(A letter to the editor concerning an article on the ten thousand grief and stress counselors that showed up in NYC following 9-11)
In 1985, my parents were among the American hostages aboard the hijacked Achille Lauro cruise ship. Following the ordeal, families gathered at Newark Airport to greet the hostages on their return.
While we waited, a Navy psychologist spoke to us about symptoms of post-trauma stress we might observe---bad dreams, sleeplessness, and so on---but assured us that lingering effects were unlikely. “No matter how horrible it was,” he said, “most people will be fine after a week or two. Psychologically, we can recover from anything. If that weren’t true, our species would never have survived.”
A few minutes later, my parents emerged, and the family rushed to embrace them. My 70-year-old father had not slept for 48 hours. A few days before, facing imminent death, a rifle barrel pointed at him, he had whispered “Goodbye” to my mother. He had been through hell, and he looked it.
Nevertheless, when our hug ended, he put his hands on my shoulders and gave me a long look. “You know,” he said, “I never thought I’d see you again. But now that I do, isn’t it time you got a haircut?”
Copyright 2004 Michael Kubacki
Friday, June 18, 2004
Thursday, May 6, 2004
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AROUND THE WORLD
- by Thomas Sowell - A Book Review
Some years ago, Thomas Sowell, an economist at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, published a book entitled “The Vision of the Anointed,” in which he examined various social movements and government programs which are never evaluated on their merits, even though there may be years of data indicating abject failure in achieving a program’s stated goals. The policy argument that takes place regarding such programs, to the extent there is such an argument, concerns only the original rationale. The actual evidence of the program’s performance, even decades later, is not relevant. It’s impolite, politically, to present such evidence, so no one does.
Affirmative action, in its various guises, is one such program. Is it a good thing, we ask, to give the disadvantaged a leg up? Yes, of course. And that is the extent of the discussion.
It is surprising, in this vacuum, that there is enough evidence to fill a book, but there is, partly because affirmative action programs have a much longer history in countries other than the United States. Most of the book is a detailed history of these programs in India, Malaysia, Nigeria and Sri Lanka, and what is startling is the extent to which affirmative action programs around the world foster the same politics, experience the same problems, and progress along the same evolutionary path. If you happen to think that Indians or Nigerians are different from us in some fundamental way, this book will disabuse you of that notion.
In fact, the “uniqueness” of the American situation, with our history of slavery, is the first myth to fall by the wayside. Everybody, it turns out, is “unique,” and this uniqueness is invariably the centerpiece of the initial push for affirmative action programs, whether it involves the Maoris in New Zealand, the untouchables in India, or blacks in the U.S.
(Discrimination against untouchables, which has existed for millennia, is among the worst against any group in any society. Although they achieved legal equality in 1947, violence against untouchables [including lynching] persists to this day. And there are rural areas in India where the wearing of shoes by untouchables remains a sensitive issue.)
These programs are also touted as “temporary” and “limited,” though there is no affirmative action program in any country that has ever come to an end, or failed to expand beyond its original parameters. In India, for example, affirmative action for untouchables applied only to university admissions (at the insistence of the untouchables themselves!), but quickly led to “affirmative grading,” which has also appeared in the United States. Invariably, once group identity is politicized, political leaders emerge, and these leaders cannot rest on past achievements. They must continually seek new concessions from the majority. In India and Sri Lanka, these escalating demands have led to riots, murder, and atrocities. Sri Lanka, a peaceful multicultural society in the 1940’s and 1950’s, has been in a state of civil war for two decades because of ethnic wars that began with affirmative action and the politicizing of ethnicity. Though the United States has escaped the horrific ethnic violence that has plagued other countries, the goals here have continually progressed, from equality to preferences to quotas to demands for reparations. And it is difficult to argue that racial harmony has been achieved in the process.
Every country in which affirmative action programs are started also experiences a “redesignation” phenomenon. In Australia, for example, there was a 42% increase in aboriginals between 1981 and 1986, a demographic impossibility. In the U.S., there were 50,000 American Indians in the 15-19 age cohort in 1960. In 1980, when these same individuals would be in the 35-39 group, there were 80,000 of them. While it is not surprising that fraud occurs in procuring of government benefits, the increase in people who benefit from these programs adds to the difficulty in reforming or ending them, or even in assessing their results, since the constituency for affirmative action is always growing.
As the constituencies expand, and as new groups are designated as worthy of preferences, programs grow in ways that could never have been anticipated at the outset, and sometimes make little sense when considering the original purpose of the programs. There is no obvious social benefit in granting preferences to black millionaires in the awarding of cable TV monopolies, for example. Similarly, there is nothing in the “the legacy of slavery” that can explain why white children should receive preferences over Chinese-American children in San Francisco’s public schools. This morphing of affirmative action into entitlement programs for the politically-active occurs everywhere.
Historically, affirmative action programs emerge a century or more after the worst subjugation, peonage or slavery has ended. The subjugated group then endures a long period of second-class citizenship and poverty. When a sufficient number of the subjugated group manage to pull themselves up into the mainstream, the group becomes worthy of political notice, and civil rights legislation of one sort or another is passed.
Once legal equality is achieved, if affirmative action programs follow, the beneficiaries are those members of the subjugated group that have already joined the mainstream. In Malaysia, for example, the richest 10% of ethnic Malays have seen their incomes increase significantly, though the mass of Malays have made no progress at all. Since the awarding of preferences under affirmative action programs is a zero-sum game, there are also victims, and these tend to be the poorest members of the “dominant” group. In India, those who have benefited are the most politically-savvy (and educated) untouchables, at the expense of the lowest echelons of the Brahman caste. In the U.S., upper-middle-class black families are the primary beneficiaries, while the poorest and least-educated whites fall further behind. The evidence suggests that affirmative action does very little to help the poorest Malays, the poorest untouchables in India, or the poorest blacks in America.
Copyright 2004 Michael Kubacki
Some years ago, Thomas Sowell, an economist at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, published a book entitled “The Vision of the Anointed,” in which he examined various social movements and government programs which are never evaluated on their merits, even though there may be years of data indicating abject failure in achieving a program’s stated goals. The policy argument that takes place regarding such programs, to the extent there is such an argument, concerns only the original rationale. The actual evidence of the program’s performance, even decades later, is not relevant. It’s impolite, politically, to present such evidence, so no one does.
Affirmative action, in its various guises, is one such program. Is it a good thing, we ask, to give the disadvantaged a leg up? Yes, of course. And that is the extent of the discussion.
It is surprising, in this vacuum, that there is enough evidence to fill a book, but there is, partly because affirmative action programs have a much longer history in countries other than the United States. Most of the book is a detailed history of these programs in India, Malaysia, Nigeria and Sri Lanka, and what is startling is the extent to which affirmative action programs around the world foster the same politics, experience the same problems, and progress along the same evolutionary path. If you happen to think that Indians or Nigerians are different from us in some fundamental way, this book will disabuse you of that notion.
In fact, the “uniqueness” of the American situation, with our history of slavery, is the first myth to fall by the wayside. Everybody, it turns out, is “unique,” and this uniqueness is invariably the centerpiece of the initial push for affirmative action programs, whether it involves the Maoris in New Zealand, the untouchables in India, or blacks in the U.S.
(Discrimination against untouchables, which has existed for millennia, is among the worst against any group in any society. Although they achieved legal equality in 1947, violence against untouchables [including lynching] persists to this day. And there are rural areas in India where the wearing of shoes by untouchables remains a sensitive issue.)
These programs are also touted as “temporary” and “limited,” though there is no affirmative action program in any country that has ever come to an end, or failed to expand beyond its original parameters. In India, for example, affirmative action for untouchables applied only to university admissions (at the insistence of the untouchables themselves!), but quickly led to “affirmative grading,” which has also appeared in the United States. Invariably, once group identity is politicized, political leaders emerge, and these leaders cannot rest on past achievements. They must continually seek new concessions from the majority. In India and Sri Lanka, these escalating demands have led to riots, murder, and atrocities. Sri Lanka, a peaceful multicultural society in the 1940’s and 1950’s, has been in a state of civil war for two decades because of ethnic wars that began with affirmative action and the politicizing of ethnicity. Though the United States has escaped the horrific ethnic violence that has plagued other countries, the goals here have continually progressed, from equality to preferences to quotas to demands for reparations. And it is difficult to argue that racial harmony has been achieved in the process.
Every country in which affirmative action programs are started also experiences a “redesignation” phenomenon. In Australia, for example, there was a 42% increase in aboriginals between 1981 and 1986, a demographic impossibility. In the U.S., there were 50,000 American Indians in the 15-19 age cohort in 1960. In 1980, when these same individuals would be in the 35-39 group, there were 80,000 of them. While it is not surprising that fraud occurs in procuring of government benefits, the increase in people who benefit from these programs adds to the difficulty in reforming or ending them, or even in assessing their results, since the constituency for affirmative action is always growing.
As the constituencies expand, and as new groups are designated as worthy of preferences, programs grow in ways that could never have been anticipated at the outset, and sometimes make little sense when considering the original purpose of the programs. There is no obvious social benefit in granting preferences to black millionaires in the awarding of cable TV monopolies, for example. Similarly, there is nothing in the “the legacy of slavery” that can explain why white children should receive preferences over Chinese-American children in San Francisco’s public schools. This morphing of affirmative action into entitlement programs for the politically-active occurs everywhere.
Historically, affirmative action programs emerge a century or more after the worst subjugation, peonage or slavery has ended. The subjugated group then endures a long period of second-class citizenship and poverty. When a sufficient number of the subjugated group manage to pull themselves up into the mainstream, the group becomes worthy of political notice, and civil rights legislation of one sort or another is passed.
Once legal equality is achieved, if affirmative action programs follow, the beneficiaries are those members of the subjugated group that have already joined the mainstream. In Malaysia, for example, the richest 10% of ethnic Malays have seen their incomes increase significantly, though the mass of Malays have made no progress at all. Since the awarding of preferences under affirmative action programs is a zero-sum game, there are also victims, and these tend to be the poorest members of the “dominant” group. In India, those who have benefited are the most politically-savvy (and educated) untouchables, at the expense of the lowest echelons of the Brahman caste. In the U.S., upper-middle-class black families are the primary beneficiaries, while the poorest and least-educated whites fall further behind. The evidence suggests that affirmative action does very little to help the poorest Malays, the poorest untouchables in India, or the poorest blacks in America.
Copyright 2004 Michael Kubacki
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
DICK MEDICINE
Did you know Rafael Palmiero has hit 528 home runs? I didn't. I follow baseball, and I know he's a star for the (invisible) Texas Rangers, but 528 homeruns? Who knew? I mean, that's a hall of fame number. More than that, it's a first-ballot-walk-right-in number. It's a don't-even-bother-to-show-us-your-driver's-license number. It's a Mike Schmidt number.
And yet---well---I don't know what you thought the first time you saw Rafael Palmiero in a Viagra commercial, but personally, it gave me the creeps. And the 528 dingers somehow make it worse. I mean, here's a guy in his 30's, a pro athlete, a home run hitter, good-looking, a guy who has 22-year-old porn-star-wannabes waiting for him outside the locker room every night, and HE can't get it up? What the hell is wrong with him?
Speaking as a guy, on behalf of all guys everywhere, Rafael Palmiero is wrong for the product. I understand what the advertising people were thinking, but they were wrong, because most guys are not going to identify with him. I'm sure the advertising people thought the message was: "Viagra, man---if Palmiero can take that stuff, it must be cool" or "Take Viagra and you'll knock them out of the park too." No. Un-unh. Nothing like that. Speaking for all men, everywhere, here is what guys think when they see Rafael Palmiero pitching Viagra. They think: "Poor bastard. His dick is broke."
The typical customer for dick medicine, the 60-year-old guy who can't throw the football through the swinging tire like he used to, does not think his dick is broke. No guy ever thinks his dick is broke, even if the organ in question is sitting in a jar of formadehyde in a medical museum at Harvard. There's always a rational explanation for limpness that has nothing to do with a broken dick. ("So I'm sitting there, and there's 3 seconds left in overtime, and the Lakers are down one, and Shaq is at the line shooting two, and the bitch puts her hand on my thigh! And this is AFTER she burned the goddamn macaroni and cheese!!")
Needless to say, since no guy ever thinks his dick is broke, the last thing he wants to see is a commercial telling him it is. That's just not what he thinks. He thinks: "I am every inch the tough SOB I was forty years ago, but now I'm tired at the end of the day. And OK, I'm getting older. Everything still works, but I need a boost sometimes, like vitamins or something. I'm not some 30-year-old pretty boy who can't get it up; I'm more like---Ditka!"
