As wars go, my father’s WWII was not the worst. He spent almost all of his time in North Africa and Italy (rather than, say, Iwo Jima), he didn’t kill anybody, and though he was shot at and bombed, he never felt he came seriously close to getting seriously hurt. In addition, as he pointed out more than once, the army was superior to his childhood in this respect: in the army, he always got his chow.
When Italy fell to the Allies in 1944, my old man was there, and he spent the rest of the war in the pacification of a place where a substantial portion of the citizenry was not averse to being pacified. While the de-nazification of Germany took about ten years, the de-fascistification of Italy took about ten minutes. Still, there was work to be done in getting the Germans out of Italy, and Captain Kubacki had to do some of it.
In 1945, when the Germans in Italy had (mostly) been defeated, my father was given a jeep, a lieutenant, two heavily-armed MPs, a strongbox full of money, and a long list of people’s names along with the towns and villages in which these people lived. As the American army had worked its way through the Italian countryside, cleaning out German strongholds, it had taken what it needed from the farmers and townspeople along the way, in each case promising to return with payment at some point in the indefinite (and uncertain) future. It is fair to assume that these promises, to a people who had dealt with the ravages of invading armies for the previous five thousand years or so, were met with a certain skepticism.
Captain Kubacki and his crew would drive into town unannounced, and the Captain would set off to find the mayor or some other nabob, to whom he would explain his mission. “We’re here to pay your people,” my father would say, in his imperfect Italian, “for the sheep and mules and tomatoes and gasoline the American army took last year. Please call everyone together so we can get started.”
The initial response to this, typically, was, “You want to do WHAT?”
Sleepy little Italian towns being what they are, however, people had already started peeking around corners to find out what the Americans were up to, and with entertainment in short supply at the time, there would soon be a crowd gathered in the town square with my father, the lieutenant, the MPs and the strongbox at the center of it. At which point, my father would unfurl his list and call out the first name.
“Vincenzo Massimo!”
All eyes would turn to Vincenzo, who was suddenly on the spot, and with a shrug of the shoulders and a puzzled look, he would approach.
“A mule,” my father would say. The lieutenant would count out some appropriate number of lire and hand the cash to Vincente, who would look at it, hold it up to the sun, wave it in the air for the crowd to see, and return to his pals, who would examine the notes intently.
Meanwhile, Captain Kubacki was calling out the next name: “Luigi Grieco!”
According to my father, the same scenario, with few variations, played out in town after town. In a few minutes, a table would be brought to the square, with comfortable chairs for the captain and the lieutenant. Shortly, a plate of olives would appear on the table, perhaps with a bit of bread and cheese. A few minutes later, a flagon of wine would materialize, along with a young lady whose job it was to ensure the officers’ glasses were never empty. As the soldiers worked their way down to the end of the list for that day, a fiddle or a guitar would be heard somewhere in the distance, and this was a sign that the party was beginning in earnest.
For two months, as their caravan progressed through the countryside, the most difficult part of the job was getting out of town, since it was impossible to accept all the hospitality that was offered. These were people who had nothing, of course, but who invariably insisted on providing my father’s squad with the best beds, the best food, and the best wines.
It’s an irresistible story, and I heard him tell it many times. It’s a war story and an anti-war story at the same time, as well as a tale of American patriotism and values. His favorite aspect of it, the part he seemed to savor in the telling, was the surprise and confusion that greeted their arrival and the realization the American army had actually returned. They were honoring a commitment that literally no one had expected them to honor. Unlike the dozens (or hundreds) of invaders who had come through Italy over the centuries, the Americans were there to make everything right, and pay for what they had taken.
Copyright 2007 Michael Kubacki
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Friday, October 6, 2006
IN PRAISE OF HATE SPEECH; The Cartoon War and the Heckler’s Veto
A couple years ago, I was sitting on the beach at Rehoboth, talking to a lawyer friend about a First Amendment case he was handling, and apropos of our conversation, I said, “Thank God we live in a country where it’s not a crime to call somebody a nigger.”
He thought about that, and looked at me funny.
“C’mon, Bob,” I said. “Would you want to live in a place where it was illegal to stand in the courtyard at City Hall and yell ‘The first thing we have to do is kill all the Jews.’”
He didn’t answer. He was thinking, as he sometimes does. Then, as luck would have it, a very healthy 20-year-old girl in an abbreviated bathing costume strolled past on her way to the surf, and he seemed to lose interest in my question. My attention may have wandered as well. By the time we were through examining the evidence, my First Amendment question had been forgotten.
But it’s an important question, especially in light of the war breaking out over the Muhammed cartoons. Should it be a crime to use the word “nigger,” or demand that Jews be killed? In other words, should “hate speech” be protected by the First Amendment?
Most Americans understand that the First Amendment makes us different from the rest of the world, even from other democracies with traditions of free speech and freedom of the press. One obvious difference is that free speech in America is rooted in our constitution, which trumps all other law. The British Parliament could pass a law tomorrow that would put all newspapers under government control. If the US Congress did such a thing, however, the law would be nullified as unconstitutional by the first (and every subsequent) federal judge to review it.
Nationalizing the press is an extreme example, of course, and there is no chance the British Parliament is going to do it. In a democracy lacking an overarching body of law like the First Amendment, however, the boundaries of free speech are always subject to political fashion and the whim of the legislature. And in fact, elected bodies in other countries regularly nibble away at speech rights in ways our constitution and our Supreme Court do not permit. Free speech law, as outlined by our courts over the last two hundred years, is marked by bright lines that neither Congress nor the states can cross. One of these bright lines of particular significance to hate speech laws (and the Danish cartoon war), is the “heckler’s veto,” a legal doctrine unique to the United States.
In the case of Terminiello v. Chicago, in 1949, a lecturer was arrested for a breach of the peace when an angry crowd gathered outside the auditorium where he was speaking. The trial judge told the jury that under a Chicago ordinance, it could convict the speaker if he had engaged in speech that “stirs the public to anger, invites dispute, brings about a condition of unrest or creates a disturbance….” On review, the US Supreme Court reversed the conviction and ruled the ordinance unconstitutional. Speech is protected, the Court wrote, BECAUSE “it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.”
Speech may legally be restricted for many reasons. You can’t hold an anti-war rally on Broad Street on January 1, when the mummers are parading, because that would be an “unreasonable time and place.” Some speech content (i.e., kiddie porn, national security secrets) is not only unprotected, it is actually criminal. Under Terminiello, however, the only reason speech rights may not be limited is that the speech will offend people, or even enrage them. To limit offensive speech because it offends is to give the heckler a veto over speech that annoys him. In fact, it encourages the heckler to become violent and breach the peace, because then the speaker will be punished. The rule of Terminiello is that we punish the violent heckler, but we do not punish the speaker.
The reasoning of the Terminiello case is that once you start banning speech because it offends, eventually you grant control of all discourse to the most sensitive, irrational and violent elements in society. Opening this door creates a “slippery slope” to repression. Though you begin by punishing nazis and racists, you move swiftly to jailing artists like Andres Serrano (“Piss Christ”) and newspaper editors who publish Muhammed cartoons. Ultimately, you lock up the guy who says, “Ya know, women can do a lot of things, but I still think the best firefighters are men.”
Though Terminiello is settled law (a “super-precedent,” as Arlen Specter would say), the rule of the “heckler’s veto” is not universally loved or respected, and there are plenty of folks who would ban what they view as “hate speech” if they could get away with it.
In the last twenty-five years, over 90% of colleges and universities in the United States have enacted speech codes or sexual harassment codes that ban “offensive” speech or speech that “demeans, provokes or subordinates” any person. A private university like Harvard or Bob Jones may legally do such a thing, but a public university like Temple or Penn State or Michigan is legally viewed as an arm of the government and is subject to the First Amendment.
When a student runs afoul of these rules with speech deemed “offensive” or “harassing” by college administrators, litigation often ensues. Currently, there are lawsuits all over the country. In fact, there is now a non-profit organization, the Foundation For Individual Rights In Education (“FIRE”), that provides legal assistance to students or faculty members who are punished for constitutionally-protected speech. FIRE never loses these cases.
Dozens of examples, including those that don’t reach the litigation stage, can be found at FIRE’s website, www.thefire.org. Here are a few:
***Cal-Poly, 2002. Student Steven Hinkle posted a flier in the campus Multicultural Center advertising a College-Republican-sponsored speech by Mason Weaver, author of It’s OK To Leave The Plantation. The flier displayed only the title of the book, the time and place of the event, and a picture of the author, an African-American. After some black students objected the poster was offensive, Hinkle, following a seven-hour hearing before the Cal-Poly Judicial Affairs Office, was ordered to write letters of apology to the offended students or face “severe penalties.”
***Central Michigan U, 2001. In October 2001, an administrator ordered a number of students to remove various patriotic displays (American flags, eagles, etc.) from their dormitory because the displays were offensive.
***Holy Cross, 2001. In October 2001, the chairman of the sociology department ordered a secretary’s American flag display removed from the office. The flag was in memory of her friend Todd Beamer, who fought and died on United flight 93 over Pennsylvania on 9-11.
***San Diego State, 2001. In September 2001, Zewdalem Kebede witnessed a group of Saudi Arabian students loudly expressing their delight at the success of the terrorist attacks. Kebede spoke to them in Arabic, condemning their opinions and bad taste. When the students complained, Kebede was subjected to a disciplinary hearing and issued a formal “letter of admonishment” in which he was told to avoid similar confrontations or face “severe disciplinary measures.”
***William Patterson U, 2005. Jihad Daniel, a Muslim student and employee of the college, received a mass email from Professor Arlene Scala promoting a showing of a film described as “a lesbian relationship story.” He replied privately to the professor, asking that he not be sent any mail about “Connie and Sally” or “Adam and Steve” because his religion viewed these relationships as “perversions.” Mr. Daniel received an official letter of reprimand in his employment file noting his violation of sexual harassment regulations.
***U of New Hampshire, 2004. Timothy Garneau posted fliers in the elevators of his dormitory suggesting that women could lose the “freshman 15” (weight gained the first year of college) by taking the stairs. Charged with “acts of dishonesty, violation of affirmative action policy and harassment,” Garneau was expelled from student housing, given disciplinary probation, required to meet with a psychological counselor and write a 3000-word essay about it, and further required to submit a letter of apology to the student newspaper.
***U of Cal-Irvine, 2004. Members of the College Republicans staged an Affirmative Action Bake Sale to dramatize the unfairness of affirmative action programs. Prices for donuts were based on the race and sex of the consumer, with white males paying a dollar, Hispanics 75 cents, and blacks 50 cents. A spirited discussion ensued, until the Dean of Students stopped the sale, claiming it violated student regulations on discrimination. College Republican groups have set up these sales at universities around the country, and were also shut down at Illinois State and SMU. At DePaul, the students were charged with violating the school’s harassment policy.
Another tactic used by college administrations to silence views they dislike is to allow, or even encourage, radical students to do the silencing by means of vandalism, theft, or other violence. At the University of Colorado, for example, an affirmative action bake sale ended when, with campus police in attendance, counter-demonstrators were permitted to rip down signs and overturn tables, without opposition or consequences.
In 2005, at Washington State University, student playwright Chris Lee produced his play, “Passion Of The Musical,” and advertised it widely as “offensive or inflammatory to all audiences.” During one performance, a group of forty protesters repeatedly stood up, shouted they were offended, and threatened audience members and the cast. When Lee finally stopped the play and asked campus security to remove the protesters, they refused his request. Evidence later surfaced that the Washington State Office For Campus Involvement had bought forty tickets for the protesters with university funds and had helped organize the disruption.
A common tactic for radical students is to steal the entire press run of a student newspaper containing “offensive” (i.e., politically conservative) material. Typically, the thieves are never punished. In fact, the theft is sometimes defended by administrators and professors as itself being an exercise of free speech. Again, these incidents are found across the country at a wide variety of institutions. A few that garnered significant press coverage were at Berkeley, UNC-Wilmington, U Mass, Loyola Marymount, Boston College, Morehead State, and Oregon State. FIRE has received reports on hundreds of such events.
It may be tempting to attribute these cases to a few ignorant zealots who happen to be college administrators, but in fact, they happen regularly across the country, in small schools and large, in red states and blue. Also, even when the light is shone on the suppression of speech at an institution supposedly dedicated to intellectual freedom, schools rarely back down. They litigate. They fight these complaints, spending many thousands on lawyers and thousands more on settlements and judgments. But even after they lose, the speech codes remain.
Illegal speech codes grew out of a misreading of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, federal laws that prohibit real harassment in the workplace and on campus. Because of this misunderstanding, and because of their own political views, the people who run our universities came to believe they were permitted, or even required, to regulate offensive speech. While it seems unlikely anyone could still believe this, the speech codes are now in place and there is strong support for them on most campuses.
University speech codes illustrate the “slippery slope” in full regalia. Federal laws designed to prevent the most severe, persistent, frightening sort of harassment (the equivalent of “stalking” under state laws), have morphed into an Orwellian system of oppression.
Thus, expressing one’s religious view that homosexuality is immoral becomes a hate crime. Poking fun at affirmative action policies results in disciplinary hearings and punishment. American flags get ripped from dormitory walls a month after 9-11. Once the door is opened to the notion that speech can be banned because someone is offended by it, no speech is safe. All variety of commentary becomes subject to the heckler’s veto.
American universities will eventually get the message that their speech codes are illegal, but in nations without a First Amendment (i.e., everywhere else), and without a Terminiello case, there is no particular reason to tolerate speech the majority deems hateful. And since, as a matter of practical politics, there is no organized constituency in favor of the most offensive speech, it is often banned.
In 1998, an Ontario man was convicted of a hate crime for distributing pamphlets about Islam. The offending pamphlet (truthfully) listed atrocities committed in the name of Allah, and urged the reader to be careful in dealing with Canadian Muslims.
More recent Canadian law has criminalized the public disapproval of homosexuality. In 2001, Hugh Owens placed an ad in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix in which a drawing of two males holding hands was overlaid with a red circle and a diagonal bar. The ad also referenced (but did not quote) four Bible passages that condemn homosexuality. Mr. Owens and the newspaper were fined $4500 under the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code, and the ruling was upheld by the Queen’s Bench, where a Justice Barclay wrote that “the advertisement can objectively be seen as exposing homosexuals to hatred or ridicule.” And under Canadian law, that’s all that matters. In another recent case from Ontario (not a speech case), a printer (a Christian) was fined $5000 for refusing a job printing letterhead for a gay advocacy group.
Hate speech laws are also found throughout Europe.
Shortly after Muslims carried out bomb attacks in London in 2005, a German man printed up toilet paper with the word “Koran” on every sheet, then sent the rolls to TV stations and mosques. He was given a one-year prison sentence, which will be followed by 300 hours of community service. I
In an odd English case, the Mayor of London was brought before the Adjudication Panel For England over a heated exchange he had with a reporter for the Evening Standard, a paper the Mayor despises. The Mayor asked the reporter (a Jew) if he had been a German war criminal and compared him to a concentration camp guard. The result was a four-week suspension for the Mayor, who will also have to pay legal fees of $175,000.
In Sweden, the Rev. Aake Green was sentenced to a month in prison for a sermon denouncing homosexuality as “a cancer on society.” After a yearlong appeal, the conviction was overturned and the pastor remains free, but the prosecution has announced plans for a further appeal, which will include a demand for a longer sentence.
Though the Rev. Green may escape punishment for his remarks from the pulpit, the effect of such laws on speech was apparent in his post-appeal statement to the press. “I’ll go on preaching as usual but I won’t be dedicating so much time to this issue,” he said. (This “chilling effect,” under US law, is why even an unsuccessful attempt to censor speech, or a rarely-enforced speech code, is actionable. On February 22, 2006, the Alliance Defense Fund filed a lawsuit against Penn State over its speech code in which the plaintiff is a student who has never been disciplined by the university for his speech, though others have been.)
The most widespread hate-speech laws are those banning public display of nazi symbols or denial of the holocaust. There are ten such countries in Europe (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Poland.) In addition, there are other countries (e.g., Canada and the U.K.) that do not explicitly ban holocaust denial, but do so under broader laws against inciting racial hatred.
On February 20, 2006, a British historian named David Irving was sentenced to three years in prison by an Austrian court for denying the holocaust in a 1989 publication (in England). The prosecutor is appealing the sentence as too lenient since the 1992 Austrian law provides for a sentence of up to ten years.
There is solid support for hate speech laws, of various kinds, across Europe. In fact, the EU bureaucracy is currently engaged in writing regulations to ban various forms of offensive speech on the internet. It is against this backdrop that the Danish cartoon war erupted.
The protests began with boycotts of Danish dairy products in Arabian countries and quickly progressed to riots, embassy-burning and blood in the streets. As the violence escalated, there were repeated demands that the government of Denmark, and other countries, apologize. And some government officials did, but not the Prime Minister of Denmark. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, though noting that burning a Koran would be a crime in Denmark, claimed the Danish government could do nothing about the cartoons because it did not control the press. In other words, the Danish government had nothing to do with it, so how could they apologize?
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Hitler-wannabe who is now President of Iran, in one of his more rational moments, hit the nail squarely on the noggin: “How can the insulting of the prophet of Muslims worldwide be justified within the framework of press freedom, but investigating the fairy tale holocaust is not?”
And he’s got a point, doesn’t he? In Europe, they’re trying to keep skinheads off the internet, they fine the elected mayor of a great city because he insults a reporter, they lock up a historian because he denied the holocaust in a different country three years before a law was passed saying you can’t deny the holocaust, and they want to put a preacher in jail for quoting Leviticus on Sunday morning. SO WHAT ABOUT US? WE’RE PISSED TOO! WHAT ABOUT OUR DAMN PROPHET??? Now, suddenly, you’re claiming there’s some free speech principle involved? Since when did YOU ever bother about free speech?
The Muslims are correct this time. There is no reasonable basis upon which Denmark or any other European country can stand on principle, because they recognize no such principle. If speech is offensive, it is banned, and speakers go to jail. Putting aside the issue of how much of the rioting is actually government-sponsored, there’s no question that Muslims are genuinely annoyed by the graphic depiction, especially in a negative light, of their prophet, so why aren’t the cartoonists eating out of tin cups? If some kid at Duesseldorf U. put a swastika in his dorm window, the Germans would treat him like Sherman treated Georgia. Once you begin banning offensive speech, you’re going to encounter some sensitive people (like Muslims), and you will have to accommodate them. When you allow the heckler a veto, you may be unpleasantly surprised by how many hecklers there are and how easily they are offended.
Europe’s failure to protect hate speech left an opening for the growing Muslim population there to exploit, and this particular battle in the culture war was over before it started, with Western freedom exposed as an illusion. European governments and journalists had no idea how to respond because they weren’t sure what they believed in, so many governments and newspapers apologized to the Muslim world. What newspaper now will publish words or pictures (even truthful ones) that will enrage the Muslim population? Those that do not censor themselves can expect no protection from the law; in fact, they may themselves be arrested for offending the rabble.
Apart from the freedom that disappears when a people fail to understand the importance of protecting hate speech, the cartoon war illustrates another danger of permitting the heckler a veto. As the Terminiello court pointed out, the peril for society is that the loudest and most violent hecklers will rule.
It may seem polite or civilized or politically-correct to ban speech that may offend one group or another, but this impulse is extremely shortsighted. What happens when groups of “victims” disagree over what speech is offensive? What will happen in Europe, for example, when an imam calls for the silencing of gay advocacy groups because their views are an affront to Allah? Homosexuals are executed in some Muslim countries; what happens when the faithful demand the same in Europe? It is one thing to lock up an elderly small-town Swedish pastor for condemning homosexuality, but would the Europeans do the same to a Muslim preacher who said far worse? An Iranian university just held an academic conference on the “myth” of the holocaust. Suppose someone decided to launch such an event in France?
When conflicts like this arise, the only method of resolving it will be to accede to the wishes of those who are most offended (i.e., the loudest). Since there is no principle involved other than a “right” not to have one’s (subjective) feelings wounded, those with the strongest feelings should prevail. And can anyone doubt that the winners of the rage-fest will be followers of Islam?
America, however, is different. America is better. Here, at least some people understand that if we want any freedom at all, we must accept the possibility we will sometimes be offended by other people’s exercise of it. It’s our law. It’s our tradition. “F*** em if they can’t take a joke” might as well be written in the Constitution. Several years ago, Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” was displayed in a public museum. The sculpture, a statue of Jesus immersed in a plastic case filled with the artist’s own urine, was deeply upsetting to many (perhaps most) people in this very Christian nation, but I remember no one calling for the suppression of this work. The only issue, discussed endlessly on TV and radio and in editorials, was whether artists like Mr. Serrano should receive public funding. Ban Muhammed cartoons? Ban offensive speech? Give me a break. Americans (outside of academia) don’t know how to think like that.
As Europe descends into oppression, we can be thankful that free speech, especially hate speech, survives here. America is still a place where you can say any damn thing you please. Maybe you’ll get punched in the nose for it, and maybe you should get punched in the nose for it, but you won’t get arrested. Or silenced.
Copyright 2006 Michael Kubacki
He thought about that, and looked at me funny.
“C’mon, Bob,” I said. “Would you want to live in a place where it was illegal to stand in the courtyard at City Hall and yell ‘The first thing we have to do is kill all the Jews.’”
He didn’t answer. He was thinking, as he sometimes does. Then, as luck would have it, a very healthy 20-year-old girl in an abbreviated bathing costume strolled past on her way to the surf, and he seemed to lose interest in my question. My attention may have wandered as well. By the time we were through examining the evidence, my First Amendment question had been forgotten.
