The Truth As I See It

Tlooth-some

2009-06-27T22:23:00.001-04:00

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

His Wikipedia entry makes a comparative reference to Thomas Pynchon. The back of the book says “He is like Pynchon, Barth, and William Gaddis.” But Harry Mathews is no Pynchon, nor a Barth or Gaddis for that matter.

It was back in late-April that I heard Mathews’ short story Country Cooking from Central France: Roast Boned Rolled Stuffed Shoulder of Lamb (Farce Double) read on the Symphony Space program “Selected Shorts” (and available as an MP3 here; I highly recommend it). I had never heard of him, and after digging up his biography online, I was both comforted in my ignorance and surprised, given the odd pathways of literature that I have followed, not to have found him earlier. I bought three of Mathews’ books, and have just finished Tlooth, his second novel, originally published in 1966 and (in the case of my copy) republished in 1998 by Illinois State University’s Dalkey Archive press. And off we go...

***

“Fully dressed, Dominique had worn sixteen garments and ornaments. She shed four of them on the first day, three on each of the next four days, and at the end she danced naked, shielded only by her hands and hair. Every piece of her jewelry and clothing had been fastened with an inextricable knot, from which one or several tassels hung. The dancer’s enchantment worked yeastily through her audience while for hours she slowly tried, with shakings and suave caresses, to pamper loose one cluster of dangling strands. When the voluptuous ferment became unbearable, the girl, turning away with a mild complicit shrug, would draw from a scabbard fixed upright near her a wicked blue scimitar, and slice the knot. The sword, always visible to the crowd, gathered terrific significance as the moment of its use approached; and each severing of trivial cords fell on the tormented mass like a scourge, exciting hysterical shrieks, fits, faints, onsets of importance, confessions of speakable crimes, miraculous cures, numberless psychic and physical traumata, and the exchange (settled by the unpredictable time of the event) of millions of francs among the slightly cooler-headed gambling element.” (Pages 151-152)

This might be one of the most inspired, enervating paragraphs I have read in a long time, alive with words not often found in fiction (“yeastily”! “traumata”!), combined with a description of a series of acts of such improbability that it still comes as a surprise to learn in the next paragraph that Dominique the stripper has died on the sixth day of her marathon dance session. One has a sense of Dominique as trapped by these knots she cannot remove, and yet empowered to remove them; she is performing, voluptuously, but also bored, as the shrug suggests This Moroccan stripper’s is, on the one hand, considered so tangential that it is entirely parenthetical. On the other hand, Mathews’ frames her death as of such magnitude that “she was proposed to Rome for canonization.” It hadn’t once occurred to me she might be a Catholic.

If Mathews owes a debt to anyone, it is Georges Bataille and his Story of the Eye. Tlooth is less aggressive (if no less violent) but just as manic in its appetites, and just as absurd in its approach to the same. A long section—at least, long in the context of this story—in the middle of Mathews’ novel is itself another fiction, a living walkthrough of a movie script, highly pornographic, that the narrator has been hired to write. I call it a “living walkthrough” because, as the reader, you lose your own sense of whether you’re reading the script that Mathews’ protagonist has written, or if that same protagonist is now actually in the story.

We get references to how the camera should pan in one direction or the other. We get a mixture of highly specific, scene-setting detail—from clothing to the use of Wedgwood china to the acts being performed and in which locations—and at the same time a glib skipping over of any kind of context that might help the reader establish a genuine point of reference. It doesn’t really matter. And still, at the end of the whole section, after so much absurdist human interaction, it comes as a surprise to find the script completely dismissed by the crazy Count who commissioned it: “It’s interesting. But where is the character development? In the last scene we do not really know anything more about Sister Agnes than we did in the first.” (Page 136)

Indeed, we do not learn much at all about Sister Agnes. The character development is ours, the readers’. We learn something of ourselves from Tlooth, as we do from most difficult (and may I here use the word surrealist?) works. Yes, we learn about ourselves and our ability or willingness to read through challenging literature. More importantly, I think, are what novels like this teach us about our sense of self: whether, in wading through complicated, deeply layered and hidden ideas, we find things at which to smile or laugh, and whether we can see in small, absurdist details, analogies to how most of us also fixate on the little bits of errata in our daily lives. We just don’t normally see such things as particularly absurd—but perhaps we should. We might be happier that way, and more alive.

American Jewish Rage

2009-06-12T06:55:00.000-04:00

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

I recently had the odd experience of being accused (somewhat indirectly) of having a “pathological absence of rage.”

As part of an evening of study for the holiday Shavuot, I found myself among a small group of people listening to a dialogue-cum-diatribe by two American Jews, under the title “The Denial of Hatred and The Hatred of Denial.” The two speakers (whose names I feel no need to reveal here) were addressing what turned into a conflated and conflicted bunch of points. They tried to include some “facts,” such as the claim that anti-Semitism is at its highest point since the World War II era, an unprovable assertion that they tied to a Pew study. They both seemed to believe that American Jews (as exemplified by those of Manhattan’s Upper West Side) are deluded in not seeing or believing the imminent threat of anti-Semitism. They refute any notion that anti-Semitism might be rooted in anything other than the utterly irrational, in no way a response to (perceived) actions by Jews themselves. And at the same time, they suggested that too many Jews walk around fearful of expressing their Jewishness—a ludicrous claim in general, and certainly in New York City!

First, on the so-called fact of the scope of worldwide anti-Semitism: the presenters quoted a study by the Pew Research Center to bolster their claim that anti-Semitism is at its highest point since the holocaust. They were presumably referring to a 2008 study by Pew Research Center that showed that anti-Semitism was on the rise, in some cases strongly (see “Xenophobia on the Continent,” by Andrew Kohut and Richard Wike). Without ignoring the impact of those findings, there is still nothing to support the presenters’ hyperbolic claims, or the implicit sense that Jews everywhere should be on alert. As Kohut and Wike wrote in their article: “While there has been a rise in anti-Semitic opinion in Europe, the percentages holding negative opinions toward Jews in most countries studied remain relatively small.” Moreover, the data collected and presented by Pew explicitly draws connections between anti-Semitism and perceptions about Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians, as well as about the role and (perceived) power of Jews in America.

The speakers also revealed what I would call (to use their own terms) a pathological naivete: a denial of the obvious fact that powerful (or perceived powerful) minority groups have always been targets of one kind or another (e.g., Tutsis in Rwanda, or the Ismaili Shia in many Sunni Muslim countries). Similarly, small states with (again, perceived) out-sized power have also been targets, particularly when they have engaged in the kinds of conflict with their neighbors that trigger reflexive feelings about minority populations and their political or social agendas.

Let me be clear: I am not making excuses for anti-Semitism. But I also believe it’s irrational to think that a minority group that makes up 2-4% of the total United States population, yet controls wealth equal to three or four times those numbers, and which has very, very prominent group members represented in high places in government, finance, etc., isn’t going to face some animosity. Nor am I the only one who thinks this is the case, or that this is a reality that Jews must confront. To go back to additional Pew-funded research, in 2006 the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life co-sponsored a talk with Josef Joffe, author of “Überpower: The Imperial Temptation of America,” on anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. While rejecting what he describes as “the perception that Jews have ‘conquered’ America and have the most powerful country in the world at their beck and call,” Joffe nonetheless goes on to say “that Jews and Americans have always acted as forces of rampant change that has [sic] rolled over ancient traditions and dispensations and thus threatened traditional status and power structures. If you represent the forces of an anonymous market, you are bound to anger those players who profit from privilege and entrenched position.” In other words: duh. Without making excuses for a kind of murderous, irrationally rooted anti-Semitism, one must nonetheless accept the reality that one’s actions in the world have consequences. Jews, whether in America or Israel, aren’t exempt from this construct any more than anyone else.

Yet none of this makes me fearful. Politically engaged and morally concerned, and desirous of living righteously (and not just to and towards Jews)? Yes. But fearful? No. The presenters’ argument that American Jews are too afraid of being publicly Jewish ran smack into their argument that there is this massive tsunami of hatred coming to get us and that we should, essentially, be afraid to be publicly Jewish. And that, for me, is where it all fell apart: the idea that I suffer from a “pathological absence of rage” about the existence of anti-Semitism, that I should get over my denial, and that in overcoming my denial I will be free—finally free to be afraid.

