Only 21 Percent Of U.S. Voters Support Net Neutrality

"So this is how democracy dies; with thunderous applause."

Kind of how I felt when I read this disturbing tidbit on the silliness of libertaria­ns:

Maybe it was inevitable that the National Opt-Out Day, when travelers were going to refuse body scans en masse, failed to become the next Woolworth’­s sit-in (how do you organize a movement that abhors organizati­on?). It turned out most Americans actually supported the body scanners. [emphasis added]

If true, I'm afraid I must sadly conclude that we have become a nation of idiots.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

New York Officially Dead

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And here is the epitaph:

I am ending Lost City. Most of the City is lost after all—the good parts, anyway—so you could say the course of history has put me out of a job. Ironically, the kinds of news that fills up a jeremiad like this will, if too constant and voluminous, eventually puts the enterprise out of business. It's like writing a volcano report from Pompei; you know the communiques are going to end sometime.

I began the blog because I was incensed and alarmed at what the city was becoming. It was losing its grit, its fabric, its very character. It was losing its New York-ness, and gaining nothing but Subway franchises and luxury condos. Since none of my editors would let me write about it, I became my own editor. I was gratified to soon find that there were a lot of people out there who felt the way I did. And it wasn't too long before there were other bloggers who took on a similar mission, like Jeremiah Moss at Vanishing New York and EV Grieve at the blog of the same name. Taken together, we made for quite a few howls in the wilderness. And, tragically, we never ran out of things to report.

But, in the end, they were just howls, as ineffective at Lear's on the heath. I wrote thousands of words, and posted hundreds of pictures for four-and-a-half years—nearly 3,000 posts, all told. None of them made any difference. Not really. The press paid a little attention to our windmill-tilting, but City Hall never did. The City continued on its inexorable march to glossy mediocrity. Bloomberg, the billionaire, city planner Amanda Burden, the millionaire, and their cabal of equally wealthy real estate and Wall Street pals forged ahead and got the metropolis they wanted all along: homogenous, anodyne, whitewashed, suburban, toothless, chain-store-ridden, ordinary, exclusive and terribly, terribly expensive. A town for tourists and the upper 2%. He took a world-class capital of culture, individuality and independent endeavor and turned it into the smoothest, first-class, gated community Houston ever saw. Walk down Broadway on the Upper West Side, Sixth Avenue in Chelsea, Third Avenue in Yorkville—or look at the gaping hole of Altantic Yards—and you will see the administration's legacy.

My father, a nearly life-long New Yorker, warned me of its pending demise when I was just a kid. Why? The middle class increasingly forced out by ludicrous rent prices, small businesses forced out by ludicrous rent prices, everything good forced out by ludicrous rent prices... Well, let's face it, it's only gotten worse and more ludicrous. New York is a cautionary tale of what happens when an economy produces only rich and poor. And the darkness is spreading.

Fucking Hilarious

Flying the Unfriendly Skies

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Remember when flying was fun? Remember when flight attendants... attended? Not anymore. Now, apparently, their comfort comes first. Remember this waitress in the sky who forced a woman off the plane because she wouldn't drug her fussy toddler? Now comes a story of Jet Blue attendant who consigned a passenger to the bathroom because she didn't care for her jump seat.

Gokhan Mutlu, of Manhattan's Inwood section, says in court papers the pilot told him to "go 'hang out' in the bathroom" about 90 minutes into the San Diego to New York flight because the flight attendant complained that the "jump seat" she was assigned was uncomfortable, the lawsuit said.

. . .

The pilot told him 1 1/2 hours into the five-hour flight that he would have to relinquish the seat to the flight attendant, court papers say. But the pilot said that Mutlu could not sit in the jump seat because only JetBlue employees were permitted to sit there, the lawsuit said.

. . .

The aircraft hit turbulence and passengers were directed to return to their seats, but "the plaintiff had no seat to return to, sitting on a toilet stool with no seat belts," court papers say.

