CRT

Army General Mark Milley is the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Last week, he and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin appeared before a congressional hearing to discuss the proposed budget for the Department of Defense. Present at the hearing were two Florida congressmen, Mike Waltz and darling of the Trump crowd, accused child molester Matt Gaetz. Both took the opportunity to question the Secretary and the highest ranking uniformed member of the military about the ultra right's latest red herring, the teaching of Critical Race Theory. 

CRT is the idea that for centuries and to this day, racism has been endemic in American society. To anyone with any sense of US History, that is a no-brainer. Nevertheless the ultra right has taken up the cause of fighting against teaching our children, and specifically for Waltz and Gaetz at the hearing, members of the military, a truthful and honest representation of American history, rather than the sugar coated Euro-centric version that generations of us (myself included) received. 

For his part, Secretary Austin, the first black Secretary of Defense, deflected the question, saying that the military is merely interested in weeding out the kind of extremism that led a handful of its members to take part in an insurrection, storming the Capitol on January 6th of this year in an attempt to overturn a free election. Here are some of his comments:

We do not teach critical race theory. We don't embrace critical race theory, and I think that's a spurious conversation... We are focused on extremist behaviors and not ideology — not people's thoughts, not people's political orientation. Behavior is what we're focused on.

Milley chose another path. He gave an impassioned two minute speech espousing the importance of education while denouncing the willful ignorance of the questioners. Here in full is his statement:

I do think it’s important for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and be widely read. The United States Military Academy is a university. It is important that we train and we understand. I want to understand white rage — and I’m white. What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? What caused that? I want to find that out. I want to maintain an open mind. I do want to analyze it. It’s important that we understand it. Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and guardians — they come from the American people. It’s important that the leaders, now and in the future, understand it. I’ve read Mao Zedong. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist. So what is wrong with having some situational understanding about the country we are here to defend? I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military — our general officers, our commissioned and non-commissioned — of being ‘woke’ or something else because we’re studying some theories that are out there while calling out those who have criticized military officials as “woke” for entertaining the theory based on the idea that systemic racism exists in America. [Critical race theory] was started at Harvard Law School years ago and proposed that there were laws in the United States prior to the Civil War that led to a power differential with African Americans that were three-quarters of a human being when this country was formed. We had a Civil War and an Emancipation Proclamation to change it. We brought it up in the Civil Rights Act. It took another 100 years to change that. I do want to know. I respect your service and we’re both Green Berets, but I want to know. It matters to the discipline and cohesion of this military.

The Green Beret comment was directed at Waltz who is a decorated veteran. During Milley's comments, Gaetz, the Eddie Haskell of Congress who is more famous for showing colleagues nude photos of his sexual partners than for his non-existent military service, was shown smirking and shaking his head. He would later tweet this:

With Generals like this it’s no wonder we’ve fought considerably more wars than we’ve won.

Later that day, the talking heads at Fox, especially Laura Ingram and Tucker Carlson threw, in the words of Vanity Fair, a massive "shit fit" over Milley's comments. Ingram suggested that Congress refuse to grant a penny to the Department of Defense until they agreed to renounce CRT. 

Wow and I thought the Trumplicans were supposedly appalled by so called "cancel culture". Now they want to cancel the Pentagon?  How times have changed. 

The "conservative" Carlson seemed to have a particular bee in his bonnet over Milley's mention of "white rage". That makes sense because through his years of publicly huffing and puffing over the subject of so called "reverse racism", and his insistence that white folks such as himself are the true victims of it, Carlson has become the poster child for white rage. 

Poor little snowflake.

Carlson called the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff "stupid" and a "pig" and later doubling down on his hissy fit, called Milley's thoughtful comments at the hearing, "disgusting and disgraceful". 

During his diatribe the evening of the hearing, Carlson said this: 

(Milley) didn't get that job because he's brilliant or because he's brave. Or because people who know him respect him. He is not, and they definitely don't. Milley got the job because he is obsequious. He knows who to suck up to, and he's more than happy to do it. Feed him a script and he will read it.

Geez given Carlson's remarks, you'd think that Milley was a Biden appointee. Spoiler alert: he's not.

For the record, Milley is brilliant, well at least in the common sense of the word, having received a bachelor's degree from Princeton and advanced degrees from Columbia University and the Naval War College. As for his braveness, well if you watched the hearings you may have noticed ten bars upon his right sleeve, each one representing six months of time served in combat deployment. The hardware displayed over his left breast displays a distinguished record of service to this country.  Where Carlson got the idea that Milley is not respected is anybody's guess, folks of his and Gaetz's ilk feel little need to back up what they say. 

Tucker Swanson Carlson, heir to the TV dinner fortune, has a penchant for questioning the bravery of bona fide American military heroes who don't happen share his world view. For his part, Carlson's military record is every bit as impressive as Matt Gaetz's.

That's not to say he's not brave, after all he did do this: 

Also for the record, Mark Milley was appointed to his current position by none other than Calson's BFF, Donald Trump. While dressed in military fatigues, Milley among others accompanied the exPOTUS during his infamous march to St. John's Episcopal Church across the street from the White House last year during the protests over the killing of George Floyd, for the sole purpose of staging a photo op of the Chief Executive standing in front of the slightly damaged church while holding a bible. 

Shortly after that shameful performance where police and National Guard members used force against peaceful protestors to clear the way for the exPOTUS's stunt, Milley regretted his presence at the event and publicly apologized for his symbolic role in the farce:

I should not have been there. My presence in that moment, and in that environment, created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.

Milley even considered resigning from his post after the public embarrassment.

Perhaps Carlson felt it was that affront to his Dear Leader that gave him carte blanche to go after Milley. 

What I find remarkable is that people who call themselves "traditional conservatives", people who express pride in their supposed unwavering support and respect for the military and those who serve in it, would put up with this relentless trash talk against them, especially coming from folks like Gaetz, Carlson and yes, Donald Trump, none of whom have ever come close to service of their own. 