I haven't seen Rafael Palmiero selling Viagra since the debut of the Ditka/Levitra spots, and I don't think that's an accident. Next to Ditka, Palmiero will always look like PeeWee Herman, no matter how many home runs he hits. I mean, if you want to sell dick medicine to the masses, who's better than Ditka? Clint Eastwood maybe? Well, OK, but he doesn't do commercials. Billy Dee Williams? Maybe, but he would never do a commercial suggesting he is actually 67 years old rather than, say, 25.
Most guys are not pretty, and neither is Ditka. But with his fireplug physique, and his psychopathic twinkle, he's still a tough guy after all these years. The hair still looks like he cut it himself with an Insinkerator, and is there any doubt that, in a pile of large, biting, kicking men with bad attitudes, he would still somehow emerge with the football? And yeah, he takes Levitra. YOU GOT A FREAKIN PROBLEM WITH THAT?? This is an attitude that the wimpiest, flabbiest, cubicle-bound, chicken-legged, bald, impotent 60-year-old guy can admire because he too is certain (certain!) that with the game on the line, he would also emerge with the football. I know I would.
The latest entrant in the sweepstakes, Cialis, seems to understand they have already lost the celebrity endorsement battle, because they don't even use a celebrity in their commercials. Instead, they use "life-style" scenes of loving elderly folks driving sports cars and looking out at the ocean together. It's possible to watch these spots and not even know Cialis is a dick medicine. OK, you think---happy geezers---now what the hell does this thing cure? Liver spots? Shingles? Cat-hair allergies?
Again, this message is wrong. Even if you can figure out what Cialis is for, it is not something guys are going to rush out and buy. Geezer romance? Is this something guys long for? Even old guys? I don't think so. Again speaking for all guys everywhere, I have nothing against romance. But let's face it, romance has NOTHING to do with boners. To the extent there is any link between the two in the public imagination (i.e., what chicks think), it's the product of a decades-long propaganda campaign financed by the Hallmark Card Company. Halliburton probably had their hand in there somewhere too. Geezer romance? Spare me. Bob Dole, in the darkest hour of his erectile despair, did not dream of holding hands with his elderly wife in a hot tub. Trust me on this.
Which brings us back to Ditka.
The problem presented by these products, for advertisers, is that they have to tell us what the product does (or at least strongly imply it), without grossing us out. Viagra succeeds on the first count, but the image of a 528-homer guy with a broke dick is way too distressing. Cialis fails on both counts---it's hard to figure out what it does, and even if you do, the payoff (in senior muskrat love) just isn't worth the trouble.
Using Ditka, on the other hand, makes all the problems go away. At a stroke, he eliminates the gross-out issue because it is impossible for anyone who does not live in an institution to look at him and think of sex. Though I do not claim to understand women, I cannot believe that any woman, ever, looked at Mike Ditka and said to herself, "Wow. That guy is hot!" It just never happened, even at the height of his athletic career, and his fame, and his wealth.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm sure Mike has his loving, cuddly side (though, throughout his 50-year career in the public eye, no mention has ever been made of it). But the point is that when he throws a football through a swinging tire, our minds won't take it any further. The metaphor never gets extended.
I mean, who would want to? The thought of Mike Ditka climbing into the sack with some pitiful creature---well, decent people just don't think of these things, do they? There are special neurons or something in the brain that prevent that kind of thought from forming. Because we're not talking Playboy Channel here, are we? No. We're talking Animal Planet. We're talking "The Miracle of Life on the Serengeti: Large Herbivores," right? I think it's fair to say that any human being with a shred of decency would rather witness a bloody, eight-car pile-up on the Schuylkill Expressway, complete with severed heads rolling across the median strip, than spend one second visualizing Mike Ditka "making love."
Mike Ditka is the rare person who can sell dick medicine on TV without anyone ever thinking about him having sex. For a man of his singular talents, this is perhaps the most unusual.
Copyright 2004 Michael Kubacki
And yet---well---I don't know what you thought the first time you saw Rafael Palmiero in a Viagra commercial, but personally, it gave me the creeps. And the 528 dingers somehow make it worse. I mean, here's a guy in his 30's, a pro athlete, a home run hitter, good-looking, a guy who has 22-year-old porn-star-wannabes waiting for him outside the locker room every night, and HE can't get it up? What the hell is wrong with him?
Speaking as a guy, on behalf of all guys everywhere, Rafael Palmiero is wrong for the product. I understand what the advertising people were thinking, but they were wrong, because most guys are not going to identify with him. I'm sure the advertising people thought the message was: "Viagra, man---if Palmiero can take that stuff, it must be cool" or "Take Viagra and you'll knock them out of the park too." No. Un-unh. Nothing like that. Speaking for all men, everywhere, here is what guys think when they see Rafael Palmiero pitching Viagra. They think: "Poor bastard. His dick is broke."
The typical customer for dick medicine, the 60-year-old guy who can't throw the football through the swinging tire like he used to, does not think his dick is broke. No guy ever thinks his dick is broke, even if the organ in question is sitting in a jar of formadehyde in a medical museum at Harvard. There's always a rational explanation for limpness that has nothing to do with a broken dick. ("So I'm sitting there, and there's 3 seconds left in overtime, and the Lakers are down one, and Shaq is at the line shooting two, and the bitch puts her hand on my thigh! And this is AFTER she burned the goddamn macaroni and cheese!!")
Needless to say, since no guy ever thinks his dick is broke, the last thing he wants to see is a commercial telling him it is. That's just not what he thinks. He thinks: "I am every inch the tough SOB I was forty years ago, but now I'm tired at the end of the day. And OK, I'm getting older. Everything still works, but I need a boost sometimes, like vitamins or something. I'm not some 30-year-old pretty boy who can't get it up; I'm more like---Ditka!"
I haven't seen Rafael Palmiero selling Viagra since the debut of the Ditka/Levitra spots, and I don't think that's an accident. Next to Ditka, Palmiero will always look like PeeWee Herman, no matter how many home runs he hits. I mean, if you want to sell dick medicine to the masses, who's better than Ditka? Clint Eastwood maybe? Well, OK, but he doesn't do commercials. Billy Dee Williams? Maybe, but he would never do a commercial suggesting he is actually 67 years old rather than, say, 25.
Most guys are not pretty, and neither is Ditka. But with his fireplug physique, and his psychopathic twinkle, he's still a tough guy after all these years. The hair still looks like he cut it himself with an Insinkerator, and is there any doubt that, in a pile of large, biting, kicking men with bad attitudes, he would still somehow emerge with the football? And yeah, he takes Levitra. YOU GOT A FREAKIN PROBLEM WITH THAT?? This is an attitude that the wimpiest, flabbiest, cubicle-bound, chicken-legged, bald, impotent 60-year-old guy can admire because he too is certain (certain!) that with the game on the line, he would also emerge with the football. I know I would.
The latest entrant in the sweepstakes, Cialis, seems to understand they have already lost the celebrity endorsement battle, because they don't even use a celebrity in their commercials. Instead, they use "life-style" scenes of loving elderly folks driving sports cars and looking out at the ocean together. It's possible to watch these spots and not even know Cialis is a dick medicine. OK, you think---happy geezers---now what the hell does this thing cure? Liver spots? Shingles? Cat-hair allergies?
Again, this message is wrong. Even if you can figure out what Cialis is for, it is not something guys are going to rush out and buy. Geezer romance? Is this something guys long for? Even old guys? I don't think so. Again speaking for all guys everywhere, I have nothing against romance. But let's face it, romance has NOTHING to do with boners. To the extent there is any link between the two in the public imagination (i.e., what chicks think), it's the product of a decades-long propaganda campaign financed by the Hallmark Card Company. Halliburton probably had their hand in there somewhere too. Geezer romance? Spare me. Bob Dole, in the darkest hour of his erectile despair, did not dream of holding hands with his elderly wife in a hot tub. Trust me on this.
Which brings us back to Ditka.
The problem presented by these products, for advertisers, is that they have to tell us what the product does (or at least strongly imply it), without grossing us out. Viagra succeeds on the first count, but the image of a 528-homer guy with a broke dick is way too distressing. Cialis fails on both counts---it's hard to figure out what it does, and even if you do, the payoff (in senior muskrat love) just isn't worth the trouble.
Using Ditka, on the other hand, makes all the problems go away. At a stroke, he eliminates the gross-out issue because it is impossible for anyone who does not live in an institution to look at him and think of sex. Though I do not claim to understand women, I cannot believe that any woman, ever, looked at Mike Ditka and said to herself, "Wow. That guy is hot!" It just never happened, even at the height of his athletic career, and his fame, and his wealth.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm sure Mike has his loving, cuddly side (though, throughout his 50-year career in the public eye, no mention has ever been made of it). But the point is that when he throws a football through a swinging tire, our minds won't take it any further. The metaphor never gets extended.
I mean, who would want to? The thought of Mike Ditka climbing into the sack with some pitiful creature---well, decent people just don't think of these things, do they? There are special neurons or something in the brain that prevent that kind of thought from forming. Because we're not talking Playboy Channel here, are we? No. We're talking Animal Planet. We're talking "The Miracle of Life on the Serengeti: Large Herbivores," right? I think it's fair to say that any human being with a shred of decency would rather witness a bloody, eight-car pile-up on the Schuylkill Expressway, complete with severed heads rolling across the median strip, than spend one second visualizing Mike Ditka "making love."
Mike Ditka is the rare person who can sell dick medicine on TV without anyone ever thinking about him having sex. For a man of his singular talents, this is perhaps the most unusual.
Copyright 2004 Michael Kubacki
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
THE TRAVELER
I am occasionally asked why we named our son Tex.
In the hallway of my sister’s house hangs a formal portrait (circa 1900) of my mother’s great-great granduncle, Artur Maciejewski. This is his story.
Artur Maciejewski was born on a farm outside of Gdansk, Poland in 1830, the first of eight children conceived by Sofia and Federik Maciejewski.
From his earliest years, Artur’s personality was characterized by a wanderlust verging on madness. At the age of fourteen months, shortly after he had learned to walk, Artur was discovered in a rainstorm, alone and half-drowned, in a drainage ditch some eighteen kilometers from his home. The farmer who found him, a dour yet loving man named Andrzej Movacek, with fourteen children of his own, rescued Artur and nurtured him back to life, searched vainly for the boy’s parents, and ultimately decided to raise him as his own.
Seven years later, Artur’s mother was selling pierogies at a fair in the region when a boy approached her table. Sofia, a mother’s love suffusing every fiber of her being, recognized him instantly, and followed him as he retreated, pierogies in hand, from her table.
At last, when Artur encountered a man who spoke to him in a way suggesting a parental relationship, Sofia pounced. Introducing herself, she told her tale and demanded the particulars of the lad’s provenance. Andrzej, in a trembling voice, his heart breaking, related the events of the stormy night seven years prior.
A discussion ensued and both families gathered, as did a number of townspeople. As darkness fell, Father Jok Doriecki, the village priest, wandered by and was recruited as arbitrator. Prayers were said. Vendors gathered, hawking “Death By Potato,” the local vodka.
Sofia spoke, as did Andrzej and each of his children. At last, Fr. Doriecki, swaying a bit and fueled by the spirit, pronounced his verdict in a single sentence still celebrated by every student of Polish jurisprudence.
“A mother is a mother,” he declared.
And there was silence. Many fell to their knees, dumbstruck at the simple wisdom of this parish priest, their eyes raised heavenward where, as if by providence, a shooting star flashed, fell, and disappeared into the darkness. Thus was the case decided. Artur returned home that night with Sofia and Federik.
The next morning, as dawn broke, Sofia arose and went to gaze upon her sleeping son. He was gone, of course, already halfway to the seaport where he would sign on as a cabin boy aboard a tramp freighter that would ultimately deposit the young man, ten years old, at the foot of Manhattan Island. The year was 1840, and Artur Maciejewski was now an American.
Artur spoke Polish and the patois of a hundred nations, yet not a word of English. But in a new country full of immigrants, for a boy already accustomed to earning his supper through the sweat of his brow, New York was a dream come true. For him, there was always work, always food, and always adventure. He hauled fish, shined shoes, and sold coffins. For several years, he worked as cook and laundryman for a bawdyhouse on Wall Street. It was there he learned to read and write English, with the King James Bible as his textbook.
But not even the Big Apple could keep Artur in its thrall for long. At sixteen, with twelve dollars in his pocket and new shoes on his feet, he set out for a place he had heard about only in the stories of drunken men at the cathouse bar. It was a land with a big sky and vast deserts and grasslands a thousand miles across, a wild place where riches were waiting for any man with a strong back, a brain in his head and a gun on his hip. He didn’t know exactly where it was, but he knew it was called Texas, and he knew he could not rest until he had seen it. It would take him eleven years to get there.
