"We Are All Abusers Now'

Apologies to Sir William George Granville Venables Vernon Harcourt, Speech in Parlimanet 1887, “We are all socialists now.”

            Let’s get one thing straight: I abhor abusers.  I’ve known women abused by fathers, uncles, neighbors, and others.  I’ve known all too many students abused by teachers, and I was brought up Roman Catholic so I have a clear picture of those ills as well.  Abuse or harassment, honestly defined, is a major offense, often against the law and always against morality.  (Full disclosure: as a preteen I was abused by two older male cousins.  I finally told my mother, who told their mother, and the abuse stopped.  I don’t recall any jail time, and indeed in later life each became a police officer.)

            That being said, I am disturbed at the turn the harassment and abuse conversation has taken, as it has broadened into a self-righteous condemnation of anyone who does not meet the speaker’s self-proclaimed rules, a condemnation that threatens far more than the power abusers whose depredations have set this revolution in motion.

            Let me give a few examples.  I listened to a highly respected liberal Boston talk show, in which the term “zero tolerance” was used repeatedly.  Up to now, “zero tolerance” has tended to be a weapon of the powerful against their victims.  “Zero tolerance” gave us three strikes laws, brutal penalties for crack cocaine, and the largest prison population in the world. It also gave us epidemic school expulsions and suspensions, often aimed at students of color, and even extending to the pre-school grades.  It allows politicians to use the “soft on crime” label for just about anyone, and the disgusting “lock her up” chants (for a woman who was never proven to have done anything, despite the best efforts of Republican forces from Ken Starr to the present moment).  Now it’s a new weapon to be used indiscriminately to ruin the careers of anyone who ever crossed an imaginary line that was just drawn this year.

            To take a few cases of what may not be tolerated: “kissing someone without their permission.”  Kissing them on what part of the face?  Under what conditions?  Is anyone but me old enough to remember Sammy Davis Jr. kissing Archie Bunker on “All in the Family”? Surprise kisses are the stuff of song, screen, and youthful memories.  Yes, some surprise kisses are just acts of domination, but certainly not all.  And while the “permission” movement has a massive amount of validity on its side when it comes to overt sexual acts, kissing is not just about sex.  Who steps back and says “May I kiss you?” as a Victorian would ask for a dance?  I have been kissed by innumerable women, sometimes on the lips, including by the elderly, lesbians, and parents of students at the schools I headed, as well as by complete strangers from other cultures on first meeting.  Moreover, I have been clasped to the often impressive bosoms of women without my permission.  Should I file complaints?  Or does the writ only run in one direction?

            Take another current phrase “I felt uncomfortable.”  This is often used as a show-stopper, along with “inappropriate.”  So anyone who declares something to be inappropriate or expresses their discomfort can stop the discussion immediately.  A very useful tool, which unfortunately can be used by anyone – e.g. “It’s inappropriate to discuss gun control at this time out of sensitivity to the victims’ families.” This is of course part of the whole “trigger warning” movement, which leads to such anomalies as discussions of campus rape where the word “rape” cannot be used. 

            The over-reaction has also extended to parts of the body heretofore not included.  Remember how parents trying to teach their children that no one should be allowed to touch them in certain places use “the underwear rule” or “the bathing suit rule.”  Now the bathing  suit rule seems to extend the full length of a Victorian swimming costume.  The shoulder, the back, the knee, all are off limits, at least between adult men and women, and for all I know between gay men and other men.  And of course if the knee is included, everything below the knee must also be included, since many people pat someone on the knee soothingly, but few do so on the ankle.  I believe that leaves the arm, as long as one isn’t getting above the bicep – or maybe the elbow. 

            Let me end with another example from the aforementioned radio show.  The topic later shifted from the specific issue to the general need to condemn evil.  One speaker, a protestant minister whose main passion, according to her blog site, is combating homophobia, declared her abhorrence for the Pope’s failure to use the term “Rohynga” while in Myanmar.  According to this speaker, who, by the way, was opposed by one or two of the others on the show, you have to go where evil is being done and condemn it there.  You can’t condemn it from a different forum, in the media, but on the spot.  This example of self-created moral law, to which everyone must conform, or be damned to the speaker’s own private hell, captures where the “me too” movement seems to be taking us.

                       

           

And Now for Something Completely Different

Every once in a while social and political issues have to take a back seat.  For someone who grew up in the Yankee heyday, post-season baseball is that time, and the Yankees that historical lens (though I came to Boston in 1967 and defected immediately from the Bombers).

