2 Movies, New To Me!

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My stepdaughter lent me a copy of Three Amigos, which I first saw when it came out, back in 1986.  I remember being vaguely embarrassed by it then, but amused, as well.

My wife promptly said, before I even brought the movie home, to make sure that she wasn't around when I watched it.  I was puzzled, and I'm still puzzled, because, watching it again, I have to say that it is in fact an absolute jewel.  I have to admit, it might not have the staying power of, say, Blazing Saddles.  But the most important thing is that the writing is really good.  My wife, notwithstanding her earlier remarks, could not help slipping in to join me for the last several minutes of the movie, and observed that it had a sort of Saturday Night Live-ishness about it.  That must come purely from the personnel: the three stars, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short are all SNL alumni, and so is Producer / Writer Lorne Michaels.  But I think the movie transcends its humble origins.  In fact, if I may be permitted to question it, I do question the supposed humbleness of these origins: SNL in the 1980's was not such a terrible show.

I think one of the funniest things about it is the timing and the surprises.  Every point at which we expect a cheap joke, we are surprised, and there is usually a good joke a few seconds later.  The fake sunsets in some of the backdrops cracked me up early on, and even Steve Martin's painful humor was funny.  Chevy Chase was stunningly understated, and was fairly hilarious as a sort of ensemble player.  And, not least, Randy Newman's songs and Elmer Bernstein's score were perfect.  I wish I had the energy to pick up my own copy of this, movie.  (Santa Claus, if you're reading this, just check to see whether there is a Blue Tooth of this available, if Blue Tooth is the phrase I'm searching for?)

Cate Blanchett, Jude Law (as Errol Flynn)

My Stepdaughter also lent me a copy of The Aviator, this one with the full endorsement of her mother.  (Those two are out on a mission to educate me.)  And I must admit, Aviator is awesome, just as promised.

The movie is, as many of you must know already, the story of Howard Hughes.  It stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Alec Baldwin, and a number of other well-known actors.  The big surprise was Cate Blanchett, playing Katharine Hepburn brilliantly.  I have seldom seen a more persuasive movie, unless it was Amadeus.  I suppose I'm particularly gullible, because these movies seem to be pitched to gullible folks like me.  But I, for one, can't help feeling that I understand Howard Hughes, even if I see Leonardo Di Caprio doing things that are jarringly unconvincing.  Somehow the movie transcends the limitations of its resources, and indeed one can't see how it could have possibly been improved upon.  In places, Leonardo mutters phrases repeatedly "... the way of the future ... the way of the future ..." but you see what he's trying to do.  This is common in Theatre, of course.  You're two people, one analyzing the technique of the production, and the other completely buying the illusion, which isn't really an illusion.

Martin Scorcese is truly brilliant, and that could be a very relative statement.  I enjoy all, or certainly most, of the movies directed by him that I have seen.

Anyway, the movie was certainly educational.  I heard about the Spruce Goose way back in the seventies, and it never really made any sense to me: did it fly, or didn't it?  And why was it called the Spruce Goose?  All these matters are made clear in the movie, as are Howard Hughes's confusing life and achievements.  I encourage everyone to watch this movie; it explains an enormous number of things entertainingly and convincingly.  It is difficult to watch the depiction of Hughes's mental illness (which comes across as something in the general area of Schizophrenia, but that could be simply because Schizophrenia---complicated though it is---has a history of successful depiction in Cinema, which Scorcese could draw on.  In fact, Scorcese might have been instrumental in building up this body of cinematic depiction of the ailment).

What a wonderful world we live in, that has such things as movies and literature in it!

I was just watching a movie of Leonard Bernstein's opera Candide, based on Voltaire's eponymous novella.  Leonard Bernstein, as you must know, was a compulsive explainer, and he had to explain: "Why Candide?"  He does so briefly, at the beginning of the movie (which is a film of a concert).  "I know what you're thinking," he says, "here's the professor come to lecture us again!"

Candide was an extreme reaction to Leibnitz's philosophy of optimism, which said that anything that exists (or, anyway, anything that has survived to come down to the present) has to be good.  (I understood it as a sort of theory of philosophical Darwinism, in the sense that if it wasn't good, it couldn't last.)  But, says Bernstein, there was a huge catastrophic earthquake in Lisbon in Portugal, and Voltair ---together with most of those alive at the time--- could not reconcile this disaster with the existence of God, or with the belief that we lived in a friendly universe, and certainly not with the philosophy of Optimism.  This was not the Best of All Possible Worlds, said Voltaire, and evidently Bernstein felt impelled to second the motion.

But we have to admit, that this world is a heckuva lot better than a world without movies would be!

Arch

Some Unusual Musical Performers from the 80's and 90's

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(I’ve focused so much on politics for so long that my readers have probably forgotten that I have other interests, too!  (Remember that I called the election for Obama as far back as August, but hey, it wasn’t based on science, so much as just my hunches, and what are my hunches worth, given that we don’t even have TV?  Humph.)