Whatever.

The debate over Critical Race Theory is yet another farce foisted upon us by the Trumplicans. It's as ludicrous to suggest we refrain from teaching our children the truth about our past (good and bad) as it is to suggest that German schools refrain from teaching their children about Nazism.

This should be so obvious, there is really little to say about it, but I will bring up one crucial example of how the American education system has failed us, and the absolute need to teach our children honestly about race in this country. It can be summed up in three words:

Tulsa Race Massacre.

Until recently, how many of us knew about this particularly horrific event in US History? 

I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't.

If you still don't  know about it, look it up. If you don't look it up because you feel there is no need to learn about critical race theory because you believe we have overcome racism in this country, then my friend, you're part of the problem, not the solution. 

From Here to Sewickley

One of the glories of baseball is that no matter how much you've experienced it, there is always the chance that something will happen that you and no one else have ever seen before. Such a thing happened the other day at PNC Park in Pittsburgh in a game between the Pirates and the Cubs. 

In the third inning with two out and Wilson Contreras the runner on second, Chicago Cubs shortstop Javier Baez hit a sharp ground ball directly to the Pirate third baseman Erik Gonzalez. It should have been a routine inning ending out but Gonzalez's throw pulled first baseman Will Craig slightly off the bag to the home plate side of first. Dead in the water, Baez rather than trying to dive into first to avoid the tag, what you're taught to do in that situation, put on the breaks and started heading back to home plate.

Then, rather than simply turning around and stepping on first base to end the inning, Craig chose to chase Baez back to home. Actually chase is not the correct term here, nonchalantly follow him is more like it. 

In the meantime, Contreras was circling third headed for home as fast as his catcher's legs would carry him. As Contreras began to slide into the plate, Craig tossed the ball to his own catcher Michael Perez, but it was too late as Contreras slid under the tag. 

After sticking around watching the action AND making the motion calling his teammate safe at home, Baez turned around and sprinted back to first. Again he should have been an easy out (which would have nullified the run), but none of Craig's teammates thought to cover the bag. 

Despite that, Perez threw to first anyway in the direction of second baseman Adam Frazier who was en route, and the ball ended up in right field, allowing Baez to end up at second.

Ian Happ, the next batter for the Cubs, drove in Baez from second meaning two runs scored off that Pittsburgh miscue. And wouldn't you know it, the Cubs ended up winning the game by two runs. 

 

It was a crazy, crazy play, (a circus play as some would call it) which inspired one of the Pittsburgh radio guys to blurt out one of the best lines I've heard from a baseball announcer in a long time: "Oh you can hear the calliopes from here to Sewickley!"

As you can imagine the entire baseball world it seems has ganged up on Will Craig, calling his the stupidest play ever in the history of baseball. 

The Baseball Reference box score of the play hardly does it justice: 

Reached on E3 (catch) (Ground Ball to Weak 3B to 3B); Contreras Scores/No RBI/unER; Baez out at 2B/Adv on E2 (throw)

Here's how it looked:

It was indeed a comedy of errors (as you can tell from the reaction by the Cub bench) although the only actual error meted out was against the Pirate catcher for his wild throw to first which allowed Baez to take second.

Not to make excuses for him, but I wouldn't be so fast to gang up on the Pirate rookie first baseman. Here's why:

First of all it's true that had he simply turned around and stepped on first base, that would have been the third out and the play would have been forgotten as soon as the Pirates came to bat that inning. But here's the thing, Craig had eight teammates on the field, a bench with a bunch more, plus a slew of coaches and a manager. How is it possible that not a single one of them thought to yell at him to just step on the bag? From what I could tell, the ballpark was practically empty so not being able to hear because of screaming fans simply doesn't hold up.  

Here's my theory: the rest of the Pirates were as dumbfounded by Baez's actions as much as Craig was, (and the Cub broadcasters who as you can hear, were rendered speechless by the play). After all, who in God's name heads backwards to home plate after hitting the ball in play? 

What IS very common in baseball, is for a runner heading to any base OTHER than first, to turn around and head backwards if the ball proceeds him to the base with enough time to do so. It's called getting into a run down (or a pickle in popular terminology). 

To be sure, before every play, ball players in the field have to go over in their heads what to do in case of any situation. More importantly, at practice, players drill every conceivable fielding situation over and over again so they don't have to think when the ball comes to them, they just react by instinct.

Was what Baez did a conceivable situation? Well as far as I know, while it's not illegal in the majors (it is in high school ball), no one in major league history running in the direction of first base, has ever stopped, made a 180, and turned back and run for home.

I'd be willing to bet my firstborn (who's also a ballplayer) that no team anywhere, ever practices what to do in that situation. 

They do on the other hand, practice rundowns between the bases, over and over and over again, ad nauseam. So clearly in this situation, Craig, perhaps unaware that there were already two outs against the Cubs, was acting out of pure instinct rather than using his head. And so were his teammates.

After the game, the Pirate's pitcher Tyler Anderson took some of the heat off of Craig, saying that it was a team failure, not the failure of just one player.

He should know, photos reveal Anderson standing about ten feet in front of home plate, in perfect position to see the action unfold right in front of him, but not in position to do anything about it. Oh yes let's not forget the second baseman Adam Frazier who had plenty of time to cover first base to take the throw from the catcher to easily end the inning, but didn't because he was to busy being dumbfounded as well. 

As the basement dweller Pirates aren't likely to be headed to the post-season this year, poor Will Craig probably won't go down in history with the likes of Fred Merkel, Fred Snodgrass and Bill Buckner, all great players who went to their graves remembered for the critical errors they committed that contributed to their teams' losing a championship. But those videos of the Baez play will be played for eternity and Mr. Craig will have his imprimatur stamped all over them. Unless he does something truly spectacular in his career, he will be forever defined by that one unfortunate mental error. 