            Sports writers have been jumping all over themselves to praise Aaron Judge’s breakout in the middle of the ALCS, when he hit 3 home runs.  But where should we put Judge’s start among the Yankee greats?  The answer is simple: 5^th out of 5.  Take batting average:  Judge’s .118 is an embarrassment, compared to DiMaggio, Jackson, and Gehrig, all of whom hit over .300, and even Mantle’s .283.  In batting, Gehrig is the superstar – in his first 6 World Series he averaged .371, and even his last and lowest was .286.  (His highest was .545)

            (Note: Judge has only appeared in 2 rounds, but to get in the closest number of games to Judge’s 13, and at bats to his 48, I went to 3 series in a few cases.  Remember too that Mantle, Gehrig, and DiMaggio only played in World Series against the best of the NL, and Jackson in ALCSs and Word Series, while Judge had a play-in game against the 6^th best AL team, and didn’t get to play the best team in the NL.)

            Home runs look better.  Judge’s 4 put him with Mantle and Gehrig, though far behind Jackson’s 7 (DiMaggio 1).  His RBI’s however, leave him behind all but DiMaggio.  The other power hitters drove in 17 (Gehrig), 15 (Jackson), and 12 (Mantle) to his 11. 

            Then there are the strikeouts: 27 in 13 games.  It took Jackson 32 games in his Yankee career  (37 in his younger days with Oakland) to reach 27 Ks, and Mantle 39 games.  Neither Gehrig (34 total WS games) nor DiMaggio (an amazing 51 WS games) struck out that many times in their careers.

            So let’s rank them this way: 1 to 5 for each positive stat, with strikeouts reversed , so Judge gets the 5 there.  Lowest score wins:

                        RBIs   HRs    BA       SO       Tot.  RANK

Gehrig               1          2        1          2          6         1

Jackson             2          1        2          3          8         2

Mantle               3          2        4          3        12        3

DiMaggio          5          5        3          1        14        4

Judge                 4          2        5          5         17       5

One other tidbit: If Judge plays in as many games as each of the other 4, he would end up with between 71 and 160 strikeouts, the lowest total of which would still be higher than the highest total of any of the 4 (Jackson’s 65 in 77 games).  Having struck out 27 times in one post-season, he will only need 3 more to get to third.  First is not out of the question, as 6 post-seasons will get him there. On the other hand, he’ll need seven post-seasons to get to first in home runs, and 8 to get there in RBIs.   By the way, the guy ahead of him in RBIs is Bernie Williams, and though Derek Jeter is the #1 in Ks, he’s also the leader in plate appearances, and struck once every 5.4 at-bats to Judge’s once every 2.1.

However if Judge keeps setting strikeout records, his career may be shorter than anyone expects.  The 100^th best player all-time in AB to SO ratio in baseball history averaged 1 per every 7.67 at bats.  Judge so far is averaging one for every 2.5.  Of the Yankee greats mentioned, Jackson is the next worst with 1 SO per 3.8 ABs.  Only Jim Thome of the all-time Top 10  HR hitters ranks worse with a 3.3 average.   But some will say it’s a different game today.  Well, Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera and Edwin Encarnacion, the most likely active players to break into the top 10 are at 8.5, 5.1, and 5.2 respectively, still twice to more than three times better than Judge.

So hold the Hall of Fame invitation for at least 15 years.

R E S P E C T

            Sorry for the long absence, due to personal and volunteer pressures.

            One of the contentions of reporters, analysts and the blogosphere has been that the Trump revolution is largely based on the feeling among middle Americans, the white working class, or whatever label they are given, that they are being disrespected and ignored by the coastal and liberal elites.  That’s certainly a plausible hypothesis.  Groups both here and around the world have found such disrespect to be not only linked to numerous forms of practical disadvantage, but intolerable in itself.

            There are many means of demanding and obtaining respect.  When it’s a matter of direct oppression, as of racial and religious minorities, or of a whole people by a military junta or a dictatorship, open revolt may be a rational option.  But when the disrespect is more general, pervasive and unorganized, other means are usually more effective.

            Let’s take a few examples.  In the early twentieth century, workers who felt disrespected by management unionized to gain bargaining power.  Starting soon after the Civil War, formerly enslaved people and their white allies began opening schools and colleges to educate black children.  Later organizations like the United Negro College Fund, and individuals, worked both to strengthen those institutions and to gain admission to formerly exclusionary universities.  Immigrant Asians likewise made great sacrifices to help their children pursue careers that would gain them entry into the most prestigious professions, and their children studied arduously to succeed in those paths.  Each of those approaches clearly worked to alter the minds of many in the majority about the respectability of the particular groups.

            Now it’s true that some minorities – Irish Americans and Latinos, for example – have gained respect through the ballot box.  But for the most part, those groups, as well as African Americans, have put forward their “best and brightest” in those areas, at least for the past three-quarters of a century. 

            Our “Heartland” oppressed, however, seem to ignore almost all the principles of past strategies. Of the 18 states with adult educational attainment above the national average, all but Kansas and Utah are Democratic, while the bottom 13 are all Republican, and all between the coasts.  The 13 states with 15% or higher union membership include only two 2016 Red states, Alaska (oil workers) and Michigan.  Of the other 11, nine are coastal, and include every state from Maine to Delaware except Maine and New Hampshire.  On the other hand, the 15 states with fewer than 10% unionization are all Red.