Back in the Seventies, there was a character called Rick James.  I just couldn’t see what made him so special, but then there were oddball acts before him, some of which I actually liked, for instance Nino Tempo and April Stevens, which I have just this minute learned were a brother and sister act, who knew?  Jeeze. The song I loved most from them was “I can’t go on living, baby, without you,” which is, I suppose, better than a title such as “In the course of human events.”

Anyhow, Rick James had this hit called Super Freak, which would have been allowed to peacefully slip into oblivion if not for the fact that M. C. Hammer, of all people, sampled it for his mega-hit “Can’t Touch This.”  Rick James was a big, gangly fellow with horrible greased curls and an unlikely face, marginally uglier than Little Richard, who might have looked perfectly normal but for having adopted an eccentric personality and makeup. The Beatles --especially Paul McCartney-- admired Little Richard, and covered his signature song Long Tall Sally.

Still, why should popular musicians be condemned for not being attractive? Some of my best friends are as ugly as sin.

Another performer, about whom I’ve written before, is El DeBarge of the UK.  This man is quite handsome, but his voice sounds like a woman, though it has sounded a little less so over the years.  His specialty was long, slow romantic ballads such as “All this love is waiting for you,” which is a lovely thought. (Someone else’s love might have headed off to Alaska.)

Simply Red, about whom I’ve also written before, was a music group, I’m told, from Scotland, of all places.  No, scratch that: they're from Manchester.  The lead singer was a red-haired, freckled gentleman (Mick Hucknall) who was barely out of his teens in the eighties when their song “Holding back the years” (I’ll keep holding on) first hit the charts.  The videos on MTV usually showed just this singer, with perhaps various models.  (Honestly, I do not know what the members of his group might have looked like, and they might easily be in the videos.) Wikipedia has an interesting article on the band, Simply Red, and a separate article on the lead singer, Mick, as mentioned earlier, Hucknall.  We learn there that Hucknall and some others formed a band before Simply Red, called the Frantic Elevators, which released Holding Back the years (the link above is to that version), we we can clearly hear how Hucknall honed his craft over the years, so that by the time it was re-released in the Eighties, not only was the sound and the style different, his singing was a lot more controlled and mature.  Evidently, he went on to reassemble a band called the Faces, taking the place of their original lead singer, Rod Stewart, as it turns out.

Well, that’s good.  His was too good a voice to lose.

Another great singer from the Eighties --and before, as it turns out-- is Rickie Lee Jones, whose hit Chuck E’s in Love, crossed over into the pop charts. For all I know, Ms Jones is still singing, even if off the charts.

One of the most respected --even if confusing-- performers and musicians of the eighties was the one who was  famously called Prince at that time.  His movie Purple Rain was greatly celebrated at the time of its release, even if it was a little too sexually violent for some viewers of that time.  Not only was Prince a gifted performer, he was also a brilliant arranger and record producer, and produced records for a number of gifted artists of the time, one of whom was Sheila E.

The image here shows Sheila E as she was a few years ago.  The photo captures the delight she is clearly feeling, to be performing in front of an audience.  The inset shows her as she was in the late seventies and early eighties; it seems sultry, even pensive or brooding, a mood you never saw in the Sheila E performing live.

Sheila E was, first and foremost, a percussionist.  Her live appearances on TV were highly entertaining to watch, and not having my ear to the musical ground, I don’t know what happened to her once she passed from the circle of top acts in Pop, but I remember a song by her called The Glamorous Life, and that is the memory of her that persists.  Warning: the video below pretty much has to be viewed on a desktop; it probably will not come through on a mobile device!  View it at maximum resolution!


I remember her as a lovely woman, beautiful in her youth, and full of a irrepressible girlish charm.  She obviously wanted to be a big star; the song is clearly autobiographical.  An easy search will turn up a much more recent, High-Definition video clip taken recently in San Francisco.  Except for a few more pounds, the high-energy and ebullient spirits have survived the two intervening decades.  Wikipedia chronicles her progress in the years since she parted with Prince and his band.
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Education Reform looks to Successful Businessmen for Advice

[See below for a late addition to this post.]
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Mano Singham, in his blog, remarks that he recently saw a headline saying that Rupert Murdoch was speaking on Education Reform at a think tank. He remarks that Bill Gates has also been weighing in on Education Reform. There is a general trend, he observes, to look to successful businessmen for advice about “how to fix” Education.

Generally speaking, we realize that someone who is smart, and has a good understanding of complex systems, and people, and society, can have something useful to say about  education, among other things. But Murdoch?  His achievements have been very specific, and mostly to do with the aspects of society and human behavior that seem most distantly removed from children and education.  Bill Gates is probably a better choice, but Education is an endeavor that requires shepherding along enormous numbers of people and children, whereas Bill Gates's world, one imagines, involves small human forces, most of whom listen to him fairly well.  He and his wife (as Mano Singham points out) have studied the problems of education closely, and have useful ideas, possibly, about harnessing technology for education.  But Murdoch?  Perhaps we need to harness wire-tapping and sensationalism more enthusiastically for our younger people, who will be Murdoch's readers some day?