Lest these two gentlemen be unfairly called out for their views, it is worth noting that they are hardly the only ones to hold this classic mixture of bigoted, fear-mongering views. For example, currently making its way around the internet is an offensive screed by Rabbi Dr. Morton H. Pomerantz, the absurd claims of which can be summarized just from the first sentence: “Our new president did not tell a virulent anti-Semite to travel to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington to kill Jews, but he is most certainly creating a climate of hate against us.” That’s a heavy charge—and one that falls flat, because it rests on both the misrepresentation of what President Obama said, and, more importantly, on that classic American Jewish Fundamentalist perspective that there is no such thing as legitimate criticism of Israel. For those with this worldview, President Obama is damned for eternity because he dared to say openly what is so obviously true: that past wrongs against Jews do not excuse current wrongs inflicted by Israelis—and that the forty-plus year Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people must, finally, end.

In retrospect, the tipoff that this Shavuot presentation would be problematic might have come at the very beginning, when one speaker began with a second-hand holocaust story, about his mother’s experiences in the camps and after the war. The purpose, clearly, was to engage the audience and provoke an emotional reaction that would bind the listeners to the presenter, credentialize him as an authority, and simultaneously remind us of that greatest of all acts of murderous anti-Semitism. Such tactics tend to work with Jews; we have been well conditioned. But if my description sounds cynical, it is not nearly as bad as the act of the presenter himself, which reminded me of a character from Tova Reich’s novel “My Holocaust,” in which she so effectively caricatures the second-generation survivors, whose devotion to the cause of the holocaust has often surpassed that of the survivors themselves.

We sat in rapt attention, listening to this compelling story—only to discover yet another Jew sadly abusing the memory of the murdered (and those few who survived), in order to justify the rights and reactions of Jews everywhere at the expense of other humans. To my mind, such “me first” righteousness is counter to the morality, the humanity, that rests at the core of Judaism, and there is no denying that it must be resisted.

Our Mortgaged Future

2009-05-30T16:20:00.001-04:00

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

An article (“Recovery begins at home”) from last week’s issue of The Economist, about Shaun Donovan, the new Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) caught my attention—not for the analysis of Donovan’s early assertion of leadership, but because of the statistics included about the continuing problem of home foreclosures. The Economist reports that “foreclosure filings last month increased by 32% over April 2008; one in every 374 housing units received a filing.” The article also noted that HUD “announced that a $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers could be used as down-payment on a mortgage…” and that “it would provide $2 billion in stimulus funds to stabilise neighbourhoods hit by foreclosure.”

Reading this article reminded me of how adrift we are in the middle of this vast sea of foreclosed homes, and that we cannot seem to find the dry land beyond the horizon. The collapse of our economy has been spurred on in large part by our collective capacity to over-borrow, and our collective desire to over-inflate the value of our homes. While the cracks in the broader economy are more complicated—the housing asset bubble is only one factor—this problem of over-mortgaged homes with over-inflated values is probably the thing most average people are able to focus on. The housing bubble was aided by the robust market in “sub-Prime” mortgages, and part of the problem with these mortgages was their inherent short-termism: banks loved the fees associated with mortgage creation, and the near-term monthly payments, without caring about the long-term impact of the potential failure of the housing market. If the goal was to maximize near-term profits, all of this made sense.

But there was always a logical inconsistency in the sub-Prime mortgage market, waiting for someone to notice it: it is difficult to make money over the long-term with loans you can almost guarantee that no one will be able to afford to pay off. If you know the borrower won’t be able to pay up over the life of the loan, then your short-term profits will ultimately be undermined by the long-term collapse. No amount of mortgage insurance will cover this potential deficit. It’s like building the George Washington bridge out of cardboard: it’s only structurally sound until the first rainfall, and coating it in plastic wrap is not long-term protection from the rain.

News that HUD is offering a credit to first-time homebuyers is great, but helps none of the people who currently have mortgages with unreasonable interest rates or already face foreclosure proceedings. And $2 billion to “stabilize” neighborhoods is all well and good, but it’s hard to know what impact it will have on affected homeowners. These initiatives are part of what the department is calling its “Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan.” It seems to me that the best way to achieve this would be to encourage mortgage lenders to make loans more affordable, in order to bring stability to the turbulent world of home ownership. All of this led me to ask a different question: is the solution to the failed investment in mortgages ... more investment in mortgages?

Here’s how this investment program might work, as a formal process implemented with government backing, and in lieu of the purchasing of “distressed debt” mortgages by external vultures. Instead of foreclosing on a property, or simply refinancing the mortgage on more favorable terms, banks would refinance while also taking an additional equity stake in these homes. The bank’s investment might be 20-25% of the total value of the mortgage. The mortgage interest rates offered by the banks for these new loans would be fixed within a small range corresponding to the Federally set prime rate; some higher rates would be permitted, but only by one or two percentage points. All mortgages would be fixed rate loans on a 15, 20, or 30 year schedule.

The payoff (so to speak) of this process would be three-fold:

First, it would shift the process of dealing with many of these problem mortgages from a challenge over impending foreclosure back to focus on continued ownership. As with the bursting of many asset bubbles, part of the problem with the collapse of the market is the glut of houses available at reduced prices, which depresses the value of the newly foreclosed assets even further. This is not good for banks looking to recover from the sale of these assets, and it doesn’t help homeowners with legitimate (that is to say, normal) reasons for wanting to sell. Therefore, removing some homes from the market by keeping them owner-occupied would help return some stability to the market.

Second, this refinancing structure would reduce the monthly mortgage payments owed by the homeowners, by refinancing at a rate that owner-occupants can actually afford, on a schedule that makes rational economic sense (which most adjustable rate and sub-Prime mortgages do not, except on a short-term basis). What is the bank’s incentive to refinance this way? That leads to the third point...

By refinancing at a reasonable rate, banks enable homeowners to invest in their properties—keeping their homes and neighborhoods cleaner and more desirable—while the bank still, even at 6 or 7%, makes money. Well-kept homes in cleaner neighborhoods will likely have better resale values over the long-term.

The biggest benefit of this new process will be that it creates a mutual incentive for long-term success, for both the owner-occupant and the bank: the owner's incentive is the opportunity to stay in their house at a monthly payment rate they can afford. The bank will recoup its additional costs over time by taking that addition 20% equity stake, thus giving them 20% of the profit when the home is eventually sold. Since part of the allure of sub-prime mortgages was the higher interest rates being charged, and thus the higher rate of return to those who invested in these mortgages, this equity based approach will also help address the loss of profit that will result from bringing a 14% mortgage interest rate down to 7%.

Why should these homeowners accept this 20% reduction of their equity in their own homes? Well, for one thing, this new bank stake would reduce the amount the borrower owes by the same percentage, in effect reassessing the near-term value of the home. Given the inflated market in which many people purchased their homes, such a readjustment might be welcome. But the long-term rationale is even stronger: a 20% reduction in one’s investment is almost always better than a 100% loss of both equity and one’s actual home. For homeowners, choosing between 80% and 0% should not be so hard—and as banks might be starting to learn for themselves, 100% ownership of many, many houses may not be a good investment for their own shareholders.

Preventing Obama

2009-05-25T22:29:00.005-04:00

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

If I was in the message management business (and I am), and I had a client with terrible, horrible news to release to the world or a potentially disastrous idea to float, well heck: the days before a long, holiday weekend might be perfect. Few people are paying attention to the news as it is; even fewer when focused on sunny weather and beach blanket bingo in the days ahead.

However, I do not know whether I would be clever enough (or Machiavellian enough) to coordinate the release of this terrible, horrible news with a speech timed as a counter-point to a speech given by one of my client's biggest critics. Seriously, it's hard to get one’s critics to cooperate! It takes tremendous resources and planning, and a stealthy streak worthy of a come-from-behind presidential candidate.

Therefore, it should be no surprise to anyone reading this that the person who released the terrible, horrible news was President Barack Obama, and the clever (or Machiavellian) maneuver was to share the information alongside a critical speech given by former Vice President Dick Cheney.

And the news that was released?

That President Obama favors a program of "preventive detention," sort of like what repressive, authoritarian, mock-democratic regimes (c.f., China, Egypt, Iran) use to reign in people and perspectives they don't like. Rather than worry about having to try suspects after they have committed a crime, Obama’s proposal would allow for indefinite detention without a trial where evidence is presented that suggests someone was planning a crime. The New York Times ran two articles about this, the first on 21 May (“Obama Is Said to Consider Preventive Detention Plan”), the second on 23 May (“President’s Detention Plan Tests American Legal Tradition”). There are plenty of others, too.

Thankfully, I am not alone when I say—loudly and unambiguously—this is bullshit. I will dispense with reciting chapter and verse on why such a “preventive detention” plan is unconstitutional. Senator Russ Feingold has done this eloquently enough for anyone interested, while underscoring that Congress (or at least one Senator) is watching and intends to stand guard on this issue. Senator Feingold: thank you!