He worked the farms and orchards of southern Ohio, and tarried a bit. There was a girl named Polly, a girl with wide hips and apple cheeks and a ready smile, the only child of a prosperous widower with a big spread. He liked the farmer and he liked Polly, but she was not Texas, and when Spring arrived, he was gone again, through the hills and hollows of Kentucky to the Mississippi River, and St. Louis, Missouri.
There was always work at the docks for a man who wanted it, and that is where he went. His experience at sea got him a job on a paddle-wheeler as a laborer, then as a seaman, then as a faro dealer, then as manager of the bar and card-room. At age 22, Artur was wearing tailored suits and had acquired a taste for expensive cigars. He was a gentleman of sorts, a man of some means, and he was known in every port along the river.
On June 10, 1857, Artur was cutting into a steak at his favorite restaurant in New Orleans when his attention was drawn to an altercation at a table across the restaurant. An elderly gentleman was being accosted by two rough-looking men standing over him and shouting. The source of their pique was unclear, but as the their language grew foul and threatening, Artur rose and strode purposefully across the room. Grasping a shoulder, he spun one of the men around and flattened him with a right hand to the jaw. The other turned and swung wildly at Artur, who countered with a solid left. As waiters dragged the two assailants to the street, the elderly man spoke to Artur.
“Young man, my name is Sam Houston, and if you return with me to Texas, you will never regret it.”
“I am dining with friends, sir,” Artur replied. “May I finish my supper before we leave?”
And thus did Artur come to serve Sam Houston as factotum, bodyguard and friend at Houston’s home in Huntsville. Two years later, when Houston was elected Governor, the pair moved to Austin, where Artur quickly became “a good man to know” if you wanted the governor’s ear. Houston was forced to resign in 1861 over his staunch opposition to secession, and the men returned to Huntsville, where Artur attended the old man until his death in 1863.
Still a young man, Artur (now known as Tex) was well-situated financially and known throughout the state. Some of Sam Houston’s cronies wanted to launch him into Texas politics. Others came forward with various business opportunities.
But such a life of sedentary privilege was not for Tex. Instead, he took a low-paying, dangerous job with a group of men he respected above all others. Tex Maciejewski became a Texas Ranger. For the next 25 years, Tex would see every inch of the land he had come to love, bringing law to the lawless, and keeping the peace for the innocent.
In 1888, after three dusty weeks on the road, Tex returned to his headquarters to find a letter waiting for him, addressed simply to “Artur Maciejewski, Texas.” Sofia had found him again. Now in her late 70’s, she had immigrated to America with two of her sons and was living in Philadelphia.
Three weeks later, Tex knocked at the door of a nondescript tenement in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia, and was reunited with his mother, with whom he would live for the rest of her life.
Tex himself became a popular figure in the taprooms and clubhouses of Port Richmond, and his stories of cowboys and Indians, outlaws and range wars, all rendered in fluent Polish with a Texas drawl, captivated both young and old for years.
Toward the end of his days, he was once asked if he had any regrets in his long and colorful life. “Well,” he said, “I never married, never had a son. Ha! Maybe somebody will name a kid after me.”
Tex died quietly in 1907. His services were attended by five Texas Rangers who stood at attention throughout the memorial, then returned to Texas with his ashes, which were scattered along the Rio Grande. Among the Polish families in Port Richmond, and now among their descendants, the name “Tex” endures as a popular name for a first-born son.
THE TRAVELER
I am occasionally asked why we named our son Tex.
In the hallway of my sister’s house hangs a formal portrait (circa 1900) of my mother’s great-great granduncle, Artur Maciejewski. This is his story.
Artur Maciejewski was born on a farm outside of Gdansk, Poland in 1830, the first of eight children conceived by Sofia and Federik Maciejewski.
From his earliest years, Artur’s personality was characterized by a wanderlust verging on madness. At the age of fourteen months, shortly after he had learned to walk, Artur was discovered in a rainstorm, alone and half-drowned, in a drainage ditch some eighteen kilometers from his home. The farmer who found him, a dour yet loving man named Andrzej Movacek, with fourteen children of his own, rescued Artur and nurtured him back to life, searched vainly for the boy’s parents, and ultimately decided to raise him as his own.
Seven years later, Artur’s mother was selling pierogies at a fair in the region when a boy approached her table. Sofia, a mother’s love suffusing every fiber of her being, recognized him instantly, and followed him as he retreated, pierogies in hand, from her table.
At last, when Artur encountered a man who spoke to him in a way suggesting a parental relationship, Sofia pounced. Introducing herself, she told her tale and demanded the particulars of the lad’s provenance. Andrzej, in a trembling voice, his heart breaking, related the events of the stormy night seven years prior.
A discussion ensued and both families gathered, as did a number of townspeople. As darkness fell, Father Jok Doriecki, the village priest, wandered by and was recruited as arbitrator. Prayers were said. Vendors gathered, hawking “Death By Potato,” the local vodka.
Sofia spoke, as did Andrzej and each of his children. At last, Fr. Doriecki, swaying a bit and fueled by the spirit, pronounced his verdict in a single sentence still celebrated by every student of Polish jurisprudence.
“A mother is a mother,” he declared.
And there was silence. Many fell to their knees, dumbstruck at the simple wisdom of this parish priest, their eyes raised heavenward where, as if by providence, a shooting star flashed, fell, and disappeared into the darkness. Thus was the case decided. Artur returned home that night with Sofia and Federik.
The next morning, as dawn broke, Sofia arose and went to gaze upon her sleeping son. He was gone, of course, already halfway to the seaport where he would sign on as a cabin boy aboard a tramp freighter that would ultimately deposit the young man, ten years old, at the foot of Manhattan Island. The year was 1840, and Artur Maciejewski was now an American.
Artur spoke Polish and the patois of a hundred nations, yet not a word of English. But in a new country full of immigrants, for a boy already accustomed to earning his supper through the sweat of his brow, New York was a dream come true. For him, there was always work, always food, and always adventure. He hauled fish, shined shoes, and sold coffins. For several years, he worked as cook and laundryman for a bawdyhouse on Wall Street. It was there he learned to read and write English, with the King James Bible as his textbook.
But not even the Big Apple could keep Artur in its thrall for long. At sixteen, with twelve dollars in his pocket and new shoes on his feet, he set out for a place he had heard about only in the stories of drunken men at the cathouse bar. It was a land with a big sky and vast deserts and grasslands a thousand miles across, a wild place where riches were waiting for any man with a strong back, a brain in his head and a gun on his hip. He didn’t know exactly where it was, but he knew it was called Texas, and he knew he could not rest until he had seen it. It would take him eleven years to get there.
He worked the farms and orchards of southern Ohio, and tarried a bit. There was a girl named Polly, a girl with wide hips and apple cheeks and a ready smile, the only child of a prosperous widower with a big spread. He liked the farmer and he liked Polly, but she was not Texas, and when Spring arrived, he was gone again, through the hills and hollows of Kentucky to the Mississippi River, and St. Louis, Missouri.
There was always work at the docks for a man who wanted it, and that is where he went. His experience at sea got him a job on a paddle-wheeler as a laborer, then as a seaman, then as a faro dealer, then as manager of the bar and card-room. At age 22, Artur was wearing tailored suits and had acquired a taste for expensive cigars. He was a gentleman of sorts, a man of some means, and he was known in every port along the river.
On June 10, 1857, Artur was cutting into a steak at his favorite restaurant in New Orleans when his attention was drawn to an altercation at a table across the restaurant. An elderly gentleman was being accosted by two rough-looking men standing over him and shouting. The source of their pique was unclear, but as the their language grew foul and threatening, Artur rose and strode purposefully across the room. Grasping a shoulder, he spun one of the men around and flattened him with a right hand to the jaw. The other turned and swung wildly at Artur, who countered with a solid left. As waiters dragged the two assailants to the street, the elderly man spoke to Artur.
“Young man, my name is Sam Houston, and if you return with me to Texas, you will never regret it.”
“I am dining with friends, sir,” Artur replied. “May I finish my supper before we leave?”
And thus did Artur come to serve Sam Houston as factotum, bodyguard and friend at Houston’s home in Huntsville. Two years later, when Houston was elected Governor, the pair moved to Austin, where Artur quickly became “a good man to know” if you wanted the governor’s ear. Houston was forced to resign in 1861 over his staunch opposition to secession, and the men returned to Huntsville, where Artur attended the old man until his death in 1863.
Still a young man, Artur (now known as Tex) was well-situated financially and known throughout the state. Some of Sam Houston’s cronies wanted to launch him into Texas politics. Others came forward with various business opportunities.
But such a life of sedentary privilege was not for Tex. Instead, he took a low-paying, dangerous job with a group of men he respected above all others. Tex Maciejewski became a Texas Ranger. For the next 25 years, Tex would see every inch of the land he had come to love, bringing law to the lawless, and keeping the peace for the innocent.
In 1888, after three dusty weeks on the road, Tex returned to his headquarters to find a letter waiting for him, addressed simply to “Artur Maciejewski, Texas.” Sofia had found him again. Now in her late 70’s, she had immigrated to America with two of her sons and was living in Philadelphia.
Three weeks later, Tex knocked at the door of a nondescript tenement in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia, and was reunited with his mother, with whom he would live for the rest of her life.
Tex himself became a popular figure in the taprooms and clubhouses of Port Richmond, and his stories of cowboys and Indians, outlaws and range wars, all rendered in fluent Polish with a Texas drawl, captivated both young and old for years.
Toward the end of his days, he was once asked if he had any regrets in his long and colorful life. “Well,” he said, “I never married, never had a son. Ha! Maybe somebody will name a kid after me.”
Tex died quietly in 1907. His services were attended by five Texas Rangers who stood at attention throughout the memorial, then returned to Texas with his ashes, which were scattered along the Rio Grande. Among the Polish families in Port Richmond, and now among their descendants, the name “Tex” endures as a popular name for a first-born son.
Copyright 2004 Michael Kubacki
In the hallway of my sister’s house hangs a formal portrait (circa 1900) of my mother’s great-great granduncle, Artur Maciejewski. This is his story.
Artur Maciejewski was born on a farm outside of Gdansk, Poland in 1830, the first of eight children conceived by Sofia and Federik Maciejewski.
From his earliest years, Artur’s personality was characterized by a wanderlust verging on madness. At the age of fourteen months, shortly after he had learned to walk, Artur was discovered in a rainstorm, alone and half-drowned, in a drainage ditch some eighteen kilometers from his home. The farmer who found him, a dour yet loving man named Andrzej Movacek, with fourteen children of his own, rescued Artur and nurtured him back to life, searched vainly for the boy’s parents, and ultimately decided to raise him as his own.
Seven years later, Artur’s mother was selling pierogies at a fair in the region when a boy approached her table. Sofia, a mother’s love suffusing every fiber of her being, recognized him instantly, and followed him as he retreated, pierogies in hand, from her table.
At last, when Artur encountered a man who spoke to him in a way suggesting a parental relationship, Sofia pounced. Introducing herself, she told her tale and demanded the particulars of the lad’s provenance. Andrzej, in a trembling voice, his heart breaking, related the events of the stormy night seven years prior.
A discussion ensued and both families gathered, as did a number of townspeople. As darkness fell, Father Jok Doriecki, the village priest, wandered by and was recruited as arbitrator. Prayers were said. Vendors gathered, hawking “Death By Potato,” the local vodka.
Sofia spoke, as did Andrzej and each of his children. At last, Fr. Doriecki, swaying a bit and fueled by the spirit, pronounced his verdict in a single sentence still celebrated by every student of Polish jurisprudence.
“A mother is a mother,” he declared.
And there was silence. Many fell to their knees, dumbstruck at the simple wisdom of this parish priest, their eyes raised heavenward where, as if by providence, a shooting star flashed, fell, and disappeared into the darkness. Thus was the case decided. Artur returned home that night with Sofia and Federik.
The next morning, as dawn broke, Sofia arose and went to gaze upon her sleeping son. He was gone, of course, already halfway to the seaport where he would sign on as a cabin boy aboard a tramp freighter that would ultimately deposit the young man, ten years old, at the foot of Manhattan Island. The year was 1840, and Artur Maciejewski was now an American.
Artur spoke Polish and the patois of a hundred nations, yet not a word of English. But in a new country full of immigrants, for a boy already accustomed to earning his supper through the sweat of his brow, New York was a dream come true. For him, there was always work, always food, and always adventure. He hauled fish, shined shoes, and sold coffins. For several years, he worked as cook and laundryman for a bawdyhouse on Wall Street. It was there he learned to read and write English, with the King James Bible as his textbook.