Public education is not the sort of problem that everyone imagines.  People have confused qualifications with education, and until that is resolved there is going to be a lot of frustration.  There is training : a specific preparation for a specific purpose.  There is qualification : a credential from some authority that someone has certain abilities.  Education is something far less tangible, and very little of education takes place in schools; it is something that used to happen in homes.  Education will continue to happen or not happen in homes for the foreseeable future.

Still, it is convenient to address a number of related problems under the general heading of "Education", even if different people mean different things by the word.  As it is in the US, one can agree that the popular perception is that education is not healthy.  What are the symptoms of this particular patient?

(1) The US has developed an array of measures of success of the education system, most of them based on tests administered to students at various grade-levels. On the individual level, the tests are a measure of how well the particular student is doing. But in the aggregate, the tests measure how well the students in that particular batch, or school, are doing, and ultimately, how well the education system is doing. Finally, American students are measured against students in foreign countries, and people are upset at the fact that our students do not do better.

(2) Many students, once they’re out of school, find it difficult to take jobs that are demanding. If the employer administers a test, for instance, the applicant may not measure up, and will not get hired. So in a situation where unemployment is high, employers can be choosier. They can hire truly qualified applicants, they can fire employees for even minor cases of incompetence (I don’t know whether this is really happening), and most annoyingly, they can hire based on prospective employees being recommended by friends and family; in other words, Nepotism can become a factor. At any rate, a general complaint could arise that US workers, in some areas, at least, are not suitably well educated for certain types of jobs. This can be seen as a shortcoming of the education system.

(3) At every ‘seam’ in the education system: when a batch of students progress from elementary school into middle school, for instance, the teachers have an opportunity to assess how well the incoming batch has learned the ‘basics’. This is not quite fair, since the purpose of education is not to prepare kids for more education primarily. [On second thoughts, modern education is actually all about preparing to gradually take the reins of your own education, so, indirectly about preparing for more education.] But it has to be admitted, this is certainly one method of assessing how well the previous segment of the education system has delivered the goods.

Taking into account all measures of education quality, and taking into account the fact that ultimately each locality has local control over their curriculum and instruction, there is some evidence that ---at least in some subjects--- the younger generation knows less than its predecessors, while in other areas it probably knows more.

One reason kids don’t do well is that they do not work very hard at schoolwork. One reason for that, in turn, is that students don’t care about school very much. Each family has its own culture of how it regards excellence in education, but the majority of students I can imagine tend to take their cue from their fellow-students on the less-motivated side of the median.

Another reason kids don’t do well is that education is considered as something done to the kid, rather than something that is done by the kid.

Yet another reason kids achieve less is that their teachers know that much less than their predecessors. A math teacher of the sixties, for instance, probably knew a lot more mathematics than some math teachers of today. On the other hand, all teachers of today have been pumped full of information about education psychology, and education methods, which are intended to make even the least charismatic individual into a teaching star. It appears that education psychology and education methods have their limitations, and ultimately education content raises its ugly head. (Students who have a hard time in college ---my students, significantly--- blame it on the fact that their professor(s) have little training in methods, and almost all their training in content.  This is a fact of life that has to do with maturity: the more mature one is, the less one needs one’s teacher to fuss with methods, and the more one needs to have good information. But increasingly, college students are not ready for “just the facts, Ma’am,” they need all the bells and whistles, and stickers. And games. (Sometimes I have to do Calculus Jeopardy to motivate my class. And even then, they do not do well.)

Honestly, Education is one thing in which Teamwork works well. Can a big businessman fix a problem that requires cooperation, when most of what works in Big Business is competition?  Mano Singham asks us what makes anyone think that just because Murdoch, or Gates, or Jobs made it big in business and industry qualifies them to suggest repairs to the education system.

And he suggests the answer: the big successes in the US are businesses and industries, and we have come to revere business leaders and industrialists so much that we think they can solve any problem. True, they can solve any problem that has to do with efficiency and profit. “You have to get rid of X,” they will say; “Any student in Business 101 knows that!” In the Corporate World, it seems, hanging on to X would be laughed at.

So, we cannot rely on Educationists to “fix” education. We cannot rely on Politicians to fix education, and we cannot rely on Businessmen to fix education. To whom can we turn?

[Added later:

A friend had posted on Facebook the inaugural address of the new President of Brown University, Dr Christina Paxson. She says:

I believe that much of the current criticism of higher education stems from a short-sighted misconception of its fundamental purpose and a lack of imagination about its potential. We are not in the business of producing widgets, in the form of standardized “career-ready” graduates. Instead, our aim is to invest in the long-term intellectual, creative and social capacity of human beings. If the men and women who come to Brown are to make a positive difference in the world over the course of their lives — lives that will extend well past Brown’s 300th anniversary — they need more than specific skills or the mastery of discrete bodies of knowledge. Yes, I hope that our students get jobs shortly after completing their educations, and we do all we can to make that happen. But if our students are to be prepared for “lives of reputation and usefulness” in the 21st century, they must leave here with something much more nuanced but ultimately more valuable than the skills of a particular trade. Their ability to effect change will depend on the capacity to think analytically and creatively, to consider social problems from a diverse array of perspectives, and to understand how to navigate in an increasingly global and technologically driven world. And that is our role — to impart not just the curriculum of a particular course, but the underlying frame of intellectual curiosity, integrity and imaginative thought.