But it’s an important question, especially in light of the war breaking out over the Muhammed cartoons. Should it be a crime to use the word “nigger,” or demand that Jews be killed? In other words, should “hate speech” be protected by the First Amendment?
Most Americans understand that the First Amendment makes us different from the rest of the world, even from other democracies with traditions of free speech and freedom of the press. One obvious difference is that free speech in America is rooted in our constitution, which trumps all other law. The British Parliament could pass a law tomorrow that would put all newspapers under government control. If the US Congress did such a thing, however, the law would be nullified as unconstitutional by the first (and every subsequent) federal judge to review it.
Nationalizing the press is an extreme example, of course, and there is no chance the British Parliament is going to do it. In a democracy lacking an overarching body of law like the First Amendment, however, the boundaries of free speech are always subject to political fashion and the whim of the legislature. And in fact, elected bodies in other countries regularly nibble away at speech rights in ways our constitution and our Supreme Court do not permit. Free speech law, as outlined by our courts over the last two hundred years, is marked by bright lines that neither Congress nor the states can cross. One of these bright lines of particular significance to hate speech laws (and the Danish cartoon war), is the “heckler’s veto,” a legal doctrine unique to the United States.
In the case of Terminiello v. Chicago, in 1949, a lecturer was arrested for a breach of the peace when an angry crowd gathered outside the auditorium where he was speaking. The trial judge told the jury that under a Chicago ordinance, it could convict the speaker if he had engaged in speech that “stirs the public to anger, invites dispute, brings about a condition of unrest or creates a disturbance….” On review, the US Supreme Court reversed the conviction and ruled the ordinance unconstitutional. Speech is protected, the Court wrote, BECAUSE “it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.”
Speech may legally be restricted for many reasons. You can’t hold an anti-war rally on Broad Street on January 1, when the mummers are parading, because that would be an “unreasonable time and place.” Some speech content (i.e., kiddie porn, national security secrets) is not only unprotected, it is actually criminal. Under Terminiello, however, the only reason speech rights may not be limited is that the speech will offend people, or even enrage them. To limit offensive speech because it offends is to give the heckler a veto over speech that annoys him. In fact, it encourages the heckler to become violent and breach the peace, because then the speaker will be punished. The rule of Terminiello is that we punish the violent heckler, but we do not punish the speaker.
The reasoning of the Terminiello case is that once you start banning speech because it offends, eventually you grant control of all discourse to the most sensitive, irrational and violent elements in society. Opening this door creates a “slippery slope” to repression. Though you begin by punishing nazis and racists, you move swiftly to jailing artists like Andres Serrano (“Piss Christ”) and newspaper editors who publish Muhammed cartoons. Ultimately, you lock up the guy who says, “Ya know, women can do a lot of things, but I still think the best firefighters are men.”
Though Terminiello is settled law (a “super-precedent,” as Arlen Specter would say), the rule of the “heckler’s veto” is not universally loved or respected, and there are plenty of folks who would ban what they view as “hate speech” if they could get away with it.
In the last twenty-five years, over 90% of colleges and universities in the United States have enacted speech codes or sexual harassment codes that ban “offensive” speech or speech that “demeans, provokes or subordinates” any person. A private university like Harvard or Bob Jones may legally do such a thing, but a public university like Temple or Penn State or Michigan is legally viewed as an arm of the government and is subject to the First Amendment.
When a student runs afoul of these rules with speech deemed “offensive” or “harassing” by college administrators, litigation often ensues. Currently, there are lawsuits all over the country. In fact, there is now a non-profit organization, the Foundation For Individual Rights In Education (“FIRE”), that provides legal assistance to students or faculty members who are punished for constitutionally-protected speech. FIRE never loses these cases.
Dozens of examples, including those that don’t reach the litigation stage, can be found at FIRE’s website, www.thefire.org. Here are a few:
***Cal-Poly, 2002. Student Steven Hinkle posted a flier in the campus Multicultural Center advertising a College-Republican-sponsored speech by Mason Weaver, author of It’s OK To Leave The Plantation. The flier displayed only the title of the book, the time and place of the event, and a picture of the author, an African-American. After some black students objected the poster was offensive, Hinkle, following a seven-hour hearing before the Cal-Poly Judicial Affairs Office, was ordered to write letters of apology to the offended students or face “severe penalties.”
***Central Michigan U, 2001. In October 2001, an administrator ordered a number of students to remove various patriotic displays (American flags, eagles, etc.) from their dormitory because the displays were offensive.
***Holy Cross, 2001. In October 2001, the chairman of the sociology department ordered a secretary’s American flag display removed from the office. The flag was in memory of her friend Todd Beamer, who fought and died on United flight 93 over Pennsylvania on 9-11.
***San Diego State, 2001. In September 2001, Zewdalem Kebede witnessed a group of Saudi Arabian students loudly expressing their delight at the success of the terrorist attacks. Kebede spoke to them in Arabic, condemning their opinions and bad taste. When the students complained, Kebede was subjected to a disciplinary hearing and issued a formal “letter of admonishment” in which he was told to avoid similar confrontations or face “severe disciplinary measures.”
***William Patterson U, 2005. Jihad Daniel, a Muslim student and employee of the college, received a mass email from Professor Arlene Scala promoting a showing of a film described as “a lesbian relationship story.” He replied privately to the professor, asking that he not be sent any mail about “Connie and Sally” or “Adam and Steve” because his religion viewed these relationships as “perversions.” Mr. Daniel received an official letter of reprimand in his employment file noting his violation of sexual harassment regulations.
***U of New Hampshire, 2004. Timothy Garneau posted fliers in the elevators of his dormitory suggesting that women could lose the “freshman 15” (weight gained the first year of college) by taking the stairs. Charged with “acts of dishonesty, violation of affirmative action policy and harassment,” Garneau was expelled from student housing, given disciplinary probation, required to meet with a psychological counselor and write a 3000-word essay about it, and further required to submit a letter of apology to the student newspaper.
***U of Cal-Irvine, 2004. Members of the College Republicans staged an Affirmative Action Bake Sale to dramatize the unfairness of affirmative action programs. Prices for donuts were based on the race and sex of the consumer, with white males paying a dollar, Hispanics 75 cents, and blacks 50 cents. A spirited discussion ensued, until the Dean of Students stopped the sale, claiming it violated student regulations on discrimination. College Republican groups have set up these sales at universities around the country, and were also shut down at Illinois State and SMU. At DePaul, the students were charged with violating the school’s harassment policy.
Another tactic used by college administrations to silence views they dislike is to allow, or even encourage, radical students to do the silencing by means of vandalism, theft, or other violence. At the University of Colorado, for example, an affirmative action bake sale ended when, with campus police in attendance, counter-demonstrators were permitted to rip down signs and overturn tables, without opposition or consequences.
In 2005, at Washington State University, student playwright Chris Lee produced his play, “Passion Of The Musical,” and advertised it widely as “offensive or inflammatory to all audiences.” During one performance, a group of forty protesters repeatedly stood up, shouted they were offended, and threatened audience members and the cast. When Lee finally stopped the play and asked campus security to remove the protesters, they refused his request. Evidence later surfaced that the Washington State Office For Campus Involvement had bought forty tickets for the protesters with university funds and had helped organize the disruption.
A common tactic for radical students is to steal the entire press run of a student newspaper containing “offensive” (i.e., politically conservative) material. Typically, the thieves are never punished. In fact, the theft is sometimes defended by administrators and professors as itself being an exercise of free speech. Again, these incidents are found across the country at a wide variety of institutions. A few that garnered significant press coverage were at Berkeley, UNC-Wilmington, U Mass, Loyola Marymount, Boston College, Morehead State, and Oregon State. FIRE has received reports on hundreds of such events.
It may be tempting to attribute these cases to a few ignorant zealots who happen to be college administrators, but in fact, they happen regularly across the country, in small schools and large, in red states and blue. Also, even when the light is shone on the suppression of speech at an institution supposedly dedicated to intellectual freedom, schools rarely back down. They litigate. They fight these complaints, spending many thousands on lawyers and thousands more on settlements and judgments. But even after they lose, the speech codes remain.
Illegal speech codes grew out of a misreading of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, federal laws that prohibit real harassment in the workplace and on campus. Because of this misunderstanding, and because of their own political views, the people who run our universities came to believe they were permitted, or even required, to regulate offensive speech. While it seems unlikely anyone could still believe this, the speech codes are now in place and there is strong support for them on most campuses.
University speech codes illustrate the “slippery slope” in full regalia. Federal laws designed to prevent the most severe, persistent, frightening sort of harassment (the equivalent of “stalking” under state laws), have morphed into an Orwellian system of oppression.
Thus, expressing one’s religious view that homosexuality is immoral becomes a hate crime. Poking fun at affirmative action policies results in disciplinary hearings and punishment. American flags get ripped from dormitory walls a month after 9-11. Once the door is opened to the notion that speech can be banned because someone is offended by it, no speech is safe. All variety of commentary becomes subject to the heckler’s veto.
American universities will eventually get the message that their speech codes are illegal, but in nations without a First Amendment (i.e., everywhere else), and without a Terminiello case, there is no particular reason to tolerate speech the majority deems hateful. And since, as a matter of practical politics, there is no organized constituency in favor of the most offensive speech, it is often banned.
In 1998, an Ontario man was convicted of a hate crime for distributing pamphlets about Islam. The offending pamphlet (truthfully) listed atrocities committed in the name of Allah, and urged the reader to be careful in dealing with Canadian Muslims.
More recent Canadian law has criminalized the public disapproval of homosexuality. In 2001, Hugh Owens placed an ad in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix in which a drawing of two males holding hands was overlaid with a red circle and a diagonal bar. The ad also referenced (but did not quote) four Bible passages that condemn homosexuality. Mr. Owens and the newspaper were fined $4500 under the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code, and the ruling was upheld by the Queen’s Bench, where a Justice Barclay wrote that “the advertisement can objectively be seen as exposing homosexuals to hatred or ridicule.” And under Canadian law, that’s all that matters. In another recent case from Ontario (not a speech case), a printer (a Christian) was fined $5000 for refusing a job printing letterhead for a gay advocacy group.
Hate speech laws are also found throughout Europe.
Shortly after Muslims carried out bomb attacks in London in 2005, a German man printed up toilet paper with the word “Koran” on every sheet, then sent the rolls to TV stations and mosques. He was given a one-year prison sentence, which will be followed by 300 hours of community service. I
In an odd English case, the Mayor of London was brought before the Adjudication Panel For England over a heated exchange he had with a reporter for the Evening Standard, a paper the Mayor despises. The Mayor asked the reporter (a Jew) if he had been a German war criminal and compared him to a concentration camp guard. The result was a four-week suspension for the Mayor, who will also have to pay legal fees of $175,000.
In Sweden, the Rev. Aake Green was sentenced to a month in prison for a sermon denouncing homosexuality as “a cancer on society.” After a yearlong appeal, the conviction was overturned and the pastor remains free, but the prosecution has announced plans for a further appeal, which will include a demand for a longer sentence.
Though the Rev. Green may escape punishment for his remarks from the pulpit, the effect of such laws on speech was apparent in his post-appeal statement to the press. “I’ll go on preaching as usual but I won’t be dedicating so much time to this issue,” he said. (This “chilling effect,” under US law, is why even an unsuccessful attempt to censor speech, or a rarely-enforced speech code, is actionable. On February 22, 2006, the Alliance Defense Fund filed a lawsuit against Penn State over its speech code in which the plaintiff is a student who has never been disciplined by the university for his speech, though others have been.)
The most widespread hate-speech laws are those banning public display of nazi symbols or denial of the holocaust. There are ten such countries in Europe (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Poland.) In addition, there are other countries (e.g., Canada and the U.K.) that do not explicitly ban holocaust denial, but do so under broader laws against inciting racial hatred.
On February 20, 2006, a British historian named David Irving was sentenced to three years in prison by an Austrian court for denying the holocaust in a 1989 publication (in England). The prosecutor is appealing the sentence as too lenient since the 1992 Austrian law provides for a sentence of up to ten years.
There is solid support for hate speech laws, of various kinds, across Europe. In fact, the EU bureaucracy is currently engaged in writing regulations to ban various forms of offensive speech on the internet. It is against this backdrop that the Danish cartoon war erupted.
The protests began with boycotts of Danish dairy products in Arabian countries and quickly progressed to riots, embassy-burning and blood in the streets. As the violence escalated, there were repeated demands that the government of Denmark, and other countries, apologize. And some government officials did, but not the Prime Minister of Denmark. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, though noting that burning a Koran would be a crime in Denmark, claimed the Danish government could do nothing about the cartoons because it did not control the press. In other words, the Danish government had nothing to do with it, so how could they apologize?
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Hitler-wannabe who is now President of Iran, in one of his more rational moments, hit the nail squarely on the noggin: “How can the insulting of the prophet of Muslims worldwide be justified within the framework of press freedom, but investigating the fairy tale holocaust is not?”
And he’s got a point, doesn’t he? In Europe, they’re trying to keep skinheads off the internet, they fine the elected mayor of a great city because he insults a reporter, they lock up a historian because he denied the holocaust in a different country three years before a law was passed saying you can’t deny the holocaust, and they want to put a preacher in jail for quoting Leviticus on Sunday morning. SO WHAT ABOUT US? WE’RE PISSED TOO! WHAT ABOUT OUR DAMN PROPHET??? Now, suddenly, you’re claiming there’s some free speech principle involved? Since when did YOU ever bother about free speech?
The Muslims are correct this time. There is no reasonable basis upon which Denmark or any other European country can stand on principle, because they recognize no such principle. If speech is offensive, it is banned, and speakers go to jail. Putting aside the issue of how much of the rioting is actually government-sponsored, there’s no question that Muslims are genuinely annoyed by the graphic depiction, especially in a negative light, of their prophet, so why aren’t the cartoonists eating out of tin cups? If some kid at Duesseldorf U. put a swastika in his dorm window, the Germans would treat him like Sherman treated Georgia. Once you begin banning offensive speech, you’re going to encounter some sensitive people (like Muslims), and you will have to accommodate them. When you allow the heckler a veto, you may be unpleasantly surprised by how many hecklers there are and how easily they are offended.
Europe’s failure to protect hate speech left an opening for the growing Muslim population there to exploit, and this particular battle in the culture war was over before it started, with Western freedom exposed as an illusion. European governments and journalists had no idea how to respond because they weren’t sure what they believed in, so many governments and newspapers apologized to the Muslim world. What newspaper now will publish words or pictures (even truthful ones) that will enrage the Muslim population? Those that do not censor themselves can expect no protection from the law; in fact, they may themselves be arrested for offending the rabble.
Apart from the freedom that disappears when a people fail to understand the importance of protecting hate speech, the cartoon war illustrates another danger of permitting the heckler a veto. As the Terminiello court pointed out, the peril for society is that the loudest and most violent hecklers will rule.
It may seem polite or civilized or politically-correct to ban speech that may offend one group or another, but this impulse is extremely shortsighted. What happens when groups of “victims” disagree over what speech is offensive? What will happen in Europe, for example, when an imam calls for the silencing of gay advocacy groups because their views are an affront to Allah? Homosexuals are executed in some Muslim countries; what happens when the faithful demand the same in Europe? It is one thing to lock up an elderly small-town Swedish pastor for condemning homosexuality, but would the Europeans do the same to a Muslim preacher who said far worse? An Iranian university just held an academic conference on the “myth” of the holocaust. Suppose someone decided to launch such an event in France?
When conflicts like this arise, the only method of resolving it will be to accede to the wishes of those who are most offended (i.e., the loudest). Since there is no principle involved other than a “right” not to have one’s (subjective) feelings wounded, those with the strongest feelings should prevail. And can anyone doubt that the winners of the rage-fest will be followers of Islam?
America, however, is different. America is better. Here, at least some people understand that if we want any freedom at all, we must accept the possibility we will sometimes be offended by other people’s exercise of it. It’s our law. It’s our tradition. “F*** em if they can’t take a joke” might as well be written in the Constitution. Several years ago, Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” was displayed in a public museum. The sculpture, a statue of Jesus immersed in a plastic case filled with the artist’s own urine, was deeply upsetting to many (perhaps most) people in this very Christian nation, but I remember no one calling for the suppression of this work. The only issue, discussed endlessly on TV and radio and in editorials, was whether artists like Mr. Serrano should receive public funding. Ban Muhammed cartoons? Ban offensive speech? Give me a break. Americans (outside of academia) don’t know how to think like that.
As Europe descends into oppression, we can be thankful that free speech, especially hate speech, survives here. America is still a place where you can say any damn thing you please. Maybe you’ll get punched in the nose for it, and maybe you should get punched in the nose for it, but you won’t get arrested. Or silenced.
Copyright 2006 Michael Kubacki
Wednesday, October 4, 2006
A MATTER OF ETHICS
I was in the car a few Sundays ago, looking for a football game on the radio, and I happened upon one of those call-in medical shows that fill out the right-wing radio schedule when Rush and Sean and Michael and Laura are all hunkered down somewhere with a box of cigars, a case of single-malt scotch and a 57-inch plasma TV tuned to the NFL package.
Normally, a medical show would hold my attention for exactly the length of time it would take me to recognize it was a medical show and hit the dial. I disapprove of these things under the best of circumstances, but on a Sunday afternoon in the Fall, I find it positively frightening to discover there are people (Americans!) who would rather talk about ginkgo and bowel movements than watch Peyton Manning dissect the Seahawks’ secondary. The shock of this realization invariably makes me wonder, briefly, whether al-Qaeda might someday win.
But at the moment I tuned in, as luck would have it, the “doctor” was not talking about ginkgo or bowel movements. He wasn’t even talking about cholesterol. Instead, he was launching into a problem in medical ethics.
And here it is.
A married couple goes to a doctor’s office to inquire about their fertility problems. The doctor examines each of them, administers some tests, and tells them to return on Thursday for the results. As they are leaving, the wife says, “Thanks, doctor. This is very important to us. We’ve been trying to have another child for seven years now.”
Before the second appointment, the doctor learns the husband is sterile. There is no other conclusion. It is a congenital condition, and while it might be corrected with surgery, the husband is not the father of their seven-year-old child.
Thursday comes. You’re the doctor. What do you tell the couple?
There’s no right answer, of course. Or rather, there is a right answer, but considerable disagreement about what it is. All us mortals can do is argue about it, and it turns out to be a great question to argue about. I brought it up, over the pie and cheesecake and coffee, at our Thanksgiving dinner, and the discussion went on for quite a while. One thing I can report at the outset is that even those with positions on the two extremes---1) tell the hard truth or 2) lie like a dog---tend not to get adamant about it. Almost everyone, it seems, can see the other side of the coin.
While you are considering your answer, and before I tell you mine, let me specify one rule: you can’t duck the question. One guy (a lawyer, of course), said the solution was to call the ethics board at the AMA and get a ruling. OK, I said, then the question is: what answer should they give you? Another guy (a doctor) avoided the question by claiming there was no such thing as medical certainty, and thus, nothing he might tell the couple could be characterized as “true” or “false.” In a nutshell, he was arguing it was impossible for him to lie when he was offering a medical opinion. (A convenient position for a doctor, n’est-ce pas?) He never did give me an answer.
The hypothetical is designed to engage our view of right and wrong---that’s the purpose of it. Don’t fight it.
On one extreme is the view of the doctor on the radio show. He said he would sit the couple down and tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This was his obligation as a doctor, he said. The couple came to him seeking a medical opinion and he would betray his oath if he were less than completely frank, no matter the consequences. As a policy matter, he noted that with DNA and genetic testing for diseases, this sort of issue was arising with increasing frequency, and it was essential to have an ironclad rule for the situation. Doctors could not be expected to “play God” with their patients, he suggested.
It’s a reasoned point of view, and I can see why a doctor, in particular, would feel that way. Among my unscientific sample, however, this is an extreme and unusual position. Only two people thought “the truth” trumped everything, and one of them was the lawyer whose first impulse was to duck the question.
The most common response, the middle road, is: “Well, he has to tell them the truth, right?” Then there is a pause of five or ten seconds. Then the person says, “Well, maybe I wouldn’t do that, exactly.” Following this, any number of creative lies emerge:
• “He’s been riding his bike too much.”
• “Maybe I check his medical records for the last seven years, and whatever happened to him is the reason he’s sterile."
• “I tell the wife the truth and ask her what she wants me to tell him.”
• “I tell them their first child was close to a miracle and he needs surgery to have another.”
My own view is at the other extreme---it would never occur to me to tell them the truth. I’m not sure what lie I would tell, but if I were a doctor, I’m sure I could invent something convincing, and I would. I would do so in spite of whatever ethical rules I learned in medical school and whatever legal liability I would be risking. I would falsify lab reports, if necessary. I would probably continue to lie even if they got a second opinion from another doctor and accused me of lying to them. I would tell them the second doctor was wrong, and subtly suggest he was well known to the police. Only when faced with threats of violence from the husband and service of a subpoena would I admit the truth.
Certainly, the truth is important, in an abstract sort of way. And yes, there is a contractual obligation on the doctor’s part to provide the service he has been engaged to perform. To see no further than these (perfectly legitimate) concerns, however, is to reduce the doctor’s role to that of the guy who sells you a new set of radial tires. A professional has an obligation to go a bit further, partly because he is in possession of specialized knowledge and the client is not. The client may not know what facts are important. He may not even know what the problem is. That’s why a professional has to acquaint himself with the entire picture, and has to use his judgment in identifying the problem and then deciding how to solve it.