What I will say is: this entire episode represents a huge political and philosophical disappointment. First, the point/counter-point construct of the speeches was both an obvious and unnecessary distraction. As president, Obama has his choice of speaking moments; he can only have agreed to this because he believed that the media’s (and public’s) focus on the “Thrilla Near the Hilla” (as Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank dubbed it) would distract from the substance of the issues and his articulation of an unsatisfactory policy plan. Otherwise, he would have given his policy address when he knew (as with many others) that it, and he, would be the sole focus of attention.

Second, it is disappointing because a politician as smart as Obama, in an environment as politically charged as this one, should know that it is hard to embrace the ideas of one’s opponent without losing credibility—unless you do so (as Bill Clinton did with policy issues like welfare reform and debt reduction) by embracing the political substance, the underlying logic, and even the fallout. President Obama has not done that; he has not suddenly started talking like Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. Indeed, quite the opposite.

Which leads to the third disappointment: the lingering suspicion that President Obama wants to have it both ways. He seems to want to be respected for charting a course that is not that of the Bush/Cheney years—e.g., one that places diplomacy, not force, at the center of our global leadership—while at the same time being given permission to pursue the same nasty, off-the-books habits, tactics, and policies, but in a manner that is more effectively off-book.

The world is a nasty place, and President Obama’s original, campaign-era formulation that faux-righteous might will not protect us remains as true now as it was then. Hidden righteousness, in the form of “preventive detention,” is unlikely to protect us, either. It only degrades our democracy, our society, and the quality of both our government and our moral judgment. On this issue, President Obama should be stopped.

UPDATE: In his 31 May column for the New York Times, Frank Rich dissects Dick Cheney's speech and the way it was reported in the news - and, very helpfully, points to an article by Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, writing for McClatchy, that points out 10 "inconvenient truths" that Cheney overlooked. That article is worth reading.

Regressive New York?

2009-05-09T23:03:00.000-04:00

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, and even Iowa all now permit “opposite marriage,” while “liberal” New York (and California, too) lag behind. An excellent article in tomorrow’s New York Times notes that as a new bill makes its way through the legislature, some New York politicians seemingly remain closed-minded. For example, Jeremy Peter’s article has a great story about a State Senator, as in this snippet:

Proponents of same-sex marriage who visited Mr. Onorato in his office in Long Island City acknowledge they have not made much progress.

“He said right off the bat that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that this is a religious issue,” said Jeremiah Frei-Pearson, 31, a child advocacy lawyer who went to the senator’s office two weeks ago accompanied by a gay man and a straight official from one of the state’s most powerful labor unions.

“I explained to him that I go to church every week and that religion teaches us not to discriminate,” Mr. Frei-Pearson said, “and that ultimately your faith should be kept separate from this decision-making process.”

He said he also tried to appeal to Mr. Onorato by explaining that he was engaged to a black woman, and that an interracial relationship like his (Mr. Frei-Pearson is white) would have been frowned upon years ago, just as many gay relationships are today.

“None of that seemed to resonate,” Mr. Frei-Pearson said.

To which I can only say: wow! Great reporting, great quotes … backwards politician!

The many perspectives (and resistance) to gay marriage in New York might be a reflection of a quality of our state that is, in an odd way, less at issue in places like Vermont, Maine, and Iowa: diversity. The same can be said of California, a similarly large and divided state. Logically, one might expect homogenous societies to enforce orthodoxy and resist (seemingly) heterodox notions like acceptance of gay marriage, let alone gays themselves—while diverse communities should be the opposite. The logic, though, may overlook the much more complicated set of connections between people’s sense security and (emotional) safety. In a funny way, places like New York may be more challenging political and social environments precisely because they toss many, many different people and perspectives together.

Not buying it? Me either, necessarily, because it starts to sound like another excuse. The truth is that this is a classic case of groundless discrimination, for which too many bad excuses have already been offered.

With the new bill in the state legislature, New York’s politicians have an opportunity to show that such discrimination has no place in a society like ours. Whether you live downstate in New York City, or upstate in Buffalo, our state needs people who want to live here, make their lives and livelihoods here, pay taxes here, raise families here, and contribute to our society—regardless of whether they love someone of the same sex. Preventing gay marriage discourages people from making their homes here, and that’s no good for anyone.

Citizens of New York: contact your State Assembly member and State Senator and make your voice heard.

Still Faking After All These Years

2009-04-25T23:09:00.000-04:00

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

Holland Cotter, the New York Times art critic who recently won a Pulitzer Prize, pulled out another terrific review last week, for an exhibition titled “I Am Art: An Expression of the Visual & Artistic Process of Plastic Surgery” at New York's Apexart gallery. It's a measure of Cotter's qualifications for journalism's highest honor that a review of an exhibition so potentially off-putting can be, instead, so intellectually intriguing.

***

I have to admit: reading that exhibition review, the first thing I thought of was something I wrote a few years ago. (Don’t worry, I'm not comparing myself to Cotter.) In my piece titled "Smooth, Firm, But Not Subtle," I explored a question that was nagging at me: how does our society treat authenticity—and fakery? As I wrote then:

Two of the most obvious and hifalutin subjects in which authenticity factors significantly are religion and art. ... Likewise in the arts, the 'real' is prized (whether in painting, sculpture, or other fine handicrafts) and an entire network of 'temples' has been constructed around the world to house art objects. Much like religion, art also relies on a broad pool of people who respond with devotion—a devotion bordering on the religious, and epitomized in the form of gifts, much as a religious establishment might receive—to those objects which the clergy comprised of museum directors, curators, and collectors has deemed to be authentic.

I then continued on to suggest that our cultural affection for authenticity is often fairly weak, and used breast enhancement surgery as an example of the point. Broadly speaking, if some 300,000 women per year (according to USA Today, although those are pre-recession numbers) are having their breasts "enhanced"—many presumably without a separate medical need for breast reconstruction—that says something about our collective need for the authentic.

That is not an expression of judgment; it is an observation. Certainly we all, at times, find some form of happiness in fakes of one kind or another, just as we can also find a kind of pleasure in the authentic. Extending the analysis into a very present-day context—the Madoff scandal and other Ponzi schemes—one might even say that we seek out people and situations we likely know cannot possibly be authentic and yet desperately hope that they are.

***

Still, an exhibition that explores, artistically, this very subject has got to have some real mettle attached to it. It does not sound like this is “Nip/Tuck,” a show that glorifies the whole premise of our physical artificiality (or, our artificial edifice). Nor does it sound like the photographic version of “Are You Hot? The Search for America’s Sexiest People,” which categorically mixed up and confused so many of the issues that relate to our collective body image (if we can be said to have one, and I think we can).

Cotter’s review makes the exhibition sound much smarter than that, and more compelling. At the same time, the question of authenticity that nagged me then remains, and I feel I am no closer to an answer.

Shotgun Wedding

2009-04-10T11:50:00.000-04:00

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the terrible problem of gun violence in the United States (“Where’s My Gun”), and the failure of our country and our culture to address the subject rationally—never mind actually come to any practical conclusions. In the days since, two other very public shooting “rampages” have occurred, one in Binghamton, New York and the other in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In both cases, there is evidence to suggest that shooters Jiverly Wong and Richard Poplawski acquired guns under questionable circumstances. Those are presumably the circumstances to which the National Rifle Association (NRA) refers when it says our government should be enforcing the gun laws that already exist, even as it continues to foment fear of “liberals” taking away the guns of good Americans.

Meanwhile, last week the Iowa state Supreme Court ruled that “gay” marriage is legal, under an equal protection clause that prohibits discrimination without a meaningful government interest in a specific outcome. Days later, the Vermont state legislature overrode Governor Jim Douglas’ veto of a bill that legalized gay marriage, making Vermont the first state to pursue this course of action through its legislature.

These subjects are connected, because they reflect important underlying, unresolved tensions in our society, around a set of problems and failures by people on every side of both issues. Even if married homosexual couples have no express or explicit interest in firearms—or gun owners have no homosexual attractions, let alone the desire for marriage—both groups should be united around a common set of legal principles that would permit them to act responsibly around their own interests. There are two Constitutional principles at stake here, and neither involve the Second Amendment. At issue are the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, which read, respectively:

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The Constitution says nothing at all about gay marriage. One can imagine this is because such marriages were not even a consideration at the time the document was authored, which might very well be true. But a careful reading of the Constitution will remind any reader that many things go unmentioned; indeed, it says nothing about marriage of any kind. The purpose of the Ninth Amendment was in part to ensure that the exclusion of a particular point from the text of the Constitution should not be taken to imply a prohibition on that issue. Accepting the NRA’s particular interpretation of the Second Amendment might be seen to offer gun owners an official leg-up—but the mention of bearing arms does not implicitly receive greater legal resilience just because it is explicitly stated. The power of the Ninth Amendment should be respected, as should the subsequently enumerated right for the states to make decisions about issues not mentioned in the Constitution.

