On a Last Word internet exclusive, Michael Moore makes a plea to the police officers of New York to join the Occupy Wall Street protests. Absolutely. He is right about this and I hope that some answer his plea. I have nothing particularly against the police. They are working stiffs just like the rest of us 99%. But then Moore said something that really bugged me. Actually, he said two things that really bugged me. Both fall under the same category: people very often defend the police (sometimes to justify their misbehavior) because of their supposed dangerous jobs and their low pay. Ha!

Did you catch the one about danger? “You have the most dangerous job in the country.” Sorry. Not even close. I am so tired of hearing this lie. Here is a list of the ten most dangerous jobs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the year 2009 (the numbers represent the number of deaths per 100,000):

1. Fishing: 116
2. Logging: 91.9
3. Aircraft engineering: 70.6
4. Farming: 41.4
5. Mining machinery: 38.7
6. Roofing: 32.4
7. Refuse collection: 29.8
8. Driving: 21.8
9. Industrial machinery: 20.3
10. Policing: 18.0

What most strikes me here is that taxi drivers are at number 8 (along with truck drivers). Unlike most of the other workers on this list, taxi driving is not much more than a minimum wage job. This relates to the thing Moore said about the police salaries, “You aren’t paid enough.” Nationwide, police officer recruits are paid $51,000 according to Indeed. This does not include overtime. And it does not include the excellent benefits that the police get. Perhaps most important of all: police salaries go up with time; this is the average starting salary. For example, sergeants are paid $71,000. (They all make a lot more where I live in expensive California.) Police officers commonly make two to ten times what a taxi driver makes and they have less dangerous jobs.

Police officers can and should be part of Occupy Wall Street. But can we please stop whining about how hard they have it? We all (all 99% of us) have it hard.

My father just related something he had heard on the Rush Limbaugh radio show. There was an interview with a fourth grader who stated that he wanted to be President of the United States when he grew up. When asked, the boy said that if he were President, he would take money away from the rich people because they are greedy. This struck me as fairly typical, simplistic moral thinking for a young child. Thus, it just isn’t very interesting. But why did Limbaugh put it on his show? Clearly, it was to show how oppressed the rich are.

Everyone has his cross to bear, and I understand that the rich have their problems and deserve their fair share of our sympathy. However, of all of the people on earth who need sympathy, the rich are hardly at the top of the list. Conservative estimates indicate that five million people starve to death every year. Almost one billion are malnourished. By and large, the only things these people have ever done wrong is to be born in the wrong place.

I have little doubt that some of the rich feel bad that fourth graders over-generalize in stating that all of the rich are greedy when it is merely most. But I’ll save my greatest concern for starving masses. Anyway, with Limbaugh out there publicizing the plight of oppressed rich, my sympathy is hardly necessary.

My dreams are usually very boring, even to me. Some are so mundane, I can’t remember if I had a conversation with my husband or just dreamt it. That’s not to say that I am incapable of having dreams that would raise Freud’s eyebrows; there are some dark, twisted, one might even say fucked up, bits of weird burrowed in the recesses of my psyche. Some of my sleep-shows have even included famous guest appearances by luminaries such as Michael J. Fox, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, John Krasinksi, and Michelle Obama, to mention only a few (I wish I were joking). Most only show up once, although, according to my official biographer, F.M. Moraes, I’ve dreamt about John Krasinksi before, I just don’t remember it. Obviously it wasn’t worth remembering, much like everything I did yesterday.

I know the thought of having celebrities and dignitaries waltzing through ones dreams sounds glamorous, but it isn’t. They’re just ordinary imaginary figures like you and me. My first celebrity guest was Michael J. Fox. This was many years ago, when his show Family Ties was on the air, and I was an impressionable, lonely young girl. You can imagine the thrill and romance of being near Michael J. Fox! It was as if we’d known each other for years as we discussed the sad state of the California school system (totally true). I must have bored him as he hasn’t been back since. A more recent vision was more inspiring: I watched helplessly (I’m the same person asleep or awake) as Michelle Obama, surrounded by burning buildings, led a group of young children to safety (also totally true). In hindsight, I probably should have written about these encounters as they happened (as my memory is virtually useless)–add some photos and forged autographs and I could publish a nice coffee table book.