How much further? Well, I admit my answer pushes professional responsibility to its limits, but once you acknowledge that the obligation to a patient or client extends further than that of the tire-monger, aren’t you forced to consider the interests of the seven-year-old child you have never met? And if, as a professional, you take that first little step toward an expanded view of your obligation---well, personally, I quickly come to the conclusion that the kid’s interests are the only ones that matter.
Morally, he trumps everybody. I’m an outsider here, but the one thing I know is that the kid is a completely innocent party. To my way of thinking, if that kid isn’t asking what happened nine months before he was born, I’m not going to tell him. I’m not going to tell anybody. And the kid isn’t asking. Why should he? He has a Momma and a Dada, and they all live together, and love each other, and whatever happened ninety-three months ago is ancient history.
It’s apparently ancient history to the husband and wife too, by the way. Remember---I’m just their doctor. I have no particular interest, professional or otherwise, in what happened way back when. All I see is a married couple that wants to have another kid. Maybe the husband had suspicions. If so, they’re gone now. The wife knew there was a possibility, but after seven years, she has persuaded herself her husband was the father. Maybe it was a two-week fling. Maybe it was a drunken Christmas party. Maybe, in her mind, it “didn’t matter.” What do I care? I’m only concerned with the kid, and what good can come to that seven-year-old by me telling the truth?
I have presented this argument to “truth-tellers” and have received the following response: “But it might be good for them to learn the truth. Maybe they will finally deal with the underlying issues in their relationship. Maybe they will reach a new understanding and a new level of partnership and love.”
“Yes,” I respond cordially. “And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.”
Speaking simply as a guy, qua guy, knowledge of a wife’s infidelity and a husband’s non-paternity is not going to catapult anybody to a new level of partnership and love. I don’t even know a guy who is that “evolved,” though I know some who probably think they are. A few guys would kill. More would divorce. About the best outcome would be a long series of therapy sessions and hot tubs and long, meaningful chats and crap like that. Meanwhile, the kid (remember the kid???) is wondering what the hell is wrong with his Momma and Dada. In my limited experience, kids don’t want Momma and Dada to have long, meaningful chats and deal with the underlying issues in their relationship. They prefer it when their parents are sitting on the patio drinking beer and talking about Britney Spears and Hillary Clinton. Kids want Momma to make cookies sometimes, and they want Dada to take them to a ballgame and buy them a hotdog and tell them a stupid joke. Kids HATE underlying issues. Nobody hates underlying issues more than kids do. Not even me.
What is interesting about this problem is that all of us can sympathize with the doctor. He is simply doing his job to the best of his ability, and suddenly he is confronted with a moral and ethical dilemma. He did not choose to be placed in the position he finds himself. Nobody would. Nevertheless, there it is. He holds the fate of this family in his hands and he has to decide what to do. He can consult other doctors or call the AMA Ethics Board or ask his priest, but the final decision is his. He’s stuck with it.
What engages us is that we are all placed in this position from time to time, typically when we least expect it. Moral issues are part of the human condition, as much as we may try to avoid them. But it’s not really an answer, is it, to “call the Ethics Board” or dismiss the issue with some bromide about “the truth” or “medical certainty” or “playing God.” Not that “the truth” is a concept without value, but why should it triumph here, in this situation, with this family? As my criminal law professor used to say, “Justify your answer!” Perhaps it can be justified, but if the parents get divorced and the kid starts selling dope on the corner, you will need a better answer for yourself than, “Well, that’s what the Ethics Board told me to do,” or “In medical school, they told us not to play God.” Because you were playing God. You were put in a position where you were forced to play God. You just made the wrong decision because you wanted to pretend you weren’t making a decision at all. This is the worst possible strategy when faced with a moral dilemma.
One way to approach these questions is to ask yourself, “If I choose Option A, and there are terrible consequences, can I still defend my decision?” Then ask yourself the same question about Option B. In this case, the first question becomes, “If I tell the truth and the family disintegrates, will I still feel I did the right thing?” Then ask, “If I lie, and I face discipline for an ethical violation (or get a punch in the nose), will I still believe my lie was justified?”
I remain curious about this question. If you disagree with me (and most people do), send me an email and tell me what you think.
Copyright 2006 Michael Kubacki
Normally, a medical show would hold my attention for exactly the length of time it would take me to recognize it was a medical show and hit the dial. I disapprove of these things under the best of circumstances, but on a Sunday afternoon in the Fall, I find it positively frightening to discover there are people (Americans!) who would rather talk about ginkgo and bowel movements than watch Peyton Manning dissect the Seahawks’ secondary. The shock of this realization invariably makes me wonder, briefly, whether al-Qaeda might someday win.
But at the moment I tuned in, as luck would have it, the “doctor” was not talking about ginkgo or bowel movements. He wasn’t even talking about cholesterol. Instead, he was launching into a problem in medical ethics.
And here it is.
A married couple goes to a doctor’s office to inquire about their fertility problems. The doctor examines each of them, administers some tests, and tells them to return on Thursday for the results. As they are leaving, the wife says, “Thanks, doctor. This is very important to us. We’ve been trying to have another child for seven years now.”
Before the second appointment, the doctor learns the husband is sterile. There is no other conclusion. It is a congenital condition, and while it might be corrected with surgery, the husband is not the father of their seven-year-old child.
Thursday comes. You’re the doctor. What do you tell the couple?
There’s no right answer, of course. Or rather, there is a right answer, but considerable disagreement about what it is. All us mortals can do is argue about it, and it turns out to be a great question to argue about. I brought it up, over the pie and cheesecake and coffee, at our Thanksgiving dinner, and the discussion went on for quite a while. One thing I can report at the outset is that even those with positions on the two extremes---1) tell the hard truth or 2) lie like a dog---tend not to get adamant about it. Almost everyone, it seems, can see the other side of the coin.
While you are considering your answer, and before I tell you mine, let me specify one rule: you can’t duck the question. One guy (a lawyer, of course), said the solution was to call the ethics board at the AMA and get a ruling. OK, I said, then the question is: what answer should they give you? Another guy (a doctor) avoided the question by claiming there was no such thing as medical certainty, and thus, nothing he might tell the couple could be characterized as “true” or “false.” In a nutshell, he was arguing it was impossible for him to lie when he was offering a medical opinion. (A convenient position for a doctor, n’est-ce pas?) He never did give me an answer.
The hypothetical is designed to engage our view of right and wrong---that’s the purpose of it. Don’t fight it.
On one extreme is the view of the doctor on the radio show. He said he would sit the couple down and tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This was his obligation as a doctor, he said. The couple came to him seeking a medical opinion and he would betray his oath if he were less than completely frank, no matter the consequences. As a policy matter, he noted that with DNA and genetic testing for diseases, this sort of issue was arising with increasing frequency, and it was essential to have an ironclad rule for the situation. Doctors could not be expected to “play God” with their patients, he suggested.
It’s a reasoned point of view, and I can see why a doctor, in particular, would feel that way. Among my unscientific sample, however, this is an extreme and unusual position. Only two people thought “the truth” trumped everything, and one of them was the lawyer whose first impulse was to duck the question.
The most common response, the middle road, is: “Well, he has to tell them the truth, right?” Then there is a pause of five or ten seconds. Then the person says, “Well, maybe I wouldn’t do that, exactly.” Following this, any number of creative lies emerge:
• “He’s been riding his bike too much.”
• “Maybe I check his medical records for the last seven years, and whatever happened to him is the reason he’s sterile."
• “I tell the wife the truth and ask her what she wants me to tell him.”
• “I tell them their first child was close to a miracle and he needs surgery to have another.”
My own view is at the other extreme---it would never occur to me to tell them the truth. I’m not sure what lie I would tell, but if I were a doctor, I’m sure I could invent something convincing, and I would. I would do so in spite of whatever ethical rules I learned in medical school and whatever legal liability I would be risking. I would falsify lab reports, if necessary. I would probably continue to lie even if they got a second opinion from another doctor and accused me of lying to them. I would tell them the second doctor was wrong, and subtly suggest he was well known to the police. Only when faced with threats of violence from the husband and service of a subpoena would I admit the truth.
Certainly, the truth is important, in an abstract sort of way. And yes, there is a contractual obligation on the doctor’s part to provide the service he has been engaged to perform. To see no further than these (perfectly legitimate) concerns, however, is to reduce the doctor’s role to that of the guy who sells you a new set of radial tires. A professional has an obligation to go a bit further, partly because he is in possession of specialized knowledge and the client is not. The client may not know what facts are important. He may not even know what the problem is. That’s why a professional has to acquaint himself with the entire picture, and has to use his judgment in identifying the problem and then deciding how to solve it.
How much further? Well, I admit my answer pushes professional responsibility to its limits, but once you acknowledge that the obligation to a patient or client extends further than that of the tire-monger, aren’t you forced to consider the interests of the seven-year-old child you have never met? And if, as a professional, you take that first little step toward an expanded view of your obligation---well, personally, I quickly come to the conclusion that the kid’s interests are the only ones that matter.
Morally, he trumps everybody. I’m an outsider here, but the one thing I know is that the kid is a completely innocent party. To my way of thinking, if that kid isn’t asking what happened nine months before he was born, I’m not going to tell him. I’m not going to tell anybody. And the kid isn’t asking. Why should he? He has a Momma and a Dada, and they all live together, and love each other, and whatever happened ninety-three months ago is ancient history.
It’s apparently ancient history to the husband and wife too, by the way. Remember---I’m just their doctor. I have no particular interest, professional or otherwise, in what happened way back when. All I see is a married couple that wants to have another kid. Maybe the husband had suspicions. If so, they’re gone now. The wife knew there was a possibility, but after seven years, she has persuaded herself her husband was the father. Maybe it was a two-week fling. Maybe it was a drunken Christmas party. Maybe, in her mind, it “didn’t matter.” What do I care? I’m only concerned with the kid, and what good can come to that seven-year-old by me telling the truth?
I have presented this argument to “truth-tellers” and have received the following response: “But it might be good for them to learn the truth. Maybe they will finally deal with the underlying issues in their relationship. Maybe they will reach a new understanding and a new level of partnership and love.”
“Yes,” I respond cordially. “And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.”
Speaking simply as a guy, qua guy, knowledge of a wife’s infidelity and a husband’s non-paternity is not going to catapult anybody to a new level of partnership and love. I don’t even know a guy who is that “evolved,” though I know some who probably think they are. A few guys would kill. More would divorce. About the best outcome would be a long series of therapy sessions and hot tubs and long, meaningful chats and crap like that. Meanwhile, the kid (remember the kid???) is wondering what the hell is wrong with his Momma and Dada. In my limited experience, kids don’t want Momma and Dada to have long, meaningful chats and deal with the underlying issues in their relationship. They prefer it when their parents are sitting on the patio drinking beer and talking about Britney Spears and Hillary Clinton. Kids want Momma to make cookies sometimes, and they want Dada to take them to a ballgame and buy them a hotdog and tell them a stupid joke. Kids HATE underlying issues. Nobody hates underlying issues more than kids do. Not even me.
What is interesting about this problem is that all of us can sympathize with the doctor. He is simply doing his job to the best of his ability, and suddenly he is confronted with a moral and ethical dilemma. He did not choose to be placed in the position he finds himself. Nobody would. Nevertheless, there it is. He holds the fate of this family in his hands and he has to decide what to do. He can consult other doctors or call the AMA Ethics Board or ask his priest, but the final decision is his. He’s stuck with it.
What engages us is that we are all placed in this position from time to time, typically when we least expect it. Moral issues are part of the human condition, as much as we may try to avoid them. But it’s not really an answer, is it, to “call the Ethics Board” or dismiss the issue with some bromide about “the truth” or “medical certainty” or “playing God.” Not that “the truth” is a concept without value, but why should it triumph here, in this situation, with this family? As my criminal law professor used to say, “Justify your answer!” Perhaps it can be justified, but if the parents get divorced and the kid starts selling dope on the corner, you will need a better answer for yourself than, “Well, that’s what the Ethics Board told me to do,” or “In medical school, they told us not to play God.” Because you were playing God. You were put in a position where you were forced to play God. You just made the wrong decision because you wanted to pretend you weren’t making a decision at all. This is the worst possible strategy when faced with a moral dilemma.
One way to approach these questions is to ask yourself, “If I choose Option A, and there are terrible consequences, can I still defend my decision?” Then ask yourself the same question about Option B. In this case, the first question becomes, “If I tell the truth and the family disintegrates, will I still feel I did the right thing?” Then ask, “If I lie, and I face discipline for an ethical violation (or get a punch in the nose), will I still believe my lie was justified?”
I remain curious about this question. If you disagree with me (and most people do), send me an email and tell me what you think.
Copyright 2006 Michael Kubacki
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
MY FAVORITE ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
Dear Joe---
Please understand I am not trying to convert you from your atheistic ways, but our conversation the other day made me realize I don’t get a chance to talk about the existence of God as much as I’d like to. People I mention it to on the subway just don’t seem that interested.
For me, creation remains the central mystery. Where did all the stuff come from? All the galaxies and chemicals and atoms---all the stuff that went into the big bang---where did it come from? Your answer, I think, was that it just appeared, or that it was always there, somehow.
This idea runs counter to everything you and I and everybody else in the history of the world have ever observed. Causes and effects are everywhere---nothing comes out of nothing. And yet, you think that at the very beginning, at the very first moment, it did. There was no particular reason for it. It just happened. At the very start, there was matter, or a creative event, or a coming into existence, or something, and then this magical process ceased forever as we were thrown into a universe of cause and effect. Why? How? And if you don’t know, can you at least point to SOMETHING that would justify your faith in this scenario?
My problem with it is that I cannot make the leap of faith you find so comfortable and certain. The idea of an effect without a cause is not only alien to my experience, I can’t even conceive of such a thing. I don’t know how to start thinking about it. In other words, it’s not that I have “faith” and you don’t. It’s impossible for a human being with a mind not to have “faith,” because there is no natural process that explains creation. You have faith too, but it’s in a process I find so outlandish and weird and irrational that I can’t imagine it.
While your theory contradicts our knowledge of the physical world, positing the existence of God contradicts nothing. My God is the Creator. Everything in the universe I am familiar with has a cause, and He is the first cause. That’s the definition of God. There can be no proof, in any scientific fashion, of His existence, but He fits. He makes sense.
I would add that I can find hints of God’s existence in my own observations, and in wisdom that has come down through the centuries, and in the Bible. It’s possible that all us believers are just kidding ourselves, of course, but your alternative offers nothing---no evidence, no hints, no explanation. In addition, we must believe that everything we see and understand is false.
Love,
Joe
Copyright 2006 Michael Kubacki
Please understand I am not trying to convert you from your atheistic ways, but our conversation the other day made me realize I don’t get a chance to talk about the existence of God as much as I’d like to. People I mention it to on the subway just don’t seem that interested.
For me, creation remains the central mystery. Where did all the stuff come from? All the galaxies and chemicals and atoms---all the stuff that went into the big bang---where did it come from? Your answer, I think, was that it just appeared, or that it was always there, somehow.
This idea runs counter to everything you and I and everybody else in the history of the world have ever observed. Causes and effects are everywhere---nothing comes out of nothing. And yet, you think that at the very beginning, at the very first moment, it did. There was no particular reason for it. It just happened. At the very start, there was matter, or a creative event, or a coming into existence, or something, and then this magical process ceased forever as we were thrown into a universe of cause and effect. Why? How? And if you don’t know, can you at least point to SOMETHING that would justify your faith in this scenario?
My problem with it is that I cannot make the leap of faith you find so comfortable and certain. The idea of an effect without a cause is not only alien to my experience, I can’t even conceive of such a thing. I don’t know how to start thinking about it. In other words, it’s not that I have “faith” and you don’t. It’s impossible for a human being with a mind not to have “faith,” because there is no natural process that explains creation. You have faith too, but it’s in a process I find so outlandish and weird and irrational that I can’t imagine it.
While your theory contradicts our knowledge of the physical world, positing the existence of God contradicts nothing. My God is the Creator. Everything in the universe I am familiar with has a cause, and He is the first cause. That’s the definition of God. There can be no proof, in any scientific fashion, of His existence, but He fits. He makes sense.
I would add that I can find hints of God’s existence in my own observations, and in wisdom that has come down through the centuries, and in the Bible. It’s possible that all us believers are just kidding ourselves, of course, but your alternative offers nothing---no evidence, no hints, no explanation. In addition, we must believe that everything we see and understand is false.
Love,
Joe
Copyright 2006 Michael Kubacki
Friday, June 30, 2006
LETTERS TO THE DAILY NEWS
Like all life-long cranks, I am an inveterate reader of letters to the editor. It’s often the only way we cranks can communicate with one another, since many of us live in institutions, relatives’ garages, 1979 VW vans, or other places that lack regular mail service or internet access. Also, since most of us are subject to a number of restraining orders, many lines of communication used routinely by our fellow citizens (e.g., stalking) are closed to us by law. But we can usually scrape together a piece of paper, a crayon, an envelope, and a first-class stamp.
There are three daily newspapers in Philly---the Inquirer, the Bulletin, and the Daily News---but for cranks, there is only one. The Inquirer fancies itself as the local version of the New York Times, and thus only publishes letters from executives (lesbians preferred) at non-profit organizations who believe polar bears should be designated an endangered species. The Bulletin is both more suburban and more conservative, but is also crank-unfriendly. A typical letter in the Bulletin runs 3000 words and concerns a five-year dispute in the Montgomery County Register of Wills Office among a County Commissioner, a buxom civil service clerk, two lawyers and a retired judge who was once married to one of the lawyers.
But then there’s the Daily News, which not only publishes letters from cranks but actually seems to prefer them. The DN not only publishes more letters than the other two papers, but on many days does not publish a single letter from someone you would be comfortable sitting next to on a bus.
Here is a collection of my favorites:
It was the day after the Phillies won 11-10.
My phone was ringing so I answered it. Wow, it was one of my sons, who I hadn’t heard from in about five years. He said he wanted to pay me a visit.
I said sorry, but I’ll be watching TV every night for a while, but if it’s raining, you could stop over. (Click.) Oh, well.
There’s a question I’ve been trying to find an answer to for quite some time.
The total mass of our planet seems to be steadily decreasing. For millions of years, the earth’s mass stayed relatively the same. Land masses shifted, glaciers formed and melted, but our total weight stayed the same. But with the Industrial Revolution came our dependence on fossil fuel.
The oil and coal we have extracted from the earth does not replenish itself and has, to some extent, changed the mass of our planet.
If we steadily keep draining billions of tons of oil and coal from the planet, could we change the orbit of our planet, move closer to the sun---and be incinerated?
The IRS’s confusion of Abigail Roberts (aka Charlotte Kuheuna) with Hawaiian heiress Abigail Kinoiki Kekaulike Kawananakoa is quite understandable, and reminds me of a similar confusion of my own.
After all, I still can’t tell the difference between Kam Fong and Chin Ho, and Zulu, as Kono.
The Daily News has been awash with items regarding the 370-and-counting murder in Philly alone. If Darwinism is true, who cares? Aren’t these murderers proving his theory, survival of the fittest?
How about the three foster sisters on the front page? If their parents weren’t strong enough to raise them, then they aren’t genetically equipped either.
Religiously and politically, the recent tsunami in south Asia is one more proof that the gods of Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism are not as pro-life as believed.
The total loss of human life in this calamity may soon equal the number killed, to date, by American military action in Iraq. These counts do not include fetuses or non-human life.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, and all other gods, indivisible with liberty and justice for all races, colors and every other nation in the world.”
In Massachusetts and San Francisco, you have men kissing men, women kissing women, right on TV.
Where are the decent families? Don’t leave the Catholic Church out---so many young men had their lives shattered. So don’t make Janet Jackson a scapegoat.
I have only one question: Is there an East Philadelphia? And where exactly is it located? I’ve heard of North Philadelphia, South Philadelphia and West Philadelphia, but never East Philadelphia.
I’ve asked and the answer is always the same---there is no East Philadelphia.
I simply refuse to believe this and hope I’m correct.
I am so sick of these people who are counting their carbs! Ever hear of moderation?
The other day at a small work party, the girl who is dedicated to this South Beach diet was the one wielding the knife cutting the cake!
Is it me?
The Democratic Party wants to increase taxes the wrong way.
Instead of small increases every year, why not just have a 100 percent income tax? All of our money can be placed in one big pot and we can receive vouchers for food, clothing, toilet paper, etc.
We may have to wait in lines sometimes, but so what? It will all be for the greater good. And why own a home? We could all live in government-subsidized apartments. Wouldn’t that be so much nicer?
And to top it all off, this would virtually eliminate crime.
If we are all equal, why would somebody want to rob or steal?
I don’t know about anybody else, but I think it’s a great idea!
In our modern world of “the good foul,” drawing blood from your opponent is never apparently punished as significantly as the victim has suffered.
This allows bladder tumors like Ann Coulter to suppurate over the public, much to their eventual reward.
So much of our public discourse has come to accept this moral metastasis that conservatives now complain when liberals use less than pristine language to reply to this downpour of pus and urine.
The news reports state that Mount St. Helens is about to erupt because it is at a Level 3.
Tom Ridge came up with this five-colored method of telling us how close we are to a possible terrorist attack.
All these hurricanes are being rated as to strength based on wind speed from 1 to 5.
These supposed simple rating methods are getting too difficult for me to understand.
Why can’t they just tell me how “screwed” we will be?
As Phils fans remember Tug McGraw, another ex-Phil’s passing might have slipped by over the holidays and in the shadow of Reggie White.
