'est le meme chose.” Unless you speak French, you’ll have to look it up like I did.
Ah, the French, the romance of Paris. Floating down the Seine on a riverboat at night midst sparkling city lights; strolling down the Chant des Lycée; gazing down at the city from the Eiffel Tower; peeing against a sturdy wall. As reported by The Daily Beast and others, the city has a problem. Male Parisians ignore the many public facilities, which require a user fee, to simply relieve themselves against the nearest wall. There is no mention of what the female population resorts to, for which I am grateful.
I can understand this, even why it’s felt there must be a wall. In the first few years of my life, there were no close neighbors to our two and a half acre piece of property on the edge of our little town. Very little traffic down the dirt road in front. Lots of bushes, lots of trees. Playing outside I was not going to go all of the way back to the house and up a flight of stairs to relieve myself. Not with so many trees around. And then we made a trip to visit my Grandmother in Dallas, who lived in a modest urban home on Mockingbird Lane. Even in the late twenties the traffic was busy on Mockingbird Lane, but that didn’t bother me in the least when I spotted this little tree, about four feet tall, newly planted in the front yard a few feet from the sidewalk. Someone in the house spotted me in action and rushed out to call a halt. I didn‘t understand. But there is a tree, I protested.
Like my family in Dallas, Parisian authorities have moved aggressively, creating an eighty-eight member force of “Brigade des Incivilitéss,” to patrol and arrest pee perpetrators, a noble calling, serving their country for the honor of France.
A hymn to Paris is in order:
I love Paris in the Springtime
I love Paris in the Fall
I love Paris when it’s Tinkle-time
All I need is just a wall.
Travel is educational. You never know what you are going to see.
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