The real culprit of all this is Javy El Mago (The Magician) Baez. It was his creative style of play that caused all the ruckus in the first place. How much of this was planned we'll never know, perhaps he doesn't know himself. All we'll know is that from absolutely nothing, he singlehandedly created the two runs that won the game. 

This kind of clever play trying to catch the opposition off guard is not all that uncommon in youth baseball and in the game played many decades ago. It reminds me of an account of one of my all time favorite ball players as told by one of his teammates*: 

...Ty was dynamite on the base paths. He really was. Talk about strategy and playing with your head, that was Cobb all the way. It wasn't that he was so fast on his feet, although he was fast enough. There were others who were faster, though, like Clyde Milan, for instance. It was that Cobb was so fast in his thinking. He didn't outhit the opposition and he didn't outrun them. He outthought them!   

A lot of times Cobb would be on third base and I'd draw a base on balls, and as I started to go down to first I'd sort of half glance at Cobb, at third. He'd make a slight move that told me he wanted me to keep going -- not to stop at first, but to keep on going to second. Well, I'd trot two-thirds of the way to first and then suddenly, without warning, I'd speed up and go across first as fast as I could and tear out for second. He's on third, see. They're watching him, and suddenly there I go, and they don't know what the devil to do. 

If they try to stop me, Cobb'll take off for home. Sometimes they'd catch him, and sometimes they'd catch me, and sometimes they wouldn't get either of us. But most of the time they were too paralyzed to do anything, and I'd wind up at second on a base on balls ....

Thank you Javy Baez for bringing some of the fun back into professional baseball. Thanks to you, Ty Cobb lives.

Now if you could only be a little more patient at the plate. 

*Sam Crawford, longtime teammate of Ty Cobb. 

 

Old School-New School

Like many, over the last year of the pandemic I took advantage of the extra time at home to become rather obsessed with cooking. I've done a good deal of the cooking for my family over the last twenty years, but became rather bored with my limited repertoire of dishes So I started picking up recipes here and there, mostly online, and set the goal of preparing at least one new recipe per week. This might become a little more complicated as I'm about to return to being at work full time, but so far so good.

One nice thing about new passions is buying new stuff. Being a photographer means there's never a lack of new stuff to buy, especially in the digital age when cameras and other gear, lenses being an exception, are practically obsolete by the time you open the box. 

That certainly wasn't true when I was coming up in the days of silver based media, otherwise known as film. Back then, if you chose carefully and were willing to make the financial commitment, you could buy a camera and lens that would last your whole life.  

Of course there are still the old school folks God bless them, who haven't yet given up on film and keep the old practices alive.

Although I'm not as well versed in it, it seems that just like in field of photography, there are two schools of thought among cooks about what tools to buy, the old, reliable ones that require work, love and care, but will repay you with years of faithful service, or the new fangled gizmos that require little attention and work just fine until they don't, at which point you throw them away. 

Pictured here is my new pan, a traditional French omelette pan made of carbon steel. According to the advocates of such a pan, carbon steel is one of the most efficient materials as far as transferring heat to your food. And the act of cooking with it creates a natural polymer that creates an almost "no stick" surface. 

Now when we think of no stick pans, the word Teflon comes immediately to mind,  the material applied to cookware that was introduced commercially in the 1940's, as so many products were after the war. Teflon became wildly popular in the sixties and seventies, the era when so many time and effort saving devices were introduced into the kitchen. And the word Teflon has taken on a meaning of its own describing a person to who gets away with all sorts of mischief because "nothing sticks to him." I can think of two former presidents who fit that description. 

I distinctly remember those days when there were two running schools of thought regarding cooking, one was that it was a chore that should be made as painless as possible, and the other, that it was an art where every bit of effort was valued The former was personified by a woman by the name of Peg Bracken (whose name has never escaped me after all these years), who among other titles revolving around American contemporary life at the time, wrote the "The I Hate to Cook Book" 

The paradigm for the other school of thought was Julia Child. 

Need I say more? 

Both authors were tremendously popular and both served an important purpose. 

Bracken's work was created in the time when the traditional roles of the "breadwinner" man and the "housewife" woman were breaking down. As more and more women entered the workforce and households with two working adults became the norm, there was less time to cook, and every time-saving device was gobbled up.  

At the same time, a new found interest in cuisine from other cultures took a foothold in America, largely thanks to Child and her classic two volume set "Mastering the  Art of French Cooking", written along with French master chef, Simone Beck, and especially her classic PBS series, "The French Chef."  

Also in the photo, placed inside my lovely new pan, is my new fangled digital meat thermometer, which gives readings almost instantly in either Fahrenheit or Celsius. It works with both roasts, or tiny slivers of meat on the grill. Try that with your old fashioned analog thermometer. Plus it has a bottle opener to boot!

I bought it along with a digital kitchen scale which is vastly more accurate, convenient and easy to use than my old spring scale. 

And yes, when these things break, as they most certainly will, into the garbage they will go with no second thoughts. 

Barring catastrophic damage, the pan on the other hand will last me for the rest of my life and if they choose to hold on to it, my children's as well. That's quite unlike a Teflon or other "no stick" pan, whose useful life is only rated for a couple years at best before the surface ceases to be stick free. Then of course, it ends up as landfill. 

Beyond that, my new pan is beautiful, at least I think so. Over time it develops a patina that will be an image how how it was used, what was cooked in it, and the love that went into those meals. 

After all cooking, especially for one's family or friends is a labor of love isn't it?

What more can you ask of your tools?   

Baseball, Is That You Again?

Two old codgers and a baseball bat

For the first time since I started publishing this blog 12 years ago, Baseball Opening Day came and went without so much as a wink or a nod. 

I wouldn't say that my passion for the game I love has dried up, hardly. It's just that A. Bartlett Giamatti's description of it as a game "designed to break your heart" has become all too real, especially for my son.

The funny thing is that unlike most of the kids he played baseball with over the years of Little League, Travel Ball, and High School Baseball, my son, in college now, is still directly involved with the game.