Johnnie Oates, a catcher in the early ‘70s, also succumbed to brain cancer, just as Tug and pitcher Ken Brett did two months before McGraw. Throw in Vuke, and that’s four former Phils of the ‘70s era who have had brain cancer.
Considering that the odds in a normal environment of contracting brain cancer is about 1 in 8,000 and that there were only a couple of hundred Phillies who competed during that era, should a question be raised concerning possible public health risks from the Vet facility?
I’d start with the Astro Turf. According to the U.S. Patent Office, Astro Turf is composed of many ingredients, one of which is polyvinyl chloride, a plastic that when exposed to temperatures of 86 degrees or more breaks down into a dioxin.
If inhaled on a consistent basis, and if you have a susceptibility factor, it could eventually lead to angiosarcoma in the brain or liver. Throw in a stadium where this heavier-than-air byproduct has no place to travel, and this might be an item to examine.
And it’s not just here where this has occurred. Two names come easily to mind: Stargell and Bonds, who called Pittsburgh and St. Louis, their homes. These cities, along with Cincinnati, had fields of Astro Turf.
At the very least, Major League Baseball and the Players Association have an obligation to make former players aware of the possible health risks that may be ahead for them.
Your Op/Ed page STINKS. If you print this rant, please put stinks in capital letters, like I just did.
First, I read about a woman who complains bitterly about her quarter-life crisis. Nothing seems to work for her. She had a kid but her life is boring. So what does she do? She writes to the Daily News, the editor prints it, and now she feels better…OK?
A few weeks ago, a lawyer writes how miserable her life is, and that it’s better living without a man in her life, and her bitching letter pays off.
If you want to cry the blues, the best place to shed your tears is on the Op/Ed page of the Daily News. Believe me, the editor is in need of a psychiatrist for printing this junk.
And I should have my own head examined for even writing to you.
There are three daily newspapers in Philly---the Inquirer, the Bulletin, and the Daily News---but for cranks, there is only one. The Inquirer fancies itself as the local version of the New York Times, and thus only publishes letters from executives (lesbians preferred) at non-profit organizations who believe polar bears should be designated an endangered species. The Bulletin is both more suburban and more conservative, but is also crank-unfriendly. A typical letter in the Bulletin runs 3000 words and concerns a five-year dispute in the Montgomery County Register of Wills Office among a County Commissioner, a buxom civil service clerk, two lawyers and a retired judge who was once married to one of the lawyers.
But then there’s the Daily News, which not only publishes letters from cranks but actually seems to prefer them. The DN not only publishes more letters than the other two papers, but on many days does not publish a single letter from someone you would be comfortable sitting next to on a bus.
Here is a collection of my favorites:
It was the day after the Phillies won 11-10.
My phone was ringing so I answered it. Wow, it was one of my sons, who I hadn’t heard from in about five years. He said he wanted to pay me a visit.
I said sorry, but I’ll be watching TV every night for a while, but if it’s raining, you could stop over. (Click.) Oh, well.
Jim Bresnan, Richboro
*
There’s a question I’ve been trying to find an answer to for quite some time.
The total mass of our planet seems to be steadily decreasing. For millions of years, the earth’s mass stayed relatively the same. Land masses shifted, glaciers formed and melted, but our total weight stayed the same. But with the Industrial Revolution came our dependence on fossil fuel.
The oil and coal we have extracted from the earth does not replenish itself and has, to some extent, changed the mass of our planet.
If we steadily keep draining billions of tons of oil and coal from the planet, could we change the orbit of our planet, move closer to the sun---and be incinerated?
Albert D. Lancelotti Sr., Philadelphia
*
The IRS’s confusion of Abigail Roberts (aka Charlotte Kuheuna) with Hawaiian heiress Abigail Kinoiki Kekaulike Kawananakoa is quite understandable, and reminds me of a similar confusion of my own.
After all, I still can’t tell the difference between Kam Fong and Chin Ho, and Zulu, as Kono.
Stuart Caesar, Philadelphia
*
The Daily News has been awash with items regarding the 370-and-counting murder in Philly alone. If Darwinism is true, who cares? Aren’t these murderers proving his theory, survival of the fittest?
How about the three foster sisters on the front page? If their parents weren’t strong enough to raise them, then they aren’t genetically equipped either.
Tom Dietrick, Philadelphia
*
Religiously and politically, the recent tsunami in south Asia is one more proof that the gods of Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism are not as pro-life as believed.
The total loss of human life in this calamity may soon equal the number killed, to date, by American military action in Iraq. These counts do not include fetuses or non-human life.
Henry T. Stokes, Philadelphia
*
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, and all other gods, indivisible with liberty and justice for all races, colors and every other nation in the world.”
Paul Rash, Philadelphia
*
In Massachusetts and San Francisco, you have men kissing men, women kissing women, right on TV.
Where are the decent families? Don’t leave the Catholic Church out---so many young men had their lives shattered. So don’t make Janet Jackson a scapegoat.
Moses Cook, Philadelphia
*
I have only one question: Is there an East Philadelphia? And where exactly is it located? I’ve heard of North Philadelphia, South Philadelphia and West Philadelphia, but never East Philadelphia.
I’ve asked and the answer is always the same---there is no East Philadelphia.
I simply refuse to believe this and hope I’m correct.
Rodney Madison, Houtzdale (Pa.) State Prison
*
I am so sick of these people who are counting their carbs! Ever hear of moderation?
The other day at a small work party, the girl who is dedicated to this South Beach diet was the one wielding the knife cutting the cake!
Is it me?
Anne Mendenhall, Willow Grove
*
The Democratic Party wants to increase taxes the wrong way.
Instead of small increases every year, why not just have a 100 percent income tax? All of our money can be placed in one big pot and we can receive vouchers for food, clothing, toilet paper, etc.
We may have to wait in lines sometimes, but so what? It will all be for the greater good. And why own a home? We could all live in government-subsidized apartments. Wouldn’t that be so much nicer?
And to top it all off, this would virtually eliminate crime.
If we are all equal, why would somebody want to rob or steal?
I don’t know about anybody else, but I think it’s a great idea!
William Lattanzio, Spring City Pa.
*
In our modern world of “the good foul,” drawing blood from your opponent is never apparently punished as significantly as the victim has suffered.
This allows bladder tumors like Ann Coulter to suppurate over the public, much to their eventual reward.
So much of our public discourse has come to accept this moral metastasis that conservatives now complain when liberals use less than pristine language to reply to this downpour of pus and urine.
Ben Burrows, Elkins Park
*
The news reports state that Mount St. Helens is about to erupt because it is at a Level 3.
Tom Ridge came up with this five-colored method of telling us how close we are to a possible terrorist attack.
All these hurricanes are being rated as to strength based on wind speed from 1 to 5.
These supposed simple rating methods are getting too difficult for me to understand.
Why can’t they just tell me how “screwed” we will be?
Mayer Krain, Philadelphia
*
As Phils fans remember Tug McGraw, another ex-Phil’s passing might have slipped by over the holidays and in the shadow of Reggie White.
Johnnie Oates, a catcher in the early ‘70s, also succumbed to brain cancer, just as Tug and pitcher Ken Brett did two months before McGraw. Throw in Vuke, and that’s four former Phils of the ‘70s era who have had brain cancer.
Considering that the odds in a normal environment of contracting brain cancer is about 1 in 8,000 and that there were only a couple of hundred Phillies who competed during that era, should a question be raised concerning possible public health risks from the Vet facility?
I’d start with the Astro Turf. According to the U.S. Patent Office, Astro Turf is composed of many ingredients, one of which is polyvinyl chloride, a plastic that when exposed to temperatures of 86 degrees or more breaks down into a dioxin.
If inhaled on a consistent basis, and if you have a susceptibility factor, it could eventually lead to angiosarcoma in the brain or liver. Throw in a stadium where this heavier-than-air byproduct has no place to travel, and this might be an item to examine.
And it’s not just here where this has occurred. Two names come easily to mind: Stargell and Bonds, who called Pittsburgh and St. Louis, their homes. These cities, along with Cincinnati, had fields of Astro Turf.
At the very least, Major League Baseball and the Players Association have an obligation to make former players aware of the possible health risks that may be ahead for them.
Chip Maylie, Marlton, N.J.
*
Your Op/Ed page STINKS. If you print this rant, please put stinks in capital letters, like I just did.
First, I read about a woman who complains bitterly about her quarter-life crisis. Nothing seems to work for her. She had a kid but her life is boring. So what does she do? She writes to the Daily News, the editor prints it, and now she feels better…OK?
A few weeks ago, a lawyer writes how miserable her life is, and that it’s better living without a man in her life, and her bitching letter pays off.
If you want to cry the blues, the best place to shed your tears is on the Op/Ed page of the Daily News. Believe me, the editor is in need of a psychiatrist for printing this junk.
And I should have my own head examined for even writing to you.
Ed Galing, Hatboro
Wednesday, May 3, 2006
ADVICE TO MY SON TEX
*** Never participate in a drinking contest of any kind, not even of water.
*** After chopping jalapenos, wash your hands with soap and water before touching your penis.
*** Aside from your parents, nobody really cares whether you are educated. Most of the world, including almost all of your teachers, wants you to be stupid. If you want an education, you will have to fight for it.
*** Blondes cannot be expected to take out the trash.
*** Someday you will be attracted to a girl who wants a diamond ring, a large wedding with a horse-drawn carriage, and wedding presents from William-Sonoma. Do not, under any circumstances, marry this girl.
*** Never bet the favorite. If you don’t like the underdog, pass.
*** Throughout your life, maintain some friendships with people who are either much older or much younger than you are.
***In no-limit Texas hold-em, never go all in with an ace-queen unsuited.
*** Ignore doom-sayers. They are always wrong, and they are generally only in it for the money. Salt and sugar and fat are not bad for you, and cell phones won’t give you brain cancer. “Global Warming” is 1% science and 99% hype. If you ever have any doubts about this, remember how most of us died from Global Cooling in the 1970’s, and the rest of us perished in the Y2K disaster.
*** Nobody ever really gets away with anything.
*** If you know what you want to do with your life when you’re 18, fine. Otherwise, politely ignore advice that you find a career or settle down. No one in your family ever amounted to anything before the age of thirty.
*** You will be happier with girls whose eating habits are no stranger than your own.
***In war, America is 23 – 1. When you are faced with a battle against superior forces, in school or in life, ask yourself: “What would the Vietcong do?”
*** Where money is concerned, focus your attention on the upside, and ignore risk. A single $10,000 score pays for a lot of $100 losses. In the long run, this strategy is much safer than trying to grind it out. The grinders get wiped out too, and they never have a chance to earn a truly interesting sum of money.
*** You can either have cats or nice furniture. You can’t have both.
*** In my 20’s, I had a nasty apartment in a bad neighborhood, and I was burglarized several times. I’m not suggesting you live in such a place, but it did teach me not to get attached to material things, and this has turned out to be a valuable lesson.
*** A gentleman pays his gambling debts before he pays his mortgage, his electric bill, or his lawyer.
*** All of us are confronted every day with the choice of good or evil. The real danger lies in pretending you don’t know the difference.
Copyright 2004 Michael Kubacki
*** After chopping jalapenos, wash your hands with soap and water before touching your penis.
*** Aside from your parents, nobody really cares whether you are educated. Most of the world, including almost all of your teachers, wants you to be stupid. If you want an education, you will have to fight for it.
*** Blondes cannot be expected to take out the trash.
*** Someday you will be attracted to a girl who wants a diamond ring, a large wedding with a horse-drawn carriage, and wedding presents from William-Sonoma. Do not, under any circumstances, marry this girl.
*** Never bet the favorite. If you don’t like the underdog, pass.
*** Throughout your life, maintain some friendships with people who are either much older or much younger than you are.
***In no-limit Texas hold-em, never go all in with an ace-queen unsuited.
*** Ignore doom-sayers. They are always wrong, and they are generally only in it for the money. Salt and sugar and fat are not bad for you, and cell phones won’t give you brain cancer. “Global Warming” is 1% science and 99% hype. If you ever have any doubts about this, remember how most of us died from Global Cooling in the 1970’s, and the rest of us perished in the Y2K disaster.
*** Nobody ever really gets away with anything.
*** If you know what you want to do with your life when you’re 18, fine. Otherwise, politely ignore advice that you find a career or settle down. No one in your family ever amounted to anything before the age of thirty.
*** You will be happier with girls whose eating habits are no stranger than your own.
***In war, America is 23 – 1. When you are faced with a battle against superior forces, in school or in life, ask yourself: “What would the Vietcong do?”
*** Where money is concerned, focus your attention on the upside, and ignore risk. A single $10,000 score pays for a lot of $100 losses. In the long run, this strategy is much safer than trying to grind it out. The grinders get wiped out too, and they never have a chance to earn a truly interesting sum of money.
*** You can either have cats or nice furniture. You can’t have both.
*** In my 20’s, I had a nasty apartment in a bad neighborhood, and I was burglarized several times. I’m not suggesting you live in such a place, but it did teach me not to get attached to material things, and this has turned out to be a valuable lesson.
*** A gentleman pays his gambling debts before he pays his mortgage, his electric bill, or his lawyer.
*** All of us are confronted every day with the choice of good or evil. The real danger lies in pretending you don’t know the difference.
Copyright 2004 Michael Kubacki
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
LETTER TO THE PRINCIPAL
To the Principal:
My son Tex is in 11th grade at Masterman, and every September, he brings home two or three “contracts” similar to the enclosed Academic Integrity Policy. He and I both have to sign them. We agree to respect the dignity and personal property of others. We agree he will do his homework. We agree he will bring his textbook to class. For all I know, we may have agreed to mow your lawn, since neither he nor I read them anymore. I grumbled a bit at first, but I never wrote a letter to the principal before. At Tex’s request, I just signed these contracts and forgot about them. He did not want to be the kid with the crazy father.
Now, with this Academic Integrity Policy, the stakes have apparently been raised. Tex was told he would receive a detention unless he signs on the dotted line and “agrees” not to cheat, not to plagiarize, etc., etc., etc. Enough, already. It’s time for me to break my silence.
So here’s my question: why? What is the purpose of this continuing program of forced “agreements”? Throughout my life, I have had rules laid out for me by parents, teachers, nuns, coaches, bus drivers, trash men, camp counselors, employers and wives, and NOBODY demanded I sign a contract about them. In fact, nobody cared what I thought of them. They were simply the rules, and if you broke them, sanctions were imposed. You got kicked off the bus. Somebody hit you. Your trash didn’t get collected. Your wife wouldn’t talk to you. Whatever.
I live in the freest country on earth, and long may I wave. I am not oppressed. But freedom, and civilization itself, depends on the existence of tacit, semi-formalized authoritarian arrangements of rules and sanctions, and a universal understanding that we all have to submit to these arrangements or all hell will break loose. None of this has anything to do with laws, or “contracts.”
Masterman High School is the best school in the Philadelphia area in terms of all the usual measures---test scores, college admissions, etc. And every student at Masterman got there because they had excellent marks in lower grades and aced a competitive admissions test. Here’s the point: THERE IS NOT A STUDENT IN THE ENTIRE SCHOOL WHO DOES NOT KNOW HOW SCHOOL OPERATES. They know what a teacher is, they know what a rule is, and they know what happens when a rule is broken. Yes, they’re teenagers, and they’re not entirely civilized, but they’re not wildebeests wandering the Serengetti either. The fundamentals of the organization of society were implanted in them a dozen years ago. Forcing them to sign an agreement to do their homework can have no possible effect on the likelihood they will actually do their homework, can it? The only possible effect I can see of such an agreement is that it will nourish the innate teenage anti-authoritarian impulse and provide further evidence (as if they need it) for the proposition that all adults are idiots.
I mention Masterman, with its high standards, to highlight the absurdity of this contract craze. But would the analysis be any different at other schools? No matter how dopey a student is, or inattentive, or even violent, he knows what rules are and what teachers are. A student will break rules out of rebelliousness, or indifference, or perhaps because a teacher shoved the rules in front of him and demanded a signature and he’ll be damned if he’s going to bend over for some fascist, but not because he doesn’t understand he’s supposed to obey them. The social dynamic of the “me-teacher, you-student” relationship is not terribly complex. Every kid understands it on his first day of school, if not before.
In fact, if you could find a student who did not understand the basics of school/rules/sanctions, wouldn’t it be your job as a teacher or administrator to help that child understand how the world works? And how the world works doesn’t have anything to do with contracts, does it? I mean, when somebody sits down next to you on the subway, do you hand them a contract under which they agree not to annoy you for the duration of your journey? Do you present your loonier colleagues with contracts demanding they not falsely accuse you of hideous crimes? Of course not. Living in peace with one another requires all of us to give the other guy the benefit of the assumption he is not a sociopath. We accord every stranger a modicum of respect, at least until that respect is abused. It’s called manners. And that, of course, is another problem with presenting contracts to your students. It’s rude. It’s insulting. When you do it, YOU become the wildebeest in the classroom. And you are teaching students to behave in a fashion that really has no place in a civilized society.
Even you don’t take these contracts seriously, I’ll wager. Suppose a student refused to sign. Would you flunk him? I’m guessing you would tell him, “Well, these are my rules and you’ll have to abide by them whether you sign or not.” So why not simply state your rules and cut out the middleman?
Or suppose a student hands back your contract, and you do not notice it is unsigned. Further suppose that the next day, he cheats on a test. “Aha!” he says. “But I never signed the contract.” If you don’t punish him, you’ve let a cheater escape. But if you do hold him responsible for his behavior, aren’t you admitting the “contract” was a pointless exercise to begin with?
Are you beginning to see how the use of these contracts actually reduces the authority of teachers in the classroom?
Or suppose a student attempts to negotiate the terms of the contract with you. I have often thought of doing this---presenting a counterproposal to the teacher---simply as a means of highlighting the absurdity of it all:
I, Tex’s teacher, agree to
1) brush my teeth regularly;
2) refrain from drinking alcohol after 9:00pm on a school night;
3) not appear tired or listless the morning after the Eagles play on Monday Night Football;
4) stifle the urge to lecture upon, or even mention: a) the horrors of No Child Left Behind, b) my recent colonoscopy, or c) my soon-to-be-ex-spouse’s unreasonable demands in our property settlement.
I don’t know how this fad got started. A Ph.D thesis at some Ed School, perhaps? What is obvious, however, is that it has spread, like e. coli on a week-old Big Mac, largely because no one involved in education has ever spent twenty seconds thinking about it. That is what I am urging you to do.
Are there really any benefits that accrue from making everybody sign these things? I would argue that no benefits can be demonstrated. On the other side, what is the harm? The point of this letter is that there is a real downside to the practice (other than the waste of time it entails). If part of the role of schools is the socialization of our children, then teaching them through forced assent is simply wrong because that’s not the way our society operates. In addition, I suggest that these contracts make educators look like fools, and totalitarian fools at that, since there is no escaping the stink of the loyalty oath that surrounds them.
Copyright 2006 Michael Kubacki
My son Tex is in 11th grade at Masterman, and every September, he brings home two or three “contracts” similar to the enclosed Academic Integrity Policy. He and I both have to sign them. We agree to respect the dignity and personal property of others. We agree he will do his homework. We agree he will bring his textbook to class. For all I know, we may have agreed to mow your lawn, since neither he nor I read them anymore. I grumbled a bit at first, but I never wrote a letter to the principal before. At Tex’s request, I just signed these contracts and forgot about them. He did not want to be the kid with the crazy father.
Now, with this Academic Integrity Policy, the stakes have apparently been raised. Tex was told he would receive a detention unless he signs on the dotted line and “agrees” not to cheat, not to plagiarize, etc., etc., etc. Enough, already. It’s time for me to break my silence.
So here’s my question: why? What is the purpose of this continuing program of forced “agreements”? Throughout my life, I have had rules laid out for me by parents, teachers, nuns, coaches, bus drivers, trash men, camp counselors, employers and wives, and NOBODY demanded I sign a contract about them. In fact, nobody cared what I thought of them. They were simply the rules, and if you broke them, sanctions were imposed. You got kicked off the bus. Somebody hit you. Your trash didn’t get collected. Your wife wouldn’t talk to you. Whatever.
I live in the freest country on earth, and long may I wave. I am not oppressed. But freedom, and civilization itself, depends on the existence of tacit, semi-formalized authoritarian arrangements of rules and sanctions, and a universal understanding that we all have to submit to these arrangements or all hell will break loose. None of this has anything to do with laws, or “contracts.”
Masterman High School is the best school in the Philadelphia area in terms of all the usual measures---test scores, college admissions, etc. And every student at Masterman got there because they had excellent marks in lower grades and aced a competitive admissions test. Here’s the point: THERE IS NOT A STUDENT IN THE ENTIRE SCHOOL WHO DOES NOT KNOW HOW SCHOOL OPERATES. They know what a teacher is, they know what a rule is, and they know what happens when a rule is broken. Yes, they’re teenagers, and they’re not entirely civilized, but they’re not wildebeests wandering the Serengetti either. The fundamentals of the organization of society were implanted in them a dozen years ago. Forcing them to sign an agreement to do their homework can have no possible effect on the likelihood they will actually do their homework, can it? The only possible effect I can see of such an agreement is that it will nourish the innate teenage anti-authoritarian impulse and provide further evidence (as if they need it) for the proposition that all adults are idiots.