. . .

Mutlu's lawsuit, filed Friday in Manhattan's state Supreme Court, says JetBlue negligently endangered him by not providing him with a seat with a safety belt or harness, in violation of federal law.

Patton Oswalt Revisits the "Famous Bowl"

As discussed here Patton Oswalt has given the folks at KFC a run for their money with his searing take on their "Famous Bowl." In his AV Club blog, Patton explains his fascination with the product.

Would that I could forget that fateful evening in the autumn of 2006 when I first heard the shrieking, beckoning clarion call of Kentucky Fried Chicken's Famous Bowl. I was fast-forwarding through the commercials of a Tivo'd episode of The Venture Brothers. The commercial for the Famous Bowl came on. I thought it was a Tim & Eric sketch.

It wasn't. Kentucky Fried Chicken had filled a bowl with gravy, mashed potatoes, corn, breaded chicken, and finally, cheese. Shut-ins, people afflicted with Prader-Willi Syndrome, and manic-depressives also do this. If you're trying to make a fortune in the food and beverage industry, those are the three demographics to shoot for—the Famous Bowl is one of the bestselling items on the KFC menu.

KFC calls it their version of the shepherd's pie. Shepherds in Kentucky must be full of rage and slathered in confusion. They must hang their fat, skin, and muscles from bones carved with runes of surrender.

I must've watched the commercial a dozen times. It looked like a self-shot (but well-cut and -lit) video that someone would make as they prepared to commit suicide. I couldn't take my eyes off it. I didn't think the implosion of society would be so funny.

As stated previously, I firmly believe that Oswalt's uproariously funny stand-up bit forced KFC to backpedal furiously on their marketing strategy. Subsequently, they reintroduced the quaint, old-fashioned notion of cutlery. Perhaps in some vain attempt to co-opt their fiercest critic, they have honored him with a bobble-head doll. But the AV Club went a step further and convinced Oswalt to actually taste test the product he has so famously skewered. It did not go well.

The Famous Bowl hit my mouth like warm soda, slouched down my throat, and splayed itself across my stomach like a sun-stroked wino. It was that precise combination of things, and so many other sensations that did not go together. At all.

The gravy, which I remembered as being tangy and delicious in my youth, tasted like the idea of blandness, but burned and then salted to cover the horrid taste. The mashed potatoes defiantly stood their ground against the gravy, as if they'd read The Artist's Way and said, "I'm going to be boring and forgetful in my own potato-y way!" The corn tasted like it had been dunked in fake-corn-flavored ointment, and the popcorn chicken, breaded to the point of parody, was like chewing a cotton sleeve that someone had used to wipe chicken grease off their chin.

The cheese had congealed. Even in the heat and steam of the covered Famous Bowl, it had congealed. I stabbed it with the tines of my spork and it all came up in one piece. I nibbled an edge, had a vision of a crying Dutch farmer, and put it down.

I managed three or four more spoonfuls, trying to be fair. I am not the healthiest eater, but this was a level of crap I hadn't earned a belt in yet.

Perhaps some obscure, meritorious rank for eating dare-devilry will be the chotchky KFC attempts to ply him with next.

Is It the Apocalypse?

Fight the Power

I've been thinking a lot about Mona Shaw.

We spent the weekend at my mother-in-law's. She has Verizon high speed internet; FIOS. Quite speedy... when it works. Not this weekend, though. Nope. So my husband spent about four hours, cumulatively, with customer support. At one point he clocked 40 minutes on hold... just listening to the pretty music. Three days later, my mother-in-law still has no internet. See, they have to make absolutely certain that it can't be resolved over the phone, without sending out a tech, even though everybody knows that it's an equipment problem. Everybody knows it. The techs know it. My husband knows it. The switchboard operators know it. The entire city of Mumbai knows it, because my husband was on the phone with most of the population. But, they can't just send out a tech... not until they execute a tier 3 support ticket. They'll call back, within 24 hours. The tier 3 techs. Just like the tier 2 folks did... except that they never did. Come to think of it... Nope. We just sat by the phone waiting, like a bunch of teenage girls, for the call that never came.

