Black Friday: The Holiday We Deserve

Well, folks, Thanksgiving came and went.  As has become the norm for American culture, the frenzy of mass consumption known as Black Friday was much more the story than the beginnings of what would become the United States of America.  Whether people believe that Thanksgiving should represent the importance of giving thanks for the charity that allowed the pilgrims to survive their first year in North America, or you take a more cynical view and focus on the centuries of betrayal and slaughter that followed that fateful year, one thing is certain; either is more important than shopping, and neither gets the focus afforded shopping after Thanksgiving.  But the ridiculous hysteria centering around shopping on Black Friday tells us something very important about ourselves as a culture, as well.  We have sold our national soul at the altar of capitalism in exchange for a few pieces of plastic and a chunk or two of compacted plant fossils.

Last year, in the media-hyped craze of consumerism, we witnessed people trampled to death as others, driven mad by the prospect of missing out on a good deal, ignored their cries for medical attention.  Human beings seemingly forgot who and what they were, and instead reverted to some sick, animalistic version of a rabid baboon bent on self-satisfaction at whatever cost became necessary.

This year, the hype was even greater, and in the face of a woeful economy and high unemployment the pressure was on us all to spend, spend, SPEND!  Should we be doing so?  Probably not, but those who profit from the mass expenditure of Black Friday will pay any price for the media to convince us that we need to be giving our hard-earned money to Abercrombie & Fitch.  Many news outlets were also attempting to ring the shopping bell to illicit pavlovian wallet-dribbling on the day after Thanksgiving.  Am I the only one who is bothered by all this?  Why is the news running stories about where the best deals can be had on iPods and flat screen TV’s?  I don’t really know the answer, except to say that local news is highly ratings-driven, and they report the stories people want to see.  Not one story about anything that actually happened to make Thanksgiving a day of historical or cultural import, just hour after hour of shopping news and updates on when the chain stores will be opening up for their doorbusters to provide another trampling casualty.  There are no reports of trampling deaths to date, but I know I have a friend who almost got into a fist fight with an elderly woman over a purchasing dispute yesterday while infected by the contagious insanity that is Black Friday shopping.

Here’s how it really is.  Most people don’t even know what happened on Thanksgiving, much less what the holiday was meant to inspire.  Yes, the after-effects of the first thanksgiving were gruesome, brutal, and hypocritical.  The first, though, represented a time when people would join together and be grateful for whatever good fortune had found its way to their tables.  Instead of being glad for what we have, we have turned the day into a time when we are expected to be as unhappy as possible with what we already possess so that we will go out shopping for happiness in newer and “better” possessions.  As a people, we have all too willingly given up on the spirit of gratitude Thanksgiving is supposed to represent.  The rabid fever of conspicuous consumption we have come to know is exactly what we have proven we deserve.  I can only hope we earn our real holiday back soon.

A Lesson for Democrats: Be Like Michael Bay

This weekend, I rented “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” on pay-per-view.  It was a non-stop thrill ride of explosions and violence that bombarded my eyes and ears with a constant rain of fire, leaving me with the jitters from all the adrenaline coursing through my veins.  The movie also left me confused, because as we all know Michael Bay doesn’t understand story structure and certainly doesn’t waste time with plot or character development.  And you know something?  I didn’t care.  When I rented the movie I knew what I was buying.  I wanted to see giant robots fighting and blowing shit up, and Michael Bay delivered.  For all of his lack of storytelling ability, Michael Bay still gets huge crowds and his films continue to make enormous amounts of money because he gives the people what they want.

This is a lesson to which President Obama and the rest of the Democratic party should be paying attention.  Regardless of what the critics say, or what kinds of reviews might be on the horizon, the only way someone in the public eye can be successful is to submit to the public will.  The public will, after all, is on display not only when people vote, but in what they buy and what they say.  The fact is that people voted for Barack Obama and put Democrats in charge of the national legislature for one reason; the people wanted their will to be obeyed.  We wanted to be out of the middle east, period.  We wanted a national health plan that would stop the ongoing figurative rape that is our current health care environment, period.  Finally, we wanted someone to check the ridiculous growth of the power afforded the wealthy elite and Wall Street firms, period.  As yet, we have seen none of these things.

