Thursday, January 20, 2011
Lessons I've Learned from Gay Marriage
I'm an opinionated know-it-all who doesn't know nearly as much as she'd like to think. And I'm more naïve than is justifiable for a 34 year old woman who claims to be as worldly as I do when I’m in a bragging mood.
I was raised by unusually unbiased parents. Not all Italian-Americans can say the same. And I while I bitch often about some of the other pedagogical shortcomings of my mother and father, I will sing their praises to high heaven for having encouraged open-mindedness in me and in the rest of my siblings. In this regard, both of them did a stellar job. Perhaps too good. I'm sometimes utterly and stupidly bewildered at the close-minded way in which many people in this country think and operate. I should also say that the bulk of my experience in this great nation has been in cities like New York and Los Angeles and, although I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it is uncommon to find myopic intolerant people in these places, one may indeed be more likely to encounter them in other parts of the country. So sometimes, like a deer frozen by the light of an oncoming car, I just get side-swiped by the opinions people hold.
Take gay marriage. As a straight person with a pretty low opinion of marriage as an institution in general, my initial response to the issue was: Why are we even talking about this? They want to get married? Let them! And then can we PLEASE move onto something IMPORTANT like childhood illiteracy, this fucking war, or the sad (and racist) state of the U.S. justice system? Mine was a "let them eat cake" attitude that I have come to rethink and regret.
Now, I hope it does not but perhaps it requires mentioning that I think homosexuality is a splendid lifestyle that increases the variety of people we have the good fortune to get to know on this planet and that it is another aspect of our collective nature that we should relish in, learn about and from and, YES, expose our children to. But naïve though I may be, I wasn’t born yesterday and I know that not everyone in this country feels the way I do. Still, I was astonished at how many people had -not just opinions- but strong crusade-like opinions about what gay people should not be allowed to do. I just didn't get it. I'm saying this with my hand on my conscience, I'm not being cheeky: why anyone who wasn't gay would have more than a passing "whatever" attitude about the whole thing absolutely escaped me. Like I said, I am a dummy.
The anti-gay lobby uttered some incendiary one-liners about "sanctity" and "the children" and presto, all of a sudden we had an issue that everyone had to have an opinion about. Its vitriol bulldozed me. The arguments about the “sanctity” of marriage repulsed me. First of all, what’s so sacred about marriage? As far as I can tell, marriage hasn’t been sacred for a few generations at least (a very good thing if you ask me). Was it sacred for Elizabeth Taylor? Many married people I know are moderately to extremely unhappy in their “sacred institutions”. Besides, this country still does enjoy separation of church and state, no one was telling Roman Catholics they had to let Adam and Steve get married in Saint Patrick’s but why would the SECULAR state be opposed to it based on the “sanctity” of the institution? Since when is sanctity a criteria for deciding PUBLIC (that is, SECULAR) issues? And this whole business about what it will do to the children! I am outraged at how kids are always being used for these obscenely transparent ends. But you’ve all heard the rhetoric, I don't intend to get into each ridiculous claim of the anti-gay lobby. Suffice it to say, in the face of all this, I ended up feeling awful about having been so cavalier about the whole thing at the beginning.
But I still think that gay marriage should be something like a non-issue, where do straight people get off telling gays what they "think" about them having the same rights? The cheek of it still kind of shocks me. And I do think that our energies as a nation would be better focused on what I consider to be much more pressing problems. A large part of me suspects that part of the reason why this issue was so polemicized is that its resolution was “simple”: i.e. we either decide to let gay people do what they want or we decide instead what they can and cannot do. It’s an easy thing to talk about in sound bites. Other issues, like an increasingly awful education system, an increasingly doped up population of children who don't spend enough time with their parents but spend WAY too much time in front of the TV, are complex and require thoughtful reflection and discussion and their resolution is likely to come in stages and to be expensive. So while I have the anti-gay lobby to thank that I have become convinced that marriage is a civil right after all and that gay people were absolutely right to make a stink and hopefully this insane notion that straight people should get to dictate whether gays marry will eventually fall into an ugly part of our past along with state-sanctioned segregation, I also worry that the only problems we tend to focus on are these controversial, yes, but ultimately easily digested ones, ones that make snazzy headlines, ones around which people are easily galvanize-able.