So, I've been thinking about Mona Shaw. The woman has guts. Guts and nothing left to lose. Mona Shaw is my new hero.

It seems that Mona bought into one of those "bundling" packages that cable companies like to arm-twist you about through endless phone calls and mailings. The service combines phone, cable and Internet service.

Her provider was Comcast. Without saying anything more about Comcast's reputation in the cable community, I will merely point out that there's a blog called ComcastMustDie.com that does a lively business on the Web.

Anyway, Mona and her husband scheduled a service call. The company failed to come on the appointed date. When they did show up two days late, they left with the job half-done.

Two days after that they cut off her service.

Mona and her husband decided the best way to get this misunderstanding straightened out was to visit the local cable office. When they arrived, a customer service representative told them the manager would be right with them and asked them to please take a seat.

They did - for two hours. At that point, the customer rep cheerfully announced that the manager had left for the day.

Shaw told the Washington Post, "They thought that just because we're old enough to get Social Security that we lack both brains and backbone."

So after a weekend spent at low boil, Mona, armed with a claw hammer, visited the Comcast office again.

But there was no waiting this time. Mona delivered a few well timed blows to a computer keyboard and monitor and, for good measure, to the telephone.

"After I hit the keyboard," Mona said, "I turned to the blond who had been there previously, the one who told me to wait for the manager, and I said, `Now do I have your attention?"

Mona Shaw is a 75 year old woman with a heart condition. Comcast left an elderly woman with a life threatening condition and her elderly husband without phone service and blew off her every attempt to rectify the matter. But to hear them tell it, they're the victims, so scared of a little old lady they took out a restraining order.

"Nothing justifies this sort of dangerous behavior," Comcast spokeswoman Beth Bacha said.

Police arrested Shaw for disorderly conduct. She received a three-month suspended sentence, was fined $345 and and is barred from going near the Comcast offices for a year.

Mona has no regrets.

"I stand by my actions even more so after getting all these telephone calls and hearing other people's complaints," she told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.

Mona Shaw got fed up. It's passed time to be fed up. The law is not on the side of the citizen; not on the side of the voter; not on the side of the consumer. The day is coming when none of us will have anything left to lose.

I Want a Failure Pile in a Sadness Bowl

Methinks KFC was a little tweaked by Patton Oswalt's riff on it's "Famous Bowls." I can't watch the commercials showing the graphic layering of mashed potatoes, corn, chicken nuggets, etc., without throwing up a little bit in my mouth. KFC's newest commercials, though, are clearly a marketing wizard's attempt at damage control, now that Patton Oswalt's shot across their bow has gone viral. You know the ones. They show a woman sitting at her desk, eating her lunch like a proper lady. Or as the folks on the Commercials I Hate Forum put it:

The way the woman explains it is just annoying.

"I'm eating KFC's extra crispy chicken, which actually requires a fork and a knife."

Who talks like that?

Who talks like that? Only a company that's afraid of being perceived as being on the slippery slope to a "lunch gun."

Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Patton Oswalt!

Terrorist Toddlers and Other Threats to Freedom

Paul Westerberg - Waitress in the Sky


As a mother who has flown the unfriendly skies, I feel Kate Penland's pain.

An Atlanta woman wants an apology from Continental's Express Jet Airlines for kicking her and her toddler off of the plane -- all because, she said, a flight attendant wanted the woman's son to stop talking.

. . .

"She leaned over the gentleman beside me and, ah, said, 'OK, it's not funny anymore, you need to shut your baby up.' And, you know, my first reaction was she had to be kidding. So, I asked her, you know, 'Are you kidding?' And she said, no, she was tired, she'd been stranded at the airport all day, and she did not want to hear it."