            These are not accidents of history, but deliberate policies.  Red states are consistently anti-union in their legislation and actions.  Nine of the ten states with the lowest expenditure on public education were Red in 2016.  (Interestingly, the three states collecting the highest proportion of their school funding from the federal government are South Dakota, Louisiana and Mississippi.  The three lowest?  Maryland, Connecticut and New Jersey.)

            But enough data.  What is the strategy of the new victim class, aside from threats of Second Amendment solutions or secession, torchlight marches, and the like?  It seems to be to elect people, from Donald Trump to Roy Moore, who instantly become laughingstocks to most of the nation aside from their rabid supporters.  Depending on ill-informed, under-prepared, irrational bigots who espouse views rejected by the majority of Americans, as well as claims easily corrected by the simplest research, is surely a way to gain respect, isn’t it? 

            Take Roy Moore, a man who believes President Obama wasn’t born in the U.S., sharia law is being practiced somewhere up north – “Illinois, Indiana, I don’t know” – and doesn’t know what DACA is or who the Dreamers are when asked by a local radio reporter. Surely he will take his place among the leading members of the Senate for his knowledge, judgment, and perspicuity.  (Remember Sonny Bono, who was elected to the House, marveled at how smart Barney Frank was, and died by skiing into a tree?)

            In her book Dignity: The Essential Role It Plays in Resolving Conflict, Donna Hicks distinguishes between Respect, which is earned by actions and character, and Dignity, which is owed to all human beings simply by virtue of their humanity.  Accepting this distinction for the moment, the Trump revolutionaries, and of course their leader and some of his now unruly former followers, seem hell-bent on surrendering any claim to respect.  (Contrast John  McCain, who brings to mind Shakespeare’s famous line, “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it.”)  Going further, if dignity is a two-way street, the refusal of many of these partisans to grant dignity to other races, religions, genders, and nationalities makes it hard to offer them the dignity they might otherwise deserve.

My Culture, Your Culture, Our Culture

            Since I’ve been attacking the vigilantes of cultural appropriation for a while, let me look at things from a different side.  First, a story:

            In 2006 I, a born Catholic, Jesuit-educated, semi-Christian, interviewed in Florida for the interim headship of the largest Jewish day school south of Washington DC.  As you might expect, I faced some tough questions.  One of the easiest, however, was intended as a challenge: “What are you going to do if one of the rabbis says to you, ‘This is a Jewish thing; you wouldn’t understand.”  I immediately said, “I’d say ‘Rabbi means teacher, doesn’t it.  So you must teach me, and then I will understand.”  I got the job, ran the school for two years, and was succeeded by another Catholic.  And I spent two years asking questions, which the rabbis and others were delighted to answer.

            What’s my point?  That cross-cultural understanding is not only vital, it is a positive, life-enhancing activity, and should be encouraged first, and only challenged when there appears to be a negative, hostile, or avaricious motivation on someone’s part.

            Consider the vexed question of clothing, for example, both everyday and special occasion.  Here motivations, uniqueness, and cultural distance all come into play.  Anyone who wants to wear green on St. Patrick’s Day is, I believe, welcome to do so.  A person not of direct Scottish descent can probably wear a kilt in some situations – say a non-Scottish bagpiper, or a friend at a Scots wedding.  People wearing everyday kimonos or yukatas around the house, okay.  Likewise, berets, top hats, Irish caps, tweed, fine.   Women have even more latitude, I think, in many areas – culturally identified blouses, for example. 

            But turbans, dashikis, war bonnets, keffiyahs, pretty much not.  And burkas, kente cloth, any culture’s ritual or religious wear, no.  (I once heard from an Argentine-Jewish family who had gone to Buenos Aires on school vacation.  Visiting a hip coffee house, they overheard two locals speaking in Spanish about the mens’ yarmulkes:  “What are they wearing?”  “Oh that’s the cute little cap that’s all the rage in Miami.”)

            And absolutely not – racially, nationally or other garb that speaks to a group’s oppression or crimes: no slave clothes and no Nazi uniforms.

            I’ve stuck to clothing because it’s less complicated than other areas.  Can whites, for example, use black language?  Well, they have for more than a century: Jazz, jive, juke, mumbo- jumbo, ragtime, chill, crib, tote, voodoo, zombie, to name just a few.  The rules and lines are complex.  Like much slang, a group invents a word to distinguish itself from others, and that word enters common use and therefore often becomes useless for its in-group purpose.  (Compare Yiddish, which has so thoroughly entered non-Jewish usage that numerous words for body parts, as well as many insults, are now common property.)