If I’m right, we’re in trouble. Because it means that complicated issues will always be eclipsed by sexy headlines and facile polemics. I’m glad that things seem to be moving –albeit slowly- in the right direction when it comes to gay marriage but I fear that our other, truly big troubles may never be so lucky if we insist on only focusing the public dialogue on problems that can easily be categorized as polarizing yes or no issues.
Unfortunately, certain problems can not be addressed by simply forcing people to answer the question: For or Against?
I was raised by unusually unbiased parents. Not all Italian-Americans can say the same. And I while I bitch often about some of the other pedagogical shortcomings of my mother and father, I will sing their praises to high heaven for having encouraged open-mindedness in me and in the rest of my siblings. In this regard, both of them did a stellar job. Perhaps too good. I'm sometimes utterly and stupidly bewildered at the close-minded way in which many people in this country think and operate. I should also say that the bulk of my experience in this great nation has been in cities like New York and Los Angeles and, although I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it is uncommon to find myopic intolerant people in these places, one may indeed be more likely to encounter them in other parts of the country. So sometimes, like a deer frozen by the light of an oncoming car, I just get side-swiped by the opinions people hold.
Take gay marriage. As a straight person with a pretty low opinion of marriage as an institution in general, my initial response to the issue was: Why are we even talking about this? They want to get married? Let them! And then can we PLEASE move onto something IMPORTANT like childhood illiteracy, this fucking war, or the sad (and racist) state of the U.S. justice system? Mine was a "let them eat cake" attitude that I have come to rethink and regret.
Now, I hope it does not but perhaps it requires mentioning that I think homosexuality is a splendid lifestyle that increases the variety of people we have the good fortune to get to know on this planet and that it is another aspect of our collective nature that we should relish in, learn about and from and, YES, expose our children to. But naïve though I may be, I wasn’t born yesterday and I know that not everyone in this country feels the way I do. Still, I was astonished at how many people had -not just opinions- but strong crusade-like opinions about what gay people should not be allowed to do. I just didn't get it. I'm saying this with my hand on my conscience, I'm not being cheeky: why anyone who wasn't gay would have more than a passing "whatever" attitude about the whole thing absolutely escaped me. Like I said, I am a dummy.
The anti-gay lobby uttered some incendiary one-liners about "sanctity" and "the children" and presto, all of a sudden we had an issue that everyone had to have an opinion about. Its vitriol bulldozed me. The arguments about the “sanctity” of marriage repulsed me. First of all, what’s so sacred about marriage? As far as I can tell, marriage hasn’t been sacred for a few generations at least (a very good thing if you ask me). Was it sacred for Elizabeth Taylor? Many married people I know are moderately to extremely unhappy in their “sacred institutions”. Besides, this country still does enjoy separation of church and state, no one was telling Roman Catholics they had to let Adam and Steve get married in Saint Patrick’s but why would the SECULAR state be opposed to it based on the “sanctity” of the institution? Since when is sanctity a criteria for deciding PUBLIC (that is, SECULAR) issues? And this whole business about what it will do to the children! I am outraged at how kids are always being used for these obscenely transparent ends. But you’ve all heard the rhetoric, I don't intend to get into each ridiculous claim of the anti-gay lobby. Suffice it to say, in the face of all this, I ended up feeling awful about having been so cavalier about the whole thing at the beginning.
