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Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Welcome to the New Iraq

Please be advised that our menu of options has recently changed.  If your town or city does not have electricity, please press “one” now.  If your local police force has disbanded or cannot be located, please press “two” now.  If your water supply has been degraded by targeted military strikes and not purified since 1991, please press “three” now.  If your local judges or legal authorities have been assassinated, please press “four” now.  If your family members have been detained by American forces and you have not seen them in the past year, please press “five” now.  If you have a question or concern about the privatization of municipal and other civil-agency functions, please hold while we transfer your call to our representatives from Halliburton.  If you have a question or concern about the privatization of security forces, please hold while our service representatives from Blackwater trace your call and locate you for questioning.  If you are being detained, questioned, kidnapped or abused at the moment, please stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order it was received.

Thank you for calling the new Iraq.  Your call is important to us.

Posted by Michael on 06/30 at 02:37 AM
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Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Back in les États-Unis

First off, I should say that although the Bérubé name is originally from Normandy—Damien Bérubé having come to Québec in 1671 (the whole story is available somewhere on line)—I’ve never been to France in my life.  In fact I’ve been to Europe only once as an adult, to Italy in 1999 for ten days.  Second, I should note that although trips to France, in the current political climate, would seem to be the exclusive preserve of the treasonous, cosmopolitan, moral-relativist, white-wine-sipping liberal cultural elite, it is actually possible for a family of four to visit Paris and the south of France for under one billion Euros, if you’re willing to fly discount (this involves strapping one child to the fuselage of the plane) and stay in hotels into whose rooms one has to be lowered by one’s armpits.

No, really, we had a great time, with our moral relativism and our two preternaturally-patient, champion-traveler kids and our just- barely- able- to- converse- haltingly- with- the- taxi- driver- about- sports- and- automobiles French.  Sure, we underwent what gastroeconomical specialists call a “radical moneyectomy” in our five days in Paris.  But it was worth it.  And Jamie loved the Métro and the zoo, and overcame his fear of heights long enough to accompany me to the top of l’Arc de Triomphe, which, as the plaques at its base will tell you, commemorates French military valor in the Franco-Prussian war, World War I, World War II, la guerre d’Indochine, and that dustup in Algiers. I would say something properly derisive about this, but on the whole, the French were so nice to us that I just don’t have the heart to do the cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys bit.  Apparently they figure that if you’re an American in France who can use French verbs in two tenses, you must not be watching Fox News.  (Besides, I know perfectly well that the Arc was originally all about Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz, and of course it was great to see the French Resistance commemorated.)

I won’t do any serious vacation blogging.  Somehow it feels too self-indulgent, even for a blog, where one always asks oneself, “self-indulgent as compared to what, exactly?” Besides, everything you’ve read about Paris and the south of France is true: no false words have ever been written about these parts of the world.  So consult those words if you want the details about what it’s like to be there.  Here, I’ll confine myself to two light observations about cultural matters.

One: it’s much fun to turn on the TV and see Jacques Derrida debating Régis Debray, and it’s great to see the passages of the Métro festooned with ads for Paul Auster’s novel La Nuit de L’Oracle.  It’s quite true, artists and intellectuals are part of popular media in French life in ways that their American counterparts can only dream about.  But it’s also quite true, on another front, that French popular music sucks.  It actually sucks in so many ways, in so many genres, that I could not keep proper track of its promiscuous modalities of inadequacy.  A friend suggested to me that the French never made the categorical distinction between “rock” and “show tunes” that is fundamental to Anglo-American popular music, so that French pop sounds more or less like Barry Manilow.  But that doesn’t explain the travesty that is French hip-hop.  Nor does it explain the curious fact that although experimental French art and literature have in fact rocked almost continuously for the past 175 years, no French music of any kind has really mattered to the rest of the world since the mid-thirteenth century, when the hot new musical form known as the “motet” took Europe by storm.  I welcome your theories about this.  (Before anybody gets all weird with me about Berlioz and Satie, all I have to say is, two exceptions in 750 years prove the rule.  And the incomparable Django Reinhardt wasn’t French, he was Manouche.)