Theoretically, a rejectionist response to gay marriage could point not to the Constitution, but to the Bible—except that as presently constructed in the United States, this is not a religious issue but a legal one. While religion may have informed the creation of the Constitution of these United States, religion is also explicitly not the framework under which legal decisions are made. The Constitution respects the right of the people to practice their religion, and also distinguishes between religious practice and state-held legal authority. (Never mind that the Bible does not say anything about a range of issues mentioned in the Constitution, including a specific right to own guns, as well as those of copyrighting and patent-holding.)

Supporting the fullest and widest interpretation of both Constitutional amendments should unify these seemingly-disparate groups, and remind us that we do not have to like or approve of every decision made by our neighbors or fellow citizens—but we do need to respect them. If supporters of gun rights also argued for the preservation of other fundamental, Constitutional rights, and if (conversely) gay rights advocates supported the right to bear arms as part of a similar interpretation of the Constitution, we might have more than just a new political coalition. We might have a more vibrant Constitutional democracy.

***

Asides of one kind or another:

Mark Guarino, correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, had a thoughtful article from 6 April about how Iowans are reacting to their state Supreme Court’s decision regarding gay marriage.

National Public Radio’s Michele Norris had an amazing interview with gun store owner Johnny Dury a few days ago; NPR’s web site has an abbreviated text version of the story posted, but the full audio version (linked from that page) is worth a listen, no matter where you are in the United States or what you believe about this situation.

Back in 2004, I wrote a piece about gay marriage (“Union vs. Confederacy?”) arguing that “marriage” should be left to religious institutions, while the state should be responsible for civil unions. This would ease the tension over “gay marriage” by allowing for appropriate discrimination based on religious beliefs, while reinforcing equal protection under the law. In an opinion piece from The New York Times, “A Reconciliation on Gay Marriage,” by David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch, published 22 February 2009, a similar approach is articulated.

Where's My Gun?

2009-03-29T22:12:00.002-04:00

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

The gun violence in America is seemingly endless. Just this afternoon, as I sat down to write about this issue after two weeks of rumination, the news flashed yet another story of more of the same: “Police: NC nursing home shooting kills 6, hurts 3,” reports the Associated Press. I find nursing homes aggravating and dispiriting, too, but I have no plans to shoot them up.

Here is what is on my mind about this whole subject, prompted by the shooting spree in the towns of Samson and Geneva, Alabama on 11 March 2009: if the National Rifle Association (NRA) claim that an armed populace helps stop crime is so true, how did Michael McLendon manage to kill 10 people before being stopped by the police? That’s the question, and it’s just that simple. And here is some context to help consider this issue.

According to the Violence Policy Center (VPC) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2005 the “Household Gun Ownership” rate in Alabama was 57.2%, while the “Gun Death Rate” was 16.18 per 100,000. Alabama ranks 5th in the VPC’s rankings of per capita gun-related deaths (behind, in descending order, Louisiana, Alaska, Montana, and Tennessee). The VPC’s argument is simply stated: “States in the South and West with weak gun laws and high rates of gun ownership lead the nation in overall firearm death rates,” and the statistics seem to back this up.

At the same time, according to the Alabama Policy Institute's web site, “Firearms are used far more often to stop crimes than to commit them. In spite of this, anti-firearm activists insist that keeping a firearm in the home puts family members at risk, often claiming that a gun in the home is 43 times more likely to be used to kill a family member than an intruder.” Of course, to be fair to the Alabama Policy Institute (which thanks visitors to its web site for their “commitment to Alabama's families and Alabama's future”) they are not being super-thoughtful about their gun policy perspectives, and are instead just quoting from “Fables, Myths, and Other Tall Fairy Tales about Gun Laws, Crime, and Constitutional Rights,” by the National Rifle Association, as noted at the bottom of their page on “Gun Control Myths.” Surely the NRA would not lie. Right?

So, again: where were the guns during the Alabama shooting spree, aside from the ones being used by the murderer and, eventually, the police? If 57% of Alabama households have guns, and guns are used more often to stop crimes than to commit them, did Michael McLendon just happen to pick targets within the 43% of non-gun-owning households in Alabama? It was not like he was particularly stealthy or selective: the Reuters article reports that he was “firing at random” as he drove through town, including during an apparent stop at a service station. No one at the service station had a gun? Perhaps they just couldn’t get to it fast enough, or maybe they were too afraid, given that McLendon seemed to be shooting randomly. (That’s not blame: I know that in all likelihood I would be searching for safety in a situation like this.)

I am not blaming the victims of this terrible, terrible tragedy. They didn’t ask to be shot and killed. Among them was the wife and child of a deputy sheriff there, and that too raises further interesting questions, worthy of pursuit and pondering: what is this sheriff’s take on gun control issues? And the rest of the police in Alabama, too: do they also subscribe to the “if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” perspective?

***

In accepting my own contradictions, I’m comfortable calling myself a solid libertarian who nonetheless finds some intellectual appeal in the Thaler / Sunstein approach to laws and decision-making. What does that mean in plain English? Here goes—in four parts.

Part 1. The libertarian in me supports the fundamental Second Amendment right to own guns. This is less because of the United State’s Constitution’s Second Amendment per se, and more because (as a libertarian) I do not like unnecessarily restricting people’s freedoms or blaming an object for its misuse by human idiots. (It is, to my mind, largely true that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” and people have been killing each other aggressively since long before the invention of guns.) From cars to cigarettes to people who mix household cleaners containing chlorine and ammonia, we live in a dangerous world. But it’s not the fault of chlorine and ammonia that someone dumped them together.

Part 2. At the same time, the positions of the NRA are generally unsustainable; it is too simplistic by far to say there should be no restrictions on gun ownership at all, period. We agree, as a society, to regulate a broad swathe of things for the common good—from automobiles to zoos—so the idea that guns alone should be exempt from such a regulatory process is absurd.

Part 3. Part of what American society needs is a more honest and open debate about the cost to our society of gun regulation or deregulation. We have never really had a genuine national assessment of the issue—the “issue” here being the cost to our society in human life, not the regulation of guns. I don’t hold out much hope for this, just as I am not holding my breath for health care “reform” or that the Obama administration will push back on AIPAC, but it’s still a worthy goal.

Part 4. In the Thaler / Sunstein mold, we should consider moving away just from broad attempts at regulation or deregulation of guns, and towards a system that incentivizes responsible ownership and citizenship across the board—while imposing harsh penalties for those who abuse their rights.

We cannot simply eliminate guns from our society and our country; to think that we can is as simplistic as the views of the NRA. We can do a better job of trying to learn from tragedies like the one in Alabama, and do a better job of having real discussions about the impact of our choices—while pushing back on the fuzzy-headed thinking about this issue that comes from the extreme right and extreme left of our political spectrum.

RSS Feed Update

2009-03-29T14:55:00.000-04:00

More technology notes: with the migration to a new server last week, and the other problems I was having with Blogger, the Atom & RSS feeds for my sites were not working.

Those problems should now be fixed. If you need to update your feeds, here's the info:
Atom: http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/atom.xml
RSS: http://www.2rss.com/atom2rss.php?atom=http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/atom.xml

Cheers!

Back Noir

2009-03-22T12:31:00.000-04:00

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

I love the city of Buffalo. I have a soft spot for it because it's where I spent many summers, with my paternal grandparents, whom I loved. The city has a beauty and charm that, even in its darkest moments, helped keep it alive. (And I say that not just because I have a Buffalo client, but because from Frederick Law Olmsted to Louis Sullivan to Frank Lloyd Wright to Eliel and Eero Saarinen to a longer list of people and institutions than I can mention here, Buffalo has a lot to offer.)

Therefore, it was with pleasure that I discovered that part of the action in Richard Stark's 1963 novel The Outfit takes place in Buffalo, and that the location Stark gave—798 Delaware Avenue—is, as the story has it, one of the city's glorious old mansions. It turns out that it’s the house right across the street from Temple Beth Zion, my grandparents' synagogue. There’s some kind of serendipity in there.

***

Much has been written about Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake) and his "Parker" series of novels, and with good reason. Forty-six years after The Outfit was written, it still holds up as a tightly constructed and engaging novel of crime and vengeance, with a David and Goliath twist to it.