That's a little bit of a mixed blessing because while he'll always be able to say he was on a college baseball team, he may not get a chance to play. 

But he's still at it and for that I can't admire him more. I would have given up years ago. So this is dedicated to him and to all the kids out there, young and old, still living the dream. 

Oh by the way, who are the "two codgers" pictured above, still living the dream in what appears to be them long past their prime? Well if there were a Mount Rushmore of baseball players, these two would have been finalists on just about anybody's list, Ty Cobb, on the left and Honus Wagner on the right, both members of the "original class" of  Baseball Hall of Fame inductees. In the voting, Ty Cobb came in first of all players nominated and Wagner came in second, tied with Babe Ruth.

Here's a photo of the two in their playing days when they faced each other (for I believe the only time) in the 1909 World Series. The two most dominant players of their era, Cobb played for the American League Detroit Tigers and Wagner for the National League Pirates.

In case you're interested in a World Series that took place 102 years ago, and for God's sake why wouldn't you be(?), the Pirates won the 1909 championship four games to three. 

That's the beauty of baseball, it's a game that lives equally in the present, in the future, and in the past. 

Play ball!

 

Knowing Less and Less as I Grow Older

When I was 14, my daughter's current age, I knew everything there was to know about the world. Everything made sense, the good guys were always good, the bad guys always bad, and there was no messing with Mister In-Between. Most important, new ideas were always preferable to the way things had been done for basically ever. Why couldn't my parents understand that?

My father, God rest his soul, always took the bait and we'd end up in screaming matches so intense that it occurred to me one day that if there had been a gun in our house, one of us (not sure which one) would have used it.

Perhaps what all these years of life on this planet have taught me, is never  argue with people who have all the answers.

So unlike my father, I don't.

Yea me.

As I get older, I have more and more questions, and fewer if any answers, at least ones with any credibility. Surely for example I thought, several years ago after one of the most  the most heart breaking events of the century after 9/11, people would finally come to their senses and realize that the lives of first and second graders are vastly more important than the right to own semi-automatic rifles capable of killing people as quickly as it takes for the shooter to pull the trigger. 

What do I know? Today, nearly nine years after the Sandy Hook massacre, guns are easier than ever to procure in this country and there is a serious movement underway to push through the courts, new laws to make it even easier to carry a weapon of mass destruction out in public in the United States. Given the makeup of the current Supreme Court, these laws are likely to stick. 

Same thing a few weeks ago during the trial of Derick Chauvin, who in his role as a Minneapolis police officer, murdered George Floyd. The backlash from Chauvin's kneeling on the neck of an unarmed man and taking his life was so profound, surely I thought, police all over the country would have thought twice before using deadly force.

Once again, I was wrong, just moments before the guilty verdict was read in a court in downtown Minneapolis, there was another police shooting, this time in Columbus, Ohio. And in the weeks prior to that reading and in the subsequent week, there have been several others, two notable ones here in Chicago, one involving a 13 year old child. Their names were Anthony Alvarez and Adam Toledo. 

In all these well publicized incidents, the officer was white and the decedent was a person of color. As everyone knows, black people and other people of color, die in numbers proportionately greater than their population at the hands of the police.

That is a fact. 

It's also a fact that while not quite in numbers rersenting their population, white people also get killed by the police. In 2020, 457 white people (44% of all deaths at the hands of the police) were killed by the police in the US. 

By comparison, 241 black people (23% of all deaths at the hands of the police) were killed by the police last year as were 169 people (16% of all deaths at the hands of the police) of Hispanic origin. 

As roughly 12 percent of the US population is black, the death rate for black people at the hands of the police is nearly double that of the population of black people in this country.  Given that, it's not an unreasonable conclusion that there is a racial bias in this country when it comes to police violence against the general public, although as these numbers might suggest, not quite as much as we are led to believe. 

After all, today in virtually all the reporting surrounding police killing of civilians, the victims are people of color, and the police doing the killing are nearly all white. But as you can see from the numbers above, white people also get killed by the police, yet we almost never hear about it.

That is also a fact.

Another sobering statistic is this. In 2019 (the last year data was available for this statistic), 53 percent of all murder victims in this country were black, a number way out of proportion to the black population of the US.

And there are other statistics involving black folks in the US that are way out of proportion to their population, things like levels of poverty, education, and children raised in single, or no parent homes.

So what are we to make of these numbers? Well I guess that all depends upon how much you know about the world and especially which side of the fence you're sitting on. To the know-it-alls on the right side of the fence, one answer might be a lack of initiation on the part of black people. To those on the left, a one word answer will do, racism.   

But to those of us with less confidence in our knowledge of everything under the sun, there are no easy answers. True, the numbers are telling but in the immortal words of Benjamin Disraeli:

There are three kinds of lies, lies, damned lies, and statistics.

As we just saw, people can use the same set of data to tell a vastly different story. That's just the nature of things I guess. 

There are factors that run much deeper than numbers, sometimes you just gotta feel them in your heart. Take so called "white privilege." Like many, I cringe at the term as I feel it has become overused to the point where it has lost much of its meaning. It is now little more than a "talking point" for folks on the left. 

After all I too, a white guy, have had several encounters with the police in my life, none of them pleasant, including once being subjected to a humiliating body search in full view of the public. 

But here's the thing, yes, in every one of these encounters I complied with what the police asked of me, because I knew the police have the power to make one's life miserable. In other words I deeply wanted to avoid unpleasant things that might befall me such as getting thrown into  jail. On the other hand, never for one second did the notion that I might lose my life cross my mind.   

There in a nutshell is the critical difference between a typical white person's experience with the police, and that of a person of color. 

Call it what  you will, but as white parents, my wife and I have never felt it necessary to have "the talk" with our two children, explaining to them in great detail what to do when (not if) they have an encounter with a police officer, not so they won't get thrown in jail, but so the won't get killed. 