Penland said she replied that Garren would probably be asleep by the time the plane lifted off.

"I said, 'Well, he's been here at the airport for 11 hours, stuck in a stroller, you know, you should be lucky he's not screaming his head off.' And she said, 'Well, it's called Baby Benedryl.' [She made] just a little, you know, drinking motion, and I thought she's got to be kidding me. And I told her, 'I'm not going to drug my baby so that you'll have a pleasant flight.'"

Dissatisfied with Penland's unwillingness to dope up her kid, the flight attendant apparently told the captain she'd been threatened and had the plane turned around and Penland and her talkative 20-month-old removed.

Anyone who has ever flown on a plane with their kids knows it's hard; harder these days than ever. Endless check-in procedures, long lines, and grumpy, underpaid security people nitpicking your personal belongings and taking away your toiletries. Kids don't have the self-control to affect the disdainful but patient expressions of adults. Many of them lose their shit. My own daughter was very good, if impatient, during our last plane trip. That is, until some over-zealous security guard took her most precious stuffed animals away to inspect them. (You never know what might be hidden in a well-chewed and thread-bare stuffed kitty-cat.) Then the woman had the temerity to glare at me like I was a bad parent when my, then, three-year-old had a melt-down.

Traveling with a small child teaches you a very important lesson: A lot of people hate kids.

Bring on the child haters, the airline critics, the lazy parenting theorists! If you think this story sounds like an urban legend designed to foment sippy-cup culture wars, I don't blame you. I too would have found it difficult to swallow had I not experienced a similar treatment on an airline just last month. The details are tedious -- they involve me tapping the flight attendant on the shoulder trying to pass along some trash, him informing me he didn't appreciate "being touched," and me asking why he was being so rude. He then snarled at me: "Your children are totally out of control! If you'd just discipline them, you'd be much better off."

Granted, my kids often give an unfortunate impression given that they both look two years older than they are, but definitely act their age. In public situations, I've been known to whisper, hiss, threaten, cover a screaming mouth, and take away beloved privileges until I'm literally dripping with sweat. But this wasn't one of those occassions. When the flight attendant -- a young man who I assumed had no children -- told me off, both children were sitting absolutely silent, enraptured by a Hello Kitty DVD. Perhaps something had happened while I was in the bathroom and they were with my husband, I'll never know. After the event, I had 20 more hours of traveling to soul-search. Perhaps my children are monsters and I would never really be able to see it. Maybe in the wake of 9/11, flying and the jobs of flight attendants had become too stressful and high anxiety for them to be able to deal with squirmy passengers with squeaky voices or anything out of the ordinary. (Do a search for "kicked off airplane" and you get all sorts of stories about American flights dumping passengers for virtually nothing: a coughing fit, a political T-shirt, for a father asking if a pilot is sober.)

Once we switched flights to Lufthansa and a number of smiling, toy-bearing German flight attendants charmed the socks off my kids, I couldn't help thinking that it wasn't air travel but an American cultural divide about the place of children in society. The recent story about a woman who was kicked off a Delta flight for not covering her toddler's head with a blanket while breast-feeding offers more evidence of some weird attitudes toward children. The experience of Kate Penland vindicates this hunch...

On Why I Hate Reality Shows

So this evening my husband was clicking through channels and happened on some pirogies in preparation. Next thing I know, we're watching "Top Chef." We both hate reality shows, but my husband's love for food trumped that disgust for about twenty minutes; twenty truly awful minutes.

I despise these shows. They make me cringe. If I'm going to watch human drama, I want it well scripted and brilliantly acted. Putting ordinary humans in an electronic petri dish and watching them react to a variety of stimuli is, well, inhuman. It's mean. This may come as a shock to my readers, but I have no meanness in me. I can be a bitch, but I'm not mean. I take no joy the suffering of others; even others I despise. And an unflinching camera lens directed at people's pain, anger, disappointment, and general vulnerability holds absolutely no allure for me. Watching adults struggle not to cry on camera or shift in their shoes looking uncomfortable is not edifying. It's degrading to participant and viewer alike.