This tension, between immediate utility, on one hand, and the long-run benefit to society, on the other, also runs through discussions about the value of research. Again, these concerns are not new. In 1939, the same year that Wriston was defending liberal arts education, Abraham Flexner, the founding director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, published an essay in Harpers titled “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge.” In it, he made the case that the most significant discoveries — those that were ultimately of the highest value to society — were made by “men and women who were driven not by the desire to be useful but merely the desire to satisfy their curiosity.”

People do not become presidents of universities for nothing; this sort of eloquence does not come cheaply.  She has captured the sense of things I have been struggling to say over several years.

When most people talk about the problems with education, though, they are not talking about the sort of education Ms Paxson is.  They are talking about the education that makes a student useful.

I have just finished grading a test for students in my lowest-level class. Some of them were unable to multiply 13 times 13.  Some of them were unable to add fractions.  On top of teaching them Trigonometry and such things, I must now teach them how to add fractions.

Does life in the 21st century require a student to be able to add two fractions, given that they have calculators?  Most of us will affirm this strongly, so long as it isn't we who have to learn to add fractions. A lot of things are being relegated to the area of things other people have to learn to do (on my behalf!).  Nobody wants to learn to replace a doorknob, to take out the garbage, to feed the dog, to wash the dishes, to vacuum the floor; what people aspire to, most of all, is to escape drudgery.  And education is beginning to be viewed --by students-- as drudgery, rather than a gateway to knowledge, or discovery, or whatever.  Not by every single student, mind you; but enough of them to make a teacher’s job increasingly distasteful.

In the nineties, briefly, there was a desperate hope that young people in the Third World would subject themselves to the drudgery of education, while we employed them.  But labor costs are going up, and rightly so.  And so is unemployment, and it looks very much as if we're going to have to do our own work in the very near future, and some of us need to find work, to earn a living.  Maybe we never expected work to actually be work, but that's what it looks like.  We're going to have to get our kids to really learn stuff, and then they're going to have to go out and really work.  Bummer.
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[To be continued.]


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Four More Years of (mostly) Sanity

Barack Obama won a second term last night---it was after 11:00 EST when the network we were watching, NBC, called the election for the President---and all around us at the local Obama campaign headquarters, people were going crazy with delight, not least of them our own Obama Fellow, and some friends who had come to campaign all the way from upstate New York.  [*Footnote: this post is a day late getting out :)]  She (our Obama Fellow) was justly pleased that the Senate Democrats had picked up a few new members, most celebrated among which was Elizabeth Warren, whom the Democrats considered to have inherited the seat of Ted Kennedy.

It was a moment of mixed pleasure for me.  I have come to deplore the fact that this victory had come at such cost in personal relationships and neighborhood unity.  People on both sides have come to take the struggle very personally---I know I have---and are resentful towards former friends and acquaintances whose politics seem to have favored the other party, or parties.

Most amazingly, we seem to have re-elected a Democrat President, but have been content to also re-elect a Congress which is just as heavily Republican as it was.  Do people want progress or don’t they?  Do people want the deficit reduced or do they not?  Do they believe in this fairy-tale of deficit reduction AND tax cuts?  Most of my friends and acquaintances are of the same economic class as my wife and I: these are not millionaires.  But the conservatives among them seem to believe that their taxes, under Obama, will go up significantly, but would not have under Romney.  If Romney were to have been elected President, how would he have reduced the deficit without raising taxes?  Would he have rented out the White House to Donald Trump, and reduced the deficit with the rent money?

I am even more depressed for yet other reasons.  Looking at the states that were announced through the night for one candidate and for another, an unfortunately clear picture emerged: diverse counties and districts voted for Obama; all-white, middle-class suburbs voted for Romney.  University towns with a diverse student population voted for Obama, rural districts with few or no immigrants or Americans of foreign descent voted for Romney.  Districts with many employed women, or women seeking employment voted for Obama; districts with home-makers dominated by their spouses voted for Romney.  This election reflects the fear of Middle America for the increasing non-whiteness of the nation.  People who have met, and come to know foreigners vote one way, those who prefer to view foreigners from across the street or through thick windows, or only on television, vote another.  An exception is conservative, middle-class Hispanics, who have bought into the paranoia of fiscal conservatives, and are embarrassed by their undocumented former compatriots, probably vote the GOP ticket.

Barack Obama, in his victory speech, quite clearly underscored some of the issues.

“Tonight, in this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back, and we know in our hearts that for the United States of America the best is yet to come.”

Read: we are not working for today alone, but building for the future.