But I still think that gay marriage should be something like a non-issue, where do straight people get off telling gays what they "think" about them having the same rights? The cheek of it still kind of shocks me. And I do think that our energies as a nation would be better focused on what I consider to be much more pressing problems. A large part of me suspects that part of the reason why this issue was so polemicized is that its resolution was “simple”: i.e. we either decide to let gay people do what they want or we decide instead what they can and cannot do. It’s an easy thing to talk about in sound bites. Other issues, like an increasingly awful education system, an increasingly doped up population of children who don't spend enough time with their parents but spend WAY too much time in front of the TV, are complex and require thoughtful reflection and discussion and their resolution is likely to come in stages and to be expensive. So while I have the anti-gay lobby to thank that I have become convinced that marriage is a civil right after all and that gay people were absolutely right to make a stink and hopefully this insane notion that straight people should get to dictate whether gays marry will eventually fall into an ugly part of our past along with state-sanctioned segregation, I also worry that the only problems we tend to focus on are these controversial, yes, but ultimately easily digested ones, ones that make snazzy headlines, ones around which people are easily galvanize-able.
If I’m right, we’re in trouble. Because it means that complicated issues will always be eclipsed by sexy headlines and facile polemics. I’m glad that things seem to be moving –albeit slowly- in the right direction when it comes to gay marriage but I fear that our other, truly big troubles may never be so lucky if we insist on only focusing the public dialogue on problems that can easily be categorized as polarizing yes or no issues.
Unfortunately, certain problems can not be addressed by simply forcing people to answer the question: For or Against?
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Zia Lisetta, Great Aunt is right
For those of you raised in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, let me explain what may not be clear: family ties tend to be tighter for people with Mediterranean temperaments. Cousins are like siblings. This may lead you to the very reasonable question, what, then, are siblings like? Siblings are like an extension of yourself, a limb you hold very dear, say. So that the feeling of seeing a sibling in pain is not unlike the feeling of being wounded on your own limb. This is the only way I know how to describe it, I'm not saying this is always a good thing nor am I in any way suggesting that we love more than you, just that we're crazy when it comes to family. CRAZY. My family is particularly insane in this respect, I won't go into specifics and I know everyone thinks his/her family is nuts so you'll just have to take my word for it (or not, whatever).
Zia Lisetta, my grandmother's sister, for example, was not someone I only saw twice a year at family reunions. This was the lady whose house my little brothers and I would run to when my grandmother was being mean to us. She always stuck up for us, she'd get into screaming matches with her older sister, call her a tyrant, stop speaking to her for weeks, all to defend four little rugrats who, truth be told, probably had whatever they got coming to them. She was a drunk. I can count on one hand the times in my life that I saw her sober and in rural Italy being a drunk is bad enough but a drunken woman is just short of criminal. Zia Lisetta didn't seem to care much what the townsfolk thought of her though and neither do I. You'd be hard pressed to find a cooler lady. She was the mail lady in our village, the first woman in the town of 800 to get her license, back when women did not drive. Her beat up old Fiat always smelled like homemade wine and the back was always filled with burlap sacks of undelivered mail and she's drive it around the steep narrow treacherous roads of our little mountain village like it was a Ferrari... Zia Lisetta usually forgot to wear her dentures which made the many kisses she always insisted on showering upon us rather painful since her pointy protruding chin would always reach our cheeks long before her lips did. I'm thinking about her today because I'd give anything to be sitting in her kitchen right now, pouring myself a glass of gassosa with a healthy helping of wine added to it and listen to her drunken ramblings for hours on end. Zia Lisetta was a hot-blooded, hardcore, tell it like it is, powerhouse. And I loved her awful.