But some people must love it. These shows are taking over the airwaves for some reason. As our political system collapses, as our young men and women are being blown up in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans want nothing more than to look at the flop sweat of some young hopeful grabbing 15 minutes of fame. So I ask again, are we Rome? Is this really the bread and circuses of a dying empire?

A few weeks ago, I caught one of my favorite "Star Trek" episodes: "Plato's Stepchildren." I always took the title to refer to the way Rome was a pale, degraded imitation of ancient Greece, because surely the people Kirk and crew encounter are supposed to be Romans. The Platonians are a bunch of ageless telekinetics who get their kicks torturing a dwarf who lacks their superhuman power. But it is the seemingly all powerful, ruling class that is weak. Wholly sedentary because the slightest scratch can kill them, they must live vicariously through the suffering of others. To them, entertainment is forcing the Enterprise crew to put on a live sex and torture show. Like sad marionettes they are forced to dance, sing, and that whiter than white Captain Kirk is forced to kiss Lt. Uhura; the first interracial kiss on television. (So... it was under duress. A small point.) But finally Kirk turns the tables and points out that:

You're half dead, all of you! You've been dead for centuries. We may disappear tomorrow, but at least we're living now, and you can't stand that, can you? You're half crazy because there's nothing inside. Nothing. And you have to torture us to convince yourselves you're superior.

This is what Americans are becoming; cosseted, feeble, and utterly dependent on a decadent and exploitive system. We're apparently so unchallenged internally that we think watching people squirm on camera is high drama. Where's Captain Kirk when you need him?

So Why Do I Care About Paris Hilton?

I spent a good part of the last few days arguing about Paris Hilton. Among other subjects of debate, is the issue of why we should be discussing her in the first place. After all, as an individual, she is probably one of the most uninteresting people ever to usurp national interest. Ironically, this is exactly what makes her worthy of discussion. Her iconic status says far more about the country than it possibly could about her. She's a reflection of a culture run off the rails by economic disparity, ignorance, shallowness, and the gullibility of a public too easily distracted by bread and circuses. Or as one of my favorite bloggers Steven Weber put it:

A true-life, virtually unbelievable culture criminal, the embodiment of all that America® and it's affiliates (America-Lite, America Xtra Caff, McJesus, HistoryBeGone!, etc.) export to its citizenry and the world, she is like one of those characters at the end of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 walking around endlessly reciting books they have committed to memory in impart [sic] to future bookless generations the ingredients essential to humanity: knowledge, curiosity, imagination, the adhesive substances that bind the bricks of civilization. Only, Paris Hilton walks by herself in an isolated part of the forest, barely able to keep a Bazooka Joe comic in her head, stumbling over the big words and encouraging not mere passing scorn or fringe amusement but outright worship.

It's been said that Miss Hilton received a harsher sentence because of her celebrity status. If so she's been hoisted by her own petard, for she is the walking embodiment of an old cliché; quite literally famous for being famous. I think it's more likely that the Honorable Judge Sauer lobbed a very tiny book at Miss Hilton because she has consistently displayed an attitude that she is above the law.

"I can't believe that either attorney did not tell her that the suspension had been upheld," the judge said. "She wanted to disregard everything that was said and continue to drive no matter what."

What else can one possibly deduce about a person whose excuse for ignorance of the legal documents she signed is that she, "has people who do that for me." How many times does a person have to be cited for driving on a suspended license before some realization dawns?

But according to prosecutors, Hilton violated at least three terms of her probation. First, she failed to enroll in an alcohol education course within 21 days of her sentencing.

Second, she had several traffic violations after receiving probation. On February 27, 2007, she was stopped by L.A. Sheriff Deputies for driving “a new Bentley” at 70 m.p.h. in a 35 m.p.h. zone “in darkness without her headlights on,” and without a valid driver’s license.