While every day I worry about our kids, including their personal safely living in a neighborhood where it's not all that unusual to hear gunshots, one thing I don't worry about is them being killed by a police officer. 

Sadly that's a luxury no black parent in America enjoys. 

Because of our personal experience, we white folks assume that if people of any color simply comply with what the police ask of us, there would be no trouble. But simply complying with what the police ask of us doesn't always work, especially if you're a person of color.  If you don't believe me, when you get to the afterlife, just ask Philando Castile. 

This is not to say the police are never justified in using deadly force. Sadly, sometimes it is necessary in order to protect innocent lives, and their own. This is why it is essential to not lump every act of police violence against civilians together. 

In the case of the above mentioned police shooting in Columbus, the victim was wielding a knife against another person when the officer shot her. I don't know the exact details, at this moment I don't think anybody does, but given that information, no one can deny there is a world of difference between the tragedy in Columbus and the one that took place in Minneapolis last Memorial Day.

The actions of Derick Chauvin that day against George Floyd were reprehensible, of that there is no question. There is no credible police officer in this country who can  reasonably defend Chauvin's strangle hold of a man who had already been subdued. 

Nor could any reasonable person defend the actions of Jason Van Dyke, the former Chicago cop who in 2014 emptied his weapon into Laquan McDonald, a young man who was carrying a knife, but at the time of his death, shown by video to not have posed an immediate threat to anyone. 

Both Van Dyke and Chauvin were rightfully convicted of murder.

But not all cases of police violence are open and shut like these, at least not for someone like me who doesn't have all the answers.

To me the question isn't always good cop vs. bad cop, but what is and what is not acceptable procedure. Take for example the tragedy of Daunte Wright who was killed by an officer this past April 11, about 10 miles from where the trial of Dereck Chauvin was taking place. Mr. Wright was shot by the officer who had apparently mistaken her gun for a taser. Of course the whole world asked the question: "how could anybody make such a mistake?" In all honesty I think I could have. But to me the more pertinent question is this: was it really necessary in that situation for the officer to fire a weapon in the first place? 

Again, more questions than answers but a far as policing goes in my opinion, much of the problem lies with the training of police officers in this country and the policies regarding their use of lethal force. 

And of course the eternal question of what is the proper role of police in our society.

To my simplistic thinking at least, unless lives are threatened, there is no reason why a traffic stop, even one where there is an arrest warrant pending, should end up deadly. 

Let alone an encounter with a unarmed man suspected of passing a counterfeit double sawbuck. 

And please, please, don't even get me started with Breonna Taylor.

But what do I know. 

Indelible Symbols

Last night I had a dream about all people, George Wallace. Don't know where that one came from, I can't remember the last time I thought about the former segregationist governor of Alabama, it may have been 2013 when I wrote this piece commemorating the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination.

In my dream I was interviewing Wallace late in his life, where he renounced, as he did in real life, his racist/segregationist ways. The only detail I remember of the dream was looking into his eyes and being convinced he was sincere.

Hey what can I say, it was a dream.

In case you're too young to remember, Wallace was a major player on the American political scene from the early sixties and extending well into the eighties. He ran unsuccessfully for president four times and in 1968 became the last third party candidate to date to receive electoral votes from a state. He actually won five states, all of them in the south. It's difficult to say what if any impact he had on the outcome of that election as he more than likely siphoned both Democratic votes (Wallace was a Democrat) from Hubert H. Humphrey, and conservative votes from Richard M. Nixon who won the presidency in one of the closest elections in US history.

The 1972 election almost cost Wallace his life after an assassination attempt while campaigning for his party's nomination in Maryland.

Confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, Wallace managed to run for president again in the Democratic primary of 1976, and continued to serve as Governor of Alabama, a post he held until 1987.

But much of that is forgotten. George Wallace will go down in history as the man who as governor, stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, in an attempt to prevent black students from entering, and thereby integrating the school. It took the efforts of President Kennedy and the National Guard to force Wallace to comply. Wallace is also infamous for his most well known quote delivered at his first inauguration in 1963:

In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.

Two years later, it was Wallace who ordered the brutal attack on civil rights marchers as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, during the planned march from Selma to the state capital Montgomery.

Times changed radically after the turbulent sixties and it was a kinder, gentler, but still thoroughly conservative Wallace who managed to hold on to power all those years. By the end of his life he had all but completely distanced himself from his past.

Wallace attended a commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Selma violence forever known as Bloody Sunday. He was too old and sick to speak at the event but delivered a plea for reconciliation via an assistant to those gathered. In the speech through his aide, Wallace said: 

My friends, I have been watching your progress this week as you retrace your footsteps of 30 years ago and cannot help but reflect on those days that remain so vivid in my memory. Those were different days and we all in our own ways were different people. We have learned hard and important lessons in the 30 years that have passed between us since the days surrounding your first walk along Highway 80...

Those days were filled with passionate convictions and a magnified sense of purpose that imposed a feeling on us all that events of the day were bigger than any one individual...

Much has transpired since those days. A great deal has been lost and a great deal has been gained, and here we are. My message to you today is, 'Welcome to Montgomery.'

May your message be heard. May your lessons never be forgotten. May our history be always remembered.

Whether his change of heart was genuine or out of political expedience, no living person will ever know, Wallace took that knowledge to his grave in 1998. Considering late in his life what his legacy would be, (in a very different era than the one in which he started his career), perhaps Wallace did not want to be seen as having forever been on the wrong side of history. Or perhaps his "finding Christ" later in life helped show him the error of his ways, we'll never know. 

What is true is the image of Governor Wallace standing in the university doorway in Tuscaloosa in 1963, has proven to be perhaps the most indelible image of American racism. 

That is until last week. 

It didn't take a political genius to figure out a path to victory for the Democratic candidate in the 2020 presidential election. To prove that point, I spelled it out in this post from February of last year. I may not have gotten the candidate right but I sure nailed the strategy. That strategy was simply to appeal to black voters in swing states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio, states that all went Republican in 2016 but all by relatively small, easy to overcome margins. 