But not even the Big Apple could keep Artur in its thrall for long. At sixteen, with twelve dollars in his pocket and new shoes on his feet, he set out for a place he had heard about only in the stories of drunken men at the cathouse bar. It was a land with a big sky and vast deserts and grasslands a thousand miles across, a wild place where riches were waiting for any man with a strong back, a brain in his head and a gun on his hip. He didn’t know exactly where it was, but he knew it was called Texas, and he knew he could not rest until he had seen it. It would take him eleven years to get there.
He worked the farms and orchards of southern Ohio, and tarried a bit. There was a girl named Polly, a girl with wide hips and apple cheeks and a ready smile, the only child of a prosperous widower with a big spread. He liked the farmer and he liked Polly, but she was not Texas, and when Spring arrived, he was gone again, through the hills and hollows of Kentucky to the Mississippi River, and St. Louis, Missouri.
There was always work at the docks for a man who wanted it, and that is where he went. His experience at sea got him a job on a paddle-wheeler as a laborer, then as a seaman, then as a faro dealer, then as manager of the bar and card-room. At age 22, Artur was wearing tailored suits and had acquired a taste for expensive cigars. He was a gentleman of sorts, a man of some means, and he was known in every port along the river.
On June 10, 1857, Artur was cutting into a steak at his favorite restaurant in New Orleans when his attention was drawn to an altercation at a table across the restaurant. An elderly gentleman was being accosted by two rough-looking men standing over him and shouting. The source of their pique was unclear, but as the their language grew foul and threatening, Artur rose and strode purposefully across the room. Grasping a shoulder, he spun one of the men around and flattened him with a right hand to the jaw. The other turned and swung wildly at Artur, who countered with a solid left. As waiters dragged the two assailants to the street, the elderly man spoke to Artur.
“Young man, my name is Sam Houston, and if you return with me to Texas, you will never regret it.”
“I am dining with friends, sir,” Artur replied. “May I finish my supper before we leave?”
And thus did Artur come to serve Sam Houston as factotum, bodyguard and friend at Houston’s home in Huntsville. Two years later, when Houston was elected Governor, the pair moved to Austin, where Artur quickly became “a good man to know” if you wanted the governor’s ear. Houston was forced to resign in 1861 over his staunch opposition to secession, and the men returned to Huntsville, where Artur attended the old man until his death in 1863.
Still a young man, Artur (now known as Tex) was well-situated financially and known throughout the state. Some of Sam Houston’s cronies wanted to launch him into Texas politics. Others came forward with various business opportunities.
But such a life of sedentary privilege was not for Tex. Instead, he took a low-paying, dangerous job with a group of men he respected above all others. Tex Maciejewski became a Texas Ranger. For the next 25 years, Tex would see every inch of the land he had come to love, bringing law to the lawless, and keeping the peace for the innocent.
In 1888, after three dusty weeks on the road, Tex returned to his headquarters to find a letter waiting for him, addressed simply to “Artur Maciejewski, Texas.” Sofia had found him again. Now in her late 70’s, she had immigrated to America with two of her sons and was living in Philadelphia.
Three weeks later, Tex knocked at the door of a nondescript tenement in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia, and was reunited with his mother, with whom he would live for the rest of her life.
Tex himself became a popular figure in the taprooms and clubhouses of Port Richmond, and his stories of cowboys and Indians, outlaws and range wars, all rendered in fluent Polish with a Texas drawl, captivated both young and old for years.
Toward the end of his days, he was once asked if he had any regrets in his long and colorful life. “Well,” he said, “I never married, never had a son. Ha! Maybe somebody will name a kid after me.”
Tex died quietly in 1907. His services were attended by five Texas Rangers who stood at attention throughout the memorial, then returned to Texas with his ashes, which were scattered along the Rio Grande. Among the Polish families in Port Richmond, and now among their descendants, the name “Tex” endures as a popular name for a first-born son.
THE TRAVELER
I am occasionally asked why we named our son Tex.
In the hallway of my sister’s house hangs a formal portrait (circa 1900) of my mother’s great-great granduncle, Artur Maciejewski. This is his story.
Artur Maciejewski was born on a farm outside of Gdansk, Poland in 1830, the first of eight children conceived by Sofia and Federik Maciejewski.
From his earliest years, Artur’s personality was characterized by a wanderlust verging on madness. At the age of fourteen months, shortly after he had learned to walk, Artur was discovered in a rainstorm, alone and half-drowned, in a drainage ditch some eighteen kilometers from his home. The farmer who found him, a dour yet loving man named Andrzej Movacek, with fourteen children of his own, rescued Artur and nurtured him back to life, searched vainly for the boy’s parents, and ultimately decided to raise him as his own.
Seven years later, Artur’s mother was selling pierogies at a fair in the region when a boy approached her table. Sofia, a mother’s love suffusing every fiber of her being, recognized him instantly, and followed him as he retreated, pierogies in hand, from her table.
At last, when Artur encountered a man who spoke to him in a way suggesting a parental relationship, Sofia pounced. Introducing herself, she told her tale and demanded the particulars of the lad’s provenance. Andrzej, in a trembling voice, his heart breaking, related the events of the stormy night seven years prior.
A discussion ensued and both families gathered, as did a number of townspeople. As darkness fell, Father Jok Doriecki, the village priest, wandered by and was recruited as arbitrator. Prayers were said. Vendors gathered, hawking “Death By Potato,” the local vodka.
Sofia spoke, as did Andrzej and each of his children. At last, Fr. Doriecki, swaying a bit and fueled by the spirit, pronounced his verdict in a single sentence still celebrated by every student of Polish jurisprudence.
“A mother is a mother,” he declared.
And there was silence. Many fell to their knees, dumbstruck at the simple wisdom of this parish priest, their eyes raised heavenward where, as if by providence, a shooting star flashed, fell, and disappeared into the darkness. Thus was the case decided. Artur returned home that night with Sofia and Federik.
The next morning, as dawn broke, Sofia arose and went to gaze upon her sleeping son. He was gone, of course, already halfway to the seaport where he would sign on as a cabin boy aboard a tramp freighter that would ultimately deposit the young man, ten years old, at the foot of Manhattan Island. The year was 1840, and Artur Maciejewski was now an American.
Artur spoke Polish and the patois of a hundred nations, yet not a word of English. But in a new country full of immigrants, for a boy already accustomed to earning his supper through the sweat of his brow, New York was a dream come true. For him, there was always work, always food, and always adventure. He hauled fish, shined shoes, and sold coffins. For several years, he worked as cook and laundryman for a bawdyhouse on Wall Street. It was there he learned to read and write English, with the King James Bible as his textbook.
But not even the Big Apple could keep Artur in its thrall for long. At sixteen, with twelve dollars in his pocket and new shoes on his feet, he set out for a place he had heard about only in the stories of drunken men at the cathouse bar. It was a land with a big sky and vast deserts and grasslands a thousand miles across, a wild place where riches were waiting for any man with a strong back, a brain in his head and a gun on his hip. He didn’t know exactly where it was, but he knew it was called Texas, and he knew he could not rest until he had seen it. It would take him eleven years to get there.
He worked the farms and orchards of southern Ohio, and tarried a bit. There was a girl named Polly, a girl with wide hips and apple cheeks and a ready smile, the only child of a prosperous widower with a big spread. He liked the farmer and he liked Polly, but she was not Texas, and when Spring arrived, he was gone again, through the hills and hollows of Kentucky to the Mississippi River, and St. Louis, Missouri.
There was always work at the docks for a man who wanted it, and that is where he went. His experience at sea got him a job on a paddle-wheeler as a laborer, then as a seaman, then as a faro dealer, then as manager of the bar and card-room. At age 22, Artur was wearing tailored suits and had acquired a taste for expensive cigars. He was a gentleman of sorts, a man of some means, and he was known in every port along the river.
On June 10, 1857, Artur was cutting into a steak at his favorite restaurant in New Orleans when his attention was drawn to an altercation at a table across the restaurant. An elderly gentleman was being accosted by two rough-looking men standing over him and shouting. The source of their pique was unclear, but as the their language grew foul and threatening, Artur rose and strode purposefully across the room. Grasping a shoulder, he spun one of the men around and flattened him with a right hand to the jaw. The other turned and swung wildly at Artur, who countered with a solid left. As waiters dragged the two assailants to the street, the elderly man spoke to Artur.
“Young man, my name is Sam Houston, and if you return with me to Texas, you will never regret it.”
“I am dining with friends, sir,” Artur replied. “May I finish my supper before we leave?”
And thus did Artur come to serve Sam Houston as factotum, bodyguard and friend at Houston’s home in Huntsville. Two years later, when Houston was elected Governor, the pair moved to Austin, where Artur quickly became “a good man to know” if you wanted the governor’s ear. Houston was forced to resign in 1861 over his staunch opposition to secession, and the men returned to Huntsville, where Artur attended the old man until his death in 1863.
Still a young man, Artur (now known as Tex) was well-situated financially and known throughout the state. Some of Sam Houston’s cronies wanted to launch him into Texas politics. Others came forward with various business opportunities.
But such a life of sedentary privilege was not for Tex. Instead, he took a low-paying, dangerous job with a group of men he respected above all others. Tex Maciejewski became a Texas Ranger. For the next 25 years, Tex would see every inch of the land he had come to love, bringing law to the lawless, and keeping the peace for the innocent.
In 1888, after three dusty weeks on the road, Tex returned to his headquarters to find a letter waiting for him, addressed simply to “Artur Maciejewski, Texas.” Sofia had found him again. Now in her late 70’s, she had immigrated to America with two of her sons and was living in Philadelphia.
Three weeks later, Tex knocked at the door of a nondescript tenement in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia, and was reunited with his mother, with whom he would live for the rest of her life.
Tex himself became a popular figure in the taprooms and clubhouses of Port Richmond, and his stories of cowboys and Indians, outlaws and range wars, all rendered in fluent Polish with a Texas drawl, captivated both young and old for years.
Toward the end of his days, he was once asked if he had any regrets in his long and colorful life. “Well,” he said, “I never married, never had a son. Ha! Maybe somebody will name a kid after me.”
Tex died quietly in 1907. His services were attended by five Texas Rangers who stood at attention throughout the memorial, then returned to Texas with his ashes, which were scattered along the Rio Grande. Among the Polish families in Port Richmond, and now among their descendants, the name “Tex” endures as a popular name for a first-born son.
Copyright 2004 Michael Kubacki
Wednesday, December 3, 2003
WINGED MIGRATION---A Review
I don’t think I’m giving too much away by telling you “Winged Migration,” a G-rated documentary now playing at art houses throughout the land, is about birds. And when I say it’s ”about birds,” I don’t mean this in the way one might say, for example, that “Dr. Zhivago” is “about Russia,” or that “Kingpin” is “about bowling.” No. Rather, I mean it in the way you might describe “Deep Throat” as being “about fellatio” because there is literally NOTHING ELSE IN THE ENTIRE FREAKING MOVIE!
The point I'm trying to make, or belabor, here is that there's nothing but birds in the movie. They fly (a lot), they swim, they hop on rocks, they stick worms in their baby's mouths, and then they fly some more and hop on some more rocks, and then they do some of their preening dances and crap like that. And then they fly some more. And finally, for a sort of encore, they fly. There's no characters, there's no story, there's no talking birds or singing birds or birds that comment wryly on human foibles, there's no bird that belongs to some cute kid and the bird flies off to the sheriff and scratches out a message on his desk and then the sheriff goes and rescues the kid from a well. There's nothing like that.
It's critically acclaimed. "Breathtaking!" say the critics, and "Exhilarating!" and "Astounding!" And really, you can't argue with them. I mean, the pictures are amazing. The movie follows birds migrating, and it follows these birds like the movie is flying right next to them, over oceans and under bridges. And I mean THE SAME BIRDS!!! It follows THE SAME BIRDS flying from, like, Tierra del Fuego to North Dakota, and not only does it follow them in the air, but the camera is WAITING for them when they land in some swamp or something to take a break and have a snack. And you see them do all that, and then they take off again and the camera goes with them again.
OK. Maybe sometimes it's actually different birds that just look like the same birds, and it's just edited to make you think it's the same birds, but at times it is literally the same birds because some of them are distinctive in one way or another and you can tell. It's astounding (and breathtaking! and exhilarating!) You spend most of the movie thinking, "How the hell could they possibly get that shot?" Did they have cameras attached to other little birdies? Did the flocks call ahead to some pond for reservations or something so the crew would know they were coming? This reaction will be universal---you can't see "Winged Migration" and NOT wonder how the hell they did it.