The air must be rarefied, indeed, in a place where one can pull such a stunt and remain mystified when the judicial system catches up.

Like I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Paris draws a legion of admirers convinced that she is above the law. Their offenses are too trifling, they say, to merit the statutory penalties for the crimes of which they were both convicted.

Like the George W. Bush, Miss Hilton lives far from the reality-based community.

"I've never lived around poor people," Wallis remembers Bush saying. "I don't know what they think. I really don't know what they think. I'm a white Republican guy who doesn't get it. How do I get it?"

To people like Miss Hilton, even millionaires are poor.

A heated argument erupted last Friday between the two after Lohan approached Hilton, who had been partying with her sister, Nicky, and friends.

But the argument took a nasty turn when Paris and her oil heir pal, Brandon Davis, left a club on Monday night to go home.

As the pair walked to their car Davis - an oil heir worth $A31.4 billion($US24billion) - hurled a tirade of disgusting comments about Lohan.

...

He said: "I think she's worth about seven million dollars ($A9.16 million), which means she's really poor.

"It's disgusting. She lives in a motel."

He also let loose a racial insult against Lohan's former boyfriend Wilmer Valderrama.

"Is he in a mariachi band?" Davis said.

During the rant, Paris' publicist, Elliot Mintz, walks by her side, helpless and grim-faced.

He has been quick to try and distance Paris from the comments - despite the fact she laughed along and encouraged the rant.

For today, it seems Miss Hilton has hit the limits of what insulation her wealth and privilege could ensure. Screaming to her mother about the unfairness of it all, she was returned to halls of justice very different from those most of us would encounter.

Hilton was housed in the "special needs" unit of the 13-year-old jail, separate from most of its 2,200 inmates. The unit contains 12 two-person cells reserved for police officers, public officials, celebrities and other high-profile inmates. She didn't have a cellmate.

I can only hope that her social peers in the White House meet a similar fate. I won't hold my breath.

"Are We Rome?"

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Now that is a question I've asked, myself, many times? I'm no historian but the parallels have struck me as more than a little obvious. Which is why I privately refer to President Bush as Caligula. Salon takes up the question in a review of a new book of the same name. Former Atlantic Monthy editor Cullen Murphy's Are we Rome? hit bookstores last month.

So are there parallels? You betcha.

First, just as Romans saw Rome as the literal center of the world -- they placed in the Forum a stone omphalos, or "navel," that they believed stood over the entrance to Hades -- America's political ruling class suffers from delusions of Beltway grandeur. "[T]he way the tiny, elite subset of Americans who live in the nation's capital see America -- and see Washington itself," Murphy argues, is a "faulty premise" that "leads to an exaggerated sense of Washington's weight in the world: an exaggerated sense of its importance in the eyes of others, and of its ability to act alone." He tartly recounts the way that courtiers in such self-obsessed capitals become obsessed with prestige. In JFK's time, "only 29 people held the coveted title of 'assistant,' 'deputy assistant,' or 'special assistant' to the President; by the time Bill Clinton left office, there were 141 such people."

As a military spouse, I found this correlation rather chilling.

Second, there's military power. Like Rome, America suffers from a "two cultures" problem, in which military and civilian society are increasingly alien to each other. A Roman historian wrote that soldiers returning from distant posts were "most savage to look at, frightening to listen to, and boorish to talk with." Murphy notes: "America's Delta Force would fare no better in Saddle River, Brentwood, or Winnetka." Moreover, like Rome, America is unable to sustain its enormous military, and is forced to turn to outsiders -- for Rome, barbarians, for America, contractors. "The Iraq War is the most privatized major conflict since the Renaissance," Murphy notes.

This one is subtle, but it is probably the most disturbing in its portents for the future of our "democracy."