“Sasha and Malia, before our very eyes you’re growing up to become two strong, smart beautiful young women, just like your mom.  And I’m so proud of you guys. But I will say that for now, one dog’s probably enough!”

Read: we must set an example of restraint, rather than conspicuous self-indulgence.  I have forgotten that praising little girls for their looks is not considered a good strategy, but fathers tend to forget that in their excitement sometimes.

“To the best campaign team and volunteers in the history of politics...The best. The best ever. Some of you were new this time around, and some of you have been at my side since the very beginning.  But all of you are family. No matter what you do or where you go from here, you will carry the memory of the history we made together and you will have the life-long appreciation of a grateful president. Thank you for believing all the way, through every hill, through every valley.”

Read: Politics has evolved into a massive team effort.  Remember that this is just the beginning of the job, not the end.

“I know that political campaigns can sometimes seem small, even silly. And that provides plenty of fodder for the cynics that tell us that politics is nothing more than a contest of egos or the domain of special interests. But if you ever get the chance to talk to folks who turned out at our rallies and crowded along a rope line in a high school gym, or saw folks working late in a campaign office in some tiny county far away from home, you’ll discover something else.

[Paraphrased: There are many wonderful people who fought for me, who deserve much better.]

“That’s why we do this. That’s what politics can be. That’s why elections matter. It’s not small, it’s big. It’s important. Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated. We have our own opinions. Each of us has deeply held beliefs. And when we go through tough times, when we make big decisions as a country, it necessarily stirs passions, stirs up controversy. …

“But despite all our differences, most of us share certain hopes for America’s future. We want our kids to grow up in a country [with good schools and teachers, a leader in technology and discovery and innovation, with all the good jobs and new businesses that follow.  … We want our children to live in an America that isn’t burdened by debt, that isn’t weakened by inequality, that isn’t threatened by … a warming planet.  We want to pass on a country that’s safe and respected and admired around the world, a nation that is defended by the strongest military on earth. …

“But also a country that moves with confidence beyond this time of war, to shape a peace that is built on the promise of freedom and dignity for every human being. We believe in a generous America, in a compassionate America, in a tolerant America, open to the dreams of an immigrant’s daughter who studies in our schools and pledges to our flag.”

Read: My picture of America is a bigger one than the GOP envisages.  It will be admired for more things than just its economic power and military might.  It has to have room for immigrants and their dreams, and big ideas that flow from knowledge and education.

“Tonight you voted for action, not politics as usual.  You elected us to focus on your jobs, not ours.  And in the coming weeks and months, I am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of both parties to meet the challenges we can only solve together.  Reducing our deficit.  Reforming our tax code.  Fixing our immigration system.  Freeing ourselves from foreign oil.  We’ve got more work to do.”

Read: I’m impatient with self-serving Congressmen who are more concerned with being re-elected and enjoying being in Congress than with making the US a better place for their constituents.  This is a big point: Obama is declaring that he did not seek office to make Democrats happier, but the people happier, and the USA a better place.  Romney, in contrast, is open to the accusation that he was running for office to keep Big Business in the style to which it was accustomed at the cost of the people.  And the voters saw  through this.

“But that doesn’t mean your work is done. The role of citizens in our Democracy does not end with your vote. America’s never been about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us together through the hard and frustrating, but necessary work of self-government. That’s the principle we were founded on.”

Read: Without pressure from the electorate, nothing is going to be accomplished for the next four years.  

Mitch McConnell, the minority leader in the Senate, announced that it was time for the President to stop playing games, and offer legislation that the Republicans can stand behind.

Read: McConnell sees his job as showing up the President as a do-nothing Democrat who promises but can’t deliver.  He thinks this is what is best for the Republican Party.  McConnell is representing the GOP.  Obama is representing the nation as a whole.  McConnell has stated repeatedly that he sees his primary duty as overseeing the voting out of Obama.  McConnell has failed both the GOP and all his constituents.  He has to be eased out, and fresh leadership given the Republican minority in the Senate.  Obstructing an Obama re-election is no longer a priority; with a Democrat President and a Democrat Senate, being obstructionist will become increasingly transparent over the next several months.

Obama: “This country has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our diversity, our culture are all the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

“What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth.

“The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what makes America great.

“I am hopeful tonight because I’ve seen the spirit at work in America. I’ve seen it in the family business whose owners would rather cut their own pay than lay off their neighbors, and in the workers who would rather cut back their hours than see a friend lose a job.

“I’ve seen it in the soldiers who reenlist after losing a limb and in those SEALs who charged up the stairs into darkness and danger because they knew there was a buddy behind them watching their back.  I’ve seen it on the shores of New Jersey and New York, where leaders from every party and level of government have swept aside their differences to help a community rebuild from the wreckage of a terrible storm.  And I saw just the other day, in Mentor, Ohio, where a father told the story of his 8-year-old daughter, whose long battle with leukemia nearly cost their family everything had it not been for health care reform passing just a few months before the insurance company was about to stop paying for her care.  I had an opportunity to not just talk to the father, but meet this incredible daughter of his. And when he spoke to the crowd listening to that father’s story, every parent in that room had tears in their eyes, because we knew that little girl could be our own.