I mention Masterman, with its high standards, to highlight the absurdity of this contract craze. But would the analysis be any different at other schools? No matter how dopey a student is, or inattentive, or even violent, he knows what rules are and what teachers are. A student will break rules out of rebelliousness, or indifference, or perhaps because a teacher shoved the rules in front of him and demanded a signature and he’ll be damned if he’s going to bend over for some fascist, but not because he doesn’t understand he’s supposed to obey them. The social dynamic of the “me-teacher, you-student” relationship is not terribly complex. Every kid understands it on his first day of school, if not before.
In fact, if you could find a student who did not understand the basics of school/rules/sanctions, wouldn’t it be your job as a teacher or administrator to help that child understand how the world works? And how the world works doesn’t have anything to do with contracts, does it? I mean, when somebody sits down next to you on the subway, do you hand them a contract under which they agree not to annoy you for the duration of your journey? Do you present your loonier colleagues with contracts demanding they not falsely accuse you of hideous crimes? Of course not. Living in peace with one another requires all of us to give the other guy the benefit of the assumption he is not a sociopath. We accord every stranger a modicum of respect, at least until that respect is abused. It’s called manners. And that, of course, is another problem with presenting contracts to your students. It’s rude. It’s insulting. When you do it, YOU become the wildebeest in the classroom. And you are teaching students to behave in a fashion that really has no place in a civilized society.
Even you don’t take these contracts seriously, I’ll wager. Suppose a student refused to sign. Would you flunk him? I’m guessing you would tell him, “Well, these are my rules and you’ll have to abide by them whether you sign or not.” So why not simply state your rules and cut out the middleman?
Or suppose a student hands back your contract, and you do not notice it is unsigned. Further suppose that the next day, he cheats on a test. “Aha!” he says. “But I never signed the contract.” If you don’t punish him, you’ve let a cheater escape. But if you do hold him responsible for his behavior, aren’t you admitting the “contract” was a pointless exercise to begin with?
Are you beginning to see how the use of these contracts actually reduces the authority of teachers in the classroom?
Or suppose a student attempts to negotiate the terms of the contract with you. I have often thought of doing this---presenting a counterproposal to the teacher---simply as a means of highlighting the absurdity of it all:
I, Tex’s teacher, agree to
1) brush my teeth regularly;
2) refrain from drinking alcohol after 9:00pm on a school night;
3) not appear tired or listless the morning after the Eagles play on Monday Night Football;
4) stifle the urge to lecture upon, or even mention: a) the horrors of No Child Left Behind, b) my recent colonoscopy, or c) my soon-to-be-ex-spouse’s unreasonable demands in our property settlement.
I don’t know how this fad got started. A Ph.D thesis at some Ed School, perhaps? What is obvious, however, is that it has spread, like e. coli on a week-old Big Mac, largely because no one involved in education has ever spent twenty seconds thinking about it. That is what I am urging you to do.
Are there really any benefits that accrue from making everybody sign these things? I would argue that no benefits can be demonstrated. On the other side, what is the harm? The point of this letter is that there is a real downside to the practice (other than the waste of time it entails). If part of the role of schools is the socialization of our children, then teaching them through forced assent is simply wrong because that’s not the way our society operates. In addition, I suggest that these contracts make educators look like fools, and totalitarian fools at that, since there is no escaping the stink of the loyalty oath that surrounds them.
Copyright 2006 Michael Kubacki
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
2006 NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
I, Michael Kubacki, hereby resolve to:
1) Be more tolerant and accepting of people from different ethnic groups, and not just the good ethnic groups, but the stupid, dirty ones as well.
2) Drive just a little bit faster wherever I go, and use the time saved to watch internet pornography.
3) Remember to turn up my cell phone ring when I go to the movies so I don’t miss any important calls.
4) Take some of the money I’ve been putting away for Tex’s college and start buying better beer.
5) Put on a few pounds. Instead of that green salad I usually put next to my macaroni and cheese, why not a baked potato? Six minutes in the microwave!
6) Give up my study of the Bible and watch more TV instead.
7) Stop being so shy in spreading the good news about our wonderful President Bush to all my friends.
8) Remember to say “Native Americans” instead of “Woo-woo Indians.”
9) Be more sensitive, caring and understanding toward my fellow man, but always be sure to get the other guy before he gets me.
Copyright 2005 Michael Kubacki
1) Be more tolerant and accepting of people from different ethnic groups, and not just the good ethnic groups, but the stupid, dirty ones as well.
2) Drive just a little bit faster wherever I go, and use the time saved to watch internet pornography.
3) Remember to turn up my cell phone ring when I go to the movies so I don’t miss any important calls.
4) Take some of the money I’ve been putting away for Tex’s college and start buying better beer.
5) Put on a few pounds. Instead of that green salad I usually put next to my macaroni and cheese, why not a baked potato? Six minutes in the microwave!
6) Give up my study of the Bible and watch more TV instead.
7) Stop being so shy in spreading the good news about our wonderful President Bush to all my friends.
8) Remember to say “Native Americans” instead of “Woo-woo Indians.”
9) Be more sensitive, caring and understanding toward my fellow man, but always be sure to get the other guy before he gets me.
Copyright 2005 Michael Kubacki
Thursday, September 22, 2005
ARCHIE BUNKER AIR
Does anyone feel safe on an airplane these days? It’s been, after all, more than three years since the horrors of 9-11, and flying still supplies endless fodder for dark humor. We have all learned the resigned shrug of the helpless as we step on an airplane.
Everyone has a story. The two-hour wait for security. Take off your shoes. Take off your belt. Step over here, Madam, I need to feel your bodacious ta-tas. Why are they giving that eight-year-old a workout, and ignoring the six Arab guys who are half-pretending not to know each other? And don’t sit next to the only guy in a suit on the flight to Orlando. He’s the air marshal; he’s the first one they’ll kill, to get his weapon. And oops---thank God they missed this Swiss army knife I forgot I had---but wait, what else did they miss?
The procedures themselves are always changing, but it never gets any better, does it? Well, really, how can it? Name a government bureaucracy that does. Do the public schools get better? Does Medicare get more efficient? How about Amtrak?
Some years ago, during one of the periodic national debates on why it took five years and $500 million to get a new drug through the FDA (it’s now eight years and $800 million), Milton Friedman commented that calling for “reform” of the FDA is like saying you like cats, but you want one that barks. The flaws of a bureaucracy, in other words, are embedded in its very nature.
In particular, the incentives for a bureaucrat are different from those of an entrepreneur who, in order to survive, must satisfy his customers with efficiency and low prices. A bureaucrat, on the other hand, derives prestige from the size of his staff and his budget, so there is little motivation for efficiency. The bigger the agency, the more important the bureaucrat. Further, his customers are actually “end-users,” a term the computing world has invented to describe consumers who are stuck with a product because they have no market power in the transaction. Parents and children are end-users of public schools. Geezers are end-users of Medicare-regulated healthcare. As we all have learned, an end-user is pretty much the last thing you want to be in this world. Political prisoners generally have a lot more fun.
And when we go to the airport, we’re all end-users of airport security, aren’t we? I mean, there’s no choice. Whether it’s Delta, or USAir or Southwest, we all get the same one-size-fits-all, take-off-your-shoes, make-a-joke-and-you’re-off-to-Gitmo, expensive, annoying, inefficient security system. And then we get on the plane and spend the flight watching the creepy 20-year-old male Egyptian in seat 8C who strolled unmolested through security but who, if he were spotted at a Bush rally, would immediately be surrounded by seventeen Mormon commandos.
No matter what you may think about the evils of the profit motive and the lack of imagination in the corporate world, they couldn’t possibly be as ham-fisted and brain-dead as the feds, could they? In fact, freed from the constraints of political correctness and union politics and the civil service, YOU could come up with a better, safer, cheaper system. I know I could, and I don’t have much doubt that every commercial air carrier would as well. And you, the consumer, would vote with your dollars on the security system you prefer.
If airline security were left entirely to the airlines, several innovations would appear almost immediately.
First, since there would no longer be any federal scrutiny of security procedures, carriers would need to assure customers that airplanes are, in fact, safe. (Not that the feds do this, of course, but the airlines would have to.) So in short order, there would be an industry group or an independent testing company that would test security systems and report the results publicly. Think Underwriters Laboratory, the people who test electrical equipment of all sorts and put their “UL” sticker on the ones that pass. For airlines, there would be a similar company that would try to sneak fake weapons onto planes and fake bombs into suitcases, and all of us would find out whether they succeeded.
Second, there would be an industry-wide “Trusted Traveler” program, under which any passenger could choose to submit himself to a series of interviews, background checks and a polygraph test. Once approved, a Trusted Traveler would sail through a special line at any airport and be spared all security-related delay. There would be a charge to the passenger for the screening process, but it could be reasonable because the program would actually save the airlines a ton of cash. Every business traveler in the country would sign up for the program. It would be a status symbol. And half the people now doing “security” because they can’t find a job as a bartender would have to polish up their mai-tai-making skills.
The third thing that privatization would accomplish immediately is that it would permit carriers to discriminate among those flights that require extensive security checks and those that do not.
For example, consider the 7:30 AM Monday trip from Scranton to Harrisburg. Every week, there are six people on this airplane, and they are always the same people. Even when a newcomer shows up, it’s somebody that four of the passengers can vouch for, and when I say “vouch for,” what I mean is something along the lines of “I went to elementary school with Joe---he’s OK,” or “Sally’s my sister-in-law,” or “The guy baptized my kid---give him a freaking break.” No security whatsoever is needed on these flights, and there are hundreds of them every day. Why waste metal detectors on these people? Because it’s “fair?”
By contrast, while I have never been on an 8:00 AM weekday flight from Logan Airport in Boston to LAX, I think that if I ever had to fly that route, I would refuse to get on the plane until every passenger had been given extensive, even lingering, body-cavity searches. There are many such flights---any flight to D.C. or any flight out of Miami or Newark, for example. No rational human being, including Hindus, will now board these flights without a full complement of rosary beads. Post-privatization, these would instantly become the safest airplanes in the country. You might have to report for your flight six hours before departure, but once you got on the plane, you could sleep like a baby.
The possibilities for airline security are limited only by the imagination, a commodity utterly absent in the bureaucratic mind. Many suggestions have been made for improvements in the system, but very few have been tried. I think we could expect some of the following experiments to appear.
1) Naked Air. We’ve all heard this one. Check your clothes at the gate, and they are returned at your destination. Carry-on luggage would we strictly limited as well. Perhaps not the ideal solution for those Minneapolis to Vancouver flights in mid-January.
2) Captains Rule Airlines. Your pilot, assisted by those of the flight crew he trusts, sits at the entrance to the jetway and exercises his unfettered discretion on the question of who flies. Some folks he waves aboard. Others he questions, and if they satisfy him, they too are allowed to fly. Others he rejects. There are no appeals. (This discretionary power of the master of a ship or conveyance dates back at least to the Phoenicians, and was part of English and American common law until it was discarded by aviation bureaucrats a few years ago.)
3) El Al America. Here’s the ad: “Ever flown from Tel Aviv to Milan? Expect the same from us. All our employees are trained by El Al, the safest airline in the world.”
4) Badges? Badges? Oh, Yes, You Need Some Stinkin Badges Airways. Passports are required for all domestic U.S. flights (an Ann Coulter idea). If you hold a foreign passport, it must be submitted 48 hours in advance so it can be authenticated.
5) Rambo Airlines. All members of the crew, including stewardesses, are ex-military, trained in hand-to-hand combat, and heavily armed. Go ahead. Try to take over the plane. Make their day.
And now here’s my idea, and it’s not original. I first heard it thirty years ago from Archie Bunker on “All In The Family.” He was having an argument with his son-in-law, the Meathead, about airplane hijackings, and Archie’s solution was as follows: “When you get on a plane, they give everybody a gun. There’s maybe two or three hijackers at most, and they’re outnumbered. End of problem.”
I laughed at the time. That was the idea. But in the intervening years, I have seen the kernel of truth embedded in the joke. Because…well, why do we fear flying?
It’s because we’re helpless, isn’t it? And not only are we vulnerable, we are aware that every other decent, law-abiding non-terrorist passenger is also vulnerable. Our current system of airline security is 100% effective at disarming people who pose no threat to anyone, so all the bad guys need is one gun, or a few blades, and the rest of the passengers are as good as dead. The presence of air marshals might provide some comfort if they were not so easily identifiable, but at present, they might as well wear signs that say, “KILL ME FIRST.” They actually make airplanes more dangerous because terrorists are spared even the trouble of smuggling a gun aboard. All they have to do is kill the guy in the blue blazer and take his.
A central problem with our air security system, and one that has been completely overlooked, is rooted in the belief that you can make people safer by rendering them powerless to defend themselves. But our federal aviation geniuses did not invent this idea. In fact, it has been tried in many places, and it appears to be one of those notions that cannot be discredited no matter how often or how spectacularly it fails whenever it is implemented.
On April 28, 1996, a lunatic went on a killing spree in Port Arthur, Tasmania. Ten days later, nationwide gun control legislation went into effect in Australia, featuring buybacks, new registration requirements, and confiscation of guns. Though it was already very difficult to own a handgun (legally), the new laws took away hundreds of thousands of rifles and shotguns as well. In a matter of months, the Australian people were effectively disarmed.
In the U.K., the impetus was a mass murder in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1997. By February 1998, possession of a handgun had become a criminal offense throughout the realm.
The results were entirely predictable. While homicides and suicides remained about the same, there were immediate increases in all categories of violent street crime---assaults, sexual assaults, robberies and armed robberies---as criminals faced a victim population that had been rendered, for the bad guys, conveniently helpless. In 2000, a Crime Victim Survey conducted by the Dutch Ministry of Justice determined that, among the seventeen countries they categorize as “industrialized,” the three most dangerous were England, Wales and Australia. Residents of those countries were more likely to be victimized by crime than residents of any other country. The results, at least in the U.K., were confirmed two years later when the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute found that in England, in 2001, 55 crimes had been committed for every 100 residents.
Of particular concern to the citizenry of these countries was a terrifying crime that had been almost unheard of before---the home invasion.
In a place like the U.S., invading a home is something no halfway sane criminal would even consider, because even if the residents are an elderly and infirm couple, there is always a decent chance they keep a loaded .38 under a couch cushion. Unless a criminal can be certain there is no weapon inside, a home invasion is simply too dangerous a proposition. With the guns gone in Australia and England, the home invasion became a much safer play.
And the same dynamic is present in a hijacking. It may be difficult to get in the airplane with a weapon, just as it may be difficult to get in the house, but once you’re in, your victims are helpless and have nowhere to run. You can slaughter them at your leisure, fly the airplane into a building, demand ransom---whatever your agenda, the passengers are the least of your problems.
But on Archie Bunker Air, the passengers are a big problem. They outnumber you, many of them are armed and you don’t know which ones, and if you try to take over the plane, they’ll get desperate.
And OK, I suppose I’m not going to hand every passenger a gun at check-in. But I’m not going to make it too difficult to carry a piece onto an airplane either. Maybe all we require at “The Arch” is a concealed-carry permit, which are now easily obtainable in a number of states. Maybe we even require a one-hour NRA-designed course at a local shooting range. Whatever. Just so long as we make it easy enough that on any random flight of say, a hundred passengers, a dozen or so will be packing.
As Archie himself would say: “End of problem.”
Copyright 2005 Michael Kubacki
Everyone has a story. The two-hour wait for security. Take off your shoes. Take off your belt. Step over here, Madam, I need to feel your bodacious ta-tas. Why are they giving that eight-year-old a workout, and ignoring the six Arab guys who are half-pretending not to know each other? And don’t sit next to the only guy in a suit on the flight to Orlando. He’s the air marshal; he’s the first one they’ll kill, to get his weapon. And oops---thank God they missed this Swiss army knife I forgot I had---but wait, what else did they miss?
The procedures themselves are always changing, but it never gets any better, does it? Well, really, how can it? Name a government bureaucracy that does. Do the public schools get better? Does Medicare get more efficient? How about Amtrak?
Some years ago, during one of the periodic national debates on why it took five years and $500 million to get a new drug through the FDA (it’s now eight years and $800 million), Milton Friedman commented that calling for “reform” of the FDA is like saying you like cats, but you want one that barks. The flaws of a bureaucracy, in other words, are embedded in its very nature.
In particular, the incentives for a bureaucrat are different from those of an entrepreneur who, in order to survive, must satisfy his customers with efficiency and low prices. A bureaucrat, on the other hand, derives prestige from the size of his staff and his budget, so there is little motivation for efficiency. The bigger the agency, the more important the bureaucrat. Further, his customers are actually “end-users,” a term the computing world has invented to describe consumers who are stuck with a product because they have no market power in the transaction. Parents and children are end-users of public schools. Geezers are end-users of Medicare-regulated healthcare. As we all have learned, an end-user is pretty much the last thing you want to be in this world. Political prisoners generally have a lot more fun.
And when we go to the airport, we’re all end-users of airport security, aren’t we? I mean, there’s no choice. Whether it’s Delta, or USAir or Southwest, we all get the same one-size-fits-all, take-off-your-shoes, make-a-joke-and-you’re-off-to-Gitmo, expensive, annoying, inefficient security system. And then we get on the plane and spend the flight watching the creepy 20-year-old male Egyptian in seat 8C who strolled unmolested through security but who, if he were spotted at a Bush rally, would immediately be surrounded by seventeen Mormon commandos.
No matter what you may think about the evils of the profit motive and the lack of imagination in the corporate world, they couldn’t possibly be as ham-fisted and brain-dead as the feds, could they? In fact, freed from the constraints of political correctness and union politics and the civil service, YOU could come up with a better, safer, cheaper system. I know I could, and I don’t have much doubt that every commercial air carrier would as well. And you, the consumer, would vote with your dollars on the security system you prefer.
If airline security were left entirely to the airlines, several innovations would appear almost immediately.
First, since there would no longer be any federal scrutiny of security procedures, carriers would need to assure customers that airplanes are, in fact, safe. (Not that the feds do this, of course, but the airlines would have to.) So in short order, there would be an industry group or an independent testing company that would test security systems and report the results publicly. Think Underwriters Laboratory, the people who test electrical equipment of all sorts and put their “UL” sticker on the ones that pass. For airlines, there would be a similar company that would try to sneak fake weapons onto planes and fake bombs into suitcases, and all of us would find out whether they succeeded.
Second, there would be an industry-wide “Trusted Traveler” program, under which any passenger could choose to submit himself to a series of interviews, background checks and a polygraph test. Once approved, a Trusted Traveler would sail through a special line at any airport and be spared all security-related delay. There would be a charge to the passenger for the screening process, but it could be reasonable because the program would actually save the airlines a ton of cash. Every business traveler in the country would sign up for the program. It would be a status symbol. And half the people now doing “security” because they can’t find a job as a bartender would have to polish up their mai-tai-making skills.
The third thing that privatization would accomplish immediately is that it would permit carriers to discriminate among those flights that require extensive security checks and those that do not.
For example, consider the 7:30 AM Monday trip from Scranton to Harrisburg. Every week, there are six people on this airplane, and they are always the same people. Even when a newcomer shows up, it’s somebody that four of the passengers can vouch for, and when I say “vouch for,” what I mean is something along the lines of “I went to elementary school with Joe---he’s OK,” or “Sally’s my sister-in-law,” or “The guy baptized my kid---give him a freaking break.” No security whatsoever is needed on these flights, and there are hundreds of them every day. Why waste metal detectors on these people? Because it’s “fair?”
By contrast, while I have never been on an 8:00 AM weekday flight from Logan Airport in Boston to LAX, I think that if I ever had to fly that route, I would refuse to get on the plane until every passenger had been given extensive, even lingering, body-cavity searches. There are many such flights---any flight to D.C. or any flight out of Miami or Newark, for example. No rational human being, including Hindus, will now board these flights without a full complement of rosary beads. Post-privatization, these would instantly become the safest airplanes in the country. You might have to report for your flight six hours before departure, but once you got on the plane, you could sleep like a baby.
The possibilities for airline security are limited only by the imagination, a commodity utterly absent in the bureaucratic mind. Many suggestions have been made for improvements in the system, but very few have been tried. I think we could expect some of the following experiments to appear.
1) Naked Air. We’ve all heard this one. Check your clothes at the gate, and they are returned at your destination. Carry-on luggage would we strictly limited as well. Perhaps not the ideal solution for those Minneapolis to Vancouver flights in mid-January.
2) Captains Rule Airlines. Your pilot, assisted by those of the flight crew he trusts, sits at the entrance to the jetway and exercises his unfettered discretion on the question of who flies. Some folks he waves aboard. Others he questions, and if they satisfy him, they too are allowed to fly. Others he rejects. There are no appeals. (This discretionary power of the master of a ship or conveyance dates back at least to the Phoenicians, and was part of English and American common law until it was discarded by aviation bureaucrats a few years ago.)
3) El Al America. Here’s the ad: “Ever flown from Tel Aviv to Milan? Expect the same from us. All our employees are trained by El Al, the safest airline in the world.”
4) Badges? Badges? Oh, Yes, You Need Some Stinkin Badges Airways. Passports are required for all domestic U.S. flights (an Ann Coulter idea). If you hold a foreign passport, it must be submitted 48 hours in advance so it can be authenticated.
5) Rambo Airlines. All members of the crew, including stewardesses, are ex-military, trained in hand-to-hand combat, and heavily armed. Go ahead. Try to take over the plane. Make their day.
And now here’s my idea, and it’s not original. I first heard it thirty years ago from Archie Bunker on “All In The Family.” He was having an argument with his son-in-law, the Meathead, about airplane hijackings, and Archie’s solution was as follows: “When you get on a plane, they give everybody a gun. There’s maybe two or three hijackers at most, and they’re outnumbered. End of problem.”