Murphy illuminates one key facet of the decline of Rome by citing the Oxford historian Geoffrey de Ste. Croix, who explored the evolution of a single Latin term: the word "suffragium," which originally meant "voting tablet." Citizens could cast votes, although in practice great men who ran patronage systems controlled large blocs of votes. Over time, Roman democracy withered, but the patronage system remained, and the word "suffragium" came to mean only the pressure that a powerful man could exert on one's behalf. Eventually, the word came to denote simply the money paid for a favor: a bribe. Ste. Croix's devastating conclusion: "Here, in miniature, is the political history of Rome."

In a telling historical-etymological comparison, Murphy looks at the history of the word "franchise." It too originally "had to do with notions of political freedom and civic responsibility": It denoted the right to vote. "Only much later, in the mid twentieth century, did the idea of being granted certain 'rights' acquire its commercial connotation: the right to market a company's services or products, such as fried chicken or Tupperware ... In the Wiktionary, the commercial meaning of 'franchise' is now the primary definition. The definition involving political freedom and the right to vote comes fifth." Murphy's disturbing conclusion: "Looking back at the history of 'franchise,' then, it's tempting to write this epitaph: Here, in miniature, is the political history of America."

The book also addresses the role of neoconservative movement that, embracing our imperialism, has set the country on its most disastrous course yet.

Those who are inspired include figures whom Murphy calls the "triumphalists," who "see America as at long last assuming its imperial responsibilities, bringing about a global Pax Americana like the Pax Romana at its most commanding, in the first two centuries A.D." In this camp are neoconservative pundits like Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Max Boot and "the triumphalist-in-chief, trading jodhpurs for flight suit," George W. Bush. These figures unapologetically advocate that the U.S. dominate the world.

Are we Rome? There are certainly key differences, which the author addresses. But the similarities are akin to those which saw the decline of that once great empire. It is up to us whether we address these as, in Murphy's words, "a grim cautionary tale or an inspirational call to action."

Reagan's Legacy: Executive Amnesia

The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, c.1954

Dali, Salvador


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There's a very clever graphic on the cover of The Huffington Post this morning. A Warholesque pattern of 122 images of ex-Gonazales aide Kyle Sampson. One for every memory lapse he reported on the Senate floor yesterday. "I don't remember." Get used to that phrase. We'll be hearing it a lot in the coming weeks and months.

Reagan did it with an actor's flair, but it was Reagan who ushered in this age of executive exceptionalism. "I cannot recall," he said over and over in his Iran-Contra testimony. And with that endearing little nod, that seemed to say, "Why I am just a simple man. A man of the people, baffled by these dark political machinations."

I remember my grandfather cluck, cluck, clucking in disgust. "If he were the CEO of a company," he'd say, "You know how long he'd be tellin' that story? About as long as it took him to grab his things and walk to the front gate." But my grandfather was one of those men in "gray flannel" Paul Krugman writes about. He was the product of that bygone era, when the buck actually stopped somewhere.

This is Reagan's legacy. An era of unaccountability for those who achieve the requisite wealth and influence. A time when men of small skill, but excellent breeding, fail ever upwards and descend, when they do, on golden parachutes. An era when only the little people experience the consequences, not only of their personal failings, but of the colossal failings of their "betters." When average workers of a company like Enron lose their livelihoods, their savings, their homes. But can only stare in rapt amazement as the wheels of justice grind slowly on, bringing few prosecutions and vacating that of a dead architect of corporate failure.

There is no "pound 'em in the ass prison" for even token prosecutions like Scooter Libby. That nice white boy shouldn't see the inside of a jail cell says even his jury. He didn't mean any harm. He was just so forgetful.

On Being Mr. Buttle

I was pondering just yesterday the plight of Mr. Buttle. How many of us are going to end up just like him; tortured to death because of a typo? See I can never decide what's worse. The loss of our civil liberties or the mind numbing incompetence of the people in whom our precarious freedoms are entrusted.