Zia Lisetta, my grandmother's sister, for example, was not someone I only saw twice a year at family reunions. This was the lady whose house my little brothers and I would run to when my grandmother was being mean to us. She always stuck up for us, she'd get into screaming matches with her older sister, call her a tyrant, stop speaking to her for weeks, all to defend four little rugrats who, truth be told, probably had whatever they got coming to them. She was a drunk. I can count on one hand the times in my life that I saw her sober and in rural Italy being a drunk is bad enough but a drunken woman is just short of criminal. Zia Lisetta didn't seem to care much what the townsfolk thought of her though and neither do I. You'd be hard pressed to find a cooler lady. She was the mail lady in our village, the first woman in the town of 800 to get her license, back when women did not drive. Her beat up old Fiat always smelled like homemade wine and the back was always filled with burlap sacks of undelivered mail and she's drive it around the steep narrow treacherous roads of our little mountain village like it was a Ferrari... Zia Lisetta usually forgot to wear her dentures which made the many kisses she always insisted on showering upon us rather painful since her pointy protruding chin would always reach our cheeks long before her lips did. I'm thinking about her today because I'd give anything to be sitting in her kitchen right now, pouring myself a glass of gassosa with a healthy helping of wine added to it and listen to her drunken ramblings for hours on end. Zia Lisetta was a hot-blooded, hardcore, tell it like it is, powerhouse. And I loved her awful.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Pedorast Defender Beatifies Aids Spreader
Pope Paves way to beatification of John Paul II
I admit it, I fall completely into the ex-Catholic atheist-convert stereotype. Catholics may not be any more wacky than any other religious kooks but for some reason no one pisses me off quite like Catholics do, too many years under the tyrannical reign of Sister Charlotte Anne and Don Settimio perhaps. Mormons, Muslims, Jews, Baptists, Buddhists, Hindus, you name it, as far as I can tell they're all at best harmlessly delusional, at worst dangerously so. I feel safe throwing them all in the same box because they have one major thing in common: they encourage the outsourcing of one's morality and basing one's sense of right and wrong not on one's own measured and thoughtful consideration of what's at stake but rather on the ideas expoused in ancient texts whose origins and authority are suspicious at best. But I digress, that's a matter for another day.
Still, Catholics may be special. They have been around for awhile so the number of atrocities they have to be ashamed of are all but innumerable and yet one must on some level marvel at their staying power, their ability to reinvent themselves, reinterpret doctrines, etc etc. After forcing him to recant the heliocentric theory of the cosmos, the Church cleared Galileo of any wrongdoing and reversed the edict of Inquisition on him, in 1992 a year when everyone had already realized that - although my esteemed compatriot may have been on the right track - neither the earth NOR the sun were the center of the universe! (This sort of begs the question: where was Galileo's soul in the interim between his death in 1642 and the reversal of his fortune in 1992, did he wait in the anti-room of heaven, isn't that called purgatory? I may have to consult Dante for the specifics.) If I'm not mistaken the previous Pope, a Pole by the name of Wojtyla, in the year 2000 had the good sense to apologize for the horrible acts committed against many of the Church's victims throughout the centuries, including against the native peoples of Latin America, women, Jews. He referred to these bone- chilling acts as "the use of violence some used in the service of truth." I've given more sincere apologies to furniture I've bumped into. As for the Church's strange love affair with fascism and national socialism, perhaps this new German Pope will get to apologizing for that before his black smoke comes rushing out of Saint Peter's.
Catholics may sort all their ideas out eventually, but when, and at what cost? Perhaps in a couple of years they will actually let (or if I may dream, even encourage that) child raping priests be prosecuted to the full extent of the law without protecting them in any way but how many more kids will be molested by these monsters before that happens?
Perhaps Ratzinger will get around to that but he's a busy man and first things first, first he should beatify Wojtyla, Wojtyla whose pet cause was campaigning against the use of condoms and so condemned vast numbers of people in Africa to death by AIDS and vast numbers of children on the same continent to life as sick abandoned orphans. He actually equated condom use with abortion! Come on! While I believe in abortion rights, I think every abortion represents a severe tragedy and I would hate to ever be put in a position to have to make such a difficult decision, this is why I am a firm believer in the almighty condom! Maybe eventually the Church will concede that even if some weirdo God has a divine hard-on for sex only for baby-making (it seems strange that He would have made the activity so enjoyable if this were its sole intended purpose), He probably has more of a hard-on for His beloved creatures not perishing senselessly of an unspeakably hideous disease and one, it bears mentioning, which we know how to avoid contracting! But before the Church gets around to making that concession how many more people will die?