I laughed at the time. That was the idea. But in the intervening years, I have seen the kernel of truth embedded in the joke. Because…well, why do we fear flying?
It’s because we’re helpless, isn’t it? And not only are we vulnerable, we are aware that every other decent, law-abiding non-terrorist passenger is also vulnerable. Our current system of airline security is 100% effective at disarming people who pose no threat to anyone, so all the bad guys need is one gun, or a few blades, and the rest of the passengers are as good as dead. The presence of air marshals might provide some comfort if they were not so easily identifiable, but at present, they might as well wear signs that say, “KILL ME FIRST.” They actually make airplanes more dangerous because terrorists are spared even the trouble of smuggling a gun aboard. All they have to do is kill the guy in the blue blazer and take his.
A central problem with our air security system, and one that has been completely overlooked, is rooted in the belief that you can make people safer by rendering them powerless to defend themselves. But our federal aviation geniuses did not invent this idea. In fact, it has been tried in many places, and it appears to be one of those notions that cannot be discredited no matter how often or how spectacularly it fails whenever it is implemented.
On April 28, 1996, a lunatic went on a killing spree in Port Arthur, Tasmania. Ten days later, nationwide gun control legislation went into effect in Australia, featuring buybacks, new registration requirements, and confiscation of guns. Though it was already very difficult to own a handgun (legally), the new laws took away hundreds of thousands of rifles and shotguns as well. In a matter of months, the Australian people were effectively disarmed.
In the U.K., the impetus was a mass murder in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1997. By February 1998, possession of a handgun had become a criminal offense throughout the realm.
The results were entirely predictable. While homicides and suicides remained about the same, there were immediate increases in all categories of violent street crime---assaults, sexual assaults, robberies and armed robberies---as criminals faced a victim population that had been rendered, for the bad guys, conveniently helpless. In 2000, a Crime Victim Survey conducted by the Dutch Ministry of Justice determined that, among the seventeen countries they categorize as “industrialized,” the three most dangerous were England, Wales and Australia. Residents of those countries were more likely to be victimized by crime than residents of any other country. The results, at least in the U.K., were confirmed two years later when the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute found that in England, in 2001, 55 crimes had been committed for every 100 residents.
Of particular concern to the citizenry of these countries was a terrifying crime that had been almost unheard of before---the home invasion.
In a place like the U.S., invading a home is something no halfway sane criminal would even consider, because even if the residents are an elderly and infirm couple, there is always a decent chance they keep a loaded .38 under a couch cushion. Unless a criminal can be certain there is no weapon inside, a home invasion is simply too dangerous a proposition. With the guns gone in Australia and England, the home invasion became a much safer play.
And the same dynamic is present in a hijacking. It may be difficult to get in the airplane with a weapon, just as it may be difficult to get in the house, but once you’re in, your victims are helpless and have nowhere to run. You can slaughter them at your leisure, fly the airplane into a building, demand ransom---whatever your agenda, the passengers are the least of your problems.
But on Archie Bunker Air, the passengers are a big problem. They outnumber you, many of them are armed and you don’t know which ones, and if you try to take over the plane, they’ll get desperate.
And OK, I suppose I’m not going to hand every passenger a gun at check-in. But I’m not going to make it too difficult to carry a piece onto an airplane either. Maybe all we require at “The Arch” is a concealed-carry permit, which are now easily obtainable in a number of states. Maybe we even require a one-hour NRA-designed course at a local shooting range. Whatever. Just so long as we make it easy enough that on any random flight of say, a hundred passengers, a dozen or so will be packing.
As Archie himself would say: “End of problem.”
Copyright 2005 Michael Kubacki
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
STUPID BOWLING QUESTIONS
In the summer of 2005, Tex attended a bowling camp at the Thunderbird Lanes in Northeast Philly. At the first meeting, their coach’s opening lecture concluded with this observation:
“Remember. There are no stupid questions about bowling.”
The program consisted of two three-hour sessions each week, for six weeks, and the Thunderbird Lanes are just far enough from our home that it made little sense for me to drop him off, drive home, and then drive back to pick him up. In other words, I spent a lot of time at the Thunderbird Lanes last summer doing sudoku puzzles, drinking beer, watching young bowlers hone their skills, and pondering Coach Don’s words.
Though I am not a professional bowler or a qualified bowling coach, I have decided Coach is wrong on this point. Indeed, I am convinced there are stupid bowling questions. YOU decide. I submit the following for your consideration:
1. What’s the ball for?
2. What are you supposed to put in the little holes?
3. When is the best time to stick your head in the ball-return chute?
4. Is it legal to throw overhand?
5. Some guy told me there’s a federal law that says you can’t talk on a cell phone while you’re bowling. Is that true?
6. Are you allowed to dribble a bowling ball before you shoot? You know, like in basketball?
7. There’s no “I” in “TEAM,” but there is an “I” in “BOWLING TEAM.” So what do you do?
8. Since you get two balls to knock down all the pins, can you roll them both at once?
9. Do pros ever use a lumpy ball? If so, why?
10. Can you choose how many pins there are, or does it have to be a certain number?
11. Is it ever a good idea to throw the ball in the gutter? Like for strategy?
Copyright 2005 Michael Kubacki
“Remember. There are no stupid questions about bowling.”
The program consisted of two three-hour sessions each week, for six weeks, and the Thunderbird Lanes are just far enough from our home that it made little sense for me to drop him off, drive home, and then drive back to pick him up. In other words, I spent a lot of time at the Thunderbird Lanes last summer doing sudoku puzzles, drinking beer, watching young bowlers hone their skills, and pondering Coach Don’s words.
Though I am not a professional bowler or a qualified bowling coach, I have decided Coach is wrong on this point. Indeed, I am convinced there are stupid bowling questions. YOU decide. I submit the following for your consideration:
1. What’s the ball for?
2. What are you supposed to put in the little holes?
3. When is the best time to stick your head in the ball-return chute?
4. Is it legal to throw overhand?
5. Some guy told me there’s a federal law that says you can’t talk on a cell phone while you’re bowling. Is that true?
6. Are you allowed to dribble a bowling ball before you shoot? You know, like in basketball?
7. There’s no “I” in “TEAM,” but there is an “I” in “BOWLING TEAM.” So what do you do?
8. Since you get two balls to knock down all the pins, can you roll them both at once?
9. Do pros ever use a lumpy ball? If so, why?
10. Can you choose how many pins there are, or does it have to be a certain number?
11. Is it ever a good idea to throw the ball in the gutter? Like for strategy?
Copyright 2005 Michael Kubacki
Thursday, March 10, 2005
THE PASSION OF THE HONDA
Andy Fazio
Andy’s Service Center
139 S. Blakely St.
Dunmore, PA 18512
Dear Andy:
Since you and I are both fans and admirers of Father Jack Doris, let me say a word about him before describing the series of events that befell me on February 14.
Jack is a friend of mine. We eat pizza together. We watched the Superbowl together. We argue about Notre Dame football. But over the years, and I don’t know exactly how this happened, he has also become a sort of spiritual advisor. He would probably laugh to hear me call him that (even though he’s a priest), but there it is.
It works like this. Every now and then, I’ll give him a call and drive up the turnpike, to Dunmore, to see him. It might be a personal problem I want to talk about, or it might be some political topic that’s been on my mind. Sometimes, there’s no reason at all I could put my finger on---I’ll just feel the need to sit and talk with him a while. And whatever it is, I always feel better afterwards. In fact, I’m sure that’s the reason I do it. The problems may still be there, and the worries, and everything else. I mean, the guy is not a magician. But I always leave feeling braced, and optimistic, and ready to ford a stream if I have to.
I live in Philadelphia, so these trips to see Jack have taken on a pilgrimage quality in my head, partly because I don’t much enjoy driving, but also because I seem to encounter extraordinary difficulties every time I attempt the journey. From Philly to Allentown, I’m fine. From Allentown to the Lehigh Tunnel, I’m cool. But I emerge from the tunnel into a different and dreadful place. Hurricanes. Blizzards. Wind that can blow a car into the median. Rain so hard you have to pull over and wait it out. I’ve seen rock slides. I’ve seen dead deer the size of elephants. I’ve seen tractor-trailers going sideways. Winter or summer, it makes no difference. It’s only a two-hour trip from Philadelphia, and almost all of it is on major highways, but I have NEVER undertaken one of these pilgrimages without, at some point, thinking, “Gosh, maybe I should pull off and find a motel somewhere, and try again tomorrow.” Never.
I’ve heard people describe the Bermuda Triangle this way, that there’s something you can feel, something that’s wrong, something that’s out to get you. And yet, when I have driven up to Dunmore at other times, there’s been no problem. If my family is in the car, or if I’m going to a ballgame or a party or something, the sun is always shining and the birds are always chirping, and I zip through the glorious woodlands and mountains of the Poconos with a song on my lips and peace in my heart. If it’s not a “pilgrimage,” I have nothing to fear. But when I’m alone, and I’m on my way to a private conference with Jack, well, anything can happen, and most of it isn’t good. I’d be safer driving from Baghdad to Fallujah with a Star of David on the side of my car.
And yet…. Well, that’s the nature of a pilgrimage, isn’t it? You don’t get something for nothing. If you want to talk to that hermit on top of the mountain and find out the meaning of life, first you’ve got to climb the mountain. Muslims go to Mecca every year, and sometimes they get trampled in stampedes and sometimes there are epidemics, but still they go, millions of them. The journey itself has a spiritual value, and the more difficult it is, the better. Unless you’re Paris Hilton, you don’t take a limo to Lourdes. You walk, or you limp, or you crawl.
Not that I cherish my moments of terror on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, you understand. In fact, if I had known I would have to traverse the Twilight Zone when I first began making these little journeys, I might have thought better of it and made other arrangements. Jack comes to Philly on a regular basis, and I could possibly have made a date to buy him a cheesesteak at Tony Luke’s. But I didn’t, and now it’s too late. If I tried to do that now, I’m certain it just wouldn’t work. I’m a pilgrim now, and the journey to Dunmore cannot be separated from the experience and discarded. It wouldn’t feel the same. I NEED to be swallowed up each time, like Jonah, by the gaping mouth of the Lehigh Tunnel, not knowing what awaits me on the other side. I accept it. I do it intentionally. It’s worth it to me. A wise man once wrote, “We are all on the path to ordination; some of us take the high road and some take the low.” Me? I take the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
All of which brings me to the events of February 14, which began, as many of my weekdays do, by dropping off my son at school in downtown Philadelphia. As I proceeded along Spring Garden Street toward the Expressway, the first snowflakes began to fall. A “wintry mix,” the radio called it, that would turn to rain. OK. I can handle that, though I wondered what the “wintry mix” would look like on the other side of the Lehigh Tunnel. At least I knew what I was facing, I thought. Often I don’t.
The snow didn’t stop, but as I rolled northward, past Allentown, past the tunnel, past Lehighton, it didn’t seem to be getting worse either. With the temperature in the mid-thirties, the road was wet but not icy, and traffic was moving normally. I was going about 55, and I was being passed more often than I was passing. On the hills that characterize the northern reaches of the turnpike, there were some trucks moving very slowly, but there are trucks moving slowly on those hills on the driest day in July.
Looking back on the accident, I think what happened was that I came to the top of a wind-swept hill that was perhaps a bit more exposed to the elements than the roadway before it, and perhaps the ambient temperature was more like 31 degrees than the 34 degrees I was used to. In any event, there was ice. I didn’t see any ice, and I hadn’t seen any all the way up from Philly. But ice there must have been, because when I turned the steering wheel a quarter-inch to the left in order to pass a slow-moving vehicle, I instantly lost control and began to slide.
Anyone who has had a life-threatening experience will tell you it seems to unfold in slow motion. They say that because it’s true. I remember every millisecond vividly---what I did, what I thought, what I saw. I wish I didn’t remember it quite so well, because the memory of it has washed over me several times since, when I wasn’t expecting it, and made me shudder.
The turn I was trying to execute when I began to spin out was only about 8 or 10 degrees of arc, but the car simply continued to turn in that direction as I worked the wheel and the brakes frantically, all to no effect. Twenty degrees. Thirty degrees. Forty-five. Seventy. I was now nearly sideways on the road, helpless, when a scream formed inside my head. It was a single word. It was a bad word. In fact, it was a very bad word, and I will not share it with you because Father Jack will also read this letter and there is no need for him to see it in print. Use your imagination. I suspect that in your career as a mechanic, tow-truck operator and entrepreneur, you may have heard it once or twice. It has occurred to me since the accident that there are people who, in my situation, would instinctively have offered up a prayer, though it would have had to be a brief one. “Please!” or “God!” or “Jesus!” might do the trick. Maybe you’re one of those people, and if so, you’re a better man than I am. There are a lot of men better than I am, I suppose.
As the Honda proceeded past the 90 degree (sideways) position, with no hint of stopping, it became clear to me I was headed for a full 180-degree turn. Hope dawned. A false hope, as it turned out, but I realized that if my angular momentum were sufficient, I might spin PAST the 180 to a complete 360 and again be heading northbound in the northbound lanes. I could then regain control and proceed calmly on my way. I would not only live to tell about it, but I would become, for a moment anyway, the coolest guy in Carbon County. Women who happened to witness the maneuver would instantly swoon, and offer to have my children.
All this raced through the old bean in a hundredth of a second---it’s amazing how the mind works when you have nothing to lose---and I turned the wheel as hard as I could in the direction I was spinning. Nothing. It was locked. I tried turning it the other way, and then jamming it back to the left, but nothing happened. I was sliding. I was out of control. What was going to happen was going to happen. I would never be the coolest guy in Carbon County.
In the next instant, I was fully backward, facing south and sliding northward, but I had stopped spinning. The car had spun 180 degrees, I still had no control, and I had no idea what would happen next. It was at this point I began to question my romantic attachment to the notion of a pilgrimage. Why hadn’t I just called Jack on the phone, I wondered. He has a phone, you know. He probably has four or five phones, and an email address, and a fax machine. What was I thinking? And how important was this particular mission anyway? OK, I had a little problem and I wanted to talk to Jack about it. But everybody has problems, right? Maybe I should have given myself a slap in the face and sucked it up. Maybe I should have been a man about it. For some reason, I thought I NEEDED to talk to him about it, in person, and now I was sliding backwards on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and I didn't like my chances of coming out of this without a permanent impairment of a body function or maybe even a permanent impairment of all my body functions, so I was performing a long-overdue cost-benefit analysis on the whole endeavor. There was a downside to this pilgrimage business, and perhaps I hadn’t given sufficient weight to it before.
And who the hell was this Jack Doris anyway? A nice enough guy, of course, and he can tend a flock with the best of them, but he’s not exactly Dr. Phil, is he? I mean, he doesn’t even have a TV show. What made me think a few words with a guy who cares way too much about Notre Dame football was worth submitting all my favorite internal organs to the whims of gravity and momentum and centrifugal force and all that other Isaac Newton stuff you had to study in high school? I hated all those physical forces now, momentum in particular. There was a kid in elementary school---Stuart Sorkin---who sucker-punched me in the sixth grade and knocked me silly, and I got a D in Citizenship as a result, and I have harbored a secret loathing for Stuart Sorkin for the past 42 years, but now I hated momentum even more. I really, really, really hated momentum. I was none too fond of my high school physics teacher, to tell you the truth. Even Isaac Newton---I mean, he was a great scientist and all, and I admit he wasn’t responsible for my predicament, but at the time, I had no use for him either.
I guess I was just in a bad mood.
But these were my thoughts as, looking south, I slid north on the Pennsylvania Turnpike at 45 mph for what seemed like a week or two. I had a lot of time, maybe too much time, to think. Those who know me would tell you I usually have an optimistic attitude toward life, but this was a real test of the spirit, and I failed. I found it hard even to search for the bluebird in my current situation. He had flown away.
I braced for impact.
I began now to slide eastward, and I’m not sure why. You would have to ask my high school physics teacher. I realize it’s hard to keep track of the geography here, but “eastward” means I was now drifting sideways toward the shoulder and the guardrail. Most of my momentum was still backwards, of course.
This cheered me somewhat. I had been worried about being rammed by a vehicle traveling northward in the normal, approved fashion, so the shoulder was an attractive option. At least I would be off the roadway. It was not something I anticipated with any eagerness, the collision with the guardrail, but if there had to be a collision, and there did, the guardrail was preferable to an 18-wheeler. I allowed myself another moment of hope. I was going to slide into the guardrail sideways. If I survived my first marriage, I could surely survive that. I had my seatbelt on, the Honda was fully equipped with airbags, and my insurance was all paid up. I would dance away from this disaster! I briefly regretted not having worn a tuxedo so I could carelessly flick a speck of dust from my immaculate cuff as I emerged laughing, James-Bond-like, from the smoldering wreckage and raced off across the Pocono moguls with Ursula Andress on the back of my jet-powered snowmobile. The odds, of course, were that Ursula was nowhere in the neighborhood, but I was going to live! That much was almost certain! Whatever else happened---well, the rest was whipped cream and chocolate sauce.
In fact, the impact was more violent than I would have liked. I hit hard. This is the part I don’t remember all that well. I didn’t lose consciousness, but when I finally came to rest, my head was bleeding and my left hand was twice the size of my right. I still have no idea how these injuries occurred. I was dizzy. I wasn’t dancing. But I was OK.
As luck would have it, a salt truck was sitting in a cutout off the road a quarter mile south. He had witnessed my adventures, and now proceeded slowly down the shoulder toward me. I opened the sunroof and gave him the OK sign. He stopped the truck, exited, and strolled over to the Honda.
“How ya doing?” he asked.
“OK,” I replied. “I’m a little foggy.”
“Is it driveable?” he asked.
I thought about that. The engine was still running. I was willing to give it a try. Since I was facing the wrong way, though, I would have to inch my way along the shoulder until I reached an area where I could turn around.
I tried it. The car went into gear, the wheels turned, everything seemed to be working, but I couldn’t steer. I got out and looked at the wheels, but didn’t see the problem. The gentleman from the salt truck returned.
“Want me to call a tow truck?”
“Thanks,” I answered.
So I waited. Cars and trucks zoomed by. The snow continued to fall. Salt trucks lumbered past, spreading crystals. I called Jack.
“Listen,” he said, “there’s a guy here in town named Andy, and he has a shop and a tow truck. I can call him if you want. He’s a great guy and he won’t rip you off.”
“Thanks, Jack,” I said, “but I’m still way down the turnpike from you and there’s a truck coming already.”
At that point, the truck arrived. Schlier’s Towing, out of White Haven. With a gruff hello, the grim driver set about hooking me up. As he was doing so, a state police car appeared, lights flashing, and cautiously approached the scene of the crime. At length, its occupant emerged and joined our little party.
Now, I guess I hadn’t been expecting a hug from Trooper Kugler, or a “Welcome to Carbon County” packet from the Chamber of Commerce, but it did strike me that a sympathetic inquiry regarding the blood dripping from my head would have been an excellent way for the trooper to break the ice and get the conversational ball rolling.
“It’s just a few drops, Officer,” I would say. “Don’t trouble yourself.”
“We have many qualified brain surgeons in the area, should you require their services, sir,” he might continue.
“Some other time perhaps. I’ll just soldier on,” I would reply.
“Stiff upper lip, sir? That’s the spirit! You’ll find that a manly attitude of strength and self-reliance will make you many friends here in Carbon County!”
It might have begun that way, and should have, in my opinion. But Trooper Kugler was apparently blind to the finer shades on the conversational palette. Or perhaps he simply felt it was important for me to understand from the get-go that, at least in Carbon County, man was not placed on this earth for pleasure alone.
“I’ll have your license, registration and insurance card, sir,” is what he actually said. I handed them over.
“Were you using a cell phone at the time of the accident?”
“No.”
“Were you wearing a seatbelt?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
I told him.
“How fast were you going when you attempted to pass the vehicle in front of you?”
“Fifty? Fifty-five? I really don’t know.”
“I’m going to take your documents back to my car now. Please remain with your vehicle.” And he departed.
The Honda was on the hook by this time, so I waited in the cab of the tow truck. Then I waited outside. Then I went back in the cab. Ten minutes later, Trooper Kugler returned with a traffic ticket.
I scanned this document as he explained how to plead guilty, how to plead not guilty, how to request a hearing, and so forth. “Driving too fast for conditions” was the charge. The tariff was $110, but of course, nobody cares much about the fine itself. It’s the points on the license and the insurance premiums you worry about. I would have to report to Jim Thorpe, the county seat, at some future date and seek justice from a magistrate who, considering my luck so far, would probably be Trooper Kugler’s loving Uncle Fred.
He blathered on. There seemed no end to the procedural nuances he was legally obligated to impart. Is this how you welcome an out-of-town visitor who accidentally embeds himself in one of your guardrails, I wondered? When was the blind kid going to show up and start playing the banjo music from “Deliverance”? Sure, I was glad to be alive, but I now understood I was a slight underdog to make it through the rest of the day without some greasy fat guy forcing me to squeal like a pig for his amusement. I had let my guard down when I survived the crash, I realized. I had thought my tribulations were over, but here I was, still the hapless pilgrim buffeted by the unknown horrors of the land beyond the Lehigh Tunnel. The snow continued to fall. It was getting colder. My head hurt. The trees all around me seemed to drip with a nameless menace.
“Drive carefully, sir,” the trooper concluded, and took his leave. State police humor, I suppose. Drive carefully indeed! What an absurd thing to say to somebody whose car is on a towing hook.
My sullen driver from Schlier’s Towing fired up the truck and got us rolling.