Two: I have long thought that soccer—known in some parts of the world, namely, everywhere but here, as “football”—is almost the perfect sport.  It involves intense, explosive large-muscle-group strength, incredible cardiovascular stamina, and stunning small-muscle-group finesse and coordination.  It also has nearly-ideal combinations of individual virtuosity with team effort, skill with chance, and synoptic strategy with sudden bursts of impromptu brilliance.  But unfortunately, the sport has deep structural flaws, the most notorious of which is its “offsides” rule, which prevents players from sprinting behind defenses.  And don’t even try to defend the inane “shootout” as a means of deciding games: at the very least, the players should run in from midfield and/or shoot from outside the penalty area.  Shooting from 11m out is a joke.  The main problem, though, is that the scale of soccer is too big.  The way I figure it, if soccer would just reduce the size of its field, reduce the number of players on the field, make the ball smaller and harder and flatten it on both ends, make the goal smaller, put up boards and glass around the boundaries, cover the field in ice, and give everybody sticks, then you’d have the perfect sport. 

But in the course of watching Euro 2004 each night, I learned that (or I should say, Janet pointed out that) “football” does have an indisputable advantage over ice hockey in one key area: soccer players are far more handsome than hockey players—in some cases, astonishingly so.  When France tied Croatia 2-2 two weeks ago, you could have told me that the Louis Vuitton house squad was playing the Dolce and Gabbana office team, and I’d have believed you.  The next night, Italy played Sweden in the rain, which meant that players had to keep sweeping their hands through their hair (and let’s not forget that the international soccer gesture for “I can’t believe I missed” is the hands-through-the-hair, as well), and I’ll be damned if the game didn’t look like a two-hour-long Versace ad.

Ah, well, yes, ahem, I did pay attention to the outcomes of the games, even if Janet had her mind on other matters.  For those of you following the tournament in other English-speaking nations, there’s no question, England was robbed in that game against Portugal.  But then, what do you expect from a sport with such severe structural flaws?

I have to say I loved travelling laptopless.  Still, it’s good to be back.  Today I recover from jetlag, tomorrow I get back to work.  Thanks for sticking around, everyone.

Posted by Michael on 06/29 at 03:44 AM
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Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Vacation time

Later today I’m leaving the country with my family for two weeks.  Take care of the place for me, will you?  When I get back I want to see Cheney in an orange jumper, doing the perp walk.  Oh, yes, and don’t forget to water the plants, especially the ficus in the den-- it’s always needed a little extra attention.

I’m not bringing the laptop, so this is pretty much it for the blog for the rest of June.  As always, many thanks to the 1500 (!!) of you who’ve been stopping by every day for the past couple of weeks, and to everyone who’s been reading this thing since it opened for business back in January.  Hope you like the redesign and the expanded expanded blogroll (thanks, Kurt!)-- I was getting tired of the standard-issue professor-with-books photo, and besides, that really is Henri Richard over there.  I’ll try to come up with some more recent photo (of me, not him) when I get back.  And, of course, I hope some of you will still come by to visit this place in July.

OK, gotta go.  I still have to pack a bunch of these, and bring the recycling out front.  Thanks again for your visits and your comments, and see you soon.

Posted by Michael on 06/15 at 03:50 AM
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For a vital center

I read a story in the newspaper this Sunday and felt that I had to comment on it because it was so important.  It was called “A Nation Divided? Who Says?” and it was written by John Tierney.  Here’s how it begins.

WASHINGTON� If you’ve been following the election coverage, you know how angry you’re supposed to be. This has been called the Armageddon election in the 50-50 nation, a civil war between the Blue and the Red states, a clash between churchgoers and secularists hopelessly separated by a values chasm and a culture gap.