            The borderlines seem to include words that are viewed as inoffensive when used within the group, but not by outsiders.  The 1902 novel, The Virginian, gave us the memorable phrase (altered over time) “Smile, when you say that,” when an outsider uses the phrase s-o-b, which the cowboys call each other regularly.” 

            They also include words that are newly coined by the ingroup, and considered proprietary.  There’s a sort of cultural copyright: “cool” entered the public domain long ago, but “fleek” hasn’t, and “sick” is too confusing for borrowing.  Unfortunately, slang moves so quickly through modern media that the lag time has become much too short in the ears of many originating groups.  See “bae,” “ratchet,” and the above-mentioned “fleek.”  Watch The Wire, or Dear White People and try to decide which words a white non-Baltimorean can use.

            Finally, they include words created by the majority to denigrate the minority: “gyp,” “paddy wagon,” “hooligan” “Indian giver” “Jew down” “pickanniny,” and of course the n-word and all its cousins: the k-words (for Jews, Germans, or South African blacks), the g-word (for Vietnamese), the w-word (for Italians) the f-word (for the French), c’s, p’s, and  j’s condensed words for Chinese, Polish, and Japanese people, and on and on.  The lists I consulted actually had insults beginning with every letter but A or Z. 

            Finally, the great question of art.  Here things get even harder.  Should we stop reading The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Huck Finn, and all the other works with female characters or characters of color who are not treated according to our modern standards?  Surely the case is different the closer we come to the present moment.  But how should we decide who can write about whom?  Men about women? Women about men?  Persons of different races about each other?  Nationalities? Gender identities?  Ages?  And if we segregate authors, artists, musicians, etc. by such criteria, should we expect that outsiders will be interested in reading the works of our groups?  I recall reading a piece by an African woman attorney who said reading To Kill a Mockingbird and admiring the character of Atticus Finch led her to her vocation.  If I had not read James Baldwin, Bernard Malamud, and Alan Paton in high school, would I have either the awareness or the empathy I have now?  Will I not grow in awareness and empathy by reading female, immigrant, Muslim, and other Others? 

            A young man I know, son of an African American father and a Greek-American mother, has become a successful jazz pianist.  For his first album, Promethean, he chose an epigraph from French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard:  “It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to.”  My sentiments exactly.

Cultural Appropriation Part 2 – Or Simply Culture?

           

            The last post objected to the term “cultural appropriation” for its inaccuracy, as well as for being itself the appropriation of a word with specific meanings.  But the claim of any culture to “own” something in an exclusive way is itself a historical and cultural absurdity.  With a vanishingly small set of exceptions, which we’ll get to later, all cultures exist by taking from other cultures.  No culture (except perhaps some literal or metaphoric islands) is an island.

            Let’s take a few of the most common markers of a culture, and see why appropriation is essential to them.

Religion

            Are you a Christian or a Muslim?  Then you’re a massive expropriator – Christians from Judaism, and Islam from both. These are incontrovertible historical facts.  Christians lifted the Ten Commandments, the Psalms, Proverbs, Prophets, and other stories directly from the Hebrew Bible, and Islam took the same figures, from Abraham (Ibrahim) to Solomon (Suleiman) to Jesus (Isa) from its two predecessors.  In fact, Mohammed may be the greatest individual appropriator of all time, since he alone did what it took Jesus, Paul, Peter, and countless others to do.

            On the other side of the globe, Southeast and East Asia took Buddhism from India, and India re-took the Buddha for a place in the Hindu pantheon (just as Islam takes Jesus as a prophet.)  Numerous syncretic religions – Rastafarianism, Jainism, Bahai, have also taken significant parts of other religions.  Can you accept the claim that a Muslim must be an Arab, a Rastafarian must be a Jamaican, or a Christian must be a former Jew? If not, then you are comfortable with these huge appropriations.

Language

            Perhaps the greatest source of appropriation of them all.  There was, perhaps, an Ur-language that borrowed from no other, but that is assuredly unrecoverable.  Language only esxists because a hearer or many hearers decide to use a word they have heard from another – an appropriation.  Whether language was monogenic or polygenic, it ramified quickly into innumerable branches of a few trunks.  The Indo-European language, for example, has over 400 living successors, and many more that are extinct.  English has taken between 26% and 29% of its words from Latin, German, or French, and about one in six words from other languages. 

            “English” by the way is a perfect example of cultural evolution: as a country it derives its name from the Angles, one of the several peoples of England before 1066 (along with the Saxons, Jutes, Celts, and probably Danes).  Their language is almost entirely incomprehensible to modern day English speakers, or even to the people loving in England during Chaucer’s day (The first poem recorded in “English” begins: “Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard metudæs maecti end his modgidanc. “).   