In this past election, all but Ohio went for the Democrats thanks to a huge turnout of black voters. What I didn't take into account was Georgia. There, the significant African American vote of Fulton County put the Democrats over the top. Not only that but in January, the Peachtree State flipped their two senate seats from Republican to Democrat, again a result of overwhelming turnout from the Atlanta area. 

Licking their wounds, Republicans hoping for better luck come the 2022 elections in the great state of Georgia, rather than logically asking how they could better appeal to this considerable constituency of theirs, decided it would be more prudent to change the election rules so as to prevent as many of the people who voted against them, from voting in the future. 

If the lion's share of those people happened to be black, well politics is politics. 

Of course in 2021 they couldn't come out and openly admit to intentionally disenfranchising black voters, so they came up with an old standby.

Voter fraud as an excuse for losing an election has been around forever.

Here's an example of a movie made in 1941 (Citizen Kane) describing an event that took place perhaps thirty years earlier.

But without a thread of evidence of voter fraud turning Georgia from red to blue, the Republicans of Georgia who still have a stranglehold over state politics, had to come up with something. How, they reasoned, could there have been such a dramatic shift between the elections of 2016 and 2020 had there not been fraud at the polls? 

Well I have a theory. It could be that the Democrats did a good job convincing black people to come out and vote in 2020. More likely however all the credit goes to Donald Trump who in his four years as president, worked tirelessly to piss off black people. It's not all that hard to figure out a swing of a little over 100,000 votes in a state with 7.6 million registered voters, and a candidate despised by so many of them. 

After losing the 2020 election, rather than campaigning in earnest for the two Republican senators, the exPOTUS just kept harping on his blatant lie that since he lost the state, the Georgia elections had to be rigged, casting doubt among his supporters on the state's ability to hold a fair election.  Turns out enough Georgia Trumplicans were so dismayed by their state's election system, they stayed at home during the runoff election, causing their party to lose both seats and with them, control of the Senate in the January runoffs. 

Well played indeed. 

Again rather than using the sensible approach, convincing their constituents that Georgia's elections were indeed fair and above board, the state's Republican legislature wrote up eighty some different bills, each one aimed at "reforming" their election system to "restore the faith" of, well lets just say some of the voters. 

Needless to say, every one of these bills in one way or other, was designed to make it harder to vote, especially for black people. 

Many of the new restrictions had to do with mail-in and absentee voting, something black people are more likely to take advantage of than white people. 

Others restricted the hours polls were open making it harder for people paid by the hour to vote. 

New voter ID requirements were put in place, which also disproportionately effect people of color. 

One bill that passed banned the use of two busses that were put into service as polling stations to help with overflow crowds on election day. Why? Well the two busses were put into service in Atlanta so your guess is as good as mine. 

In the guise of appearing that the Republicans were willing to compromise, not all eighty of their bills made it into law, they were "willing" to let a few of the more outrageous ones go by the wayside.

But a bill that did make it into law, one that has been making reasonable people's hair stand on end, is a new restriction that prevents anyone within 150 feet of a polling place other than a poll worker, from distributing water to people standing in line waiting to vote. Failure to comply with this new regulation  could result in a misdemeanor conviction and a one year jail sentence.

Now for someone like me who's from say, anywhere but Georgia, this might not seem like such a big deal because save for the last Illinois Primary election which took place during the height of the pandemic, I've never had to wait in line for more than a half hour to vote. But for whatever reason, in Georgia the voting process is notoriously slow, and standing in line for several hours to vote, especially in black precincts, is the rule, not the exception. On top of that, Georgia can still be pretty hot come election time in November, not to mention spring when the primaries occur. 

Defending this new law, state Republicans say it is in keeping with other restrictions used all over the country, preventing campaign workers from soliciting votes by offering voters within a certain distance from the polling place, "gifts" that could be construed as buying their votes. The only difference here is that water and food have been explicitly counted among these potential "gifts" that are strictly forbidden to be distributed to the voters. They say not to worry, the poll workers are there to help distribute the water. However there is nothing written into the new law that requires poll workers to distribute water to thirsty voters. 

Again, common sense would dictate that Georgia election officials would do is everything in their power to make the voting process more efficient to avoid the long lines where people require refreshment in the first place. No one should have to tolerate waiting in line for hours to vote. But given the history of the way elections have been run in Georgia over the past oh hundred plus years or so, that's apparently not what they want for whatever reason, you may draw your own conclusion.

Don't get me wrong, I don't expect people to be physically harmed by this, one way or other, folks who need hydration will get it, at least I would hope so. This is just another of a long line of indignities and injustices that people of color in this country have been subjected to over the centuries. 

But the truth is, no matter the logic of the new law nor how you spin it, bad as preventing people from voting or from attending college, the symbolism of making a law against giving another person a drink of water is a new low. It runs counter to what every decent person is taught from day one. It is a violation not only of scripture which most Republicans these days claim to be so vitally important to them, but to the very act of being human.

For all of the bullshit new regulations packed into this unnecessary law designed to disenfranchise people and nothing else, this particular feature will stand out, inspire rage and resistance, and above all and be remembered for a very long time. 

As such, the symbol of Georgia Republicans and their new law is the political equivalent of the symbol of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin with his knee on the neck of George Floyd.  

There will be consequences of course. George Wallace's blocking  the way of integration at the Uniiversity of Alabama, forced a reluctant Kennedy administration to rethink the issue of civil rights, putting it on the front burner of national issues. Backlash from Wallace, and others' blatantly racist actions paved the way for the two major civl rights bills promoted by JFK's successor Lyndon Johnson, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And the backlash from Alabama State police attacking peaceful demonstrators in Selma in 1965, helped pave the way for a reluctant country and dare I say, even George Wallace himself to rethink the issue of civil rights.

Governor Wallace can now rest in peace knowing that his face is no longer the indelible symbol of racism and inhumanity in this country. 