That’s true.  I’ve heard all these things, and they just confuse me.  That’s not the world I live in!

But do Americans really despise the beliefs of half of their fellow citizens? Have Americans really changed so much since the day when a candidate with Ronald Reagan’s soothing message could carry 49 of 50 states?

Golly, I hope not.  I remember 1984� we were happy then.  We were unified.  Everything was pretty calm and soothing. There weren’t any unpleasant arguments that I can recall.

To some scholars, the answer is no. They say that our basic differences have actually been shrinking over the past two decades, and that the polarized nation is largely a myth created by people inside the Beltway talking to each another or, more precisely, shouting at each other.

These academics say it’s not the voters but the political elite of both parties who have become more narrow-minded and polarized. As Norma Desmond might put it: We’re still big. It’s the parties that got smaller.

Now this is where I really began to think-- it’s so true.  It was one thing when the GOP was taken over by guys like Tom DeLay, and the White House was run by one of the most far-right crackpots ever to stagger out of Wyoming.  But then when the Democrats started shouting too, I think it turned everybody off.  Take that Waxman fellow� what’s he on about?  He sounds to me like he’s trying to start a fight.  And the way Ted Kennedy was arguing with John Ashcroft the other day, I just had to turn the sound down.

Most voters are still centrists willing to consider a candidate from either party, but they rarely get the chance: It’s become difficult for a centrist to be nominated for president or to Congress or the state legislature, said Morris P. Fiorina, a political scientist at Stanford and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

“If the two presidential candidates this year were John McCain and Joe Lieberman, you’d see a lot more crossover and less polarization,” said Professor Fiorina, mentioning the moderate Republican and Democratic senators. He is the co-author, along with Samuel J. Abrams of Harvard and Jeremy C. Pope of Stanford, of the forthcoming book, “Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America.”

“The bulk of the American citizenry is somewhat in the position of the unfortunate citizens of some third-world countries who try to stay out of the cross-fire while Maoist guerrillas and right-wing death squads shoot at each other,” the book concludes. “Reports of a culture war are mostly wishful thinking and useful fund-raising strategies on the part of culture-war guerrillas, abetted by a media driven by the need to make the dull and everyday appear exciting and unprecedented.”

It’s about time somebody had the courage to say this.  The media have been fanning the flames of discontent ever since John Kerry called for the collectivization of American farms and mandatory abortions for all pregnant women.  If only Joe Lieberman had been the nominee!  But no, Democrats with their manic hate-Bush rhetoric have hitched their wagon to a guy who advocates arranged gay marriages, nationalized day care, a $12/hr minimum wage and a 100 percent inheritance tax.  It�s like living in someplace like, I don�t know, El Guataragua or Panador, with all the guerrillas and the death squads.

And then what’s all this squabbling about “torture memos”?  Republicans want torture.  Democrats want no torture.  Where in this debate is there any place for a good decent centrist who can split the difference and bring the nation together over the principle of some torture?

Alan Wolfe, a political scientist at Boston College, reached similar conclusions in his 1998 book, “One Nation, After All,” which called the culture war largely a product of intellectuals.

“Compared to earlier periods - the Civil War, the 1930’s, the 1960’s - our disagreements now are not that deep,” Professor Wolfe said last week. “Indeed, it is only because we agree so much on so many things that we can allow ourselves the luxury of thinking we are having a culture war. When one of society’s deepest divisions is over stem cells, that society is pretty unified.”

I have a friend who insists that Alan Wolfe can be counted on, in articles like this, to say the most annoying, triangulating, Liebermanesque things you can possibly imagine.  But in this case, I think Professor Wolfe is right: when 98 percent of the country supports stem-cell research, and it’s blocked by a tiny handful of fundamentalist Christians who grant nine-day embryos the moral status of living humans, that’s really quite a luxury.  We should be happy that we agree on so much, down deep.  Besides, stem cells are really very tiny things.  You can hardly see them!  We’re really quite lucky we are to live in a society that “sweats the small stuff.”