            Just trying to parse out and return language to its originators and their descendants leads to absurdity.  Jeans are Genoese – return the word to my Italian ancestors, please.  Wearing jams?  Not unless you’re Indian.  You may live on a bayou, but you can’t say it unless you’re Choctaw.  If you’re of African descent, you can ask for banjo, gumbo, and safari back, but you’ll have to give up piano, grits, and diaspora.  Nor can you even curse whites who use the n-word, at least not by using the f-word. You can’t even say language appropriation is taboo unless you’re of Oceanic/Polynesian descent.

           

Art

            This is one of the most common battlefields of cultural appropriation.  Apparently one may only cover material that belongs to one’s ethnicity or one’s ancestors, and may only use artistic methods indigenous to such groups.  From Homer to Shakespeare, writers have taken subject matter from other cultures – Shakespeare, for example, wrote only 4 ½ non-history plays in Britain, but 6 in Italy (and 4 in ancient Rome), 4 in ancient Greece (6 if you include Troy and Tyre), and 5 in other continental sites.  Rome copied Greek sculpture and architecture, everyone in Europe copied each others’ painting methods and ancient themes, and on and on, to Picasso and others of his era’s borrowings from African art.

            Without appropriation: no domes, no Greek columns, no arcades, no caryatids, no Gothic, Federalist, Georgian, etc. etc.  Only 20^th and 21^st century architecture everywhere:  Gehry, Gaudi (in Spain or maybe only Catalonia); no Michelangelo David or Moses, no translations of Dante, Dostoyevsky, Cervantes, Proust, Goethe.  (And let’s not let anyone else have Shakespeare, either.)

           

Food

            As we say in Brooklyn, Fuhgedaboudit.   No tomato sauce in Italy, no olive oil in America, no hot peppers in Asia, no potatoes or corn outside of the Americas, no coffee north of the Tropic of  Cancer?   I have polled people from Japan and from the several Islamic countries and pizza and spaghetti always are the majority’s favorite foods.  Thank God the digestive system does not discriminate on the basis of anything but digestibility

           

            But enough naysaying -- next time: When it IS appropriation, or at least offensive.

Cultural Appropriation, Part One

            For many years I have been disturbed by the term “politically correct,” which in modern use simply means “more sensitive than I am to an issue of justice, civility, or inequality.”  Today however, I’m finding a new irritant – “cultural appropriation.”  In each of these two cases, the modifier distorts the meaning of the word it modifies.  Political correctness tries to dismiss ideas as not “correct” – read “true” or “accurate” -- by making them the idiosyncrasy of an opponent.  However “cultural” modifies “appropriation” in a different way – changing its meaning three times in order to make a false analogy.  First it changes the simple definition of appropriate, second it redefines the class of entities from which things can be appropriated, and third it redefines the things that can be appropriated.

            Let me explain.  To appropriate means to take something that belongs to another.  There are many forms of appropriation, some of which have their own name:

·      Governments appropriate private property.

·      Embezzlers appropriate organizational funds.

·      Armies appropriate (“requisition”) civilian property.

·      Thieves appropriate (“steal”) things that are not theirs.

·      Plagiarists take (”plagiarize”) the intellectual content of others, in verbal, musical, or visual form, in order to gain what belonged to their original creators.

What do all these things have in common?  They’re a zero-sum game.  What A rightfully had, B now has – and A no longer does.  Further, they involve taking from a definable and clearly understood entity, whether a person or a collective of persons.

            However, cultural appropriation distorts this meaning in several ways, making a false analogy between cultural phenomena and other kinds of object, and between cultures, and other kinds of entity.  When the Beat Generation adopted berets, the Basques and the French were not materially affected; their own berets, and the cultural meaning of the beret, were still theirs.  This is true both of any individual Basque or Frenchman, and for the Basques as a people or France as a country.  On the country, when German invaded France and took over its government, the French people no longer had something they once had, and that rightfully belonged to them. 

            In what sense, for example, is a white artist taking anything from someone by painting Emmett Till in his coffin.  She hasn’t taken anything from Emmett Till, or from his family, or from the coffin currently at the Museum of African American History.  Nor from any other depiction of Till.

            As in the case of the beret, someone who wears another culture’s clothing style doesn’t take anything from the originators: It’s ironic that some Japanese have complained about western women wearing kimonos, while all Japanese businessmen wear western suits, for which they even borrowed a name – sebiro (from the English Saville Row). 

            There have been cases of cultural appropriation in a more narrow sense: western archaeologists and others taking artifacts illegally from other cultures, white producers taking songs composed by African Americans for pittances and making money from them with cover artists.  But these kinds of appropriation are also defined as theft, plagiarism, or at a minimum an unjust taking, by might or economic and social power.  And in these cases, the original owner has lost either the object or the economic value thereof.

            To summarize: real appropriation means an unlawful (or perhaps immoral) taking of something of direct or indirect material value, by persons acting alone or in concert, as, for example an army, a government, or a business, from an individual or individuals who rightfully possessed that something, in such a way as to leave the victim materially harmed. 