Unfortunately, there is one celebrity who has disturbed my sleep and wandered through the back roads of my mind, with whom I have an issue. Who the hell does Stephen Colbert, alter ego of some guy of the same name (different pronunciation), think he is?[1] Swaggering into my dreams, trying to seduce me—perhaps the other way around. It doesn’t matter. Either way, I can say this with the authority of aroused personal experience: Stephen Colbert is an invader of dreams.

Portrait by Todd Lockwood.

As a result of this stealthy infiltration into my vulnerable subconscious by a man of virile intelligence, armed with a laser wit that could have taken out Bin Laden ten years ago, and the dark, fathomless eyes of the Galadhrim, I must say I’m smitten. No. I’ll admit it. The truth is, in spite of his inexplicable alliance with the Catholic church, and rumors that his doppelgänger has a wife and three children, I would so do him. (Well, as long as no one was filming us and my husband wouldn’t divorce me.) For a self-proclaimed word-o-phile and amateur pedant, his wordplay is freaking foreplay! He might even appreciate some of my endearing attempts at twisting words into new, sexy playthings: “Elk and their ilk, never wear silk” or “I was taught naught but to tie a taut knot.”

Now, most of the time I’m not a fool or deluded and now is one of those times. I know exactly what would happen if I actually met Stephen (“May I call you Stephen?”)…. If I actually met Mr. Colbert, it would be magical. Meeting Tina Fey, for example, would not. She would say, “So you think you’re pretty funny huh? Tell me a joke.” Then, the only joke I can ever remember–a joke so offensive that I’ve only told it to three people whom I trust implicitly–THAT joke would pop into my head, causing the entire apparatus to come to a grinding halt. My brain would become one of those stupid fainting goats, and as I mentally play dead, Tina would sneer and say, “Take her away. She bores us.”

But it would be different with Stephen. I would be prepared! Obviously I’d need a new wardrobe, something that says, “Under this mannish, right-wing suit is something that would make Eliot Spitzer’s spitzer stand at attention.” I would also need new, longer hair: blonde and straight or brown and straight? I wish I had a gay friend to help with this… Oh, and I’d have my teeth whitened; veneered if I have time. I want a smile that’s ready for a sexy, head tossed back, I-live-life-to-the-fullest-and-I’m-up-for-anything burst of laughter. (I don’t want a grin that says, “We don’t hold with all that socialist dentistry bullshit.”) I’d also have to get a mani-pedi, waxing everywhere (even if it requires general anaesthesia), and a facial. Fortunately, Mr. Colbert doesn’t see race or color—no worries there! (Unless someone can be too white… what if I’m actually invisible?!) To seal the deal there would be a make-up squad, lighting specialists, and Spanx. We’re talking a lot of prep here, but Stephen deserves it.

After everything is in place (in and out of the Spanx), I would be introduced to the man with the sexiest brain on the planet (no offense to Stephen Hawking’s brain, but mine would shrivel up and die from the exertion of attempting to follow everything he knows about. Plus, I really like a guy who can make me laugh and the inevitable death of the universe is not amusing.) So there I’d be, looking as lovely as our technologically advanced beauty enhancers could manage, gazing into the eyes of a being who can, with the speed of a striking cobra, verbally eviscerate the unworthy. Stephen would take my hand, and say, “Tell me a joke.” At which point I would faint.

Maybe then he’ll stop toying with my emotions while I’m sleeping.

[1] In real life, Stephen Colbert pronounces his last name as it is spelled: cole-burt.

I was at the Sonoma County Fair today. In the main pavilion, was a booth for the Sonoma County Republican Party. They had a prominent sign that consisted for the acronym RINO inside a circle with a line through it: No “Republicans In Name Only.” This was shocking. One expects the teabaggers to promote such ideas, but not the Republican Party itself. The party has always maintained that it was a “big tent.” There was, the argument goes, great diversity in the Republican Party. But no more. That isn’t a surprise but the fact that the party would explicitly endorse it is.

The same party has a bumper sticker design contest going on. And the winner gets an American flag: a fitting nationalistic prize from a nationalistic political party. On seeing the announcement, my mind instantly came up with the perfect slogan for the modern Republican Party:

Bumper sticker designed and rendered by Andrea L. English.