It was while reading The Outfit, and the earlier Parker story The Man with the Getaway Face, that I started to wonder about the timelessness of certain fiction, and how we, as readers, respond to a story. It strikes me as a challenging intellectual question: is it harder to read not-so-old fiction than very old stories? Are the anachronisms of more than a century ago easier to deal with than the missed technological opportunities of the last couple of decades?

In reading books from the pre-industrial age, the reader can make an easy mental leap to an environment in which characters are just different: bound by conventions of a period that we may or may not understand, but to which we can immediately relate as distant from our reality. On the other hand, reading a story from what we might loosely call the modern age raises a different kind of challenge: can you, the reader, make a very small mental leap backwards?

In these two Parker stories, the anti-hero protagonist maneuvers through a world that is much like ours—cars, electricity, airplanes, beer in a bottle—and yet drastically different. Parker, and his friends, can fly with fake ID with great ease, and even bring a gun on the airplane (given an absence of x-ray scanners at the airport). That’s hard to imagine these days. Conducting a stakeout, Parker has no cell phone with which to contact his friend, and the technology for breaking into the Delaware Avenue mansion is about as basic as possible: some brute force, a gun, and a small flashlight. Perhaps this is less difficult to imagine, given what movies show us about how cell phones and e-mail can be tapped and our general sense of privacy an illusion. But it is also hard to think of the situation as normal, given an absence of security cameras or other of the other electronic devices we take for granted.

In a sense, it becomes one marker of whether a book or a story can withstand the test of time: whether it is written in a way that captures our imaginations and overwhelms our sense of the present reality. Stark's “Parker” novels do just that. The author might never have imagined, back in 1963, that years later I could use my computer to zero in on the Delaware Avenue address he put in his book; perhaps he took it on faith that any reader would assume the detail to be true, and any Buffalo native would have easy confirmation if desired. But the fact that I can Google, and the fact that it exists, does not diminish the story one bit.

This is Another Test

2009-03-16T16:31:00.000-04:00

The umpteenth test in as many days. (Hence the lack of published content: the system hasn't been working.)

If you're seeing this, that's a good sign World. In which case, more to come soon.

STOT

2009-03-07T23:00:00.006-05:00

That stands for So Tired of This. "This" being Blogger and the failure to "publish" properly.

***

Based on the web traffic, one of the most popular set of posts I've ever written are the three items about my Kenmore 2-Stage Drinking Water Filter, Model #38461.

The issue was that I wanted to buy it - but that no one at Sears was able to tell me what the model numbers were for the replacement cartridges. Eventually, having posted about this publicly, I got a (nice) response from Sears and the information I needed. I bought the filter, had it installed, and have used it happily ever since.

That was about 11 months ago. Since then, I have been pleased with the filter with the noticeable improvement in water quality. We've used the filtered water for everything from baby formula to making rice to just-plain-drinking. Only now, months later, has the quality started to suggest we should change the filter. (The unit comes with a built-in, six-month timer - but at the six month mark, the water quality was fine, so we didn't change anything.)

***

Like I said, I knew the filter was working. Changing the cartridges gave an additional level of proof. For the last *week* I have wanted to post this item plus a photo of the cartridges I removed from the filter - which showed a terribly dirty, rust-colored sediment cartridge (model #38480) on the left, and a less-visibly dirty "taste and odor" cartridge (model #34373) on the right. Blogger, however, has been having fits and won't actually publish the post correctly - either because of the photo or because of the "labels" - so I am resorting to a more fool-proof method. You can now find that photo here. The "label" for this post? "Shopping."

So, now I can say - with further proof - if you're looking for a good water filter for your sink, this model works well.

***

UPDATE AS OF 16 MARCH:
1. If you're seeing this post, with the image at the top and the "shopping" label at the bottom, that's a good sign. It means the system really is working for me again.
2. As I said before ... if you're looking to publish a blog, well, Blogger still needs some work. If anyone from Blogger is reading this, I am happy to discuss the problems I have faced for several weeks now - which have been resolved, no thanks to Blogger. More on that to come from me shortly.

E Pluribus Omnibus

2009-02-28T22:00:00.001-05:00

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

Out of many, one piece of legislation.

One bill to slay all problems. One bill to stimulate all unstimulated areas of our economy. One bill, to tickle the fancy of those yearning for the good ol' days of the New Deal (most of whom, actuarially speaking, were not around to live through the original New Deal itself). As The Economist put it, one bill “larded with spending determined more by Democrat lawmakers’ pet projects than by the efficiency with which the economy will be boosted.”

One bill because multiple pieces of legislation—developed systematically, to address specific aspects of our economy that need help, and with all necessary due diligence and deliberation for each—would, obviously, be terrible. Genuine debate and analysis, obviously, would be a time-consuming abrogation of legislative responsibility, which would do nothing but slow down the momentum of the executive branch of government. Such an effort would be akin to voting to approve a war concocted (by the executive branch) under false pretenses. Or something like that.

***

One bill that has been passed by Congress, and which President Barack Obama again defended in his address to a joint session of Congress this past week as the first of many new measures.

I started writing this column two weeks ago. The idea came to me as my 20 month old daughter played with her little wallet and the dollar in it, and I had a chance to look again at the dollar itself in some detail. She has been folding it, wrinkling it, putting it in and taking it out of her wallet, and I thought that it was perhaps odd that we had given her an actual dollar as a toy. What does that say about its value? And what would she learn from playing with a real dollar that (at 20 months) she couldn’t get from a fake one?

At his inaugural address, President Barack Obama said "Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age." I loved that line. It was concise and eloquent, but also accurate and honest. It was representative of the person I wanted Obama to be as president.

That Obama is a person and a president whom we as a nation have not yet seen. Doling out federal dollars—as any Republican can tell you, after eight years of practice in Congress and the White House—is more or less the opposite of making hard choices. It's easy because, much like playing Monopoly, it doesn't feel like real money. Real money is what poor and middle class people lose when the GOP-led process of bank deregulation allows financial institutions to spiral out of control. Real money is what a father gives his daughter, not because it is a toy, but because—as an alert young person, learning about the world around her—she should know what it is, how to handle it, to hang on to it, and over time, understand its value. She will have to make hard choices with what to do with that dollar, so learning what it means, what kind of attachment to have to it and what its existence represents, is itself meaningful.

***

Congress and the Executive branch, as everyone knows, do not handle real money. They handle theoretical money that may (or may not) exist in the future, and that someone other than themselves will have to earn years later. If our government understood real dollars, then it would (for one thing) have started closing the absurd gap that our Social Security and Medicare systems will have, between the money coming in and the money going out. The President and Congress might have acknowledged that if it's OK to have government-managed health care programs for the elderly (and the poor), it's not really such a leap to consider creating a government-run system for the rest of us. Government might start moving more actively to draw down our troops in Iraq, and begin saving money on some of these absurd foreign adventures. Heck, an intellectually honest government would recognize the pointlessness of the so-called “War on Drugs,” and move to start taxing drug use instead of trying fruitlessly to eradicate it.

Or Congress and the Executive branch could wake up to the reality that investing billions of dollars to help people who cheerfully and greedily screwed up—while making essentially meaningless gestures in the direction of the hard working people who did not over-extend themselves as a result of greed—is unlikely either to solve many economic problems or to win over long-term voters.

Any of those things, just from that very small list, represent hard choices. They might also have served as economic stimulus components in their own right, by focusing on our long-term health and alleviating future debt or averting future disaster. But those are just a few of the hard choices that need to be made, and our nation has made none of them so far. No hard choices, on virtually any subject.

President Obama, in his address to Congress this week, again laid out a picture of the damage that has been done, and the hard choices we face. He was as elegant and as eloquent as usual when he said “Now, if we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that for too long we have not always met these responsibilities, as a government or as a people. I say this not to lay blame or to look backwards, but because it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament.” But at some point, the continued acknowledgment of the problem needs to shift into an actual moment of making hard choices. Granted, he has been in office for only 39 days. There are many more to go. I just wish that the stimulus bill—if it is representative of Obama’s approach—was representative of more clarity and restraint, and was a leading indicator of how problems will be tackled beyond throwing money at them.

Sadly, this was not really an omnibus stimulus bill that our Congress passed and our President signed. Instead, it was more like the world's biggest birthday cake: a cake created by 535 bakers and their assistants, for themselves, by raiding everyone else's kitchen for the necessary ingredients, and on which those same bakers and their helpers subsequently gorged themselves.