It seems that Obama and the majority of the party to which he belongs are missing something here.  There are only so many critics, and they wield no real influence over what we the people say and do.  Michael Bay is a perfect example of this.  Ever read a positive review of a Michael Bay film?  There really are none, at least none that come from the professional critics, who are the equivalent of Washington’s talking heads.  But when you ask average people if they liked the most recent Bay installment, they repeatedly say they got exactly what they wanted.  There’s a reason the second Transformers movie had the third highest opening day of all time, and it has nothing to do with critical acclaim.  The love of professional critics means nothing, as Macaulay Culkin will happily tell you while he rolls in giant piles of money and fame, surrounded by beautiful women and Michael Jackson memorabilia.  Obama would do well to pay look at this phenomenon with undivided interest.

Mr. President, the Nobel Prize was nice.  You can hang it on your wall when you retire and rest assured that the history books will view you in a much more kindly light because of that award.  It’s kind of like winning an Oscar for best actor.  This goes for everyone in the Senate and House, as well.  Heed these words.  If you want to be really successful, which results in re-election, give the people what they want and do it now.  Get the hell out of the middle east.  No one really believes we can succeed there, and their lack of faith is justified by the fact that we can’t really succeed there.  Get nationalized health care done.  Three out of every four Americans want to buy into Medicare, just let us.  Throw everyone on Wall Street in jail for fraud, larceny, terrorism, and (just for kicks) jaywalking.  They’re already guilty of all things things and the proof is in the few remaining newspapers every single day.  Democrats, it’s time to take the Michael Bay approach to politics.  Damn the critics, full speed ahead!

Teachers: America’s Most Wrongly Maligned Professionals

With all the right-wing attacks against him of late, President Obama has more than enough cause to complain about his job.  I’m not saying that he has been whining, I’m just saying that he certainly has had enough mud slung his way to warrant complaint.  Naturally, most of us don’t feel terribly sorry for the President, considering the great lengths he pursued in order to acquire such a public job.  The same would go for just about anyone in politics, or entertainment, or professional sports.  These people face a severe level of public criticism not just as individuals, but as professions in general.  Such criticism and constant scrutiny, though, is to be expected in these professions.  But what about the people whose career paths are consistently bad-mouthed by society at large, and who never sought publicity and fame?  More disrespected than personal injury lawyers and NBA officials combined, these people are public school educators, otherwise known as the most maligned group of trained professionals is the United States.

When, in 1903, poet George Bernard Shaw coined the saying “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches” as a maxim for revolutionists in Man & Superman, the first figurative shot was fired in the unspoken ideological war against those who educate our young.  Everyone, it seems, thinks they would do a better job of teaching their kids the three R’s than the kids’ teacher, if only they didn’t have to spend so much time at their real jobs.  That’s why it’s so important, they say, that we hold teachers accountable with constant supervision and numerous standardized tests that will allow the public to know whether the teachers are doing the “peon work” they’ve been hired (at a pittance) to do.  But this popular attitude begs the question; what would happen if other professionals with highly specialized training in their respective fields were to be treated in a manner such as what is currently endured by our nation’s teachers?  Let’s take a look, shall we?