“And I know that every American wants her future to be just as bright. That’s who we are. That’s the country I’m so proud to lead as your president.  And tonight, despite all the hardship we’ve been through, despite all the frustrations of Washington, I’ve never been more hopeful about our future.  I have never been more hopeful about America. And I ask you to sustain that hope. I’m not talking about blind optimism, the kind of hope that just ignores the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. I’m not talking about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk from a fight.

“I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.

“America, I believe we can build on the progress we’ve made and continue to fight for new jobs and new opportunity and new security for the middle class. I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you’re willing to work hard, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you’re willing to try.  

“I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We’re not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America.  And together with your help and God’s grace we will continue our journey forward and remind the world just why it is that we live in the greatest nation on Earth.

“Thank you, America. God bless you. God bless these United States.”

Last-Minute Canvassing

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Well, I finally consented to go canvassing with my wife.  Today, we were just going to registered Democrats who had indicated that they were supporters of Obama, to remind them to vote, and to let them know where their polling station was.  We found only a few of them at home, but those few greeted us with smiles, and told us that they were certainly going to vote, knew all about their polling places.  Some of them had already voted, and wished us a good day.

What do you think of that?  My wife had already had a day of doing the same, and was too tired to keep going for the afternoon as well, and so we came home to a delighted dog who declared she had missed us, and was glad to have us back.  She then proceeded to race up and down the backyard, barking at squirrels, both real and imaginary.

Talking about imaginary squirrels, one of the Democrats on whose door we knocked, having assured us that he was certainly going to vote, proceeded to share with us that the other candidate for President, Romney, belonged to a sect that allowed polygamy, and believed all sorts of things that weren't true.  My wife and I looked at each other with alarm; we were not fully prepared for a theological discussion, of all things.  After all, neither of us believe in the fanciful dogmas of Christians, either.  But I wasn't going so far as to accuse Romney of being a polygamist.  It is just such unfortunate myth-mongering that sets all of us back.  It was far more to the point that Romney was all about curtailing social service programs, cutting back on spending for the Arts, on education, on so many of the things my wife and I personally find positive and conducive to a better life: State Parks, limits on pollution by power companies, Head Start, and so on.  Romney's polygamy has no really important implications for national policy.

The previous day, my wife had been accosted by a man who was persuaded that in four more years, if Obama were to remain in power, all the women would be wearing veils, and this would be a Muslim country.

It saddens me that the less educated elements of Pennsylvania society, on both sides of this election, are so ignorant.  In some ways, perhaps ignorance has become more entrenched over the last half century or so.  Television has come up with new and creative ways of enhancing ignorance; I cannot explain the phenomenon otherwise.  The lies one encounters in advertising claims on new products are another source of ignorance.  That's called Marketing.  There's lies, there's damned lies, and there's Marketing.

Nevertheless, it is good to see smiles when we go canvassing.  It was a good decision, as far as I am concerned, to restrict our visits to the homes of those who have informed the campaign that they were Obama supporters, just to remind them.  There are documented instances of people who have forgotten to vote on election day.  There are lots of things wrong with the world in which we live, but being able to vote is one of the not-so-wrong things.

After the election of 1968, the highest voter turnout was in 2008 relative to the population eligible to vote.  A lot of people wanted to keep John McCain and Sara Palin out of the White House, and Barack Obama in.  It will be interesting to see the voter percentage this election, whichever outcome.  If the voter turnout is higher, and the Democrats win, it will be a terrific endorsement.  If it is lower, and the Democrats win, what does it mean?  That the Democrats were somewhat complacent, and the Republicans were too divided to agree on their man.  Similar inferences could be made if the Republicans win, depending on whether the voter turnout is higher than in 2008 or lower.

At any rate, if I do not post anything between now and Election Day, here's wishing you a good election, and hoping that you vote!
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Are we all equally to blame for the "Political Civil War"?

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The Fan Page of an author whose books I have just begun reading has a post from the author herself ---or at least it appears to be her post.  The post quotes a radio program ---This American Life-- that assessed how those of our friends who are a lot less political-minded than we are are regarding the fact that personal relationships are being strained by the politics.

"Ira Glass" it begins, "rides around with a man in the man's hometown...a man who doesn't want us to say his name on the radio. Why? Because he's secretly a Democrat, in a small town dominated by Republicans."  That sort of encapsulates the sort of thing that is happening around us: people afraid to talk politics, or disclose their affiliations for fear of cooling a relationship, or fear of ridicule.

A year or two ago I would not have thought twice about telling my students where I stood, politically, though I made it quite clear that I did not expect them to side with me, nor that they should expect me to regard them with particular favor if they did.

My wife just reported that a friend of hers on Facebook just re-posted a remark from someone that said something on the lines of "Democrats know where you live, and are going to come for you!"  She did not post this as a joke; it was a warning to fellow-Republicans.  Now, that is sad.  I had no idea that things had come to such a pass.