If we, as a nation, are to continue on the path that E Pluribus Unum implies—if we are to continue to be a united, strong one rising from the contributions of many—then the many need to see The One start confronting that "collective failure to make hard choices." Obama needs to start living up to his words, and fast.

Soon

2009-02-23T22:23:00.001-05:00

...There will be more content coming shortly...

Covering Cover Letters

2009-02-15T14:25:00.001-05:00

Today's New York Times' Business Section has a good "Career Couch" column the value of cover letters.

Regular readers (do I have such a thing?) know that I have a real hang-up about the many absurd faux-pas that job seekers make, including mistakes in handling cover letters. I highly recommend this Times' column to anyone searching for a job.

Frank Rich, My Mother, & Me

2009-02-10T23:09:00.002-05:00

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

I don't think that my mother and The New York Times' Frank Rich are actually talking about politics and the bailout (aka "stimulus"), but sometimes I wonder. There are certain parallels in their sense that the stimulus is mis-focused and the situation a bit off the rails. There are also some obvious differences in terms of how far each goes in criticizing the Obama administration directly.

At the same time, both seem to hold dear an assumption that President Barack Obama's entire governing plan would be different and, thus, that the bailout would be different than it had been under George W. Bush. Obama himself famously said that he feels like a "blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." We are now seeing the impact of that, in terms of the peoples' shattered perceptions.

Ever the cynic, I voted for Obama - but outside of an immediate sense of post-November 4 euphoria, tried to keep my expectations low.

If there was any single indicator of how not-different Obama would be from past attempts at American government, it was his ring-kissing episode with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in March 2007. Perhaps, one might argue, such obeisance was crucial for getting elected. Perhaps not, might one argue, once they've looked at what portion of the American population is Jewish (4%). Obama's margin of victory was greater than 4%. He might have won even if he'd been more honest about the mess that is Israel / occupied Palestine / the Middle East, and about what America's role in fixing it should, nay must, be.

What does this have to do with the economic stimulus package? Well, my mother has been focused like a laser on how off-track the bailout is, wondering why it's OK to dump billions of dollars on banks and bankers, but not on the people who have lost their homes, their livelihoods, their retirement savings, etc. She's not wrong.

Meanwhile, Frank Rich has been focused like a laser on the way that the Obama administration has - already, in just a few short weeks - danced around the ethical guidelines it once said it would hew to so closely.

Both have a right to be upset because - so far - the Obama administration has given us only a new version of politics-as-usual. The rise of the left on November 4th has not brought us clarity or a new vision, but rather exactly what the rise of the opposition always brings after they've been in opposition: revenge. In this case, it's been a more polite, mildly more accommodating form of revenge - but the results of those accommodations are additional goodies for the Republicans (e.g., more corporate tax cuts) rather than a realistic compromising of positions and dollars, or a genuine refocusing of priorities. Instead, almost everything counts as a priority, adding up to nearly $800 billion.

Rich said this weekend that Obama "is not Jesus," and he's right. Obama isn't Jesus, but it's also an irrelevant comparison because even Jesus couldn't sort out this mess.

Amen.

Land Grab

2009-02-08T16:10:00.001-05:00

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

Here’s a thought: maybe the recession—and the corresponding impact on commercial real estate prices—will benefit existing and new small and boutique shops in New York City. It’s a situation calling out for a better and more creative approach to business development.

***

The debate over the proliferation of “big box” retailers (and big box banks) in New York is longstanding. I am a proud Costco member-shopper, and patronize Fairway, a big box grocery if ever there was one. While there has been much angst over fair pay and union practices at some of these kinds of stores, including over whether WalMart has a place in New York City, they also often offer legitimate value in terms of job creation and cheap(er) goods. (For two good articles on this issue, see John Tierney’s piece in The New York Times from July 21, 2000, and Virginia Postrel’s article in the December 2006 issue of The Atlantic, “In Praise of Chain Stores.”)

At the same time, small shops and “boutique” brand stores offer an equally valuable shopping experience. Generally, the appeal of both rests less on price point than on the intimate knowledge that owners and employees usually have of the products on sale. And for both, it is (in part) a matter of scale: the larger a store’s stock, the less likely it is that the store’s employees will have great knowledge of each of their products. Likewise, the exceedingly wide range of products available in large stores often precludes stocking the more eccentric, low-sales-volume merchandise some customers may desire.

For example: it seems completely natural to me that the appliance and technology chain Circuit City is now bankrupt. While I am sorry for 30,000 employees who will lose their jobs, three separate instances of terrible service at two Manhattan stores was enough to convince me that this was not a good place to shop. Even if the prices were reasonable, the sales staff was generally not: they lacked in-depth knowledge about all but the most high-volume products, and were indifferent to basic customer service. Confidence-deflating salespeople make for depressed sales numbers.

Contrast the Circuit City approach with that of the average Apple store where you get what you pay for: great products with great service. Everything about the experience—including being able to book a “personal shopper” in advance—indicates that Apple understands that its customers deserve to be treated not only respectfully but with respect for their intelligence. This is, in part, a matter of hiring smart staff and training them properly, but it is also a function of the focus involved in Apple’s product line. A manageable range of products means it is possible for staff to learn in great detail about the items they sell.

The same can be said of other kinds of products and stores. Innovation Luggage, another chain store, has a perfectly fine selection of mass-produced, mass-product bags for the mass market. I have shopped there once or twice myself. But if you want a bag that is more creatively designed, something customized to different kinds of styles and purposes, you have to look elsewhere—like Peter Hermann, in New York, which sells smaller, harder to find brands. My favorite shoulder bag, by Mandarina Duck, cannot be found at most big chains, while the terrific computer tote we bought for my wife a few years ago is a true original: a product of the innovative and artistic Schlepp Berlin.

Let’s not forget bookstores, about which I wrote a few years ago. The closing, in 2006, of the fraternal twin book stores Murder Ink and Ivy’s Books and Curiosities was a terrible day for my Upper West Side neighborhood. Even worse—or perhaps just ironic—is the fact that the store fronts that housed those shops have sat empty since December 31, 2006. Only now, more than two years later, is one of them seeing a new tenant (yet another mobile phone chain). Jay Pearsall, who owned the book stores, would have every right to be angry, and also to revel in schadenfreude at a landlord whose rising rents put Pearsall out of business but also kept the spaces unrented for another two years.

***

My dream of a series of new boutiques and small stores is probably just that, given the state of the credit markets. But commercial real estate vacancy rates are high and rising, not just in Manhattan. If landlords changed, ever so slightly, their perspective on what makes a successful tenant, they might find themselves able to reverse the drain. Landlords could, for example, become limited business partners with their tenants for renewable terms; lease payments could be made based on the success of the business, which would make the success of the business in the best interests of the landlords themselves. If that sounds like a money-losing proposition, ask yourself what sounds better: unrented storefronts for the duration of the recession—or renting out that space, generating some (initially modest) income, and aspiring to achieve higher rents while also contributing to the success and stability of a given neighborhood?

This is not a foolproof strategy, as the closing of the Oscar Wilde Bookshop shows; not every business can be saved, and not every business will succeed. That is not the point. A strategy of seeking to maximize profits by looking exclusively for the largest commercial retail partner is not sustainable; there will never be enough big box partners to satisfy every available rental space. In urban and suburban communities alike, retail diversity is important—there is value to be found in many stores beyond the savings of dollars and cents—and landlords would do well to figure this out, and take advantage of it. In fact, we would all benefit.

Chinese Democracy, Part II

2009-01-25T20:17:00.000-05:00

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

It’s Sunday now, not Tuesday. Several days later, I am still sifting through the mental carnage wrought by President Barack Obama's inauguration and speech. That's carnage in a good way, a tableau of pleasant disbelief at how stunning—peaceful, engaging, inspiring—the inauguration was, and at the effective eloquence and intellectual honesty of Obama's speech.

The famous 1963 “March on Washington” has been a prominent discussion point around the inauguration, for obvious reasons. It has also been on my mind for purely personal ones: my grandmother traveled from Buffalo to Washington to be there for it. She was 57 at the time, and had been in the U.S. for 25 years, and I can only guess at her motivations—but it was an experience she spoke about with reverence, and she gave me the button she kept, proudly. Much as I can picture her shouting about the intifada, I can imagine her level of excitement had she lived to see Obama’s inauguration. It would surely have affirmed for her once again an unwavering belief in the strength of American democracy and society (and she would no doubt share in the collective relief that whatshisname has now left the White House).