If only those Democrats weren’t such a bunch of loudmouthed extremists.  They’re just as bad as the Republicans, if you ask me.  It’s about time somebody spoke up for the rest of us. 

Posted by Michael on 06/15 at 03:30 AM
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Monday, June 14, 2004

Real work for a change

I’m finishing up a big long review essay on four books-- spent all day yesterday and half the night churning out about 4000 words.  (Thanks to Janet for the day.  Saturday, Jamie and I went swimming, played basketball, rode go-carts, and went to the laser tag arcade.) So no blogging ‘til this thing is done.  I’ll be back a bit later with a heartfelt lament about how partisan extremism among Democrats and Republicans is betraying the vital center of American life.  Really.  I read in the New York Times yesterday that “it’s become difficult for a centrist to be nominated for president or to Congress or the state legislature,” and I just think that’s wrong.

Posted by Michael on 06/14 at 03:54 AM
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Saturday, June 12, 2004

The morning after

I do hope Ronald Reagan rests in peace.  And I have great sympathy and admiration for anyone who cares for a loved one with Alzheimer’s, though I also think that George Williams has just about the right take on this.  As we reflect on Reagan’s mortality and ours, I thought it might be useful to suggest that while we in the disability community have good reason to support anyone with a degenerative, debilitating illness (and his or her caregivers), we also have an obligation to all our fellow humans.

With that, I turn you over to James W. Trent, Jr., author of the remarkable book, Inventing the Feeble Mind:  A History of Mental Retardation in the United States:

“In January 1967, Ronald W. Reagan, the newly elected California governor, ordered all state agencies to eliminate 10 percent of what he characterized as ‘fat’ from their budgets.  More specifically, he insisted that state hospitals and institutions for the retarded cut their budgets by $17 million.  This cut, Reagan insisted, would eliminate 3,700 state jobs, close fourteen state-operated outpatient clinics, and begin a process of community-based care, with communities taking greater responsibility for the guardianship of their ‘mental patients.’ Angered by reaction to his proposals, Reagan remarked that state hospitals (and prisons) constituted the ‘biggest hotel chain in the state.’

“Nine months later, Niels Erik Bank-Mikkelsen, the director of the Danish national services for mental retardation, visited the Sonoma State Hospital, a large institution for the retarded in California.  Even before Reagan’s proposed cuts had fully taken effect, Bank-Mikkelsen found conditions in the institution dreadful.  He told a reporter:  ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes.  It was worse than any institution I have seen in visits to a dozen foreign countries. . . .  In our country, we would not be allowed to treat cattle like that.’ What he had found were wards of naked adults sleeping on cement floors often in their own excrement or wandering in open dayrooms.  Not uncommon were ‘head bangers.’ Many residents were heavily medicated, existing in a pharmacological daze, a daze exacerbated by the constant shouting and screaming around them.  In its defense, the California commissioner of health and welfare insisted that the state’s treatment of the retarded was ‘the most advanced in the nation.’ Bank-Mikkelsen feared he might be right.” (256)

Now, let’s be clear about one thing:  Reagan did not create those conditions.  In fact, you could argue that under such conditions, policies of “de-institutionalization” and “community-based care” are thoroughly humane-- but then, you’d have to argue that Reagan actually provided the resources for humane de-institutionalization and community-based care, and you shouldn’t try, because you’d hurt yourself with the strain.  No, the only thing Reagan is liable for here is that brutal and quite gratuitous crack likening the state’s prisons and mental hospitals to a “hotel chain"-- and the insistence that the “fat” in the state mental health budget had to go.

That was almost 40 years ago-- but then again, it was a few years after New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s 1965 attack on the inhuman conditions of the Rome and Willowbrook State Schools.  Draw from this what lessons you will, and let’s hope we all learn to do better by those with cognitive and developmental disabilities from here on in.

Posted by Michael on 06/12 at 05:29 AM
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