Don't get me wrong, Catholics have some geat things going for them: pretty churches, gorgeous religious paintings, bloody crucifixes and all that other gory shit that looked great in Madonna's Like a Prayer video. No one loves sitting in churches more than I, I used to hang out in the Vatican when I was living in Rome and read (Bukowski, a little private joke I found endlessly entertaining). I'm torn because I was raised Catholic, I love the aesthetics of the Church but unlike most Italians I cannot even justify some purely formal Catholicism, the Catholicism of Christmas, Easter, Weddings and Funerals. The Church is NOT harmless, it hasn't been historically by its own admission (like Christopher Hitchens said, "Better late than never.") but what most Catholics refuse to admit is that it still isn't. And though ideally I'd much rather not be bothered with all this God mumbo jumbo at all, and would prefer it if these beautiful buildings were preserved as historical landmarks and museums of an at-once ugly and beautiful past, still, I'd feel better about entering the "House of the Lord" if His ambassador, Ratzinger put exposing child rapists higher on his list of priorities than beatifying a de-facto spreader of Aids.
I admit it, I fall completely into the ex-Catholic atheist-convert stereotype. Catholics may not be any more wacky than any other religious kooks but for some reason no one pisses me off quite like Catholics do, too many years under the tyrannical reign of Sister Charlotte Anne and Don Settimio perhaps. Mormons, Muslims, Jews, Baptists, Buddhists, Hindus, you name it, as far as I can tell they're all at best harmlessly delusional, at worst dangerously so. I feel safe throwing them all in the same box because they have one major thing in common: they encourage the outsourcing of one's morality and basing one's sense of right and wrong not on one's own measured and thoughtful consideration of what's at stake but rather on the ideas expoused in ancient texts whose origins and authority are suspicious at best. But I digress, that's a matter for another day.
Still, Catholics may be special. They have been around for awhile so the number of atrocities they have to be ashamed of are all but innumerable and yet one must on some level marvel at their staying power, their ability to reinvent themselves, reinterpret doctrines, etc etc. After forcing him to recant the heliocentric theory of the cosmos, the Church cleared Galileo of any wrongdoing and reversed the edict of Inquisition on him, in 1992 a year when everyone had already realized that - although my esteemed compatriot may have been on the right track - neither the earth NOR the sun were the center of the universe! (This sort of begs the question: where was Galileo's soul in the interim between his death in 1642 and the reversal of his fortune in 1992, did he wait in the anti-room of heaven, isn't that called purgatory? I may have to consult Dante for the specifics.) If I'm not mistaken the previous Pope, a Pole by the name of Wojtyla, in the year 2000 had the good sense to apologize for the horrible acts committed against many of the Church's victims throughout the centuries, including against the native peoples of Latin America, women, Jews. He referred to these bone- chilling acts as "the use of violence some used in the service of truth." I've given more sincere apologies to furniture I've bumped into. As for the Church's strange love affair with fascism and national socialism, perhaps this new German Pope will get to apologizing for that before his black smoke comes rushing out of Saint Peter's.
Catholics may sort all their ideas out eventually, but when, and at what cost? Perhaps in a couple of years they will actually let (or if I may dream, even encourage that) child raping priests be prosecuted to the full extent of the law without protecting them in any way but how many more kids will be molested by these monsters before that happens?
Perhaps Ratzinger will get around to that but he's a busy man and first things first, first he should beatify Wojtyla, Wojtyla whose pet cause was campaigning against the use of condoms and so condemned vast numbers of people in Africa to death by AIDS and vast numbers of children on the same continent to life as sick abandoned orphans. He actually equated condom use with abortion! Come on! While I believe in abortion rights, I think every abortion represents a severe tragedy and I would hate to ever be put in a position to have to make such a difficult decision, this is why I am a firm believer in the almighty condom! Maybe eventually the Church will concede that even if some weirdo God has a divine hard-on for sex only for baby-making (it seems strange that He would have made the activity so enjoyable if this were its sole intended purpose), He probably has more of a hard-on for His beloved creatures not perishing senselessly of an unspeakably hideous disease and one, it bears mentioning, which we know how to avoid contracting! But before the Church gets around to making that concession how many more people will die?