I had hoped that the last year and the one coming up would have been enough fucking for the American voting population. But alas, I fear I am wrong and we will be in for two to four more years, until our collective anus has been so brutalized and we have lost so much blood that we are barely alive. Then, perhaps, tens of millions of Americans will stop voting against their best interests. And maybe by then, the Democratic Party will offer more than the wringing of hands and the assurance that they aren’t as bad as the Republicans.

Until then, if you hate America and what it has stood for as long as I’ve been alive—if you really want to fuck America with all the violence that the word implies—then your path is clear. Fuck America: Vote Republican.

Today, on his blog, Paul Krugman wrote:

When I first read this, I thought he meant to write, “quell surprise,” as an ironic, “Stop the surprise!” But this was not what he meant. The first thing I did was to see if there was some kind of strange spelling for “quell,” given that my spelling is at best poor. There was not. This lead me to think that “quelle” was a foreign word, and it is, but that isn’t the whole story. It would have been quite easy if Krugman had just typeset the sentence properly:

The italics make all the difference in the world. They alert the reader to the fact that the words are foreign. “Quelle surprise” is French for, “What a surprise!” It also sounds nothing like “quell surprise,” and sounds more like, “queue sue preez.”

In general, it is not a good idea to use foreign phrases in English writing—especially when they look to the ignorant like a reasonable English equivalent. But if one is to use them, they must be highlighted as such, and this normally means italics.

The only blog I read every day is Paul Krugman’s Conscious of a Liberal. I like reading it because I learn a great deal about economics, and that is one area that I know very little about. (I also read Dean Baker over at Talking Post Memo and Brad DeLong’s GRASPING REALITY WITH BOTH HANDS.) I’m a very smart guy, but these men make me feel like a mouse whose greatest intellectual pursuit is getting on a wheel and running nowhere for ten minutes. Nevertheless. Krugman especially can’t seem to get his head around why we are dealing with our current depression (I refuse to call it the “great recession” or the “little depression”) the same way (or worse) than we did the Great Depression.[1] The me, the answer is obvious. Although there are a few elements to it, one overshadows the others.

A depression is great time to be rich. Houses, cars, clothes, jewelry, even books are cheap. This would be enough for Krugman’s Very Serious People to want to prolong the depression. Even better, one doesn’t feel rich because he has a great house and car; he feels rich because he has a greater house and car than his neighbors. There is no incentive for the rich to improve the economy. But how can the rich maintain this excellent state of affairs?

The world’s rich are creditors—to one extent or another. The last thing they want is for any inflation because that would mean that the value of the debt owed to them would decrease. It doesn’t matter that an economic recovery would no doubt increase their bottom line, even if their debt holdings are worth less. These are very short-sighted people, but they understand that wealth is a relative concept and it only matters how much money one has relative to others; the absolute amount of money is irrelevant. Inflation would shrink the gap between rich and poor and thus make the rich feel less rich—even if they had more money in real terms. It is well documented that the rich tend to do better under Democratic administrations—but again, this is in real terms, not relative terms.

America is only a nominal democracy. The 2010 election was not a mandate—conservatives won because liberals did not vote. The rich know this; this can see this with the obnoxious repetitions of Republicans (e.g. Mitch McConnell) claiming that the 2010 election meant that people did not want taxes raised, even though the people do indeed want taxes raised—even if only on the wealth. The rich are powerful to the extent that they can limit who votes, just as Jim Crow-era southern whites maintained power despite often overwhelming black majorities. If the United States had a law requiring all eligible voters to vote, we would have a very different government and country. If that were the case, the rich would still be powerful, but we would be able to pass laws that would improve our economy and the lives of those who are suffering the most.

It is no surprise that the Very Serious People don’t make any economic sense and are immune to facts that show how to fix the economy. These people are serious—serious about protecting their relative economic interests. Debtors do not run central bands, hold high elected office, and comment on TV news shows. We are living through 1934 again, the very year Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” He got one thing wrong though, he should have said, “relative salary.” It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his continued economic dominance depends upon his not understanding it!

[1] To be fair, Krugman does talk about these issues. However, he seems constantly surprised that the powerful act as they do. There is nothing in this article that hasn’t appeared at sometime on his blog—often many times.