Here is his heir apparent, the current Georgia governor Brian Kemp, who signed bill SB202 the so called "Election Integrity Act of 2021" into law behind locked doors last Thursday.

Brian Kemp, the new poster child for American racism.

Who knows how Kemp will feel in a few years when the terrible symbol of racism he helped create will have backfired and he will be universally viewed with scorn and derision the world over, including in the South.

How will it feel for him to have been on the wrong side of history and how will he explain himself in order to correct his own legacy?

Pathetic isn't it how some people refuse to learn from history. 

But What About MY Rights???

It's official, I am now a Facebook jailbird.  

I'm not quite sure if that's something to be ashamed of, or a badge of honor. The truth is, if I ran the social media giant, I probably would have banned myself years ago for all the obnoxious, expletive-laden posts and responses to posts that are a sad part of my legacy. The arguments with former friends and family members that led to the disintegration of relationships and the ultimate social media shame, de-friendship, all centering around the administration of the exPOTUS, should have been my undoing.  

They weren't.

So what did I do to land myself in Facebook jail? Well in the words of the company, I violated their community standards, twice. Vague indeed but I can tell you exactly what I did: 

I knowingly disseminated false information about an election, and I threatened to kill someone. 

Wow that's terrible you say but in my defense, had my Facebook judges and jurors been sentient human beings rather than an algorithm, I'm convinced I'd at the most been given probation rather than a jail sentence, if any sanctions at all. 

The problem is that while computer programs are very good at tracking down what their creators deem to be objectionable content such as spreading false information or threats of violence, they are terrible at determining intent, taking into account things like context or even worse, sarcasm and irony. 

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, the latter two are sometimes even difficult for intelligent human beings to discern as well. 

I'll never forget the time when during my days as an art courier, I was accompanying a major (and rather large) painting from an exhibition in Spain, back to its home in Chicago on a cargo flight. Having experienced cargo flights first hand, I can say there is no better way to travel, you have a front row seat up in the cockpit and normally (although not on this particular flight) a comfy bunk to sleep in when you get tired of hanging out with the pilots. Despite all that, this trip was arduous, Madrid to Montreal to Mexico City and finally to Chicago, 24 hours in total. 

I did manage to develop a good rapport with the crew, always a good idea, especially one pilot who seemed to appreciate, and even share my peculiar sense of humor. So I felt comfortable joking with him, suggesting rather than flying all the way to Mexico then back to Chicago, that I just parachute with the painting out of the plane when we flew past Chicago. Suddenly the pilot's demeanor changed, and in a completely serious, non-ironic tone he said to me: "no, that would be impossible." 

It's even more difficult to weed out irony when you are not face-to-face with someone. A number of times I've made snarky, sarcastic, conspiracy theory laden social media comments so outrageous they would shock a dyed-in-the-wool, dues paying Q-Anon member. Still I've been called on them by bona-fide human beings who didn't get the joke. One woman suggested I was either kidding or a complete idiot. After assuring her that both assumptions were correct, I promised to be more careful in the future because after Kellyanne Conway's infamous comment about "alternative facts", officially marking the death of irony, every comment from that point on, no matter how outrageous, had to be taken at face value.

Anyway here's my story:

Shortly before the last election, a friend who by and large shares my political opinions, posted on Facebook an article about Democrats being more likely to have voted early, while most Republicans were likely to vote on the day of the election.  I casually responded something to the effect of "well let's hope for the best and be sure to remind all our Republican friends to get out and vote on November 4th. The official day of the election of course was November 3rd. 

That was Facebook strike one.

Strike two which landed me in FB jail, took place yesterday when I threatened to kill someone. Despite the sound of it, strike two was much more innocent than strike one. On a Facebook site devoted to the school in which she taught for decades and ended up as principal, someone remembered my Mom's birthday, to which several dozen folks responded with well wishes. One of them, a fellow I don't personally know asked: "how old is she?" Now like many of her generation, my mother is extremely protective of her age. So I replied: "I could tell you but then I'd have to (blank) you." Not wanting to end up in Blogger jail as well I'm omitting the offending word. Then to soften the blow I added: "That is if my mother doesn't (blank) me first."

You probably can guess the missing word because, well because I already mentioned it above but also because that statement is an extremely popular tongue-in-cheek expression, commonly used in both British and American English. No one with half an operating brain and/or at least a beginner's level of the English language would interpret that as a serious threat. 

So there you have it. My FB account was suspended for 24 hours. When I return as I most certainly will, if I screw up again, it would be strike three, and I may be banned from the platform. 

Unthinkable? Ridiculous? Absurd? 

Perhaps, but in all honesty I don't have a problem with it. 

You see, I've never been under the misconception that Facebook is anything other than a huge company whose primary goal is to make a huge profit. As far as these things go, it provides a service, and in return it is compensated, just like GM, Target, or the Ma and Pa corner grocery store, if such a thing still exists. 

As for the service it provides, I find that Facebook continues to perform well the purpose for which is was created, namely keeping people in touch with one another. In that sense I'm able keep up with folks whom I might not otherwise be in touch with were it not for the platform. I can share my friends' joy in their accomplishments and milestones, as well as sorrow for their disappointment and loss. I can share ideas with folks far and wide (sometimes to a fault as mentioned above) as well as shoot the breeze at a moment's notice on whatever topic I please, and almost always be guaranteed a response, something I can't always count on at home. 

Facebook has provided me a wonderful opportunity, via a group dedicated to folks learning Spanish, to communicate in that language with fellow learners all over the world. 

I've modestly promoted my own photography on the platform and also on occasion use Facebook to draw people to this site.

But like everything, there is a price to pay.   

If the phrase-culling algorithm that busted me sounds a little big brothery to you, it's nothing compared to the ones they use to extract money out of our pockets. Everyone who's ever so much as browsed at a product in an online store has noticed that all of a sudden, ads appear for that product and others like it everywhere you go online. This is true for every "free" online platform from Duolingo to Facebook. We've come to expect this and invasive as it might be, directed advertising such as this can even be helpful to the consumer. 