BUT, I can also imagine that my grandmother would have seen in Obama's election and inauguration an opportunity to point to a vital lesson, one that Americans might have heeded more carefully in 2004, when we should already have detected that the presidency of George W. Bush was going terribly awry. She would have said: we must not, can not, should not take life and liberty for granted. And she would be right.

***

A few days ago, I posted a brief item about the “communist” Chinese government having censored part of President Obama's speech. This is sad if unsurprising, and at the same time it reminded me of how much I feel like our nation had a close call with a terrible, alternate destiny. When Obama said that “we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” the Chinese had not yet cut into the speech. The Russians seem to have taken a different approach, simply steering clear of emphasizing the event, according to the BBC.

Unsurprisingly, China and Russia are two examples that come to mind where both governments and citizens have, for decades now, contended with false choices of the kind Obama meant. (The citizens, it must be said, with rather less choice in the matter than the those in government.) In both cases, there is a kind of national, propagandized mythology that strong leaders are needed—and in both nations, “strong” generally means “too weak to risk being criticized by the citizenry,” and “too weak to risk having citizens hear opposing ideas.”

I reject the Philip Roth-ian notion that there is (or was) the likely potential in America for an apocalyptic shift towards fascism. Fascism is not the danger. Instead, we should fear the deadening nature of a government that had trouble acknowledging its failings and failures, that responded to criticism—internal and external—with bluster, and that sought to increase the power of the governmental-individual (the so-called “executive”) at the expense of any deliberative process. That would be the government resoundingly removed from office on November 4, 2008.

So when Obama said “We will restore science to its rightful place,” I took it to mean not only that science would be treated with respect, and that empirically derived data would no longer be abused for political purpose. I took Obama to mean that his administration will be one in which answers and actions will be derived from what we know, not merely what we believe to be true—or wish were so. That questions and basic premises will be tested, not just the likely success of a given solutions.

And when Obama said “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers,” that too was more than just an unprecedented presidential acknowledgement of those who do not believe in a god. It was a statement of the importance of our differences, not just of our similarities, and an assertion of intellectual principle from a self-professed believer who also believes he is strong enough, sure enough of himself and his nation, to engage those with other views.

And? These are all words, true. But words matter. If words did not matter, China would not have censored the speech, and Russia would have focused more attention on Obama's inauguration in general.

I think we Americans are—finally, again—off to a good start.

Chinese Democracy

2009-01-21T23:13:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reported today that "China Central Television, or CCTV, the main state-run network, broadcast the [inaugural] address [by President Barack Obama] live until the moment Mr. Obama mentioned “communism” in a line about the defeat of ideologies considered anathema to Americans. After the translator said “communism” in Chinese, the audio faded out even as Mr. Obama’s lips continued to move."

Brilliant maneuver! Surely that will keep the Chinese people from ever discovering that at least one person on the outside world thinks their repressive system of government is flawed. Reminded me of James Fallows' terrific essay from the November 2008 issue of The Atlantic on how the Chinese manage to screw up so consistently in managing public communication(s) and messages.

***

I'll have more thoughts on Obama's inauguration and speech coming in the next few days.
Stay tuned.

"Ancient History"

2009-01-18T15:11:00.000-05:00

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

I have two distinct early memories of reevaluating my understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both dating to the beginnings of the first Palestinian intifada in 1987-1988. One memory is of watching the news with my grandmother, who shook her fist when then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir came on the screen and started a sentence that began “This little asshole...” As we listened to and absorbed the news of more rock-throwing protests, and more Israeli repression of those protests, my grandmother’s evident sadness prompted much discussion about the nature of the Zionist enterprise to which my grandparents had dedicated so much of their lives.

The second memory is of a series of conversations with author and political scientist Amos Perlmutter, who (for reasons I no longer remember) was for a while an occasional dinner guest in our house. Perlmutter challenged me to think, to criticize and evaluate my perspective on the conflict, and while we approached the matter rather differently, I recall distinctly our finding agreement on the (myriad) ways in which Israel had done itself harm by its mishandling of both its Arab-Israeli minority and the Palestinians whose lands it continues to occupy.

My grandmother and Perlmutter are both dead, while the whole messy and idiotic conflict between Israelis and Palestinians remains.

This “ancient” history is top of mind as I read about the current fighting, and think about the evolution of my own views over the years—particularly as I have expressed them here, starting in October 2000. Actually, I think my perspective evolved during the period of the first intifada and has subsequently stayed much the same, bound tightly with a belief in the moral unacceptability of the Israeli occupation. The change since then has focused more on my own religious beliefs, and figuring out ways to personalize, humanize, and “own” a religion (Judaism) and a culture (American-Jewish) in spite of all the (often offensive) things being done in the name of Judaism and Jews, both American and not.

***

Last week, I said I’d provide a round-up of past columns on this subject. At the time, I was not focused on just how much material that might be. However, in looking through it there are some interesting items and perspectives (if I do say so myself). I have collected all the links together for the years 2000-2006, and they can be accessed easily here: Roundup.html.

Two items to which I want to draw particular attention—because they seem to resonate in the current moment—are my brief report on the Palestinian protest in New York from October 2000, and my comments about Ariel Sharon’s speech in New York in March 2001.

Will we humans ever learn?

Common Sense Blog

2009-01-17T14:37:00.001-05:00

Leslie Freudenheim has a new blog! If you are interested in some intriguing ideas about federal taxation, Social Security, the "bailout," mortgage foreclosure, and other problems of the day, then this site might be for you.

Visit Leslie's blog at:
http://www.freudenheim.com/commonsense or via http://commonsensebyleslie.blogspot.com/

[For some of my own recent (and not so recent) thoughts on similar matters, see these posts here.]

With God On Our Side

2009-01-14T08:20:00.001-05:00

Two news items worthy of attention:

1. Gershon Baskin had an excellent column in yesterday's Jerusalem Post, titled "Encountering Peace: The sun will come out tomorrow - or maybe not", and it's well worth reading.

2. On NPR's Morning Edition today, reporter Greg Allen had a good story about Jews and Muslims in Florida trying to "seek common ground." Some of the dilemmas sounded similar to the rally I attended on Sunday.

Coming soon: I'll recap and catalog my Israel- and Palestine- related articles from the start of this site back in 2000.

All we are saying

2009-01-11T15:27:00.001-05:00

I just got back from a peace protest / rally on 2nd Avenue at 42nd Street. This was an event organized as a distinct contrast to the pro-Israel rally taking place on 42nd Street, and to the pro-Palestinian rally taking place at Times Square. For a brief summary of the three events, see the Muslim-Jewish Journal.

Rallies are rallies, so I won't rehash the details of standing around in the cold holding a sign because I've now done it... Nor will I reiterate my views on the current Middle East Madness, which are clear enough here and here.

Instead what I will say as a takeaway from today's event(s) is: there is a lot of hate in the world, and it's rather sad. In some cases, just downright pathetic.

In the two hours I was out there today, many people walking by - on their way to the "main" rally - shouted nasty things at our group. Some stopped to "argue," otherwise known as shout. One guy made the effort to walk around us a few times shouting "Kill them all!" as he headed to the pro-Israel rally. Well, gosh: "Kill them all" is really the right message isn't it? I mean, that doesn't make the (Jewish, wearing a yarmulke) guy sound like a genocidal nutbag, does it? Other people tossed out ridiculous arguments about how Hamas "started it," which is about at the intellectual level of a kid in elementary school.

On the eastern side of 2nd Avenue was another protest, this one by a small group of Satmars waving a Palestinian flag and holding signs against both Israel and the murder of Palestinians. So a small group of Modern Orthodox men took it upon themselves to come to the rally seemingly only with the intent of harassing the Satmars. They had signs - pre-printed - about how the Satmars are not authentic Jews (hunh?) and with absurd slogans like "Anti-Zionism = Anti-Semitism!" (If you want my take on that nonsense, read this piece about Stanley Fish, from 2007.) It says something sad about the insecurity of those young men that the best they could come up with is a way to harass a bunch of Satmars. I spoke with one of the Satmar gentlemen, and he said "They hate us more than they hate the Arabs."

The best thing to come out of this for me? The response from the cabbies and bus drivers along 2nd Avenue, many of whom gave me a thumbs-up sign, and one of them even pulled over briefly to ask some questions and offer support.

Will any of this make a difference? I don't kid myself. Hateful ideologies are difficult to dislodge, even (especially!) if you're Jewish and a Zionist and too clueless to realize you're full of hate. But it says a lot about the tremendous insecurity of American Jews that two small groups of protesters can arouse such intense hatred and expressions of anger. To me, this suggests that many of these people are not as confident in their views as they would like others to believe.