Today I rented a car so that my family could at long last scatter the ashes of my beloved mother—a woman who blessed me with many great virtues and vices like my love for reading and learning, and my contrarian nature (I owe my father much debt in these areas too). As always when I rent a car, I take the opportunity to listen to the best NPR radio station in the United States: FM 88.5/88.3 KQED. Luck was with me, because I got to hear Nina Totenberg discussing a Supreme Court decision. No one comes close to her reporting on the high court—or any court: she understands the issues involved completely and is able to communicate them with unparalleled clarity. If even a small percentage of political reporters had her talent, we would live it a much different, and better nation.

She discussed the Court’s overturning of the 2005, California law that imposed a $1,000 fine on retailers each time they sold a violent video game to a minor. The case was decided differently than we have come to expect. The majority consisted of Antonin Scalia (who wrote the opinion), Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan—strange bedfellows indeed. Concurring with the majority, but writing a more narrowly defined decision were Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Clarence Thomas dissented, although—as usual—his argument was more home-spun wisdom than law. Basically, he said we’ve always treated kids different and anyway, the Constitution is not meant to apply to children—an interesting, but highly questionable observation. Stephen Breyer made what seemed to me the best argument: this is not a substantive infringement on free speech—these are kids after all. (Breyer’s argument was much more complex than this, but that was the core.)

Over the last few years, I have had the opportunity to watch my niece’s boyfriend and his friends play a number of games of the kind under discussion. In general, my thoughts about these games have centered around their utter banality. The vast majority of them consist only of shooting humans in the head—humans who move and shoot very slowly. The games are like very bad zombie pictures. Recently, however, I have seen some games that show real creativity, although I still think these are in the minority. The better games allow the player to do other things like race cars, play card game,s and have sex with virtual love dolls. Anything to break the mind-numbing boredom of these games is welcome, but the sexual elements of the games seem to raise obvious questions.

Why can’t a 13-year-old walk into a 7-11 and buy a copy of Playboy while he can walk into a game shop and buy a virtual facsimile? In fact, it seems the games are worse (for those who are afraid sex will destroy the moral characters of their children), because the girls in Playboy are static; you can do things with the computer girls.

My belief is that it isn’t the responsibility of store keepers to enforce the morality of children. I don’t think gun shops should sell kids guns—that’s not a matter of morality, it is a matter of health. But if children can buy these games, they should certainly be able to buy any magazines they want. And whether the Supreme Court majority wants to admit it or not, I think their 7-2 ruling shows that most of them just think that real naked girls are bad, and blowing people’s heads off with high-powered weapons is not. And they clearly don’t understand that video games are made with real actors—that is, they are anatomically correct.

One of the things my mom taught me was to live and let live. It’s great that children can now get their age-inappropriate games without their parents’ permission. I’d just like to know children are going to get all the other rights that they currently don’t have, just because it doesn’t mean billions of dollars to a well-connected industry.

Norman Soloman’s excellent War Made Easy contains the following information about the number of civilians killed in recent wars. See if you can spot the trend:

Don’t you feel proud to be an American?

When Anthony Weiner spoke at Congressional Correspondents’ Dinner, I thought he was very funny. This is especially true when he spoke about living with his last name. It is at the beginning of this 12 minute talk (which is worth watching in full):

Weiner is wrong about how his name ought to be pronounced, however. What’s more, his comment that John Boehner should just go with his name—implying that it should be pronounced “boner”—is also wrong. Both names look German, with the correct spelling of “Boehner” being “Böhner.” With my limited knowledge of German, I would assume pronunciations of “viner” and “booner.”

It seem that both names are German and that these are the way the names were pronounced before coming here to the United States. According to The Internet Surname Database, we have the surname “Weiner” thanks to the Romans. It is derived from the Latin word “vinum,” which means wine, and was applied to people who lived or worked in vineyards. The name then moved with the Romans to Italy (e.g. Vingneri), Spain (Vina), France (Vignaux), England (Vyner), and, of course, Germany (Weiner). The one thing that is very clear in the pronunciations of all these words in their original languages is the “vie” sound. No “wa.” No “ee.”