But I had an experience this past weekend that went well beyond that. My wife, who has no Facebook account of her own, purchased a bed frame online. Faster than you can say Mark Zuckerberg, my Facebook feed was flooded with ads for you guessed it, beds.

That to me was a little creepy, but not surprising.   

Beyond that, for me Facebook can be, if I'm not careful, an addictive, time sucking, black hole.  Need I say more?

But it gets much worse. 

I'm sure you know the story. Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms came under serious scrutiny four years ago after the last presidential election for their failure to monitor and remove posts that promoted false or misleading information, much of it directed at the Democratic candidate for president at the time, Hillary Clinton. It is widely suspected that many of the offending posts originated in Russia, AND that the dissemination of false information may have in fact swung the outcome of that election. 

If that weren't enough, people with bad intentions have used social media sites to coordinate violent acts, from flash mobs of bored teenagers looking to start trouble in our cities, to adult thugs, following the marching orders of an exPOTUS, to stage an insurrection in our nation's capital. 

Needless to say the general public got fed up and demanded that social media platforms start controlling the content on their sites. 

It took some kicking and screaming on their part, but the internet giants started taking action. 

Of course Facebook can't possibly have human beings monitoring every single post, let alone the additional comments on them from the roughly 2.8 billion, (yes billion with a B) members of the platform. 

Nor can they rely solely upon complaints from users on the activities of others, as that review process would certainly take too long to prevent an actual crime from occurring. 

That's where the algorithms, imperfect as they are, come in.

For my part, I was given the option to appeal their algorithm's judgement of my comments, or suck it up and accept the consequences. I chose the latter because I didn't want to waste my time trying to defend myself to them. However I would probably appeal a harsher ban, should that ever come to pass. And I am pretty confident I would win, not because of common sense on their part, but because of the bottom line. 

One of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life was FB founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg trying to explain Facebook's business model before befuddled legislators during Congressional hearings investigating the company's use and possible exploitation of users' personal information. One of the senators who appeared to have just awakened from a 100 year nap asked how it is possible for the company to make a profit without charging its customers for the use of their service. Zuckerberg looked at the senator much like that pilot looked at me when I asked if I could jump out of his airplane at 35,000 feet. "Um Senator..." he said, "we run ads."

The only difference between today's social media giants and broadcast TV and radio before it, is the targeted advertising I mentioned above, made possible by the internet and the algorithms that control it, has made Facebook and other social media platforms exponentially more valuable to advertisers and consequently, exponentially more profitable, and exponentially more powerful.  

So I'm not too worried that I'll get the heave-ho from Zuckerberg and Co. as I don't think they're intent on bending over backwards to lose my business, (I do buy stuff after all), or make an example out of little ol' me.   

But shouldn't I be appalled that by censoring me, Facebook is depriving me of my right to speech?

In a word, no. 

The writers of the Bill of Rights are very clear on this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The very first words state that "Congress shall make no law..."

In other words, the government can't deprive a person his or her liberty on account of what she or he says. Implicitly this right does not extend to private entities' restriction of speech.

In still other words, Facebook jail is not real jail. 

Because of the guarantee of freedom of the press mentioned in the First Amendment of our constitution, Facebook and other private entities from Breitbart to the New York Times have the right to set standards for what they publish as well as the right to deny publishing what they feel violates those standards. In fact, a good argument can be made that it would be a violation of THEIR First Amendment rights to be forced to publish everything their subscribers happen to come up with. They as publishers have the right to print, or not print, what they please. Along with that right of course, is that they have the responsibility of owning up to their decisions. 

But can't an argument be made that social media platforms are our modern day equivalent of soap boxes on the public square? How else are people today going to express their right to speak?

I honestly think this is a valid argument in ethical, if not legal terms. 

On the other hand as we all know, not all speech is protected, even by the First Amendment. 

Speech that poses a direct threat to public safety (such as the proverbial falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater), is not protected. Nor is speech that directly conflicts with other people's rights such as libel, slander, child pornography, or "fighting words" (words intended to incite hatred of violence). 

I believe that just as the Second Amendment addresses (or in some opinions doesn't address) the individual's right to bear arms, common sense has to come into play. Responsibility goes hand in hand with rights, and no right is absolute. Just as there is a world of difference between a pistol and an assault weapon, the same is true of a constructive argument and the willful intent to mislead, or a legitimate threat of violence, precisely the two things I was accused of.

So what ARE my rights as a Facebook member?

That's pretty easy, I'm free to use the platform to my heart's content, so long as I follow their rules.

Consequently, with two strikes against me, and a weakness for the high fastball so to speak, my days on the platform may be numbered. 

Well that's a pretty defeatist attitude isn't it?

Not really. Like everything, one's relationship with a business, any business, is symbiotic, that is to say, at least one party benefits from that relationship. If everything works as it should, both parties mutually benefit. However should that relationship become one way, (parasitic as the biologists call it), the party getting the short end of the bargain has every right to pull the plug. If Facebook feels my presence there is truly toxic, believe me, they'll pull the plug in a heartbeat. 

But at least as it stands now, they need me, they need you (if you're a member), and they need the rest of their 2.8 billion subscribers, as much as we need them. There is at least some power in knowing that we can pull the plug on them as well.

In the meantime I'm happy they're doing something to control the outrageous and harmful actions of some of their subscribers. Crude as they are. their means to reasonably promote meaningful dialogue while at the same time strongly discourage or if it comes to it, ban actions that trample on others' rights may be may be effective, or they may be just a band-aid, but the fact that they're at least doing something makes my brief time in Facebook jail worth it.

Not to mention it gives me the credibility to face all the delusional, racist, conspiracy theory, nut job whiners out there, bent on destroying our democracy who are complaining about having their First Amendment rights violated by being censored by Facebook by simply telling them this: 

No they're not.