Don't get me wrong, Catholics have some geat things going for them: pretty churches, gorgeous religious paintings, bloody crucifixes and all that other gory shit that looked great in Madonna's Like a Prayer video. No one loves sitting in churches more than I, I used to hang out in the Vatican when I was living in Rome and read (Bukowski, a little private joke I found endlessly entertaining). I'm torn because I was raised Catholic, I love the aesthetics of the Church but unlike most Italians I cannot even justify some purely formal Catholicism, the Catholicism of Christmas, Easter, Weddings and Funerals. The Church is NOT harmless, it hasn't been historically by its own admission (like Christopher Hitchens said, "Better late than never.") but what most Catholics refuse to admit is that it still isn't. And though ideally I'd much rather not be bothered with all this God mumbo jumbo at all, and would prefer it if these beautiful buildings were preserved as historical landmarks and museums of an at-once ugly and beautiful past, still, I'd feel better about entering the "House of the Lord" if His ambassador, Ratzinger put exposing child rapists higher on his list of priorities than beatifying a de-facto spreader of Aids.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
JUMO
JUMO I just watched an interview with its founder, Chris Hughes, on the Colbert Report and it seemed like an omen. I had been talking earlier today to a dear friend about wanting to find good organizations to volunteer with. Even if you don't have the time to do much vonlunteering, it may still be worth signing up, you can stay informed about the causes that interest you. Check it out!
I'm pasting a portion of their About Us section below:
I'm pasting a portion of their About Us section below:
Why Jumo?
Founded in February 2010, Jumo set out to address three key challenges:- There are millions of people working to improve the lives of others, many of whom lack the resources to have greatest impact.
- There are millions more who want to help, but don’t know how.
- Despite huge advancements in connection technologies, it’s hard to find meaningful opportunities to get involved.
What we do
Jumo makes it easy to:- Find the issues and organization you care about
- Follow the latest news and updates
- Support their work with your time, money and skills.
Don't give me this Love It or Leave It bullshit!
Bi-cultural? Bi-lingual? Bi-national? All convenient euphemisms for confused. I resigned myself years ago to a partial cultural, social, national and linguistic limbo. Not that I'm complaining, although I talk like I always know exactly what I'm saying, the truth is I've come to feel grateful for the ambiguity in which I dwell, it makes life richer.
Yesterday I was stuck in rush hour Los Angeles traffic with my housemate, like me the American born offspring of immigrants, well traveled, worldly, but, unlike me in no way confused about where he belongs. We were bottlenecking off the highway onto the exit ramp and traffic, which was already the stuff of nightmares on the five-lane highway, had become nearly unbearable. I noticed that on either side of the single file line of cars contained neatly within the stripes painted on the asphalt there was enough room for another whole line of cars and I commented that if we had been in Italy where traffic rules are obeyed only if they make sense (but not even always when they do make sense) the cars on the exit ramps would have used the additional space, chaos may have ensued but I would have felt less a victim of my circumstances, and more like I was telling the traffic jam to shove it. In short, I was feeling harmlessly nostalgic about the old country in all its anarchic rule-defying charm. My housemate had the cheek to say, "Oh yes, Italy where people know how to drive... If you like it so much better there, you don't have to stay, you know." In short: love it or leave it. And not just love it, love everything about it, including its crazymaking obedience. A few years ago I might have kept my mouth shut at such a comment, but yesterday I said, "Don't you give me that bullshit. You only have one passport, you have nowhere else to live, I choose to live here, I could live in several different countries: Italy, France, Germany, England... I live here because I love it, because I choose it. Of course I love it otherwise I would leave it." I should have added, "I admit that my relationship with this country is often stormy, but my love for it is one born of reflection and choice. How many of you flag-waving love it or leave it types can say that for yourselves?"
And someone famous (probably some Frenchie) once said that it is the true patriot who most fiercely criticizes his country. I couldn't agree more, it is because of how much I love this crazy place, that I would like to see it do better, reach its potential, be, dare I say it, all that it can be. I'm not suggesting that we should rally for Italian style traffic anarchy in the U.S., my reaction yesterday was just an emotional knee-jerk response to my frustration at this city's overpopulated highways. What I am suggesting is this: criticizing a country does not mean you don't love it. It is good and healthy to think and speak critically about democratic nations, indeed it is a necessary part of any working democracy. And people who claim otherwise need to pull their heads out of their asses.