“Where we going?” I asked.
“We have a shop in White Haven,” he said. “It’s not far.”
His cell phone trilled and he took the call as I considered my position. Now that Trooper Kugler had finished his bit of dirty work, I had apparently been captured by the Schlier operation. They could be the sweetest folks in the Poconos, of course, though my sour, laconic driver provided me with little evidence in that direction. More likely, I would simply represent a nice little payday for all concerned. I lacked options, and I would have even fewer of them once my car was up on a lift in a White Haven garage. And what were the odds they would be able to find the necessary parts for a 2002 Civic in such a place? Would I be spending the night? Two nights? The rest of my life?
The driver clicked off his phone and pulled over to an area with a wide shoulder. There was also a crossover here, a gap in the median. We had traveled perhaps half a mile.
“There’s another accident, and it’s more serious than yours. The car is blocking the right-hand lane on the southbound side. I’m the only tow truck in the area, so I have to leave you here with your car. I’ll send somebody else from the shop.”
“How long will that take?”
“A half hour, maybe forty-five minutes. I have to do it.”
“Go ahead,” I said.
He left the cab and started unhooking the Honda. In seconds, I was dialing my cell phone.
“Jack, the driver here is unhooking my car. He has to go to another accident. Can you get that guy Andy down here to tow me back to Dunmore?”
“I’ll call him now and give him your number.” Click.
Seconds later, my cell phone rang.
“Mike, this is Andy’s Service. Where are you?”
I told him.
“Is there air in all your tires?”
“Yes.”
“OK. Andy’s on his way.”
The driver returned to the cab just as I was finishing my call. I explained what I had done. He didn’t like it.
“I told you I’d get another truck out here for you.”
“I know, but I’ll be better off in Dunmore. I know people there.”
He made a sort of snorting noise at this news. I gathered he thought it was amusing that I would know people anywhere. “All right,” he said finally, “just fill this out.” He handed me a clipboard with a form on it that was already partially filled in.
I glanced at it, then looked at him. “What is it?” I asked.
“Fifty dollars for the hook-up and two dollars a mile. Fifty-two dollars.”
I looked at him calmly, betraying no emotion, as I quickly assessed the danger. I didn’t want this man angry with me. He was bigger than I am, and he didn’t seem to like me very much. I was alone out here, and would be alone, on the side of the road, in a snowstorm, for an hour. I had no partners in this area code. And my head hurt.
On the other hand, I wasn’t going to pay him any fifty-two dollars.
“You haven’t really provided me any service here, have you?” I asked.
“I told you I’d send another truck.” He grabbed the clipboard and shook it at me. “Look---I have to have one of these for every tow on the turnpike.”
“But you’re not towing me. You’re leaving me here.”
“I have to leave you. It’s an emergency. And you’ve gotta sign this!”
“OK. Listen. Let’s be reasonable. Take twenty bucks and let’s forget about it.”
This was the wrong thing to say, I guess. His brow furrowed and his face clenched in anger. For a moment, I thought the top of his head was going to blow off. Then his lips flapped for a few seconds but he couldn’t get any words out.
“Get out of the cab,” he hissed at me finally. I was halfway out the door when he added: “I think I’ll have Trooper Kugler come and talk to you.”
I walked behind the truck and climbed into the dead Honda as he roared off. As parting shots go, I had to admit the crack about Trooper Kugler was a doozie, and every bit as effective as a kidney punch. The very thought of another interview with Trooper Kugler filled me with nausea, and of course, there was now nothing else I could think about. Trooper Kugler??? I was done with him, wasn’t I? Wasn’t he just the guy in Act I who brings a distressing bit of news about Lady Winifred and ruins the tea party? Apparently not! Now it seemed that Trooper Kugler was a featured player, a major villain who would return in Act II to shoot the maid, and would only be brought to ground in Act III after he had poisoned the punchbowl.
Yes, I had to hand it to that tow-truck driver. If he had offered to return with a tire iron and beat me to a jelly, I would not have been nearly as upset as I was now. Trooper Kugler! I had only recently formed an opinion that the world would be a better place if only it contained fewer and better Trooper Kuglers, but now I was to be confronted with them everywhere. I saw them behind every tree. They were multiplying like rabbits. I would never be free of the army of Trooper Kuglers who were even now closing in, surrounding me. Soon they would all be running my plates through their computers, demanding my license and registration, asking me questions, sneering at my replies, and burying me in their little yellow citations. I would be forced to leave my home and family and spend the rest of my life in Jim Thorpe defending myself before the magistrate who just happened to be Trooper Kugler’s loving Uncle Fred.
As I waited for the army to descend, I turned the key in the ignition. Nothing. The battery was dead. OK. Here was a silver lining of sorts. Maybe this was the bluebird I had been seeking. Perhaps I would freeze to death before my rendezvous with justice.
To conserve my body heat, I pulled myself into a ball with my hands in my armpits, and waited. There was nothing to do. After a short while, I fell into a kind of trance, and began to imagine what my life would be like now that I had made it onto Carbon County’s Most Wanted list.
First off, there was no chance Trooper Kugler would issue a mere citation for my latest crime spree. When he finally appeared, he was the sort who would be angry with himself for not having summarily executed me the first time around. As a two-time loser, I was facing the hoosegow for certain, complete with tight cuffs behind the back, the rough pat-down, the body cavity search, the lone phone call, and the clang of a metal door behind me. I am 53 years old and I have never been arrested, and when you are 53 years old and have never been arrested, you tend to assume you will never be arrested, and that this is one of those life experiences from which you have been mercifully spared. But of course, my assumption had been formed in a world without a Trooper Kugler. I had not known he existed until an hour before. Only now did I see, with a bitter laugh, how foolish I had been.
I continued along this line of thought for some time, musing next about the accommodations I might expect at the Jim Thorpe lock-up, and the interesting people I would meet. And the chow!
This was pierogie country, I knew---and the pierogies here were the genuine article, shaped in the withered hands of devout old Polish ladies, fried in cast iron, and dressed with sour cream or onions or even homemade applesauce. Then there were the sausages that could still be found here and there in the tiny ethnic enclaves hidden in the hills and hollows. You had to KNOW somebody to get these sausages, but they existed. I remember the kielbasa I obtained five years ago, at Christmastime, from a friend who had been subjected to an extensive genealogical interrogation from the butcher who made and sold it. Only when my friend had been able to establish his local roots to the butcher’s satisfaction was he permitted to buy.
At the St. Mary’s Church Bazaar in 2004, I feasted on potato pancakes so crisp, so lovingly seasoned, that they made me cry out. Behind the exquisite potato flavor, in every bite, was a hint of fresh grease that rested upon them as delicately as a benediction but could not be seen on the pancakes themselves. “How great thou art!” I exclaimed. And I meant it. I have attended countless masses that never came close to touching me with the glory of God the way those pancakes did. As I shoved them on back, past the tonsils, I made a conscious effort to etch every detail of the experience in my memory, with the idea that on my deathbed, I could remember those pancakes and think: “I was happy then.”
But there would be none of that now. No pierogies, no sausages, no potato pancakes. I would be dining in the cooler at the Jim Thorpe municipal building. My fellow miscreants and I would be fed from a bucket of baked beans, perhaps garnished with a few squirrel bits scraped off the highway. A local lady, a light-heavyweight, would serve it up in our tin cups with a steely smile, like one of those women in the Old Testament who went around driving stakes through people’s heads. When she left, my cellmate would demand my food, but I would have to defend it to the death even though I didn’t want it, because to give it up would mean I would be his plaything for the rest of the night.
I checked the clock on my cell phone, the only working clock I had. Forty minutes had passed. Was it possible Trooper Kugler had bigger fish to fry? Was he now using his “jaws of life” to pry someone’s body from the crumpled wreck on the southbound lanes? The Schlier’s tow-truck driver had certainly reported me by now, and I remained at mile-marker 89.7 awaiting the brand of rough justice Trooper Kugler would be more than willing to dispense, but was there a delay? Had fate intervened? Was it conceivable my truck from Dunmore would arrive first?
The car windows were completely covered with ice and my visible world had been reduced to the interior of the Honda---dashboard, glovebox, EZ-Pass transponder. I went outside and scraped, then resumed my fetal position in the driver’s seat. Now, at least, I could see what was coming. Fifty minutes. No sign of Trooper Kugler, but no sign of the tow truck either.
I refused to hope. Here, north of the Lehigh Tunnel, hope is how they get you. Better to be ready for anything, and take what comes. The calaboose? Fine, bring it on. An asteroid? Sure, why not? Jezebel was a queen of Israel and she was torn apart by dogs, so what did I have to complain about? At least I had my potato pancakes. They were in the bank, and nobody could take them away from me.
Fifty-four minutes. Fifty-five. Fifty-six. In the distance, coming south, a white pickup was approaching. Was it a tow truck? Was it Andy? BE Andy, I thought, in spite of my earlier vow. Rescue me! Transport me to Dunmore, to Jack, to the rectory at St. Mary’s! Only by completing my mission, I saw now, could this curse be lifted. When you embark on a pilgrimage, you must complete it or lose all. How could I have forgotten this simple precept? BE Andy, dammit! BE Andy.
The pickup slowed as it approached the crossover. Yes! It was a tow truck, and it came to a brief stop at the gap in the median, then scooted across the northbound lanes to join me on the widened shoulder. I was out of the Honda before it came to a stop.
And now, Andy, here is what I want you to understand. This is the reason I’m writing you this letter.
If you’re like most guys, if you’re like me, you’re not famous and you’re never going to be. Nobody is ever going to erect a statue of you, and you’re never going to be invited to the MTV Music Awards. You make a living, you enjoy your chow, you say your prayers, you have a family who loves you and maybe some friends who like you and think you’re a decent human being, and you count yourself darned lucky to have all that going for you. You look at a sunset every now and then, and think life is pretty sweet. I know. I’m the same way. Nobody, though, is going to mistake you for Clint Eastwood, are they?
But at 1:00pm on February 14, 2005, at mile-marker 89.7 on the northbound lanes of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, you were more than just some guy pulling up in a tow truck. You were something more than Clint Eastwood. In fact, you were more than Clint Eastwood and Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela all rolled into one, at least to me. As I stood by the Honda, waiting for you to come to a stop, I knew in my soul that my problems were over, and I would now complete my mission. I felt a rush of excitement and hope race through me, which was just as quickly replaced by a feeling of peace and a sense that everything had been made right at last. And I thought: “Wow! This is what those lepers felt like when Christ showed up.”
As you may recall, my first words to you, even before you got out of the truck, were, “My hero!” I meant it as a joke, but you gave me a funny look. I imagine that when you drive a tow truck, you encounter people under varying amounts of stress, and you sometimes have to be careful. I understand. I did manage to resist the urge to kiss you, so give me some credit for that anyway.
I also want to thank you for the prompt and logical diagnosis of the Honda once you got it up on the lift. It was the strut on the driver-side front wheel, you decided, and you and your assistant started calling around looking for a replacement.
As the number of calls reached double digits, I could tell you were growing pessimistic about finding the necessary part by the end of the day. I wasn’t. I never had a doubt. What’s more, I didn’t care. I was three blocks from the rectory, and safety. If Jack had to put me up for the night, so be it. We would get a pizza. Maybe he would want to talk about the problem of evil in the world. He gets that way sometimes. It’s fun.
I was sitting in your reception area while your assistant dialed, clicked off, dialed again. Finally, he said, “This is it. If this guy doesn’t have it….” He dialed. He talked. He hung up. He turned to me.
“Well, guess what,” he said.
“Any chance you can do it today?” I asked. It was 3:15.
“I don’t see why not.”
“OK. I’m going up to St. Mary’s. Andy has my cell phone number.”
St. Mary’s is on a hill in Dunmore, and it felt perfectly correct climbing it to complete my pilgrimage. The snow had stopped. There was even some sunshine peeking through. I took long strides, with my back straight and my chest out, and filled my lungs with the crisp mountain air. I was Marco Polo completing his trip across Asia, walking the last few steps to the court of Kubla Khan. I had had my ups and downs on this day, but I was coming to the end of the trail.
I rang the bell at the rectory, and a woman admitted me. “Oh,” she said, “you must be Michael. Father Doris is expecting you. He’s in his study.”
I mounted the stairs and peered into his lair. The door was open. Jack rose from the desk and greeted me. We shook hands. He sat me on the couch and had me tell him my story. He offered to fetch me a doctor. I politely declined.
We eventually worked our way around to the purpose of my visit, and we talked for an hour or so. I will draw a curtain over that part of the story, except to say this. In “A Boy Named Sue,” by Johnny Cash, Johnny wraps up the story with the lyric, “I come away with a different point of view.” That’s what usually happens when I talk to Jack, and it happened on this occasion as well.
At 4:45, my phone rang, and it was you folks telling me the Honda was fixed. And of course, it was. Everything worked. It’s not a pretty car anymore, but everything works. Amazing. I drove back to the rectory to say my farewells.
Twilight had arrived as I waved goodbye to Jack and climbed into the Honda for the drive back to Philadelphia. The sun had broken through in the late afternoon, and much of the pavement was now dry.
The first drop of rain appeared on the windshield as I pulled out of the church driveway onto Chestnut Street. By the time I reached the ramp for 81-S, about ten blocks away, the rain had become a steady drizzle, and as I passed through the booth to enter the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the skies burst forth with a crash of thunder (the first I had heard since August) and a pelting rain.
Hunched over the steering wheel and squinting through the glass, with the wipers now switched to “high,” I proceeded slowly and warily home, toward a sympathetic family, a cold beer, and a cat purring contentedly on my lap. I passed no one. The left lane was a closed book to me. Trooper Kugler, I mused happily, posed no present danger. He was probably home now, sitting with Mrs. Kugler and the little Kuglers around the dinner table. May the Lord bless them and their simple repast, I thought, though if the blessing fell a bit less heavily on Trooper Kugler himself than on his family, that would be OK with me too. One must forgive, of course, because forgiveness is the best revenge. But forgetting is another matter.
It poured all the way to the Lehigh Tunnel.
Warmest wishes,
Michael
Copyright Michael Kubacki 2005
Andy’s Service Center
139 S. Blakely St.
Dunmore, PA 18512
Dear Andy:
Since you and I are both fans and admirers of Father Jack Doris, let me say a word about him before describing the series of events that befell me on February 14.
Jack is a friend of mine. We eat pizza together. We watched the Superbowl together. We argue about Notre Dame football. But over the years, and I don’t know exactly how this happened, he has also become a sort of spiritual advisor. He would probably laugh to hear me call him that (even though he’s a priest), but there it is.
It works like this. Every now and then, I’ll give him a call and drive up the turnpike, to Dunmore, to see him. It might be a personal problem I want to talk about, or it might be some political topic that’s been on my mind. Sometimes, there’s no reason at all I could put my finger on---I’ll just feel the need to sit and talk with him a while. And whatever it is, I always feel better afterwards. In fact, I’m sure that’s the reason I do it. The problems may still be there, and the worries, and everything else. I mean, the guy is not a magician. But I always leave feeling braced, and optimistic, and ready to ford a stream if I have to.
I live in Philadelphia, so these trips to see Jack have taken on a pilgrimage quality in my head, partly because I don’t much enjoy driving, but also because I seem to encounter extraordinary difficulties every time I attempt the journey. From Philly to Allentown, I’m fine. From Allentown to the Lehigh Tunnel, I’m cool. But I emerge from the tunnel into a different and dreadful place. Hurricanes. Blizzards. Wind that can blow a car into the median. Rain so hard you have to pull over and wait it out. I’ve seen rock slides. I’ve seen dead deer the size of elephants. I’ve seen tractor-trailers going sideways. Winter or summer, it makes no difference. It’s only a two-hour trip from Philadelphia, and almost all of it is on major highways, but I have NEVER undertaken one of these pilgrimages without, at some point, thinking, “Gosh, maybe I should pull off and find a motel somewhere, and try again tomorrow.” Never.
I’ve heard people describe the Bermuda Triangle this way, that there’s something you can feel, something that’s wrong, something that’s out to get you. And yet, when I have driven up to Dunmore at other times, there’s been no problem. If my family is in the car, or if I’m going to a ballgame or a party or something, the sun is always shining and the birds are always chirping, and I zip through the glorious woodlands and mountains of the Poconos with a song on my lips and peace in my heart. If it’s not a “pilgrimage,” I have nothing to fear. But when I’m alone, and I’m on my way to a private conference with Jack, well, anything can happen, and most of it isn’t good. I’d be safer driving from Baghdad to Fallujah with a Star of David on the side of my car.
And yet…. Well, that’s the nature of a pilgrimage, isn’t it? You don’t get something for nothing. If you want to talk to that hermit on top of the mountain and find out the meaning of life, first you’ve got to climb the mountain. Muslims go to Mecca every year, and sometimes they get trampled in stampedes and sometimes there are epidemics, but still they go, millions of them. The journey itself has a spiritual value, and the more difficult it is, the better. Unless you’re Paris Hilton, you don’t take a limo to Lourdes. You walk, or you limp, or you crawl.
Not that I cherish my moments of terror on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, you understand. In fact, if I had known I would have to traverse the Twilight Zone when I first began making these little journeys, I might have thought better of it and made other arrangements. Jack comes to Philly on a regular basis, and I could possibly have made a date to buy him a cheesesteak at Tony Luke’s. But I didn’t, and now it’s too late. If I tried to do that now, I’m certain it just wouldn’t work. I’m a pilgrim now, and the journey to Dunmore cannot be separated from the experience and discarded. It wouldn’t feel the same. I NEED to be swallowed up each time, like Jonah, by the gaping mouth of the Lehigh Tunnel, not knowing what awaits me on the other side. I accept it. I do it intentionally. It’s worth it to me. A wise man once wrote, “We are all on the path to ordination; some of us take the high road and some take the low.” Me? I take the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
All of which brings me to the events of February 14, which began, as many of my weekdays do, by dropping off my son at school in downtown Philadelphia. As I proceeded along Spring Garden Street toward the Expressway, the first snowflakes began to fall. A “wintry mix,” the radio called it, that would turn to rain. OK. I can handle that, though I wondered what the “wintry mix” would look like on the other side of the Lehigh Tunnel. At least I knew what I was facing, I thought. Often I don’t.
The snow didn’t stop, but as I rolled northward, past Allentown, past the tunnel, past Lehighton, it didn’t seem to be getting worse either. With the temperature in the mid-thirties, the road was wet but not icy, and traffic was moving normally. I was going about 55, and I was being passed more often than I was passing. On the hills that characterize the northern reaches of the turnpike, there were some trucks moving very slowly, but there are trucks moving slowly on those hills on the driest day in July.
Looking back on the accident, I think what happened was that I came to the top of a wind-swept hill that was perhaps a bit more exposed to the elements than the roadway before it, and perhaps the ambient temperature was more like 31 degrees than the 34 degrees I was used to. In any event, there was ice. I didn’t see any ice, and I hadn’t seen any all the way up from Philly. But ice there must have been, because when I turned the steering wheel a quarter-inch to the left in order to pass a slow-moving vehicle, I instantly lost control and began to slide.
Anyone who has had a life-threatening experience will tell you it seems to unfold in slow motion. They say that because it’s true. I remember every millisecond vividly---what I did, what I thought, what I saw. I wish I didn’t remember it quite so well, because the memory of it has washed over me several times since, when I wasn’t expecting it, and made me shudder.
The turn I was trying to execute when I began to spin out was only about 8 or 10 degrees of arc, but the car simply continued to turn in that direction as I worked the wheel and the brakes frantically, all to no effect. Twenty degrees. Thirty degrees. Forty-five. Seventy. I was now nearly sideways on the road, helpless, when a scream formed inside my head. It was a single word. It was a bad word. In fact, it was a very bad word, and I will not share it with you because Father Jack will also read this letter and there is no need for him to see it in print. Use your imagination. I suspect that in your career as a mechanic, tow-truck operator and entrepreneur, you may have heard it once or twice. It has occurred to me since the accident that there are people who, in my situation, would instinctively have offered up a prayer, though it would have had to be a brief one. “Please!” or “God!” or “Jesus!” might do the trick. Maybe you’re one of those people, and if so, you’re a better man than I am. There are a lot of men better than I am, I suppose.
As the Honda proceeded past the 90 degree (sideways) position, with no hint of stopping, it became clear to me I was headed for a full 180-degree turn. Hope dawned. A false hope, as it turned out, but I realized that if my angular momentum were sufficient, I might spin PAST the 180 to a complete 360 and again be heading northbound in the northbound lanes. I could then regain control and proceed calmly on my way. I would not only live to tell about it, but I would become, for a moment anyway, the coolest guy in Carbon County. Women who happened to witness the maneuver would instantly swoon, and offer to have my children.
All this raced through the old bean in a hundredth of a second---it’s amazing how the mind works when you have nothing to lose---and I turned the wheel as hard as I could in the direction I was spinning. Nothing. It was locked. I tried turning it the other way, and then jamming it back to the left, but nothing happened. I was sliding. I was out of control. What was going to happen was going to happen. I would never be the coolest guy in Carbon County.
In the next instant, I was fully backward, facing south and sliding northward, but I had stopped spinning. The car had spun 180 degrees, I still had no control, and I had no idea what would happen next. It was at this point I began to question my romantic attachment to the notion of a pilgrimage. Why hadn’t I just called Jack on the phone, I wondered. He has a phone, you know. He probably has four or five phones, and an email address, and a fax machine. What was I thinking? And how important was this particular mission anyway? OK, I had a little problem and I wanted to talk to Jack about it. But everybody has problems, right? Maybe I should have given myself a slap in the face and sucked it up. Maybe I should have been a man about it. For some reason, I thought I NEEDED to talk to him about it, in person, and now I was sliding backwards on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and I didn't like my chances of coming out of this without a permanent impairment of a body function or maybe even a permanent impairment of all my body functions, so I was performing a long-overdue cost-benefit analysis on the whole endeavor. There was a downside to this pilgrimage business, and perhaps I hadn’t given sufficient weight to it before.