Doctors

Let’s try an experiment.  The next time you have a pressing medical need (kidney stones, for example, or a broken bone) walk into your doctor’s office, demand that the problem be fixed right away using only the medical practices you have designed during your coffee breaks at the office.  Insist that the physician’s degree is just a worthless piece of paper required by a massively oppressive socialist union to keep out the really qualified MD’s, and that you are certainly as well qualified to heal yourself as any doctor because of all the “real-world-experience” you have amassed.  You know exactly what treatment is needed, it is the doctor’s job to make your chosen treatment work, regardless of what his training and expertise tell him.  While you’re at it, inform the doctor that the American Medical Association is the single biggest obstacle to medical science, since they exist solely to exclude quality innovators and protect the incompetent.  After all, you’ve taught a whole bunch pf people at your job why it is of the utmost importance to keep their desks locked and protect proprietary documents.  That experience alone should qualify you to provide our nation’s future leaders with virtually everything they will ever know about representative democracy, or the doctors of tomorrow with the basis of all their knowledge about biological chemistry, right?

Lawyers

Just to be fair, I should mention that these people are a close second in my book when it comes to the most maligned professionals in America.  The two things that keep lawyers behind teachers on that list, though, is that they are much better compensated and few people think that watching an episode of Law & Order qualifies them for the job.  That said, if lawyers were treated like teachers in our society, that is precisely what would happen. Prosecutors’ jobs would be very interesting, indeed, because any time they charged someone with a crime, the governor would demand that the charges be dropped for fear that the defendant’s family might sue.  Just because no one else on the planet could have committed the crime and the evidence is absolute and concrete, they would say, the defendant has to be released because his mom and dad didn’t see the crime happen and the defendant swears to innocence.  Prosecution of a known criminal would be deemed to be “picking on him,” and maintaining the defendant’s feelings of self-worth would trump any and all evidence against him.

Dentists

Time for another experiment.  The next time you go to a dentist for a checkup, blame the tooth decay that shows up on the x-rays on the fact that the dentist didn’t prepare you sufficiently for your teeth to be checked.  Providing you with an explanation of the importance of brushing and flossing was not enough, and giving you a free toothbrush and floss with which you could prevent your cavities was insufficient.  Tell your dentist that he should have called your house every day to make sure you were accomplishing those tasks, and provided you with multiple hard copies of a brushing and flossing schedule so as to remind you that it needed to be done.  Demand that they use a new format for developing the x-rays so that it will show your teeth to be in excellent health, and insist that the frequency with which those x-rays are given be doubled until your teeth show no signs of decay from one appointment to the next.  Naturally, the dentists must be required to work those appointments around your schedule, because you have a real job and can’t be bothered to go to his office during regular business hours.  Make sure the dentist knows that under no circumstances is he to blame your cavities on the forty pounds of hard candy you suck and crunch on every day, because he is not allowed to criticise your eating habits or ask you to change your routine.  He is the dentist.  It is his job to make sure your teeth are perfectly straight and clean, not yours.  Let’s not forget, too, that if too many of your checkups show tooth decay, gum disease, or cavities, your dentist will lose his job and his office will be closed. Finally, as with the above professions, make sure your dentist understands that as far as you are concerned, he is nothing more than an inconvenient person doing a know-nothing job that could easily be replaced by any idiot off the street.  This is why, of course, even though he has years of specific training that he must continue throughout his career, he is one of those people who is so incompetent that dentistry is the only profession that would have him.

I’ll be perfectly honest here.  I was once one of those who made such arguments about teachers as have been listed above.  I had a real job, producing something of value, and I was living outside of the educational “bubble,” in the “real world.”  These formally educated snobs were only trying to justify their own unimportant existence, as far as I was concerned.  Frankly, there are some (but few) who fit that stereotype.  However, since I have entered the realm of education, I have had the opportunity to view that argument from both sides, and I can say with all candor that I was wrong.  There is a reason most teachers quit within the first five years of entering the profession.  People often go into teaching with the attitude that any body can do the job, and leave only a couple of short years later, having realized that it was they to whom the phrase “he who cannot” applies.  Until people are ready to start blaming the plumber for the broken disposal full of glue and coconut shells from the last theme party, they should really consider the fact that there are those who cannot teach, and there are those who can.  It is a difficult and rewarding profession, requiring years of training and continual refinement, and should be afforded the level of respect enjoyed by virtually all other trained professionals in American society.