I don’t know the etymology of the use of the term “weiner” as slang for penis. Certainly, sausages of all kinds have understandably been used in this way. The word “weiner” refers to sausages that come from Vienna, Austria—the German word for this region is “Wein.” If we pronounced the sausage correctly, then the slang would be similarly pronounced. None of this is any good news for Anthony Weiner. But it may make John Boehner feel better.

[Editorial Note: I’m sorry. This really is awful. It is not clear at all what I’m on about. I do, however, think it is a good starting point for a 5000 word personal essay on race in America. Read it at your peril.]

Right now, I’m working on the screenplay for the pilot of a TV show called The Post-Post Modern Comedy Hour. It is the result of years of my writing what I call “theatrical essays.” It is hard to explain exactly what these plays are all about. The closest thing you can come to it is Orson Welles’ last released film, the great F for Fake. Below is the nine-minute trailer for the film, but before you view it, there are a few things you should know. First, it starts with 20 seconds that are not the trailer and rather some The Matrix-like images and Laurence Fishburne’s “What is Real?” speech from the movie. Second, the trailer is in black & white, even though the movie is in color. Third, there are a number of things in the trailer that are not in the film. And finally, and probably most important: the movie is far more coherent than the trailer, but not exactly coherent. It is fascinating and becomes more so on subsequent viewings.[1]

Regular readers of this site will immediately see why I would be so interested in such a film: I’m most interested in taking intellectual journeys and the less predictable, the better. And thus it is with this article, because I bring up this great film only to explain that even though there is nothing about baseball in the pilot script, it required that I read three books (with one more coming) and watch one documentary about baseball—the Negro Leagues, to be more exact.

For whatever reason, I became really interested in the great third baseman Judy Johnson. You can find out more about him at the Negro League Baseball Players Association, if you are interested. Probably the most important thing about him is that he was the first manager to break the color-barrier in Major League Baseball, when he coached for the Philadelphia Athletics. He was later a renowned talent scout, having discovered a number of great players including Dick Allen, who hit 351 home runs in his career.

As much as it is exciting and edifying to learn about Johnson and the many other great black players of his time, it is heartbreaking to read about what these men went through. The opportunity cost of baseball segregation was horrible for black players (and great for marginal white players). And as I think of it now, I suspect that when Judy Johnson was consistently batting over .300 (even though he was most know for his fielding skills) while making just a dollar a day, people were claiming there was no racism in the United States because he wasn’t a slave. It reminds me now of the belief that there is no racism because we have a black president.[2]

I suppose no one need mourn for Judy Johnson. He had, it would seem by all accounts, a good life. But what of all those who weren’t exceptionally talented at something their culture valued? Who mourns for the unexceptional in our various out groups? I was at a festival today that was supposed to honor the years from 1900 through 1949. Other than a brief conversion with a haberdasher, I found only things I disliked: unearned affluence, retro-entertainment acts, jingoism, and ridiculously priced food.

What I did not find was a single black person.[3] But then why would they want to honor this period? Certainly, it was a period to mourn.

[1] I only own two Welles films: F for Fake and Othello. I am, however, planning to buy Chimes at Midnight—the only released film I haven’t seen. I have watched F for Fake far more than any of Welles’ films—at least twenty times. I’ve seen Citizen Kane at most five times and do not believe that I will ever watch it again. Although I think it is overrated (The best film of all time?! Come now!) there is no doubt that it is one of the greatest films ever made. Thus you can see what high regard I hold F for Fake in.

[2] It really bugs me—as a mathematically literate person—that a man who is half black and half white is always referred to as “black.” Isn’t the statistical case for his being “white” just as strong? And what of an octoroon? Just how white does one need to be before he is “white”.

[3] Or Latino. Or Asian. Or…

The Man Can Play!

Conservative U.S. Representative Thaddeus McCotter recently did a video interview during which he is playing what looks like an American flag-painted Telecaster. Rachael Maddow has some fun with it, titling the segment, “This is the Worst Music Video I’ve Ever Seen.” I like Maddow a lot and I think McCotter is a proto-facist. Having said that, clearly being a proto-facist does not mean that you can’t play. The man is good. The world would be a better place if he stopped representing Michigan and spent his time on stage wailing: blow big man!