And yet...well, here's the deal. I'll lay it out for you up front. The movie is profoundly, even transcendentally, lame.
Here's the question I was asking myself when I came out of the theater: if I had that amazing footage, would it be possible for me to make a worse movie than those idiots did? And I honestly don't think I could. In fact, I'll go this far---if my cat Glob (our dimmest) could be given an opposable thumb and infused with the technical knowledge needed to edit film, lay down a music track and compose narration, and you gave him that footage, he would make a better movie than "Winged Migration."
At this point in my review, it is necessary (for reasons that will become apparent), to pause and inform you that I do not hate French people. Some people hate the French these days, but I do not. It is true they can be parochial and smug and arrogant, and they have many silly political ideas, but in my house, I still make french fries and call them french fries and I would drink a glass of French champagne if somebody gave me one and I still shave a truffle onto a plate of noodles when I'm feeling unusually sporty. I've been to France and I enjoyed myself, and I had no problems with the French people I have encountered. I mean, honestly, they don't spend ALL their spare time organizing national strikes and blowing up MacDonalds and trashing synagogues. When I was there, for the most part, it seemed the French were doing exactly what I was doing, which was sitting in cafes and drinking and smoking, or laying on a beach wondering if the chick three blankets away was about to take her top off. That's pretty much all they ever did, that I saw. That, and ride buses. They ride buses a lot.
I had to go into this, obviously, because "Winged Migration" is a French movie. It's a really, really, really French movie. Everybody who worked on it, every name in the credits, is French. All the ornithologists were French, all the cameramen were French, all the grips, all the sound people, all the assistants to everybody, all the caterers, all the porters, all the electricians---French, French, French, French, French. Even in the long list of Thank Yous, everyone who was thanked by name had a French name; non-French were thanked by title only. So they thanked "Jacques Bourbon, Third Undersecretary to the Second Assistant to the French Ambassador to Senegal" and then on the next line, they would thank "The Mayor of Boston." And the credits went on for weeks, of course, so after a while you sort of got the impression that EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD was named Guy or Monique or Pierre or Yvette or something, and if your name happened to be, for example, Michael, well then, there was almost certainly something seriously wrong with you.
But it went beyond that. (And here's the hard part, the part that's difficult to explain.) It's not that the movie was bad because it was French, it's that all the silly elements that went into making it a ridiculous movie were peculiarly French silly elements. It's as if they sat down and made a list entitled "All The Things We Could Put In The Movie To Make Others Think French People Are Dolts," and then they checked off the items one by one in the editing room. It occurred to me at one point that if the footage had been given to Monty Python, they might have made it this way as a sort of extended joke about the French.
Let's start with the music. Now remember, this is a nature movie, and nature is a struggle. The birds are flying thousands of miles to survive, and some of them get wounded and eaten by crabs, and some of them get stuck in storms, and some can't find food. I mean, migration is no picnic. So what kind of music do they stick in the middle of this majestic and beautiful life-and-death struggle? Well, one tune I remember was a kind of Moulin Rouge, smoky, barroom chanteuse-type song, sung with appropriate French languor by some chick who's obviously no better than even money to make it to the end of the song before she commits suicide. The other one that stuck in my head was a tinkly little cabaret number, sung by a languid guy this time, that played over a scene where this huge freaking walrus was about to chow down on half a dozen cute little penguins. The lyrics were in French, of course, and I couldn't understand them, so I found myself wondering what the hell this whining, sneering little twit could possibly be moaning about that might shed some light on the scene before me. Love? Betrayal? Walruses? Running out of cigarettes?
"Les Oiseaus"
I sit in my cafe without you.
Monique, you little birdie,
I am a big fat walrus.
I drink my vin rouge and think of you.
I need more Gauloises.
Your love is ice,
Like the ice I waddle across
To eat you and your penguin love
And drink more wine.
Anybody got a smoke?
---Music & Lyrics by Jean-Paul Tete-de-Merde
(translated by M. Kubacki)
No one on earth other than an extremely silly French person would score that movie with this music. I wouldn't do it, you wouldn't do it, even Glob wouldn't do it. I found myself waiting for the next bit of absurd music and stifling chuckles out of fear the blue-haired Audubon Society members in the audience (i.e., everyone) would beat me to death with their binoculars if I were to laugh out loud.
And then there was the narration, and the graphics. Now you might think that if you sat through a 98-minute movie about birds, migrating birds, a movie that contained nothing but birds, you would come out of there knowing a little something about birds, at least more than you knew when you walked in. You would be wrong about that. The only actual information they saw fit to impart to the audience were things you already knew or things you could not possibly care about.
The complete narration, for example, consisted of a French guy with a Pepe LePew accent butchering five or six English sentences, in one-sentence increments, every 18 minutes or so. Here’s an example. I'm watching a flock of geese and they're flying through a snowstorm, but they're flying, man, they're migrating, and nothing's gonna stop them, and they got snow on their heads and they're not real happy about it, and you can't help but root for the poor bastards---yeah, come on, geese, you can do it---and the guy says, "Sterms can be a beeg problem forrrr me-grrrating berrrrds." And that's it. That's all he says, until like twenty minutes later when you're watching some other birds that have just flown 300 miles over water and they finally find a patch of land where they can rest and eat some cockroaches, and Pepe returns to tell us, "Me-grrrating berrrds need food forrr theirrr journey," and then he has to go eat another plate of snails and drink a half-bottle of Bordeaux before he thinks of something else to say. Maybe it's some kind of French union thing where he gets paid overtime if he says two sentences at once and there are mandatory vacations built right into the movie.
And the guy really couldn't speak English. I mean, the titles and credits and graphics were in English, and they clearly went to some trouble to make their movie distributable in English-speaking places, and then they use Pepe for the five sentences of actual narration so you can only make out about twenty of the thirty words he says. How tough would it have been to grab some American tourist off the streets of Paris for five minutes? ("Hey, mon ami, you wanna be in the movies? Read this.")
The rest of the information was in the graphics, the silliest, dopey French element of all.
Each time they showed a new bunch of birds flying (and there were ten or twelve different species they followed), they would flash a sentence on the screen telling you how far this particular bird migrates. "The grey goose migrates 650 miles from Ethiopia to Barcelona" or "The banded grebe migrates 1250 miles from Guatemala to Wyoming." Then, with the next bunch: "The common greckle migrates 825 miles from Thailand to Western China." I'm making these up because I intentionally did not memorize the actual places and distances, suspecting (paranoia was now setting in) that when the movie ended there would be a bunch of French ornithologists in the lobby handing out papers and No. 2 pencils and giving us all a fun little quiz, or as they would call it, a "queeze," and I was goddamned if I was going to give them the satisfaction of having educated me.
There are two sorts of people in the world who consider this sort of information "knowledge." The first is six-year-old boys. If you give a six-year-old boy a book about bird migration, and he really gets interested in it, you are condemned to two weeks of bird migration conversations with that boy, all of which will follow the same general lines:
BOY: Do you know how many miles the common greckle migrates?
YOU: No. 1000 miles?
BOY: No. It's 825 miles. Do you know where the grey goose flies from and where it flies to? YOU: Not really, no.
BOY: It flies from Ethiopia and it flies 650 miles. Guess where it goes to.
YOU: Uh…Lambeau Field?
BOY: Nope. Wrong again. Barcelona. You don't know much about migrating birds, do you?
The only other people who view this sort of thing as "educational" are the French, with their tedious Encyclopedies on every possible arcane topic, and their wine appellations and chateaux rankings and Guide Michelins and nationally-televised grammar tests. For long car trips, I often take along the Larousse Gastronomique and read from it to the wife and child. "Oh, here's a good one," I'll say, "the 83 uses for lard! Or would you rather I read you the 26 distinct ways to prepare kidneys?" They think about this, debate it a bit. "No, Daddy," they decide eventually, "tell us all the ways to fatten a goose, just one more time. Please."
Viva la France!
Copyright 2003 Michael Kubacki
The point I'm trying to make, or belabor, here is that there's nothing but birds in the movie. They fly (a lot), they swim, they hop on rocks, they stick worms in their baby's mouths, and then they fly some more and hop on some more rocks, and then they do some of their preening dances and crap like that. And then they fly some more. And finally, for a sort of encore, they fly. There's no characters, there's no story, there's no talking birds or singing birds or birds that comment wryly on human foibles, there's no bird that belongs to some cute kid and the bird flies off to the sheriff and scratches out a message on his desk and then the sheriff goes and rescues the kid from a well. There's nothing like that.
It's critically acclaimed. "Breathtaking!" say the critics, and "Exhilarating!" and "Astounding!" And really, you can't argue with them. I mean, the pictures are amazing. The movie follows birds migrating, and it follows these birds like the movie is flying right next to them, over oceans and under bridges. And I mean THE SAME BIRDS!!! It follows THE SAME BIRDS flying from, like, Tierra del Fuego to North Dakota, and not only does it follow them in the air, but the camera is WAITING for them when they land in some swamp or something to take a break and have a snack. And you see them do all that, and then they take off again and the camera goes with them again.
OK. Maybe sometimes it's actually different birds that just look like the same birds, and it's just edited to make you think it's the same birds, but at times it is literally the same birds because some of them are distinctive in one way or another and you can tell. It's astounding (and breathtaking! and exhilarating!) You spend most of the movie thinking, "How the hell could they possibly get that shot?" Did they have cameras attached to other little birdies? Did the flocks call ahead to some pond for reservations or something so the crew would know they were coming? This reaction will be universal---you can't see "Winged Migration" and NOT wonder how the hell they did it.
And yet...well, here's the deal. I'll lay it out for you up front. The movie is profoundly, even transcendentally, lame.
Here's the question I was asking myself when I came out of the theater: if I had that amazing footage, would it be possible for me to make a worse movie than those idiots did? And I honestly don't think I could. In fact, I'll go this far---if my cat Glob (our dimmest) could be given an opposable thumb and infused with the technical knowledge needed to edit film, lay down a music track and compose narration, and you gave him that footage, he would make a better movie than "Winged Migration."
At this point in my review, it is necessary (for reasons that will become apparent), to pause and inform you that I do not hate French people. Some people hate the French these days, but I do not. It is true they can be parochial and smug and arrogant, and they have many silly political ideas, but in my house, I still make french fries and call them french fries and I would drink a glass of French champagne if somebody gave me one and I still shave a truffle onto a plate of noodles when I'm feeling unusually sporty. I've been to France and I enjoyed myself, and I had no problems with the French people I have encountered. I mean, honestly, they don't spend ALL their spare time organizing national strikes and blowing up MacDonalds and trashing synagogues. When I was there, for the most part, it seemed the French were doing exactly what I was doing, which was sitting in cafes and drinking and smoking, or laying on a beach wondering if the chick three blankets away was about to take her top off. That's pretty much all they ever did, that I saw. That, and ride buses. They ride buses a lot.
I had to go into this, obviously, because "Winged Migration" is a French movie. It's a really, really, really French movie. Everybody who worked on it, every name in the credits, is French. All the ornithologists were French, all the cameramen were French, all the grips, all the sound people, all the assistants to everybody, all the caterers, all the porters, all the electricians---French, French, French, French, French. Even in the long list of Thank Yous, everyone who was thanked by name had a French name; non-French were thanked by title only. So they thanked "Jacques Bourbon, Third Undersecretary to the Second Assistant to the French Ambassador to Senegal" and then on the next line, they would thank "The Mayor of Boston." And the credits went on for weeks, of course, so after a while you sort of got the impression that EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD was named Guy or Monique or Pierre or Yvette or something, and if your name happened to be, for example, Michael, well then, there was almost certainly something seriously wrong with you.
But it went beyond that. (And here's the hard part, the part that's difficult to explain.) It's not that the movie was bad because it was French, it's that all the silly elements that went into making it a ridiculous movie were peculiarly French silly elements. It's as if they sat down and made a list entitled "All The Things We Could Put In The Movie To Make Others Think French People Are Dolts," and then they checked off the items one by one in the editing room. It occurred to me at one point that if the footage had been given to Monty Python, they might have made it this way as a sort of extended joke about the French.
Let's start with the music. Now remember, this is a nature movie, and nature is a struggle. The birds are flying thousands of miles to survive, and some of them get wounded and eaten by crabs, and some of them get stuck in storms, and some can't find food. I mean, migration is no picnic. So what kind of music do they stick in the middle of this majestic and beautiful life-and-death struggle? Well, one tune I remember was a kind of Moulin Rouge, smoky, barroom chanteuse-type song, sung with appropriate French languor by some chick who's obviously no better than even money to make it to the end of the song before she commits suicide. The other one that stuck in my head was a tinkly little cabaret number, sung by a languid guy this time, that played over a scene where this huge freaking walrus was about to chow down on half a dozen cute little penguins. The lyrics were in French, of course, and I couldn't understand them, so I found myself wondering what the hell this whining, sneering little twit could possibly be moaning about that might shed some light on the scene before me. Love? Betrayal? Walruses? Running out of cigarettes?