And who the hell was this Jack Doris anyway? A nice enough guy, of course, and he can tend a flock with the best of them, but he’s not exactly Dr. Phil, is he? I mean, he doesn’t even have a TV show. What made me think a few words with a guy who cares way too much about Notre Dame football was worth submitting all my favorite internal organs to the whims of gravity and momentum and centrifugal force and all that other Isaac Newton stuff you had to study in high school? I hated all those physical forces now, momentum in particular. There was a kid in elementary school---Stuart Sorkin---who sucker-punched me in the sixth grade and knocked me silly, and I got a D in Citizenship as a result, and I have harbored a secret loathing for Stuart Sorkin for the past 42 years, but now I hated momentum even more. I really, really, really hated momentum. I was none too fond of my high school physics teacher, to tell you the truth. Even Isaac Newton---I mean, he was a great scientist and all, and I admit he wasn’t responsible for my predicament, but at the time, I had no use for him either.
I guess I was just in a bad mood.
But these were my thoughts as, looking south, I slid north on the Pennsylvania Turnpike at 45 mph for what seemed like a week or two. I had a lot of time, maybe too much time, to think. Those who know me would tell you I usually have an optimistic attitude toward life, but this was a real test of the spirit, and I failed. I found it hard even to search for the bluebird in my current situation. He had flown away.
I braced for impact.
I began now to slide eastward, and I’m not sure why. You would have to ask my high school physics teacher. I realize it’s hard to keep track of the geography here, but “eastward” means I was now drifting sideways toward the shoulder and the guardrail. Most of my momentum was still backwards, of course.
This cheered me somewhat. I had been worried about being rammed by a vehicle traveling northward in the normal, approved fashion, so the shoulder was an attractive option. At least I would be off the roadway. It was not something I anticipated with any eagerness, the collision with the guardrail, but if there had to be a collision, and there did, the guardrail was preferable to an 18-wheeler. I allowed myself another moment of hope. I was going to slide into the guardrail sideways. If I survived my first marriage, I could surely survive that. I had my seatbelt on, the Honda was fully equipped with airbags, and my insurance was all paid up. I would dance away from this disaster! I briefly regretted not having worn a tuxedo so I could carelessly flick a speck of dust from my immaculate cuff as I emerged laughing, James-Bond-like, from the smoldering wreckage and raced off across the Pocono moguls with Ursula Andress on the back of my jet-powered snowmobile. The odds, of course, were that Ursula was nowhere in the neighborhood, but I was going to live! That much was almost certain! Whatever else happened---well, the rest was whipped cream and chocolate sauce.
In fact, the impact was more violent than I would have liked. I hit hard. This is the part I don’t remember all that well. I didn’t lose consciousness, but when I finally came to rest, my head was bleeding and my left hand was twice the size of my right. I still have no idea how these injuries occurred. I was dizzy. I wasn’t dancing. But I was OK.
As luck would have it, a salt truck was sitting in a cutout off the road a quarter mile south. He had witnessed my adventures, and now proceeded slowly down the shoulder toward me. I opened the sunroof and gave him the OK sign. He stopped the truck, exited, and strolled over to the Honda.
“How ya doing?” he asked.
“OK,” I replied. “I’m a little foggy.”
“Is it driveable?” he asked.
I thought about that. The engine was still running. I was willing to give it a try. Since I was facing the wrong way, though, I would have to inch my way along the shoulder until I reached an area where I could turn around.
I tried it. The car went into gear, the wheels turned, everything seemed to be working, but I couldn’t steer. I got out and looked at the wheels, but didn’t see the problem. The gentleman from the salt truck returned.
“Want me to call a tow truck?”
“Thanks,” I answered.
So I waited. Cars and trucks zoomed by. The snow continued to fall. Salt trucks lumbered past, spreading crystals. I called Jack.
“Listen,” he said, “there’s a guy here in town named Andy, and he has a shop and a tow truck. I can call him if you want. He’s a great guy and he won’t rip you off.”
“Thanks, Jack,” I said, “but I’m still way down the turnpike from you and there’s a truck coming already.”
At that point, the truck arrived. Schlier’s Towing, out of White Haven. With a gruff hello, the grim driver set about hooking me up. As he was doing so, a state police car appeared, lights flashing, and cautiously approached the scene of the crime. At length, its occupant emerged and joined our little party.
Now, I guess I hadn’t been expecting a hug from Trooper Kugler, or a “Welcome to Carbon County” packet from the Chamber of Commerce, but it did strike me that a sympathetic inquiry regarding the blood dripping from my head would have been an excellent way for the trooper to break the ice and get the conversational ball rolling.
“It’s just a few drops, Officer,” I would say. “Don’t trouble yourself.”
“We have many qualified brain surgeons in the area, should you require their services, sir,” he might continue.
“Some other time perhaps. I’ll just soldier on,” I would reply.
“Stiff upper lip, sir? That’s the spirit! You’ll find that a manly attitude of strength and self-reliance will make you many friends here in Carbon County!”
It might have begun that way, and should have, in my opinion. But Trooper Kugler was apparently blind to the finer shades on the conversational palette. Or perhaps he simply felt it was important for me to understand from the get-go that, at least in Carbon County, man was not placed on this earth for pleasure alone.
“I’ll have your license, registration and insurance card, sir,” is what he actually said. I handed them over.
“Were you using a cell phone at the time of the accident?”
“No.”
“Were you wearing a seatbelt?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
I told him.
“How fast were you going when you attempted to pass the vehicle in front of you?”
“Fifty? Fifty-five? I really don’t know.”
“I’m going to take your documents back to my car now. Please remain with your vehicle.” And he departed.
The Honda was on the hook by this time, so I waited in the cab of the tow truck. Then I waited outside. Then I went back in the cab. Ten minutes later, Trooper Kugler returned with a traffic ticket.
I scanned this document as he explained how to plead guilty, how to plead not guilty, how to request a hearing, and so forth. “Driving too fast for conditions” was the charge. The tariff was $110, but of course, nobody cares much about the fine itself. It’s the points on the license and the insurance premiums you worry about. I would have to report to Jim Thorpe, the county seat, at some future date and seek justice from a magistrate who, considering my luck so far, would probably be Trooper Kugler’s loving Uncle Fred.
He blathered on. There seemed no end to the procedural nuances he was legally obligated to impart. Is this how you welcome an out-of-town visitor who accidentally embeds himself in one of your guardrails, I wondered? When was the blind kid going to show up and start playing the banjo music from “Deliverance”? Sure, I was glad to be alive, but I now understood I was a slight underdog to make it through the rest of the day without some greasy fat guy forcing me to squeal like a pig for his amusement. I had let my guard down when I survived the crash, I realized. I had thought my tribulations were over, but here I was, still the hapless pilgrim buffeted by the unknown horrors of the land beyond the Lehigh Tunnel. The snow continued to fall. It was getting colder. My head hurt. The trees all around me seemed to drip with a nameless menace.
“Drive carefully, sir,” the trooper concluded, and took his leave. State police humor, I suppose. Drive carefully indeed! What an absurd thing to say to somebody whose car is on a towing hook.
My sullen driver from Schlier’s Towing fired up the truck and got us rolling.
“Where we going?” I asked.
“We have a shop in White Haven,” he said. “It’s not far.”
His cell phone trilled and he took the call as I considered my position. Now that Trooper Kugler had finished his bit of dirty work, I had apparently been captured by the Schlier operation. They could be the sweetest folks in the Poconos, of course, though my sour, laconic driver provided me with little evidence in that direction. More likely, I would simply represent a nice little payday for all concerned. I lacked options, and I would have even fewer of them once my car was up on a lift in a White Haven garage. And what were the odds they would be able to find the necessary parts for a 2002 Civic in such a place? Would I be spending the night? Two nights? The rest of my life?
The driver clicked off his phone and pulled over to an area with a wide shoulder. There was also a crossover here, a gap in the median. We had traveled perhaps half a mile.
“There’s another accident, and it’s more serious than yours. The car is blocking the right-hand lane on the southbound side. I’m the only tow truck in the area, so I have to leave you here with your car. I’ll send somebody else from the shop.”
“How long will that take?”
“A half hour, maybe forty-five minutes. I have to do it.”
“Go ahead,” I said.
He left the cab and started unhooking the Honda. In seconds, I was dialing my cell phone.
“Jack, the driver here is unhooking my car. He has to go to another accident. Can you get that guy Andy down here to tow me back to Dunmore?”
“I’ll call him now and give him your number.” Click.
Seconds later, my cell phone rang.
“Mike, this is Andy’s Service. Where are you?”
I told him.
“Is there air in all your tires?”
“Yes.”
“OK. Andy’s on his way.”
The driver returned to the cab just as I was finishing my call. I explained what I had done. He didn’t like it.
“I told you I’d get another truck out here for you.”
“I know, but I’ll be better off in Dunmore. I know people there.”
He made a sort of snorting noise at this news. I gathered he thought it was amusing that I would know people anywhere. “All right,” he said finally, “just fill this out.” He handed me a clipboard with a form on it that was already partially filled in.
I glanced at it, then looked at him. “What is it?” I asked.
“Fifty dollars for the hook-up and two dollars a mile. Fifty-two dollars.”
I looked at him calmly, betraying no emotion, as I quickly assessed the danger. I didn’t want this man angry with me. He was bigger than I am, and he didn’t seem to like me very much. I was alone out here, and would be alone, on the side of the road, in a snowstorm, for an hour. I had no partners in this area code. And my head hurt.
On the other hand, I wasn’t going to pay him any fifty-two dollars.
“You haven’t really provided me any service here, have you?” I asked.
“I told you I’d send another truck.” He grabbed the clipboard and shook it at me. “Look---I have to have one of these for every tow on the turnpike.”
“But you’re not towing me. You’re leaving me here.”
“I have to leave you. It’s an emergency. And you’ve gotta sign this!”
“OK. Listen. Let’s be reasonable. Take twenty bucks and let’s forget about it.”
This was the wrong thing to say, I guess. His brow furrowed and his face clenched in anger. For a moment, I thought the top of his head was going to blow off. Then his lips flapped for a few seconds but he couldn’t get any words out.
“Get out of the cab,” he hissed at me finally. I was halfway out the door when he added: “I think I’ll have Trooper Kugler come and talk to you.”
I walked behind the truck and climbed into the dead Honda as he roared off. As parting shots go, I had to admit the crack about Trooper Kugler was a doozie, and every bit as effective as a kidney punch. The very thought of another interview with Trooper Kugler filled me with nausea, and of course, there was now nothing else I could think about. Trooper Kugler??? I was done with him, wasn’t I? Wasn’t he just the guy in Act I who brings a distressing bit of news about Lady Winifred and ruins the tea party? Apparently not! Now it seemed that Trooper Kugler was a featured player, a major villain who would return in Act II to shoot the maid, and would only be brought to ground in Act III after he had poisoned the punchbowl.
Yes, I had to hand it to that tow-truck driver. If he had offered to return with a tire iron and beat me to a jelly, I would not have been nearly as upset as I was now. Trooper Kugler! I had only recently formed an opinion that the world would be a better place if only it contained fewer and better Trooper Kuglers, but now I was to be confronted with them everywhere. I saw them behind every tree. They were multiplying like rabbits. I would never be free of the army of Trooper Kuglers who were even now closing in, surrounding me. Soon they would all be running my plates through their computers, demanding my license and registration, asking me questions, sneering at my replies, and burying me in their little yellow citations. I would be forced to leave my home and family and spend the rest of my life in Jim Thorpe defending myself before the magistrate who just happened to be Trooper Kugler’s loving Uncle Fred.
As I waited for the army to descend, I turned the key in the ignition. Nothing. The battery was dead. OK. Here was a silver lining of sorts. Maybe this was the bluebird I had been seeking. Perhaps I would freeze to death before my rendezvous with justice.
To conserve my body heat, I pulled myself into a ball with my hands in my armpits, and waited. There was nothing to do. After a short while, I fell into a kind of trance, and began to imagine what my life would be like now that I had made it onto Carbon County’s Most Wanted list.
First off, there was no chance Trooper Kugler would issue a mere citation for my latest crime spree. When he finally appeared, he was the sort who would be angry with himself for not having summarily executed me the first time around. As a two-time loser, I was facing the hoosegow for certain, complete with tight cuffs behind the back, the rough pat-down, the body cavity search, the lone phone call, and the clang of a metal door behind me. I am 53 years old and I have never been arrested, and when you are 53 years old and have never been arrested, you tend to assume you will never be arrested, and that this is one of those life experiences from which you have been mercifully spared. But of course, my assumption had been formed in a world without a Trooper Kugler. I had not known he existed until an hour before. Only now did I see, with a bitter laugh, how foolish I had been.
I continued along this line of thought for some time, musing next about the accommodations I might expect at the Jim Thorpe lock-up, and the interesting people I would meet. And the chow!
This was pierogie country, I knew---and the pierogies here were the genuine article, shaped in the withered hands of devout old Polish ladies, fried in cast iron, and dressed with sour cream or onions or even homemade applesauce. Then there were the sausages that could still be found here and there in the tiny ethnic enclaves hidden in the hills and hollows. You had to KNOW somebody to get these sausages, but they existed. I remember the kielbasa I obtained five years ago, at Christmastime, from a friend who had been subjected to an extensive genealogical interrogation from the butcher who made and sold it. Only when my friend had been able to establish his local roots to the butcher’s satisfaction was he permitted to buy.
At the St. Mary’s Church Bazaar in 2004, I feasted on potato pancakes so crisp, so lovingly seasoned, that they made me cry out. Behind the exquisite potato flavor, in every bite, was a hint of fresh grease that rested upon them as delicately as a benediction but could not be seen on the pancakes themselves. “How great thou art!” I exclaimed. And I meant it. I have attended countless masses that never came close to touching me with the glory of God the way those pancakes did. As I shoved them on back, past the tonsils, I made a conscious effort to etch every detail of the experience in my memory, with the idea that on my deathbed, I could remember those pancakes and think: “I was happy then.”
But there would be none of that now. No pierogies, no sausages, no potato pancakes. I would be dining in the cooler at the Jim Thorpe municipal building. My fellow miscreants and I would be fed from a bucket of baked beans, perhaps garnished with a few squirrel bits scraped off the highway. A local lady, a light-heavyweight, would serve it up in our tin cups with a steely smile, like one of those women in the Old Testament who went around driving stakes through people’s heads. When she left, my cellmate would demand my food, but I would have to defend it to the death even though I didn’t want it, because to give it up would mean I would be his plaything for the rest of the night.
I checked the clock on my cell phone, the only working clock I had. Forty minutes had passed. Was it possible Trooper Kugler had bigger fish to fry? Was he now using his “jaws of life” to pry someone’s body from the crumpled wreck on the southbound lanes? The Schlier’s tow-truck driver had certainly reported me by now, and I remained at mile-marker 89.7 awaiting the brand of rough justice Trooper Kugler would be more than willing to dispense, but was there a delay? Had fate intervened? Was it conceivable my truck from Dunmore would arrive first?
The car windows were completely covered with ice and my visible world had been reduced to the interior of the Honda---dashboard, glovebox, EZ-Pass transponder. I went outside and scraped, then resumed my fetal position in the driver’s seat. Now, at least, I could see what was coming. Fifty minutes. No sign of Trooper Kugler, but no sign of the tow truck either.
I refused to hope. Here, north of the Lehigh Tunnel, hope is how they get you. Better to be ready for anything, and take what comes. The calaboose? Fine, bring it on. An asteroid? Sure, why not? Jezebel was a queen of Israel and she was torn apart by dogs, so what did I have to complain about? At least I had my potato pancakes. They were in the bank, and nobody could take them away from me.
Fifty-four minutes. Fifty-five. Fifty-six. In the distance, coming south, a white pickup was approaching. Was it a tow truck? Was it Andy? BE Andy, I thought, in spite of my earlier vow. Rescue me! Transport me to Dunmore, to Jack, to the rectory at St. Mary’s! Only by completing my mission, I saw now, could this curse be lifted. When you embark on a pilgrimage, you must complete it or lose all. How could I have forgotten this simple precept? BE Andy, dammit! BE Andy.
The pickup slowed as it approached the crossover. Yes! It was a tow truck, and it came to a brief stop at the gap in the median, then scooted across the northbound lanes to join me on the widened shoulder. I was out of the Honda before it came to a stop.
And now, Andy, here is what I want you to understand. This is the reason I’m writing you this letter.
If you’re like most guys, if you’re like me, you’re not famous and you’re never going to be. Nobody is ever going to erect a statue of you, and you’re never going to be invited to the MTV Music Awards. You make a living, you enjoy your chow, you say your prayers, you have a family who loves you and maybe some friends who like you and think you’re a decent human being, and you count yourself darned lucky to have all that going for you. You look at a sunset every now and then, and think life is pretty sweet. I know. I’m the same way. Nobody, though, is going to mistake you for Clint Eastwood, are they?
But at 1:00pm on February 14, 2005, at mile-marker 89.7 on the northbound lanes of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, you were more than just some guy pulling up in a tow truck. You were something more than Clint Eastwood. In fact, you were more than Clint Eastwood and Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela all rolled into one, at least to me. As I stood by the Honda, waiting for you to come to a stop, I knew in my soul that my problems were over, and I would now complete my mission. I felt a rush of excitement and hope race through me, which was just as quickly replaced by a feeling of peace and a sense that everything had been made right at last. And I thought: “Wow! This is what those lepers felt like when Christ showed up.”
As you may recall, my first words to you, even before you got out of the truck, were, “My hero!” I meant it as a joke, but you gave me a funny look. I imagine that when you drive a tow truck, you encounter people under varying amounts of stress, and you sometimes have to be careful. I understand. I did manage to resist the urge to kiss you, so give me some credit for that anyway.
I also want to thank you for the prompt and logical diagnosis of the Honda once you got it up on the lift. It was the strut on the driver-side front wheel, you decided, and you and your assistant started calling around looking for a replacement.
As the number of calls reached double digits, I could tell you were growing pessimistic about finding the necessary part by the end of the day. I wasn’t. I never had a doubt. What’s more, I didn’t care. I was three blocks from the rectory, and safety. If Jack had to put me up for the night, so be it. We would get a pizza. Maybe he would want to talk about the problem of evil in the world. He gets that way sometimes. It’s fun.
I was sitting in your reception area while your assistant dialed, clicked off, dialed again. Finally, he said, “This is it. If this guy doesn’t have it….” He dialed. He talked. He hung up. He turned to me.
“Well, guess what,” he said.
“Any chance you can do it today?” I asked. It was 3:15.
“I don’t see why not.”
“OK. I’m going up to St. Mary’s. Andy has my cell phone number.”
St. Mary’s is on a hill in Dunmore, and it felt perfectly correct climbing it to complete my pilgrimage. The snow had stopped. There was even some sunshine peeking through. I took long strides, with my back straight and my chest out, and filled my lungs with the crisp mountain air. I was Marco Polo completing his trip across Asia, walking the last few steps to the court of Kubla Khan. I had had my ups and downs on this day, but I was coming to the end of the trail.
I rang the bell at the rectory, and a woman admitted me. “Oh,” she said, “you must be Michael. Father Doris is expecting you. He’s in his study.”
I mounted the stairs and peered into his lair. The door was open. Jack rose from the desk and greeted me. We shook hands. He sat me on the couch and had me tell him my story. He offered to fetch me a doctor. I politely declined.
We eventually worked our way around to the purpose of my visit, and we talked for an hour or so. I will draw a curtain over that part of the story, except to say this. In “A Boy Named Sue,” by Johnny Cash, Johnny wraps up the story with the lyric, “I come away with a different point of view.” That’s what usually happens when I talk to Jack, and it happened on this occasion as well.
At 4:45, my phone rang, and it was you folks telling me the Honda was fixed. And of course, it was. Everything worked. It’s not a pretty car anymore, but everything works. Amazing. I drove back to the rectory to say my farewells.
Twilight had arrived as I waved goodbye to Jack and climbed into the Honda for the drive back to Philadelphia. The sun had broken through in the late afternoon, and much of the pavement was now dry.
The first drop of rain appeared on the windshield as I pulled out of the church driveway onto Chestnut Street. By the time I reached the ramp for 81-S, about ten blocks away, the rain had become a steady drizzle, and as I passed through the booth to enter the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the skies burst forth with a crash of thunder (the first I had heard since August) and a pelting rain.
Hunched over the steering wheel and squinting through the glass, with the wipers now switched to “high,” I proceeded slowly and warily home, toward a sympathetic family, a cold beer, and a cat purring contentedly on my lap. I passed no one. The left lane was a closed book to me. Trooper Kugler, I mused happily, posed no present danger. He was probably home now, sitting with Mrs. Kugler and the little Kuglers around the dinner table. May the Lord bless them and their simple repast, I thought, though if the blessing fell a bit less heavily on Trooper Kugler himself than on his family, that would be OK with me too. One must forgive, of course, because forgiveness is the best revenge. But forgetting is another matter.
It poured all the way to the Lehigh Tunnel.
Warmest wishes,
Michael
Copyright Michael Kubacki 2005
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