This American Life, it appears, blames both sides equally for this situation.  But are we vilifying the Republicans?  I don't think we are.  I think liberals are furious at the opposition for mis-characterizing Obama's attempt at progressive Health Care Legislation as something that is "leading America down the Wrong Road."  Of course liberals, who love America just as much as conservatives do, are indignant at being portrayed as anti-patriotic.  Who wouldn't be?

But do the Republicans really consider liberals as some horribly non-patriotic, un-American fringe elements of civil society, or is it just election rhetoric?  Will they tell us that it was just politics, and we're all good friends again after the election, or will they just pretend that it was that way, while they really hate our guts for being liberal?

As for me, I understand the various positions conservatives take.  I do not agree with them, but I understand them.  They say:
(a) Government spends too much money.  (We have to agree to disagree on which government programs are worth spending money on.)
(b) Women should not be allowed to have abortions, and in any case, the Government should not pay for them.  (I agree that women should not be encouraged to get pregnant casually, but we can't be setting ourselves up as judges of each individual case of pregnancy.)
(c) Social Welfare programs should be phased out, and eliminated entirely.  (I simply disagree.)
(d) Government should not get into the business of Health Care; it should be left to private insurers.  (I completely disagree.  Health care should not even be the responsibility of employers, and businesses.  Health care and business should have far less to do with each other than Health Care and Government.)
(e) The Government should not subsidize student loans.  (That's what they really think, though Romney has started to say that his administration will expand Pell grants.)
(f) Evolution should be taught side by side with Creationism as a competing theory.  (Nonsense.  I have many friends who will not come out against Creationism; they probably secretly believe in it, and hope that Scientists will find some sort of compromise that won't completely embarrass the Creationists.)
(g) People should be allowed to have any guns they want.  (Actually many conservatives would prefer gun control, but they let it pass, since their conservative friends are gun freaks.  And some of them think it might be good to have guns, just in case some illegal immigrant attacks the house.)
(h) The Mexican border should be closed up once and for all, and it should be made almost impossible for a Mexican to become a US citizen.  Furthermore, they should stop letting children born in this country automatically become citizens.  (This is a complex issue, and I'm not going to give it a flip response; I'm probably further to the left on this one than most of my readers, and I don't want to risk getting lynched.)
(i) Foreign policy should be more aggressively pursued, we must be more harsh with our perceived enemies, and more friendly towards our traditional friends.  We must be really rough with China about all the terrible things they do, e.g. currency manipulation.  (This is a lot easier to say than to do.  Our information about which countries are "friendly" is severely limited, and the pursuit of better information will actually jeopardize some of our international relationships.  The majority of moderate Republicans out there will probably be appalled at the 'rules' their leadership is willing to play by, and I fear that it is the same with the Democrats.)
(j) The environment, including Global Warming is a red herring.  We should do whatever is necessary to encourage business and improve the economy, without regard to its environmental impact.  The State Lands should mostly be given over to private companies to exploit, which will solve the employment problem once and for all.  (This is a matter of judgment.  Exploiting natural resources is how the USA became this wealthy this fast.  But it has increased the expectation among Americans about the standard of living that can be enjoyed.  It is all about Rate.  Fast exploitation: good standard of living, but rapid depletion of resources.  Slow exploitation: low standard of living, almost no depletion of resources.  You do the math.  Some hucksters promise that we can have it all.  This is why we call them hucksters.)
(k) The country should be run by Christians, for Christians, against all others.  Christian prayers and reading of scriptures should be allowed anywhere, any time; separation of church and state is only about subsidizing the churches.  (No; separation should be complete.)
(l) Most of all, taxes should be drastically reduced.  We should be allowed to enjoy a lot more of what we earn.  (This is a matter of moderation and balance.  We must provide social services to the poor, and we must pay for them out of taxes.  To the extent possible, we must seek to cut out waste, but it has to be done deliberately and carefully.  There is no doubt that there are offices in Washington that spend a lot of bucks, but from where we get very little bang.  But enormous Tax Cuts must not be promised as an election ploy.)
(m) The Deficit must be reduced.  (I'm all for it, provided we don't try to do it at the same time as we cut taxes.  Reduce the deficit first by cutting spending, then, once the deficit is reduced, the taxes can be cut.  The Republicans have this belief that cutting taxes on the very rich ---right away--- will result in more tax revenue, because the very rich will go out and make factories and hire lots of unemployed, who will in turn pay lots of taxes.  It is a lovely thought, sort of like the Tooth Fairy.  Statistics show that the opposite happens, because the very rich are notoriously tight-fisted, and are much more likely to invest in a company in China.  That will result in a lot of tax revenue, but for the Chinese.)