Tune in for a further discussion.

Better Dead Than Red? You Can Be Both.

            One of the major complaints of the Red-state world is that it feels dissed by the “elites” from the Blue states.  According to that theory, there are many good things about the Red states that the Blues ignore.

            What would these be? Are they healthier?  Better educated?  Less violent?  Do they have cleaner air & water? Lower infant mortality?  Let’s see.

            The basics: If you want to live to be 80 or over, your only reliably Red state is Utah, but of course you’ll have to follow Mormon drinking and smoking rules.  They live on average to be 85, which means non-Mormons (40% of the state) live to well under 80.

            Living to 80+, however, is average in 8 reliably (during the last 7 elections) Blue states, plus NH (Blue in 6 of 7), WI (Blue in 7 straight before 2016) and CO (Blue in the last 3 elections). 

            On the other hand, if you live in one of the other 13 reliably Red states, your life expectancy drops to under 78, and it’s even worse if you add in the 6 states (AR, KY, LA, MO, TN, WV) that have been Red for all elections since 1980 except for the Bill Clinton years. Then you lose another half-year.

            Then of course there’s the question of causes.  That’s a tough one, of course, but there are some indicators.

            No health insurance?  Of the 18 states above the national average in lacking insurance, all but Nevada are among the reliable Red.  Of the 19 states, almost all Red, that have not expanded Medicaid, 10 have suffered rural hospital closures, while of the 31 expanded states, only 9 have – total closures in non-expansion states 20, in expanded 11.

            How are you going to die?  If you prefer gunshot, move to a Red state.  Seventeen of the 18 states with the most per capita deaths by gun are Red (New Mexico is the exception). Thirteen of the safest 17 are Blue.  If you’re a woman, being a Red stater is especially dangerous for your health.  Red states are 11 among the 13 states where a woman is most likely to be killed by a man.  Nevada and New Mexico are the only exceptions.

            Prefer to die of lung diseases?  Red state will get you there faster – only three of the 20 most polluted air states are Blue.  Want to do it yourself? Join the smokers. Arkansas, Kentucky, and West Virginia are your best bets, with 8 other Red states in the over 20% category, along with Ohio and Michigan.

            Want to get it over with fast?  Infant mortality is highest in 5 Red states, with only Blue Maine and Michigan in the top 14.

            Of course you could just eat yourself to death: the 15 most obese states are all Red, and while four western states are in good shape, the other 15 trimmest are all Blue.

            And given the statistical benefits of marriage, you’re also divorcing themselves to death, holding most of the top ten places in divorce rates, while Blue states hold seven of the 10 lowest (and Utah slips in there for different reasons).  You know, family values and all that.

            Don’t believe in all this data and science mumbo-jumbo? You’ll be happiest in Red states, where you can deny global warming, continue to believe dinosaurs lived with humans, and pretty much ignore any cause-and-effect information you’d like. Nine of ten states ranked “Far Below Average” in science education are Red (only New Mexico is Blue), and so are the next 4 lowest, while the only states ranked Well Above Average are Blue.  And don’t expect college to fix what high school failed to do: of the 30 lowest states in percentage of college degrees, none is reliably Blue; the same is true for the 25 lowest in graduate degrees.

            But ignorance evidently isn’t bliss, since 16 of the 18 “unhappiest” states (WalletHub) voted Red in 2016. This gets a little quirky: only 3 southern states make the top 30 in happiness, but 8 western/Midwestern do.

            Perhaps most ironic, the Red states who feel the Blues look down on them are the most likely to have their hand out for Blue support.  Of the 25 states that receive the most federal support, 17 are Red.  The top ten state givers of dollars to the government include 7 Blue and two swings.  Most bizarre of all, Alaska, with no state taxes whatsoever, which pays residents just for being Alaskans, manages to rank 10^th in what it takes from the federal government.  (It also ranks well below the middle in work and in community environment, and 38^th in overall happiness.)

            So Red state residents are poorly educated, short-lived, unhealthy, short on health insurance, and scornful of those who are better educated and healthier; they hate government, which they nevertheless want to do more for them, except where it actually might do some good.

            What’s not to disrespect?

           

           

What's In a Name?

On a recent radio discussion, I listened as two African-American leaders excoriated Boston as an extremely – perhaps the most – racist city in America.  Among the many strange arguments they made was that our sports teams are named the Celtics and the Patriots, and one has an Irishman on the logo and the other used to have “somebody who looks like he’s going to run me down.”  (Of course I suppose it’s racist to assume that a black man should know what a football center looks like when he’s about to snap the ball.)

            But let’s look at these cases.  The Patriots are of course the simplest.  It’s just history – you know, the Tea Party, John and Sam Adams, and all that.  By the way, none of the Massachusetts signers of the Declaration of Independence ever owned slaves, unlike 53 of the others. 