A Note to Media: Know When to Say When

November 5th’s tragic scene at Fort Hood, TX, left many of us in shock.  Soldiers everywhere were undoubtedly shaken by the events, and people with friends and/or family in the military (like myself) spent much of that day looking for answers.  Questions as to the motivation of Major Nidal Malik Hasan arose as soon as the event hit the news, and as soon as the culprit’s name was released, it seemed that some made the immediate determination that Hasan’ Muslim faith was at the root of his motive.

Less than twenty-four hours after the shooting, “news” outlets were already attempting to politicize the event.  WorldNetDaily, a staunch right-wing media site, made (and repeated) the claim that Major Hasan had been an advisor to the Obama transition team.  In actuality, the only connection to the President’s transition and Hasan is that the Major signed up for (and did not attend) some events hosted by the Homeland Security Policy Institute, which played no official role in the transition but only attempted to advise.  These claims were easily disproven by mediamatters.org, but the damage, and the connection of Hasan to Obama in the minds of many right-wingers, was already done.

In addition, FOX News contributor Michelle Malkin has decided that Hasan’s rampage was all too predictable because of his Muslim faith, seemingly trying to connect these heinous acts with the religion of Islam itself.  She’s not the only one.  Popular right-wing blogger and Republican operative Debbie Schlussel has gone so far as to prod us to “think of Major Malik Nadal Hasan (and all of the other Muslim American traitorous soldiers in the U.S. military who’ve shot their fellow soldiers up and killed them or otherwise helped the enemy), whenever you hear about how Muslims serve their country in the U.S. military.”

Let me remind you that these hateful, fearmongering claims were made less than tewnty-four hours after the shooting occurred.

It wasn’t only the right, though, that proved its indecency by politicizing this tragedy as soon as it took place.  Blogger Andrew Blast wrote Friday morning in newsweek.com that Hasan’s behavior was a symptom that “the U.S. military could well be reaching a breaking point as the president decides to send more troops into Afghanistan.” Could they?  Certainly.  There are many soldiers for whom the two wars in which we are currently engaged lead to serious mental health issues.  This tragedy, however, is not the jumping-off point for such a conversation only about fifteen hours after it happened.  The dead and wounded, as well as their families, deserve time to grieve before becoming fodder in an anti-war campaign (regardless of how justified anti-war campaigns might be).

The shootings at Fort Hood on November 5th were a national tragedy that affected the entire country.  I know that such news events can be highly lucrative to a media industry that has grown increasingly cynical and insensitive to the victims of such events.  We all want to know what is going on in the world, and we understand that the bad news is much more marketable than the good.  The “if it bleeds, it leads” attitude of the news media is something to which the American people have become accustomed.  But please, please, stop trying to make political points using the still-warm bodies of the victims.  To all of you who would do so:  you should be ashamed of yourselves.  You have now officially hit rock bottom in your quest to stir up ratings.  You are controversy junkies who have indulged in your addiction for far too long.  You need to take a break and learn to control yourselves.  You need to know when to say when.

And The Song Remains The Same…

It was 5:00 in the morning.  As per my regular routine, I had just gotten out of bed and was watching the news while I waited for the coffee to brew.  Now, we all know that few enough news stories are positive these days, but what I saw this particular morning gave the typical bad news a run for its figurative money.  Since President Obama has declared the H1N1 influenza a national emergency, doses of the vaccine were to be delivered for the use of those at especially high risk of complications from disease.  These groups are children, pregnant women, health care workers, older people with respiratory conditions, and evidently, Wall Street executives!  That’s right, financial wizards have been getting H1N1 vaccinations on a priority above such unworthy recipients as hospitals!  MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” reported that some hospitals have actually been provided with fewer doses of the crucial vaccine than Goldman Sachs and Citibank’s corporate offices.