Anyone for a little "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues"?

Stupider & Stupider

2009-01-10T20:11:00.000-05:00

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

It’s Saturday evening and as I catch up on the news from today … I start to wish I hadn’t bothered. The New York Times headline reads (in part) “Israel Warns of More Extensive Attacks,” while an analysis from DEBKAfile explains that Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal put the kibosh on ceasefire talks.

If you’re reading this and have any ambiguity about my view on this idiotic quasi-war, see my piece “Dueling E-mails” from last week. Since then, a few different items have popped up in news reports, and I want to address four of them here.

1. According to several news reports (see Reuters, Voice of America), Cardinal Renato Martino, an aide to the Pope, called Gaza “...a big concentration camp.”

Hmmm. Martino’s description requires more nuance than he surely provided. If, by “concentration camp,” he meant a place like Auschwitz-Birkenau—where people were systematically murdered—he is clearly wrong. However one wishes to characterize Israel’s actions (e.g., stupid, cruel, inhumane, dangerous, unlikely-to-help-in-any-realistic-long-term-way), Palestinians in Gaza are not being systematically murdered as were the Jews, Roma-Sinty, homosexuals, etc., at Auschwitz.

If, on the other hand, Martino meant a concentration camp like Sachsenhausen—an internment camp, where people were deprived of basic human rights (food, medicine, freedom of movement), and where political prisoners and others did die on a smaller scale—then he is probably right.

Why am I even focusing on this? Because as much as I condemn Israel’s actions in this instance, rhetoric that is inaccurate and disproportionate to the situation is as harmful to both sides as any real military action. Accusing the Israelis of exterminating Palestinians simply is not true—however terrible the situation is and however many people have died. Such language becomes a propagandistic version of pornography, especially when attached to graphic images, and ultimately it undermines the Palestinian cause.

2. In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Natan Sharansky published an interesting opinion piece titled “How the U.N. Perpetuates the 'Refugee' Problem”; it is very much worth reading and should be free even for non-subscribers.

Towards the end, however, Sharansky’s argument collapses in two sentences: “Whether this war will bring about lasting change, or just provide another breather before the next battle, depends to a very large degree on the Free World. A successful Israeli campaign—in which Hamas is eliminated as the controlling force in Gaza—will bring an unprecedented opportunity for Western leaders to change the rules of the game when it comes to Palestinian civilians.”

The problem? Simple. No matter what Israel does, Hamas cannot be eliminated as the controlling force in Gaza, not militarily, not in any meaningful, long-term way. Hamas’ success is based on an ideology, and that ideology is bolstered by external circumstances that appear to make it’s view of the world seem real, accurate, and engaging to a specific group of people. And just like with any other ideology (e.g., neo-Nazism, or even Zionism) it cannot be eliminated through brute force. In fact, often brute force provides the compelling raison d’etre needed to sustain an ideology that might otherwise collapse.

3. To this same point: on Monday, The New York Times ran an article that quoted a Hamas leader named Mahmoud Zahar as saying “The Israeli enemy in its aggression has written its next chapter in the world, which will have no place for them. They shelled everyone in Gaza. They shelled children and hospitals and mosques, and in doing so, they gave us legitimacy to strike them in the same way.”

This idiocy—on the part of Hamas, and on the part of Israel—is an unsatisfactory repetition of eye-for-an-eye kind of justice. The only people well-served by this are those with the most outrageous ideologies.

4. Read Leonard Fein’s piece in The Forward, “‘There Is No Alternative’ Is No Answer.”

Dueling E-mails

2009-01-02T16:06:00.000-05:00

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

I recently received two e-mails, from opposite ends of the America-and-Israel universe. The first e-mail, which came through my synagogue’s mailing list, was the announcement from the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ) of a “RALLY TO SHOW SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL'S RIGHT TO SELF DEFENSE!” [Capital letters in the original.] The e-mail went on to say:

Dear Friends,

Please join with USCJ as we rally in front of the Israeli consulate tomorrow, Tuesday, December 30th, from 5 - 6:30 pm to show our support for Israel and her right to defend her citizens. The rally will be held on the east side of Second Avenue and 42nd Street (right down the street from USCJ's NYC headquarters). It is very important that we spread the word about this rally and encourage everyone to attend.

For the sake of courtesy, I will leave out the name of the rabbi at the UCSJ who “signed” the note. My synagogue, which is a member of the USCJ, sent the e-mail with the most neutral of introductions, which (depending on one’s perspective) might have been read as an endorsement or not. Even on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, there are diverse viewpoints on the wide range of subjects under the heading of “Israel.”

The second e-mail I received was through an organization called J Street, a progressive Jewish coalition, under the signature of Isaac Luria. I don’t know Mr. Luria personally, though I am starting to think I would like to. His e-mail said (in part):

When I heard the news about Gaza I got sick to stomach. More than 275 Palestinians dead. More than 100 rockets fired at Israeli civilians.

Indeed, I did get sick to my stomach, from all of this—but the UCSJ e-mail was particularly offensive, not to mention absurd and wrong-headed.

Israel has the right to defend itself. And there can be no justification for terrorism, even the kind of terrorism caused by rockets that don't kill people. But Israel's right to defend itself is not absolute, and in this case its actions are flawed by being both disproportionate to the near-term problem and a likely long-term contributor to increased Palestinian support for Hamas. In other words: it's just plain dumb.

Even more stupid, however, is the classic American Jewish communal response, as epitomized by the USCJ: pathetically rallying behind Israel, once again, come what may. If USCJ and other American Jewish organizations devoted as much time, energy, and money to pushing for peace instead of blindly rallying to “support” a right—Israel's right to self-defense—that blessedly few Americans question in the first place ... well, heaven knows what might happen.

Almost certainly something better than the current situation, because almost anything would be better than this. I am no naive peacenik. But American Jews should hang their head in shame that, given the opportunity, so many of our community prefer to “rally” to support Israel’s war (or war-like actions) than to fight for peace. We American Jews have tremendous power over Israel—what we lack is the will to exert it.

***

As I was saying, this situation makes me sick—just as I recently found myself a little nauseous while reading S. Yizhar's wonderful and sad novel Khirbet Khizeh. The story describes the forced evacuation of a Palestinian village by Israeli soldiers during Israel’s 1948 war for independence. For anyone with a knowledge of the holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis, or of the other acts of “ethnic cleansing” from Armenia to Bosnia to Rwanda to Darfur, it is impossible to read this poetic little book and not come face to face with the same kinds of issues and (particularly for Jews) a range of questions about the moral equivalencies we use to justify our actions.

People die in this book, but not in the way the above implies; there is no wholesale slaughter of villagers, no rounding-up of women and children for summary execution. The refugees from the village are trucked off to “join” their Arab compatriots, elsewhere. It doesn’t matter, because the violence and the sense of both a degraded morality and a dirtied humanity are clear. At one point, a soldier named Shlomo exclaims that he would rather be fighting—as in, waging war—than participating in this action. “When you go to a place where you might die that’s one thing, but when you go to a place where other people are liable to die and you just stand there and watch them, that’s something quite different.” (Page 102)

A few pages later and the narrator, suffering his own pangs of doubt and conscience, articulates the mythology on which we Jews still fixate, all these years later: “I felt that I was on the verge of slipping. I managed to pull myself together. My guts cried out. Colonizers, they shouted. Lies, my guts shouted. Khirbet Khizeh is not ours. The Spandau gun never gave us any rights. Oh, my guts screamed. What hadn’t they told us about refugees. Everything, everything was for the refugees, their welfare, their rescue … our refugees, naturally. Those we were driving out—that was a totally different matter. Wait. Two thousand years of exile. The whole story. Jews being killed. Europe. We were the masters now.” (Page 109)

***

The masters remain embroiled in the conflict, 61 years later. The masters of the masters—the American Jewish community that helps with both political and financial support—have the luxury of remaining embroiled and supportive from several thousand miles away. All while following a kind of McCarthy-ite approach that too often seeks to quiet out any voice that is not unfailingly pro-Israel.

Yizhar's book—fiction, but based on his Israeli war-time experiences—is revelatory of the underlying reality. It is (alas) the same reality now as then, and that can be seen in news reports from all over: for better and for worse, Jews are not exempt from the aggressive, tribalistic, and inhuman impulses that affect the rest of our species. (Though we are no worse, either.)

Mostly, that is for the worse. (Just look at the Bernie Madoff situation.) All this may mean that Jews are just as human as everyone else.

But the bottom line is this: humanity can never be an excuse for inhumanity. That seems like the crux of the problem that Jews, both in Israel and in America, face today.