            On to the Celtics.  The team was formed in 1946, before any professional team was integrated.  Why not Celtics? After all, Minnesota has the Vikings, Dallas the Cowboys, and Texas the Rangers.  Of them all, it might be argued that Celtics is the most accurate and the least offensive.  No Viking ever reached Minnesota, and both cowboys and rangers suggest whiteness unrelated to ethnicity, even if there were black cowboys.

            Let’s take the argument further.  Most sports teams, at least until recently, were named after animals or types of people.  Among the types of people there are some apparent criminals – Raiders, Pirates, Buccaneers – some white usurpers of Native land or Indian fighters (Sooners, Buffalo Bills, Texas Rangers).  Others, and they’re a significant number, are commonly thought of as racist because they appropriate non-white group names or insults: Redskins, Indians, Chiefs, Seminoles, Blackhawks, Braves, Aztecs, Illini.  Indeed, many anti-racist groups have parodied these by suggesting names from racial or ethic slurs that would obviously never pass muster (e.g. Chicago Polacks to name just one).  Imagine if Boston or any other city decided to “honor” African-Americans by naming a team after those famous tall Africans: the Dinkas, or the Maasai.  There would quite rightly be howls of outrage, wouldn’t there?

            Finally, let’s look beyond names.  It is true that the Celtics were the last NBA team to sign a black player.  But they were the first with a black coach, the first to start an all-black team, the first to win an NBA championship with a black coach, have had three black coaches win championships (to two for the whole rest of the league combined), and have had black coaches for 20 of the 51 years since their first.  By contrast, their arch-rivals the LA Lakers have had black coaches for only five years, yet they have for years been favored by many African-Americans despite the fact that every title LA has won has been with a white coach.

            You might as well point to the subway system’s Red Line and the Harvard Crimson as evidence that Boston is a communist city.  

You're On Your Own, Folks

 

            Lots of writers have jumped on Paul Ryan’s comment that “The conceit of Obamacare is that young and healthy people are going to go into the market and pay for the older, sicker people.”  Of course that’s the definition of all health insurance, whether it’s an employee program, an insurance company pool, or even Medicare. 

            But what’s more significant is what Ryan’s comment implies about the nature of any civilized, or even sane, society.  Marxism may have been over-reaching with the slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," but it’s closer to the way the world needs to work than its opposite, whether we phrase that opposite as “to each his own,” “every man for himself,” or “God helps those who help themselves.”  (The last, by the way, is actually believed by nearly ¼ of Americans to be in the Bible.)

            Let’s look at some of the arguments that can be extrapolated from Ryan’s position:

·      “Homeowners’ insurance asks people whose homes haven’t been burned or blown away to pay for those whose homes have.”

·      “Life insurance asks people who haven’t died to pay for people who have.”  (Not, I think,    what Jesus meant with the metaphor “Let the dead bury their dead.”

·      “Schools ask people who can read to help people who can’t.”

·      “Planes ask people who can fly them to fly people who can’t.”  (See also trains, buses, taxis, uber, lyft, etc.)

·      “Beaches and pools ask people who can swim to help people who can’t.”

·      “The Red Cross / FEMA, etc. ask people who aren’t in disaster areas to help people who are.”

And, of course, the whole system of government depends on taxation, which asks people who have money to give it, at least part of the time, to people who don’t, people who are educated to pay to educate those who aren’t yet educated, people who are housed to help people who aren’t, and so on and so forth.

            We’ve come a long way from “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” to “Don’t ask your country to do anything for you, especially if you actually need it.”

Sidenote: There’s a great moment in A Fish Called Wanda where Jamie Lee Curtis dismisses Kevin Kline’s claims to be an intellectual:  “Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself." And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.”

....And Another Plus for Geno

Recently Geno Auriemma was asked about the possibility that some of his team would, like several of the New England Patriots, not attend a White House reception if they won the national championship again this year.  His comment showed two more skills he possesses that the president lacks: diplomacy and knowledge of history.

First, with the microphone in his face he quickly came up with a just-subtle-enough "you know where I stand" comment:  “The fact that in all the 11 championships I’ve never been asked this question says something about where we are” as a country, “Forget the answer. The fact that I’ve never been asked means there’s something going on that isn’t normal.”  He continued in the same vein: “What are you going to do as a coach? It’s not like I can look it up and go, ‘What did other people do?’ We’re in a world that very few of us could have conceived five years ago.”  No rages, no insults, just an answer any diplomat would be proud of.

Then he made a comment that I doubt would even have been comprehensible to a president who seems to be proud that he has never even learned much about past presidents of the United States, much less world history.  Noting that he won't need to face the question unless UConn actually both wins the championship and receives an invitation, Geno said “I’m not crossing the Rubicon. That’s Caesar. Once your army crosses that river, you are an enemy of the state.”