I was furious.  Livid.  Boiling with incomprehensible rage.  “How greedy can these bastards be,” I thought to myself, “that they would actually put children and people in critical condition at risk of death to make sure they got the vaccine?”  I wasn’t the only one.  News outlets all day were pounding their fists on their formica desks in an expression of heated dissatisfaction at such ridiculous preferential treatment to the “Masters of the Universe” on Wall Street.

Then I got to thinking…  Why is this surprising?

At 30 years old, I cannot remember a time when the unofficial (yet completely obvious) policy of the government was to benefit big business at the expense of the common, working taxpayer.  From Reagan’s trickle-down economic plan (to which my father has always referred as “trickle-on), to Bush Sr.’s continuation of most of the same policies, to Clinton’s passage of NAFTA and welfare “reform,” my childhood was dominated by leaders who were clearly beholden not to the majority of voters, but to the majority of campaign contributions.

This didn’t change in my adult years, most of which were spent lamenting the illegal (yet somehow in power) George W. Bush administration.  Through those years, we saw massive tax breaks for the top 10% of the population, many of whom have never actually produced anything of intrinsic value in their lives.  We also saw a level of financial deregulation that enabled Wall Street to create the debacle in which we currently find ourselves, wars fought and Americans soldiers (almost entirely composed of the working class) killed in order to maintain clear shipping lanes for huge petro-businesses, and no-bid contracts awarded to military contractors on a cost-plus payment schedule that rewarded inefficiency with ever more of my hard-earned tax dollars.  For those of you who don’t already know, cost-plus is a payment structure that reimburses contractors all of their costs plus a percentage of whatever that cost may have been.  So if you’re paying 5% on that, you get $50,000 of profits for every $1 million you spend.  If you spend more, you get more.  In essence, Haliburton, KBR, Blackwater, and others were given our money to spend, and a bonus if they wasted it all and didn’t come in under budget.

Finally, there was the armed-robbery-by-proxy known more commonly as TARP.  Since the government had deregulated banks so much, they were free to gouge us to the point that there was no more money left for them to gouge.  When that happened, investment firms’ finances collapsed, and so their friends in the federal government took what will eventually amount to over $13 trillion away from us and gave it to the guys who had been ripping us off for the last 30 years.  Nice.

With Barack Obama’s election, based on ideas like “hope” and “change,” I really thought all this chicanery would end.  Boy, was I wrong.  More and more it looks like the feds are going to require us all to purchase private health insurance, with the vaunted “public option” being available only to about 10% of the public.  TARP continues unabated and in some ways even strengthened, as many regulations forcing smaller brokerages to prove honest accounting have been wiped from the law books.  Now, finally, when there is a declared public health emergency, the owners and executives of big banks are being given preventative treatment, on our dime, ahead of the regular folks truly in need of the vaccine.  Yup, sounds about par for the course.

Here’s the thing.  I should have known better than to hope.  I had no reasonable expectation that the continued predation of the super-rich upon the rest of us would cease, or that the people who are supposed to be my employees would stop helping these greedy scumbags with their Robin-Hood-in-reverse schemes.  If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, “we the people” are crazy as hell.  Government will not solve your problems.  The fabled free market will not solve your problems.  They are working together to create your problems, just like they’ve been doing for my entire life and certainly even before that.  No matter what party we follow or for whom we vote, it all turns out just as the great Robert Plant said back when Zeppelin was still together and awesome, “the song remains the same.”

What Do You Do About a Problem Like Joe Lieberman?

Last week, we here in Denver were pounded by one of our characteristic here-today-gone-tomorrow blizzards.  In two days, we received nearly two feet of wet, sloppy snow, leaving my family trapped with no way to go anywhere in our small, fuel-efficient compact cars.  On the plus side, though, I got to catch up on a lot of news.  Then again, that may not have been such a wonderful thing, since I also got to see Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman decide he needed to side with republicans in an effort to keep any health care plan with a public option from going forward.  This naturally prompted a response that made me shudder from the fact that I was actually quoting a certain former governor of Alaska; I found myself saying, “say it ain’t so, Joe.”