"Les Oiseaus"
I sit in my cafe without you.
Monique, you little birdie,
I am a big fat walrus.
I drink my vin rouge and think of you.
I need more Gauloises.
Your love is ice,
Like the ice I waddle across
To eat you and your penguin love
And drink more wine.
Anybody got a smoke?
---Music & Lyrics by Jean-Paul Tete-de-Merde
(translated by M. Kubacki)
No one on earth other than an extremely silly French person would score that movie with this music. I wouldn't do it, you wouldn't do it, even Glob wouldn't do it. I found myself waiting for the next bit of absurd music and stifling chuckles out of fear the blue-haired Audubon Society members in the audience (i.e., everyone) would beat me to death with their binoculars if I were to laugh out loud.
And then there was the narration, and the graphics. Now you might think that if you sat through a 98-minute movie about birds, migrating birds, a movie that contained nothing but birds, you would come out of there knowing a little something about birds, at least more than you knew when you walked in. You would be wrong about that. The only actual information they saw fit to impart to the audience were things you already knew or things you could not possibly care about.
The complete narration, for example, consisted of a French guy with a Pepe LePew accent butchering five or six English sentences, in one-sentence increments, every 18 minutes or so. Here’s an example. I'm watching a flock of geese and they're flying through a snowstorm, but they're flying, man, they're migrating, and nothing's gonna stop them, and they got snow on their heads and they're not real happy about it, and you can't help but root for the poor bastards---yeah, come on, geese, you can do it---and the guy says, "Sterms can be a beeg problem forrrr me-grrrating berrrrds." And that's it. That's all he says, until like twenty minutes later when you're watching some other birds that have just flown 300 miles over water and they finally find a patch of land where they can rest and eat some cockroaches, and Pepe returns to tell us, "Me-grrrating berrrds need food forrr theirrr journey," and then he has to go eat another plate of snails and drink a half-bottle of Bordeaux before he thinks of something else to say. Maybe it's some kind of French union thing where he gets paid overtime if he says two sentences at once and there are mandatory vacations built right into the movie.
And the guy really couldn't speak English. I mean, the titles and credits and graphics were in English, and they clearly went to some trouble to make their movie distributable in English-speaking places, and then they use Pepe for the five sentences of actual narration so you can only make out about twenty of the thirty words he says. How tough would it have been to grab some American tourist off the streets of Paris for five minutes? ("Hey, mon ami, you wanna be in the movies? Read this.")
The rest of the information was in the graphics, the silliest, dopey French element of all.
Each time they showed a new bunch of birds flying (and there were ten or twelve different species they followed), they would flash a sentence on the screen telling you how far this particular bird migrates. "The grey goose migrates 650 miles from Ethiopia to Barcelona" or "The banded grebe migrates 1250 miles from Guatemala to Wyoming." Then, with the next bunch: "The common greckle migrates 825 miles from Thailand to Western China." I'm making these up because I intentionally did not memorize the actual places and distances, suspecting (paranoia was now setting in) that when the movie ended there would be a bunch of French ornithologists in the lobby handing out papers and No. 2 pencils and giving us all a fun little quiz, or as they would call it, a "queeze," and I was goddamned if I was going to give them the satisfaction of having educated me.
There are two sorts of people in the world who consider this sort of information "knowledge." The first is six-year-old boys. If you give a six-year-old boy a book about bird migration, and he really gets interested in it, you are condemned to two weeks of bird migration conversations with that boy, all of which will follow the same general lines:
BOY: Do you know how many miles the common greckle migrates?
YOU: No. 1000 miles?
BOY: No. It's 825 miles. Do you know where the grey goose flies from and where it flies to? YOU: Not really, no.
BOY: It flies from Ethiopia and it flies 650 miles. Guess where it goes to.
YOU: Uh…Lambeau Field?
BOY: Nope. Wrong again. Barcelona. You don't know much about migrating birds, do you?
The only other people who view this sort of thing as "educational" are the French, with their tedious Encyclopedies on every possible arcane topic, and their wine appellations and chateaux rankings and Guide Michelins and nationally-televised grammar tests. For long car trips, I often take along the Larousse Gastronomique and read from it to the wife and child. "Oh, here's a good one," I'll say, "the 83 uses for lard! Or would you rather I read you the 26 distinct ways to prepare kidneys?" They think about this, debate it a bit. "No, Daddy," they decide eventually, "tell us all the ways to fatten a goose, just one more time. Please."
Viva la France!
Copyright 2003 Michael Kubacki
Thursday, November 6, 2003
SPOILED-ROTTEN IRISH-CATHOLIC PROSECUTORS
A friend of mine ascribes many of the evils in the world to a group he calls “spoiled-rotten Irish-Catholic prosecutors.” Over time, I have come to see the wisdom in his rage. At the moment, there seem to be an unusual number of defendants who excite my passionate support.
There’s Martha Stewart, of course, who is accused of fraud for publicly denying she was guilty of a crime the feds decided not to charge her with. Get it? She denied she had traded on inside information, and the feds later agreed, but her statement she didn’t do it is “fraud.” There’s Witch Hunt No. 1.
Then there’s Michael Jackson. Now, I frankly don’t know what the deal is with him, but when the prosecutors hold a press conference for the purpose of comparing him to Charles Manson, and then they actually charge him with “improper touching” (which, in the NFL, is only a 10-yard penalty), and then it turns out the kid’s mother has a lengthy rap sheet…. Well, let’s just say that what sounded like war crimes at first now sounds like 98% pure horseshit. Numero 2.
Next is Kobe. And let me ask the guys out there a question. I assume that maybe once or twice or fifty times in your life, a woman told you, “No.” It happens to the best of us. Well, here’s the question: did it ever mean “No”? Ever? Didn’t it mean, “not here,” or “I have to ask my girlfriend about you,” or “I need three more dacquiris first”? I mean, suddenly it’s “rape” because at some point in the eternal tug-of-war of the mating dance, a woman says “No”? Is this still America we live in? And that’s Number 3, for those of you scoring at home.
Which brings us to Rush Limbaugh. And didn’t it sound really bad at first? The “money-laundering,” for example. What ever happened to the money-laundering? And the “drug ring”? And the drug dealing? What happened to that stuff? The initial stories, which all came from leaks in the prosecutor’s office, made it sound like he was some kind of Columbian drug lord, didn’t they? And now, if they ever charge him with anything, it will be for something called “doctor shopping,” a crime I never heard of, by the way.
So here’s the story with Limbaugh. He suffered years of constant pain from back problems and failed back operations, and he wound up addicted to pain-killers. He tried to kick it himself, couldn’t do it, was publicly exposed, and then went to rehab and got clean. And now, apparently because he’s opposed to abortion on demand, or because he doesn’t believe Dick Cheney is the anti-Christ, any sense of compassion is simply out of the question. And then there’s the whole Donovan McNabb thing! We’ve gotta fry him. Somehow. For something. Has anyone in the history of this grand republic ever been prosecuted for doing what Rush Limbaugh did? I seriously doubt it.
Martha, Michael, Kobe, Rush---all four are in the crosshairs at the moment, largely because there are powerful people who hate them for reasons that have little to do with anything in our criminal statutes. Martha’s too rich, you know, and she has a lot of rich friends, too. Let’s string her up and make an example of her. You know---for the little guy. Michael? Well, he’s just too weird, right? And we know he’s doing something wrong because---well, just look at him! Kobe, of course, is the latest target for the “all-women-are-victims” philosophy that feminism has become. And Rush? People who disagree with his politics are trying to use the law against him simply because of their hatred.
Those targeted by witch-hunts and witch-hunters deserve our sympathy and support because the witch-hunters are a danger to all of us. The rule of law, the presumption of innocence---these are not just legal technicalities. They are part of the contract that we all make with each other on how we are going to live together. There may come a time when your health or happiness or even your life will depend upon that contract, and if you only stand up to the spoiled-rotten Irish-Catholic prosecutors when they are going after someone you like, who’s going to stand up when they come after you?
Copyright 2003 Michael Kubacki
There’s Martha Stewart, of course, who is accused of fraud for publicly denying she was guilty of a crime the feds decided not to charge her with. Get it? She denied she had traded on inside information, and the feds later agreed, but her statement she didn’t do it is “fraud.” There’s Witch Hunt No. 1.
Then there’s Michael Jackson. Now, I frankly don’t know what the deal is with him, but when the prosecutors hold a press conference for the purpose of comparing him to Charles Manson, and then they actually charge him with “improper touching” (which, in the NFL, is only a 10-yard penalty), and then it turns out the kid’s mother has a lengthy rap sheet…. Well, let’s just say that what sounded like war crimes at first now sounds like 98% pure horseshit. Numero 2.
Next is Kobe. And let me ask the guys out there a question. I assume that maybe once or twice or fifty times in your life, a woman told you, “No.” It happens to the best of us. Well, here’s the question: did it ever mean “No”? Ever? Didn’t it mean, “not here,” or “I have to ask my girlfriend about you,” or “I need three more dacquiris first”? I mean, suddenly it’s “rape” because at some point in the eternal tug-of-war of the mating dance, a woman says “No”? Is this still America we live in? And that’s Number 3, for those of you scoring at home.
Which brings us to Rush Limbaugh. And didn’t it sound really bad at first? The “money-laundering,” for example. What ever happened to the money-laundering? And the “drug ring”? And the drug dealing? What happened to that stuff? The initial stories, which all came from leaks in the prosecutor’s office, made it sound like he was some kind of Columbian drug lord, didn’t they? And now, if they ever charge him with anything, it will be for something called “doctor shopping,” a crime I never heard of, by the way.
So here’s the story with Limbaugh. He suffered years of constant pain from back problems and failed back operations, and he wound up addicted to pain-killers. He tried to kick it himself, couldn’t do it, was publicly exposed, and then went to rehab and got clean. And now, apparently because he’s opposed to abortion on demand, or because he doesn’t believe Dick Cheney is the anti-Christ, any sense of compassion is simply out of the question. And then there’s the whole Donovan McNabb thing! We’ve gotta fry him. Somehow. For something. Has anyone in the history of this grand republic ever been prosecuted for doing what Rush Limbaugh did? I seriously doubt it.
Martha, Michael, Kobe, Rush---all four are in the crosshairs at the moment, largely because there are powerful people who hate them for reasons that have little to do with anything in our criminal statutes. Martha’s too rich, you know, and she has a lot of rich friends, too. Let’s string her up and make an example of her. You know---for the little guy. Michael? Well, he’s just too weird, right? And we know he’s doing something wrong because---well, just look at him! Kobe, of course, is the latest target for the “all-women-are-victims” philosophy that feminism has become. And Rush? People who disagree with his politics are trying to use the law against him simply because of their hatred.
Those targeted by witch-hunts and witch-hunters deserve our sympathy and support because the witch-hunters are a danger to all of us. The rule of law, the presumption of innocence---these are not just legal technicalities. They are part of the contract that we all make with each other on how we are going to live together. There may come a time when your health or happiness or even your life will depend upon that contract, and if you only stand up to the spoiled-rotten Irish-Catholic prosecutors when they are going after someone you like, who’s going to stand up when they come after you?
Copyright 2003 Michael Kubacki
Monday, October 6, 2003
DIVERSITY DRINKING FOUNTAINS
I know many of you thought “diversity” was a sort of in-crowd, pop-culture buzzword like “girl power” or “the hip-hop nation,” but now that Justice O’Connor has found it in the Constitution (see Grutter v. Bollinger), I think it’s our job as Americans to embrace the idea, not only in our finer universities, but in public accommodations in general.
As we have learned from the halls of academe, setting different standards for different people is only a small part of what “diversity” means. Even more important, for maintaining self-esteem, is the celebration of group identity through, for example, black-only (or woman-only) faculty meetings, separate student orientation programs for Hispanic students, gay graduation ceremonies, and segregated dormitories. All these things can be found at our elite, and even not-so-elite, institutions of higher learning. It is our duty to import these lessons into our daily lives.
As a first step, I propose federal legislation, affecting all states and municipalities, requiring the replacement of public drinking fountains with “Diversity Fountains” intended to celebrate the unique richness of America’s ethnic, racial and sexual-orientation minorities. Where there is one fountain, there would now be five, each clearly labeled: “White,” “Black,” “Hispanic,” “Women,” and “Gay.”