So now I'd nominate Geno for Secretary of State, or Ambassador to Italy, and I also think Geno's library would be better than the hardly imaginable one for 45.

Who’s Your Doctor? Maybe Wu’s Your Doctor

            Recently I had some medical appointments with specialists new to me.  One was a cardiologist, whose last name was Kannam.  Although we didn’t discuss ethnicity, he seemed to me to be South Asian.  (On Google, I found that Kannam is of Indian, specifically Tamil, origin.) The next visit was to a sleep specialist, Dr. Makhija.  This time we had a broader chat, and I did ask her origins, which turned out to be Indian.  We talked about immigration and she noted the folly of immigration bans, because “We’re your doctors.” Next, I got a referral from my eye doctor to a glaucoma specialist named Rao. Going on line, I found that my Rao, Dr. Veena, was one of over two dozen Massachusetts Dr. Raos.  In fact you could almost confine yourself to Raos and have total medical care, from prenatal to hospice, including cardiac, gastro, ob-gyn, surgery, kidney, psychology, and acupuncture.

            But that’s nothing compared to my wife’ s surname team.  Her dermatologist, Dr. Wu, has a name shared by over 40 doctors and dentists in the area.  They cover 25 specialties and subspecialties, from pediatric dentistry to population medicine.  If Dr. Daniel, an ophthalmologist, needs you to see a specialist in glaucoma, the cornea, or the retina, he can send you to another Wu. Trouble with your kidneys, heart, mind, bones, neural network, skin? – there’s a Wu for you.

            There are also a large number of Muslim doctors, though I haven’t found a practical way to locate them by name.  But various sources estimate there are 15,000 – 20,000 Muslim doctors in the United States, or around 2% of the medical profession, about the same percentage of Muslims as in the general population.  In all about 20% of American doctors are foreign-born, and research shows no difference between their care and that of American born and trained doctors.  But there is a group of doctors who have a worse record – U.S. born doctors who trained elsewhere and then came back to practice here.

            So a medical “America First” campaign just might be bad for your health.  Be sure to read the label.

Why Geno Auriemma Would Make a Better President Than The One We Have

I’ve been a fan of the University of Connecticut Womens basketball team for about twenty years, partly because one of their star players in the 90s was the daughter of my college’s men’s basketball center when I was a student. Over the years, though, I’ve begun focusing as much on their coach, Geno Auriemma, as on the players.  I’ve heard several people say he would be a great leader of any sort of group, and could train others in leadership skills.

            It’s only this year, however, that I’ve realized he actually could be a better leader than the one we’ve got.  Here, in no special order, are some of the reasons why:

1.     “Make America Great Again.”  Geno not only made UConn great, he started from a base near zero.  In the 10 seasons before he arrived, UConn’s record was 92 wins and 163 losses.  It took Geno four seasons plus two games to pass 92 wins.

2.     “So much winning you’ll get tired of winning.”  Under Geno, UConn owns the two longest winning streaks in basketball history, men’s or womens.  His lifetime won-lost record is the best in men’s or womens basketball, and his 30.6 wins per season is also by far the best.  If he continues to coach for 4 more years, he is likely to end his career as the mens or womens coach with the most wins of all time.

3.     “I know the best people.”  Geno consistently recruits one of the best classes in womens basketball.  Trump recruits people who’ve never played in the jobs to which he assigns them, and often ones who don’t like the work their job entails (Education, Energy, EPA, etc.).  To date Geno has never picked a player who didn’t know basketball or didn’t like it.

4.     Clean Professional Record: In 32 seasons, Geno has never had an NCAA sanction placed on his team.  Trump has spent $25 million to settle suits against his university, and has settled suits against him by golf course members condo investor and others. He’s been involved in 169 suits with the federal government alone.

6.     Clean Personal Record: Need I say more?

7.     Team Builder: A remarkable record of choosing talent, nurturing it, getting the best out of each player, and building loyalty.  Numerous sources, and Geno himself, credit his 32-year veteran assistant coach Chris Dailey, for a significant part of the team’s success. Trump as so far fired, been forced to fire, or lost two campaign managers, one NSA director, and one Cabinet nominee, in seven months.

8.     Respecter of Women:  Geno’s players love him, his assistant coaches have consistently been women, and eleven assistants or players have gone on to major coaching jobs.  He has never apparently called any woman pig, dog, slob, bimbo, disgusting animal, etc. etc. etc.

9.     He knows how hold secret meetings when he’s strategizing.  

Oops, I forgot, he’s an immigrant.  So maybe he’d have to settle for a Cabinet Post: 

·      Defense – who’s better at building a strong defense?

·      Labor – no one gets his players to work harder

·      Interior – all-time record for blocked shots in a season

·      Energy – have you seen the way those women play?

·      Education – spent over 20 successful years in public education; teaches his players to    succeed.  (Betsy DeVos 0 years)

Immigrants—they get the job done.