Yesterday I was stuck in rush hour Los Angeles traffic with my housemate, like me the American born offspring of immigrants, well traveled, worldly, but, unlike me in no way confused about where he belongs. We were bottlenecking off the highway onto the exit ramp and traffic, which was already the stuff of nightmares on the five-lane highway, had become nearly unbearable. I noticed that on either side of the single file line of cars contained neatly within the stripes painted on the asphalt there was enough room for another whole line of cars and I commented that if we had been in Italy where traffic rules are obeyed only if they make sense (but not even always when they do make sense) the cars on the exit ramps would have used the additional space, chaos may have ensued but I would have felt less a victim of my circumstances, and more like I was telling the traffic jam to shove it. In short, I was feeling harmlessly nostalgic about the old country in all its anarchic rule-defying charm. My housemate had the cheek to say, "Oh yes, Italy where people know how to drive... If you like it so much better there, you don't have to stay, you know." In short: love it or leave it. And not just love it, love everything about it, including its crazymaking obedience. A few years ago I might have kept my mouth shut at such a comment, but yesterday I said, "Don't you give me that bullshit. You only have one passport, you have nowhere else to live, I choose to live here, I could live in several different countries: Italy, France, Germany, England... I live here because I love it, because I choose it. Of course I love it otherwise I would leave it." I should have added, "I admit that my relationship with this country is often stormy, but my love for it is one born of reflection and choice. How many of you flag-waving love it or leave it types can say that for yourselves?"
And someone famous (probably some Frenchie) once said that it is the true patriot who most fiercely criticizes his country. I couldn't agree more, it is because of how much I love this crazy place, that I would like to see it do better, reach its potential, be, dare I say it, all that it can be. I'm not suggesting that we should rally for Italian style traffic anarchy in the U.S., my reaction yesterday was just an emotional knee-jerk response to my frustration at this city's overpopulated highways. What I am suggesting is this: criticizing a country does not mean you don't love it. It is good and healthy to think and speak critically about democratic nations, indeed it is a necessary part of any working democracy. And people who claim otherwise need to pull their heads out of their asses.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Scribere est agere? Really?
There is a large part of me that is unsure whether writing is indeed acting, or the pen mightier than the sword etc. etc. I started this blog today because all of me hopes so.
Just today I became involved in a Facebook argument about whether Rush Limbaugh and other such hate-spewing intellectual midgets should be pulled from the airwaves in light of how they may have influenced the behavior of one Jared Loughner. My answer is and will always be: FUCK NO! I believe in personal responsibility, that we get what we deserve, that if no one listened to trash, trash wouldn't be on the air. The answer then must surely be to raise your voice too, to shout til you're hoarse, in the hopes of drowning out the Rush Limbaugh's of this world. Add to the cacophony, it doesn't matter if it's already deafening. Maybe I feel this way because I spent too many Sundays at Italian dinner tables where shouting was the only option if you ever intended to be heard. Whatever the case may be, this is my tiny pulpit, here is my megaphone.
Just today I became involved in a Facebook argument about whether Rush Limbaugh and other such hate-spewing intellectual midgets should be pulled from the airwaves in light of how they may have influenced the behavior of one Jared Loughner. My answer is and will always be: FUCK NO! I believe in personal responsibility, that we get what we deserve, that if no one listened to trash, trash wouldn't be on the air. The answer then must surely be to raise your voice too, to shout til you're hoarse, in the hopes of drowning out the Rush Limbaugh's of this world. Add to the cacophony, it doesn't matter if it's already deafening. Maybe I feel this way because I spent too many Sundays at Italian dinner tables where shouting was the only option if you ever intended to be heard. Whatever the case may be, this is my tiny pulpit, here is my megaphone.
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