Copyright 2003 Michael Kubacki
As we have learned from the halls of academe, setting different standards for different people is only a small part of what “diversity” means. Even more important, for maintaining self-esteem, is the celebration of group identity through, for example, black-only (or woman-only) faculty meetings, separate student orientation programs for Hispanic students, gay graduation ceremonies, and segregated dormitories. All these things can be found at our elite, and even not-so-elite, institutions of higher learning. It is our duty to import these lessons into our daily lives.
As a first step, I propose federal legislation, affecting all states and municipalities, requiring the replacement of public drinking fountains with “Diversity Fountains” intended to celebrate the unique richness of America’s ethnic, racial and sexual-orientation minorities. Where there is one fountain, there would now be five, each clearly labeled: “White,” “Black,” “Hispanic,” “Women,” and “Gay.”
Copyright 2003 Michael Kubacki
Wednesday, September 4, 2002
LADDER COMPANY #37 AND THE STRIPPER
Press coverage of the exotic dancer and the lads from Ladder #37 continues, relentlessly, in the Philadelphia area. The saga has eclipsed all other items of local interest, including the state takeover of the public schools, the resignation of Senator Torricelli, and even Donovan McNabb’s $115 million contract.
On Sunday, September 22, the Rolling Stones performed at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Local police and firemen were present outside the theater, during and after the concert. Among this security contingent were the volunteer firemen of Ladder #37, complete with fire truck. They didn’t really have an assignment, and they didn’t see the concert. They were simply on-call, hanging around.
When the show ended, one of the music-lovers to emerge from the venue was Angela (no last name), an exotic dancer employed by a Philadelphia club named Cheerleaders. As luck would have it, Angela had rushed to the show from the club and was still dressed in her work clothes. These consisted of a scoop-necked halter-top, five-inch platform heels, thigh-length black leggings, and what used to be called hot pants. Perhaps they still are.
The colloquy that ensued as Angela walked past the fire truck and the idle contingent of Upper Darby’s finest was not recorded, but since I once took a psychology course in college, I can confidently report that the conversation went substantially as follows:
One of the Boys: "Yo, Babe. How were the Stones?"
Angela: "Awesome. They let me go backstage."
OOTB: "Cool. You a model?"
Angela: "Yeah. Sort of."
OOTB: "Can we take your picture?"
Americans everywhere will be shocked to learn that Angela was amenable to this suggestion, and in a trice, had donned a fire helmet and was posing seductively on and beside the truck. One of the boys (let’s call him Jimmy), snapped merrily away.
As luck would have it, the photo session continued and the conversation turned, as it sometimes does, to the subject of thong underwear. "They were like ‘Do you have a thong on? Can we see your thong?’" Angela reported. "I was like, ‘OK’." This exchange led quite naturally to another series of photographs and ultimately to a crisis involving the zipper on her shorts.
Here, at last, was an opportunity for the bored firemen to draw upon their well of experience in emergency situations. Passing the camera, Jimmy leapt to Angela’s aid and fixed the stubborn zipper while his comrade recorded the rescue in a photograph Angela later described as "misleading."
"He was the perfect gentleman. He didn’t try to touch me in any perverted way at all. He was just trying to help me with my zipper."
As luck would have it, other cameras were present that evening in Upper Darby, and two of them belonged to professional photographers Tom Kelly III and Tom Kelly IV. (There’s still a lot of numbered people in Philadelphia.) Exiting the concert, the Kelly’s, pere et fils, captured the entire tableau on film and rushed their prints to the Philadelphia Daily News, our local tabloid.
And yet…. And yet….
Where was the news? Where was the "hook?" The Daily News is, alas, a newspaper, and while any fool could see that the lovely Angela, with her helmet and her high heels and her firemen, belonged on the front page, some journalistic justification for putting her there had to be found. It didn’t have to be big or important news. It might even be silly news. But if it weren’t news at all---well, then, she might wind up on page 12.
One can only speculate on how the Kelly/Daily News pictures came to the attention of Upper Darby Chief Administrative Officer Thomas J. Judge Jr. and Fire Chief Ed Cubler, but as luck would have it, they did.
"That’s conduct unbecoming [a firefighter]," said Chief Cubler.
"We are extremely disappointed," said Thomas J. Judge Jr.
Bingo!
Across this great land, Philadelphia may be viewed as a parochial little burg of cheese-steaks and drunken football fans, but Philadelphians are, by and large, a thoughtful people. Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison---these men walked our streets, pondered the inalienable rights of man, and founded a country. The Declaration of Independence was written here.
Thus, it should surprise no one that the story of Angela and the firemen would seize the imagination of the populace. In the streets and by-ways, from the Main Line to the Italian Market, Philadelphians examined the seven Kelly photos (especially the cover shot), dissected the comments of the principals, and formed their opinions, which were then expressed everywhere, including editorial pages and radio talk shows. The story had everything---a long-legged dancer, firemen, a thong, and even a philosophical question. To wit: when a stripper wants to borrow a helmet and pose for photographs on your fire truck, what precisely does "conduct unbecoming a fireman" consist of?
Ultimately, there arose two schools of thought on the question, and predictably, both camps invoked the memory of 9-11 to support their positions.
"Their behavior disgraced the memory of the brave firefighters who gave their lives last September," said one radio caller (it might have been "Jim from Haverford"). John McNally, a letter-writer to the Daily News, saw it differently: "The men under investigation are the same ones who will run into burning buildings to rescue Upper Darby residents…. Leave them alone."
The thong/zipper incident in particular was the focus of much commentary, and became a sort of flash point, and a dividing line between the pro-decency and pro-testosterone forces. Letting her put on the helmet---OK. Taking her picture on the fire truck---OK. But asking to see her thong? Many pundits felt this crossed the line, though the prevailing view appeared to be that of a caller ("Joe from Kensington"?) I heard on the radio one afternoon: "So they’re firemen and she’s a stripper and they ask to see her thong. What are they supposed to ask her about---Iraq?"
The investigation continues, according to Upper Darby officials. The boys of Ladder #37 are not talking to the press. And the young lady? Well, she has been extremely generous with her time for the local media, and while we still don’t know her last name, we know she thinks Upper Darby officials should "lighten up." This would seem to put her in the mainstream of contemporary thought here in the City of Brotherly Love. Finally, her tips at the club are up---way up. Recently, it was reported that firemen from the entire area are flocking to Cheerleaders, and they only have eyes for Angela.
Copyright 2002 Michael Kubacki
On Sunday, September 22, the Rolling Stones performed at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Local police and firemen were present outside the theater, during and after the concert. Among this security contingent were the volunteer firemen of Ladder #37, complete with fire truck. They didn’t really have an assignment, and they didn’t see the concert. They were simply on-call, hanging around.
When the show ended, one of the music-lovers to emerge from the venue was Angela (no last name), an exotic dancer employed by a Philadelphia club named Cheerleaders. As luck would have it, Angela had rushed to the show from the club and was still dressed in her work clothes. These consisted of a scoop-necked halter-top, five-inch platform heels, thigh-length black leggings, and what used to be called hot pants. Perhaps they still are.
The colloquy that ensued as Angela walked past the fire truck and the idle contingent of Upper Darby’s finest was not recorded, but since I once took a psychology course in college, I can confidently report that the conversation went substantially as follows:
One of the Boys: "Yo, Babe. How were the Stones?"
Angela: "Awesome. They let me go backstage."
OOTB: "Cool. You a model?"
Angela: "Yeah. Sort of."
OOTB: "Can we take your picture?"
Americans everywhere will be shocked to learn that Angela was amenable to this suggestion, and in a trice, had donned a fire helmet and was posing seductively on and beside the truck. One of the boys (let’s call him Jimmy), snapped merrily away.
As luck would have it, the photo session continued and the conversation turned, as it sometimes does, to the subject of thong underwear. "They were like ‘Do you have a thong on? Can we see your thong?’" Angela reported. "I was like, ‘OK’." This exchange led quite naturally to another series of photographs and ultimately to a crisis involving the zipper on her shorts.
Here, at last, was an opportunity for the bored firemen to draw upon their well of experience in emergency situations. Passing the camera, Jimmy leapt to Angela’s aid and fixed the stubborn zipper while his comrade recorded the rescue in a photograph Angela later described as "misleading."
"He was the perfect gentleman. He didn’t try to touch me in any perverted way at all. He was just trying to help me with my zipper."
As luck would have it, other cameras were present that evening in Upper Darby, and two of them belonged to professional photographers Tom Kelly III and Tom Kelly IV. (There’s still a lot of numbered people in Philadelphia.) Exiting the concert, the Kelly’s, pere et fils, captured the entire tableau on film and rushed their prints to the Philadelphia Daily News, our local tabloid.
And yet…. And yet….
Where was the news? Where was the "hook?" The Daily News is, alas, a newspaper, and while any fool could see that the lovely Angela, with her helmet and her high heels and her firemen, belonged on the front page, some journalistic justification for putting her there had to be found. It didn’t have to be big or important news. It might even be silly news. But if it weren’t news at all---well, then, she might wind up on page 12.
One can only speculate on how the Kelly/Daily News pictures came to the attention of Upper Darby Chief Administrative Officer Thomas J. Judge Jr. and Fire Chief Ed Cubler, but as luck would have it, they did.
"That’s conduct unbecoming [a firefighter]," said Chief Cubler.
"We are extremely disappointed," said Thomas J. Judge Jr.
Bingo!
Across this great land, Philadelphia may be viewed as a parochial little burg of cheese-steaks and drunken football fans, but Philadelphians are, by and large, a thoughtful people. Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison---these men walked our streets, pondered the inalienable rights of man, and founded a country. The Declaration of Independence was written here.
Thus, it should surprise no one that the story of Angela and the firemen would seize the imagination of the populace. In the streets and by-ways, from the Main Line to the Italian Market, Philadelphians examined the seven Kelly photos (especially the cover shot), dissected the comments of the principals, and formed their opinions, which were then expressed everywhere, including editorial pages and radio talk shows. The story had everything---a long-legged dancer, firemen, a thong, and even a philosophical question. To wit: when a stripper wants to borrow a helmet and pose for photographs on your fire truck, what precisely does "conduct unbecoming a fireman" consist of?
Ultimately, there arose two schools of thought on the question, and predictably, both camps invoked the memory of 9-11 to support their positions.
"Their behavior disgraced the memory of the brave firefighters who gave their lives last September," said one radio caller (it might have been "Jim from Haverford"). John McNally, a letter-writer to the Daily News, saw it differently: "The men under investigation are the same ones who will run into burning buildings to rescue Upper Darby residents…. Leave them alone."
The thong/zipper incident in particular was the focus of much commentary, and became a sort of flash point, and a dividing line between the pro-decency and pro-testosterone forces. Letting her put on the helmet---OK. Taking her picture on the fire truck---OK. But asking to see her thong? Many pundits felt this crossed the line, though the prevailing view appeared to be that of a caller ("Joe from Kensington"?) I heard on the radio one afternoon: "So they’re firemen and she’s a stripper and they ask to see her thong. What are they supposed to ask her about---Iraq?"
The investigation continues, according to Upper Darby officials. The boys of Ladder #37 are not talking to the press. And the young lady? Well, she has been extremely generous with her time for the local media, and while we still don’t know her last name, we know she thinks Upper Darby officials should "lighten up." This would seem to put her in the mainstream of contemporary thought here in the City of Brotherly Love. Finally, her tips at the club are up---way up. Recently, it was reported that firemen from the entire area are flocking to Cheerleaders, and they only have eyes for Angela.
Copyright 2002 Michael Kubacki
Monday, July 10, 2000
REMEMBERING GLOBAL COOLING
Most folks have now forgotten the great Global Cooling Scare of the 1970’s. To the extent it is remembered at all, it is dismissed as a mere historical blip involving a few crackpots.
But that’s not what it was. It was a big deal at the time, and I didn’t imagine the books that were published, and the Time Magazine covers and the newspaper articles. And though the entire episode has now been discreetly hushed up, I remember musing upon it during that stretch of youthful innocence when I tended to believe things I read in the newspaper, and thinking: “This sucks. We’re all gonna die!”
But what does it mean today? What conclusions are we to draw from the experience? What should we think when Chicken Little says the sky is falling and then somehow, it doesn’t? Here’s what I conclude:
Chicken Little Himself
Once Chicken Little tells us the sky is falling, and it isn’t, his future claims that the sky is falling should be completely ignored. He has used up his lifetime quota of credibility.
But guess what? This doesn’t happen. The people who now tell us we are doomed for whatever reason are, in many cases, the exact same people who told us we were doomed ten and twenty and thirty years ago because the oceans would die or we would run out of minerals or billions would starve. Nobody ever gets called on these predictions, or run out of town. Paul Ehrlich, at age 112 or whatever, is revered as a seer. Al Gore is running for president, and may even get elected.