I don't want to make a big issue out of this, but it is not the Democrats who regard the conservatives as the enemy.  It is true that most of us truly believe in the positions we take, whereas conservatives adopt their positions for political reasons, and so might be less emotionally tied to them, and feel the need a lot less to stand behind them, at the risk of losing friends.  (Gosh, that's not how I see them, somehow.)  But it is painful to be accused of being unpatriotic and un-American, and that's not something we accuse conservatives of.  (Possibly because traditionally to be American stood for some pretty terrible things that we don't like to do anymore, such as murder Native Americans, etc.  So, obviously we don't accuse the NRA of being un-American.  We call them other sorts of names that are, frankly, a lot less hurtful.  One hopes.

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Last Minute Worrying

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It might be a little too early to get complacent, but at least one source suggests that a Romney victory in 2012 can happen only if Democrats are too lazy to vote, which they notoriously are.

A site called Norwig.com has an FAQ that will be dangerously comforting to most Democrats, but ideally no one will be comforted to the point where they decide to actually skip voting.  It appears that, if we go on the odds placed by betting parlors or websites, that Obama is tipped to win at a probability of about 67%.  I don't understand the details, but go look at it.

So don't get nervous, but don't relax and go into a deep slumber that lasts past Tuesday.  Unless there is a decisive Democrat majority, sufficiently large as to make Congress think twice about enacting legislation that will be seen as repugnant to the majority, congress will be a place where everything comes to a standstill, or goes horribly wrong.  (From our point of view.)  Recall the dog-days of the Clinton presidency, when congress felt confident enough to create a circus of threats of impeachment and so forth.  (Despite all that, Clinton left the country in excellent shape, and the Republicans had to get out an unbelievable propaganda machine to portray the state of the nation as being negative.  They succeeded, mainly because of a large number of scandals, some of them fabricated by the GOP.)

At any rate, if I haven't told you already, we have an Obama Fellow rooming with us the past couple of months, a wonderful young woman from New York.  Obama fellows are unpaid, full-time volunteers who will continue working for the campaign until just past the election.  One day I happened to see her at the dining table (long after we had finished supper) looking into the sort of fine analysis that goes on in political think-tanks: what will the strategy be, post-election, if Obama wins, and yakkity yakkity yak.  (Political junkies who watch MSNBC probably do this kind of thing all the time.  Look at Norwig for a taste of this.  All pseudo-science and numbers that would make better sense to a bookie.)

Though I think "our" Obama fellow is a wonderful fellow indeed, I must say that the Science of Political Science has been a scar on the landscape.  It has succeeded in divorcing political activity from practical life, and moved it into the area adjacent to Marketing and Advertising.  It is the Madison Avenue-ization of politics, which has now emerged from out of smoky little basement offices and into the Penthouse Suites of Washington Beltway.  It is a shame.

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Last Minute Canvassing -- Republican Bullying on the Net

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Everywhere I looked a few minutes ago on YouTube, there was an Ad saying we can't afford another four years of Obama, with so many millions added to our debt, so many millions out of work, etc, etc.

The big weapon of the Republicans appears to be their ability to flood the media with negative advertisements.  It is very tempting for [the Democrats to  respond with] counter-ads that adopt the same negative tone as these Republican lies, but I fervently wish the liberals would continue to resist fighting fire with what they feel is fire.  I think a calm, informative, firm message that simply says that the advertisements are not true should work better.  I do not believe that it is worth doing anything, no matter how extreme, to win this election.  If we steal this election despite what most citizens want, we will pay for it with another four years of bitching from the 1%, and "Yeah, what he said," from the pea-brained proletariat.

There is no point to putting Obama in the White House surrounded by a Senate full of foot-dragging conservatives, and a Congress full of activist Tea Partyers and a handful of fearful moderate pseudo-Democrats who are afraid to leave the Capitol after dark for fear of being a target of a wet teabag.  Obama alone cannot do anything; he can only keep Romney from destroying the nation for four more years.  If the people want destruction, that's what they should get.

Of course, we must vote, and there is no point in capitulating until it is clear that the vast majority of voters want a conservative leadership in Washington.  But the conservatives, however vociferous, are (as far as we can tell) in the minority.  We can only hope that the so-called fabulous sector of Still Undecided Voters is not so gullible as to be unable to see through the enormous volume of Republican disinformation that is flooding the media.

The Democrat activists are yelling for more money to combat the Republican noise.  I wish they would use whatever money they have wisely, and not focus on a counter-noise campaign with just more noise.

[Added later:

The local Codes Officer  of the area in which the aforementioned Democrat state representative was accused of having sub-standard rental properties came forward with a video clip addressing the issue.  It had come to his attention, he said in the clip, that Republican Candidate X's office has been distributing handbills accusing state representative Y of being a slum landlord.  The information in the handbill is false, he continued in a calm and reasonable voice, in fact two of the properties are not owned by Representative Y, and there are errors in the other data as well.  In fact Representative Y is a good landlord, and there are no complaints against him.

Oh, I was never so proud!  The whole clip was less than a minute long, and had the facts, and nothing but the facts, and not even an implied criticism of the overeager Candidate X, or of his staff.  If I were an undecided voter, I would have been impressed.  But if these undecided voters had been me, they would already have been impressed, and been a lot less undecided.]

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