That’s right, Joe Lieberman has decided to take his thirty pieces of silver and side with the party of “NO” against health care reform, saying he will join a Republican filibuster of any bill containing a public option, thereby allowing the GOP leverage to avoid cloture and put a stop to new legislation that would shift the balance of power just a little bit toward the people instead of insurance companies.  Lieberman decided to make this choice after being given the chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in exchange for implicitly promising to side with his own party on important legislative issues.  Way to go, Joe Lieberman.  You’ve effectively proven that you absolutely cannot be trusted to do what you publicly stated you would.  You’ve shown that you will go against the will of your constituents and represent moneyed special interests instead.  You, sir, are Judas.

But why is Joe Lieberman such a traitor to his party and to the people of his state?  Is he in some way connected to big pharma and the insurance lobby?  Yes, he is.  In fact, one could say he is married to them.  Ol’ Joe’s wife, Hadassah Lieberman, has represented and been employed by drug and insurance companies for years.  In addition to her directorship with drug giant Pfizer from 1982-1985, Joe Conason of salon.com reported in 2006 that Mrs. Lieberman was “senior counselor” in Hill & Knowlton’s “health care and pharmaceuticals practice.” In fact, according to Conason last Thursday, throughout “most of the past three decades, Hadassah Lieberman has been employed by either pharmaceutical companies or the lobbying firms that represent them.” Small wonder, then, that while the average US Senator raised just shy of $4 million in the 2006 election cycle, Lieberman was able to somehow pull together more than four times that much, with one of his biggest contributors being, you guessed it, big pharma!

So Joe Lieberman’s wife works (or worked) for the drug and insurance lobbies, Joe Lieberman’s campaign gained over $18 million for reelection in 2006, and then Joe Lieberman moved to block legislation that would make it harder for insurance companies to gouge the American people.  What could possibly have happened?  Now, I’m not saying there is any solid evidence that Joe Lieberman is on the take, but I’ve always said that if something both looks and smells like fresh, steamy fecal matter, I don’t need to taste it to know what it is.

So now what?’

Well, naturally, the perks he was given in exchange for cooperation should immediately be removed.  After all, Lieberman has essentially voided the deal that got him his posh committee seats by going back on his promise to support his party and his president.  If there’s any justice to be found in the Democratic Party, Majority leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi will listen to their constituents and take decisive action.  Newsmax.com‘s Jim Meyers reports that the “activist group is calling on Democratic leaders in the Senate to strip Sen. Joe Lieberman’s chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.”  This is only the beginning of what should await Senator Lieberman for his betrayal.

After being relieved of all rank and privileges to the greatest degree the law will allow, our next step should be to take a suggestion from The Huffington Post’s Norman Lear, who has decided that Joe Lieberman actually is equivalent to the german word backpfeifengesicht, which translates roughly to mean “a face in definite need of a punch.”  Initially, I would have preferred a swift kick to the balls, but as Joe Lieberman is clearly sans testicles, we will all have to settle for someone popping him square in the mouth.  He should have to pay for all the medical costs of broken teeth and stitches out of his own pocket, too, so he can have some idea as to what he’s decided to subject the rest of us.

Finally, we must ostracize Joe Lieberman from all forms of media unless it will result in his immediate removal from the US Senate.  Since his motivation seems to revolve around making Lieberman “feel relevant,” we should make it a point to send the message that we will not reward his bad behavior.  Then maybe Joe Lieberman will remember that his job isn’t about making Joe Lieberman feel relevant, it’s about serving the American people.  Maybe it will be the prompt that gets the Senator to stop his lies about health care reform, and act like he wants to stay in office.

Joe Lieberman, here are your directives.  Either start representing the people as per your job, or change your name to Joe Iscariot, leave town with your thirty pieces of silver, and never let us see your traitorous backpfeifengesicht again.

Hadassah Lieberman