The Cult of Chicken Little
As others appear to echo to cries of doom, based upon the same flimsy or absent evidence, you begin to realize there is a mania afoot, rooted in a psychology or a politics I don’t fully understand, that is characterized by an irrational belief doom is imminent and that the rest of us rational folks must all be persuaded of it and do some horrible self-destructive thing to prevent it. In the face of this doom-mania, which has been with us since the beginning of time, even as man has progressed from caves to huts to beach condos, I think it is reasonable to reject ALL the doom-sayers.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m perfectly willing to examine the evidence of a glitch here and there, a tear in the fabric of human progress. Sometimes, after three steps forward, we take one step back. But when Edward Yardeni and his minions tell me the Y2K bug will kill millions in a worldwide recession with food riots, I don’t feel I need to listen to another word these folks have to say. They’ve joined the club, the one with Al Gore and Paul Ehrlich and Jim Jones and every two-bit fundamentalist who ever thought the world was going to end on Tuesday.
It’s not difficult to spot these people, because the bad news itself is only a prelude. There’s always a solution, and it’s always a painful one. Shut down your factories. Give me all your possessions and drink this kool-aid. Give me $100 billion and submit to my regimen of rules and regulations.
The first time one of these jokers is right, I’ll start paying attention. I don’t think there’s much danger of that happening.
So much for Chicken Little.
None of this has much to do, by the way, with the practice of science. Scientists are not trying to defraud the public, and I applaud those who study the atmosphere, or search for unintended consequences of genetically-modified organisms. God bless ‘em, I say! Kudos! No problem here with scientists who actually study things and report their caveat-filled, tentative conclusions in peer-reviewed journals and at conferences, and urge others to continue their research.
But here’s what happens:
a) A couple of real scientists write a letter to a scientific magazine about a possible effect of BT-corn on monarch butterflies, stressing the preliminary and theoretical nature of their research and pointing out that the effect had not been observed in nature. Though subsequent research fails to substantiate their fears, demonstrators in Seattle dressed as monarch butterflies cause millions of dollars in damage, and GMO research projects around the world are trashed by vandals.
b) Medical researchers fashion studies to determine the effect of second-hand tobacco smoke. While some initial studies are suggestive of a link between second-hand smoke and disease, it later becomes apparent that statistically, the correlation, if it exists at all, is insignificant. Nevertheless, the danger of second-hand smoke becomes a rallying cry for city, state and federal policy across the nation.
c) The Chernobyl meltdown has devastating effects on the surrounding population. And a new menace is born---“cancer clusters.” Though the existence of such a thing has never (to my knowledge) been found in the U.S., the populace is persuaded they are everywhere, and the EPA spends tens of millions of dollars hunting for them.
d) Medical researchers discover that sodium exacerbates hypertension, so a worldwide longitudinal study is launched on the effects of various levels of dietary salt intake. The result: the consumption of salt is unrelated to heart or circulatory (or any other) disease, though certain conditions, once contracted, can be partially controlled by reducing salt in the diet. Nevertheless, an entire non-sodium seasoning industry is born to cater to those who deny themselves the pleasure of salt in their food because they have been convinced it will kill them.
You can’t blame scientists for any of this. I blame the doomsday industry, and the forces of no-nothingness that have always been with us. At every stage in human history when mankind is on the verge of a great leap into the future these bastards are there, scratching their balls and silencing Copernicus. When Christianity emerged out of barbarian Europe, and scholarship became possible---whoops, can’t have that---let’s have the Dark Age instead. When the Industrial Revolution began, and the common man could begin to hope for some alternative to his life of tedious and back-breaking labor---well, there’s the stinking Luddites, throwing spanners in the works. When modern democracy and the notion of inalienable human rights arose in France and the U.S., and began to spread around the world, who shows up but Karl Marx to lead us into 100 years of misery with 100 million killed, tortured and discarded.
There is a tendency to dismiss the modern no-nothings as popinjays, silly folk at whom we laugh lightly, and then ignore. “Junk science,” it’s called, or “junk politics.” They mean right. They just want to protect us, you see, and preserve the environment. And sometimes they go a little overboard. Well, I reject that view.
These people are dangerous. And the human cost of their feel-good philosophy is steep. They kill people, a lot of people, with no particular justification and no remorse. In fact, the cost of their visions is something it’s impolite to examine. “It’s for the good green earth,” they tell us. “No price is too high.”
Heard of Kyoto? The world-wide conference of governments that decided, based on something-or-other involving global warming, to reduce the human industrial presence on Earth by 10%. Do you ever wonder how the Kyoto treaty will sit with the billion or so people on the planet who aren’t entirely certain where their next meal is coming from? Do you think Al Gore or Paul Ehrlich or Jose Bove care about these folks? I don’t see any evidence of it. Does there exist anything close to the sort of evidence re global warming that would justify condemning tens or hundreds of millions of our fellow humans to starvation and misery? This, apparently, is a question we are not allowed to ask.
And what of DDT? In the early 70’s, malaria was on the way to extinction around the world thanks to the discovery of DDT, the safest and most-effective mosquito-killer ever found. Then, in 1972, following months of hearings that proved Rachel Carson’s warnings were not borne out by hard scientific research, William Ruckleshaus of the EPA overturned his administrative law judge’s findings and banned DDT, effectively ending its use around the world. Currently, 2.7 million die of malaria each year; children under five years of age are the largest group of victims.
Yes, these folks are dangerous. They may think they’re being nice, but I don’t care how nice they think they are. When you ban DDT, you condemn millions to horrible deaths. When you implement Kyoto, you kill people. Now if, after a reasoned analysis of the situation, you decide DDT is too dangerous or global warming too imminent, you have to do those things despite the pain. But the people who bring forth these plans won’t even consider the pain. They don’t care, they don’t know, and they don’t care that they don’t know.
Copyright 2000 Michael Kubacki
But that’s not what it was. It was a big deal at the time, and I didn’t imagine the books that were published, and the Time Magazine covers and the newspaper articles. And though the entire episode has now been discreetly hushed up, I remember musing upon it during that stretch of youthful innocence when I tended to believe things I read in the newspaper, and thinking: “This sucks. We’re all gonna die!”
But what does it mean today? What conclusions are we to draw from the experience? What should we think when Chicken Little says the sky is falling and then somehow, it doesn’t? Here’s what I conclude:
Chicken Little Himself
Once Chicken Little tells us the sky is falling, and it isn’t, his future claims that the sky is falling should be completely ignored. He has used up his lifetime quota of credibility.
But guess what? This doesn’t happen. The people who now tell us we are doomed for whatever reason are, in many cases, the exact same people who told us we were doomed ten and twenty and thirty years ago because the oceans would die or we would run out of minerals or billions would starve. Nobody ever gets called on these predictions, or run out of town. Paul Ehrlich, at age 112 or whatever, is revered as a seer. Al Gore is running for president, and may even get elected.
The Cult of Chicken Little
As others appear to echo to cries of doom, based upon the same flimsy or absent evidence, you begin to realize there is a mania afoot, rooted in a psychology or a politics I don’t fully understand, that is characterized by an irrational belief doom is imminent and that the rest of us rational folks must all be persuaded of it and do some horrible self-destructive thing to prevent it. In the face of this doom-mania, which has been with us since the beginning of time, even as man has progressed from caves to huts to beach condos, I think it is reasonable to reject ALL the doom-sayers.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m perfectly willing to examine the evidence of a glitch here and there, a tear in the fabric of human progress. Sometimes, after three steps forward, we take one step back. But when Edward Yardeni and his minions tell me the Y2K bug will kill millions in a worldwide recession with food riots, I don’t feel I need to listen to another word these folks have to say. They’ve joined the club, the one with Al Gore and Paul Ehrlich and Jim Jones and every two-bit fundamentalist who ever thought the world was going to end on Tuesday.
It’s not difficult to spot these people, because the bad news itself is only a prelude. There’s always a solution, and it’s always a painful one. Shut down your factories. Give me all your possessions and drink this kool-aid. Give me $100 billion and submit to my regimen of rules and regulations.
The first time one of these jokers is right, I’ll start paying attention. I don’t think there’s much danger of that happening.
So much for Chicken Little.
None of this has much to do, by the way, with the practice of science. Scientists are not trying to defraud the public, and I applaud those who study the atmosphere, or search for unintended consequences of genetically-modified organisms. God bless ‘em, I say! Kudos! No problem here with scientists who actually study things and report their caveat-filled, tentative conclusions in peer-reviewed journals and at conferences, and urge others to continue their research.
But here’s what happens:
a) A couple of real scientists write a letter to a scientific magazine about a possible effect of BT-corn on monarch butterflies, stressing the preliminary and theoretical nature of their research and pointing out that the effect had not been observed in nature. Though subsequent research fails to substantiate their fears, demonstrators in Seattle dressed as monarch butterflies cause millions of dollars in damage, and GMO research projects around the world are trashed by vandals.
b) Medical researchers fashion studies to determine the effect of second-hand tobacco smoke. While some initial studies are suggestive of a link between second-hand smoke and disease, it later becomes apparent that statistically, the correlation, if it exists at all, is insignificant. Nevertheless, the danger of second-hand smoke becomes a rallying cry for city, state and federal policy across the nation.
c) The Chernobyl meltdown has devastating effects on the surrounding population. And a new menace is born---“cancer clusters.” Though the existence of such a thing has never (to my knowledge) been found in the U.S., the populace is persuaded they are everywhere, and the EPA spends tens of millions of dollars hunting for them.
d) Medical researchers discover that sodium exacerbates hypertension, so a worldwide longitudinal study is launched on the effects of various levels of dietary salt intake. The result: the consumption of salt is unrelated to heart or circulatory (or any other) disease, though certain conditions, once contracted, can be partially controlled by reducing salt in the diet. Nevertheless, an entire non-sodium seasoning industry is born to cater to those who deny themselves the pleasure of salt in their food because they have been convinced it will kill them.
You can’t blame scientists for any of this. I blame the doomsday industry, and the forces of no-nothingness that have always been with us. At every stage in human history when mankind is on the verge of a great leap into the future these bastards are there, scratching their balls and silencing Copernicus. When Christianity emerged out of barbarian Europe, and scholarship became possible---whoops, can’t have that---let’s have the Dark Age instead. When the Industrial Revolution began, and the common man could begin to hope for some alternative to his life of tedious and back-breaking labor---well, there’s the stinking Luddites, throwing spanners in the works. When modern democracy and the notion of inalienable human rights arose in France and the U.S., and began to spread around the world, who shows up but Karl Marx to lead us into 100 years of misery with 100 million killed, tortured and discarded.
There is a tendency to dismiss the modern no-nothings as popinjays, silly folk at whom we laugh lightly, and then ignore. “Junk science,” it’s called, or “junk politics.” They mean right. They just want to protect us, you see, and preserve the environment. And sometimes they go a little overboard. Well, I reject that view.
These people are dangerous. And the human cost of their feel-good philosophy is steep. They kill people, a lot of people, with no particular justification and no remorse. In fact, the cost of their visions is something it’s impolite to examine. “It’s for the good green earth,” they tell us. “No price is too high.”
Heard of Kyoto? The world-wide conference of governments that decided, based on something-or-other involving global warming, to reduce the human industrial presence on Earth by 10%. Do you ever wonder how the Kyoto treaty will sit with the billion or so people on the planet who aren’t entirely certain where their next meal is coming from? Do you think Al Gore or Paul Ehrlich or Jose Bove care about these folks? I don’t see any evidence of it. Does there exist anything close to the sort of evidence re global warming that would justify condemning tens or hundreds of millions of our fellow humans to starvation and misery? This, apparently, is a question we are not allowed to ask.
And what of DDT? In the early 70’s, malaria was on the way to extinction around the world thanks to the discovery of DDT, the safest and most-effective mosquito-killer ever found. Then, in 1972, following months of hearings that proved Rachel Carson’s warnings were not borne out by hard scientific research, William Ruckleshaus of the EPA overturned his administrative law judge’s findings and banned DDT, effectively ending its use around the world. Currently, 2.7 million die of malaria each year; children under five years of age are the largest group of victims.
Yes, these folks are dangerous. They may think they’re being nice, but I don’t care how nice they think they are. When you ban DDT, you condemn millions to horrible deaths. When you implement Kyoto, you kill people. Now if, after a reasoned analysis of the situation, you decide DDT is too dangerous or global warming too imminent, you have to do those things despite the pain. But the people who bring forth these plans won’t even consider the pain. They don’t care, they don’t know, and they don’t care that they don’t know.
Copyright 2000 Michael Kubacki
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