Here's what brought this to mind. Yesterday my internet service was out for most of the day. In my frustration, I called Verizon, who owns all the pipe around here, and keeps it functioning about as well as the duct-work in Terry Gilliam's "Brazil." But when I called them, a customer service rep (the lot of them are the bane of my existence) told me that he could not tell me anything, because when I told him the name on the account, he insisted that I was wrong. I explained, "A bill manages to find its way here every month and we pay it." This confused him terribly. I asked him if the name on the account was the one for which we receive a myriad of calls; the previous owners of our dialing digits... yes. Well that explains why we're getting so many wrong numbers six months later. So I was gaffed off because of a data entry error by the same company that left us without phone service for a month when they botched our order. I loathe Verizon.

I was inconvenienced yesterday because of bureaucratic ineptitude. But it will not be an inconvenience if I am, or someone like me is, secreted away to Egypt in a rendition program, because of typos, or any of the growing number of snafus that plague Americans daily.

This morning I learn from the Washington Post that the FBI has been abusing the Fourth Amendment even more heinously than previously known, in spite of growing concern from its own attorneys.

Under pressure to provide a stronger legal footing, counterterrorism agents last year wrote new letters to phone companies demanding the information the bureau already possessed. At least one senior FBI headquarters official -- whom the bureau declined to name -- signed these "national security letters" without including the required proof that the letters were linked to FBI counterterrorism or espionage investigations, an FBI official said.

The flawed procedures involved the use of emergency demands for records, called "exigent circumstance" letters, which contained false or undocumented claims. They also included national security letters that were issued without FBI rules being followed. Both types of request were served on three phone companies. . . .

A March 9 report by Fine bluntly stated that the FBI's use of the exigency letters "circumvented" the law that governs the FBI's access to personal information about U.S. residents.

The exigency letters, created by the FBI's New York office after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, told telephone providers that the FBI needed information immediately and would follow up with subpoenas later. There is no basis in the law to compel phone companies to turn over information using such letters, Fine found, and in many cases, agents never followed up with the promised subpoenas, he said.

But Fine's report made no mention of the FBI's subsequent efforts to legitimize those actions with improperly prepared national security letters last year.

But whose phone records is the FBI illegally obtaining? Mine or the previous owner of my phone number... Mr. Buttle's or Mr. Tuttle's?

I leave you with the latest from Bill Maher:

And finally, new rule: liberals must stop saying President Bush hasn't asked Americans to sacrifice for the War on Terror. On the contrary, he's asked us to sacrifice something enormous: our civil rights.

My good friend Renee has done the leg work and provides a full transcript of Maher's remarks here.

Today I Weep for Journalism

Last night I watched "Scarborough Country." I don't expect anything like unbiased reporting from the former Congressman turned "news man." Sad enough that he is featured prominently on a "news" network. Sadder still to hear him lament the sad demise of esteemed broadcast journalist Barbara Walters's reputation. Saddest of all to acknowledge that he is right.

SCARBOROUGH: Matthew, explain to people, if you will, that only know her through “The View” and through those interviews that she does on ABC—I guess “20/20” she‘s been doing for years—explain to people what a trailblazer Barbara Walters was and how hard she worked for her reputation, that Rosie O‘Donnell tatters every time she does something like this.

FELLING: Absolutely. It has been a shock to me that she‘s been putting up with this for this long. She is the patron saint. She is the woman that all female journalists since the ‘70s looked up to and said, “You know what? She can do it; I‘m going to do, too.”

She was perfection. She was the gold standard with regards to female journalists through the ‘80s, into the ‘90s. And now she‘s doing this Faustian bargain, where she‘s willing to put up with it, but only so far. And I do really think that Rosie‘s days are numbered.

I hate "The View." I've never understood what the seasoned news woman thought she was doing when she launched this show. For the trail-blazer who broke through the glass ceiling and proved that a woman could deliver news with the same sense of gravitas and dignity of her male counterparts, to be associated with a format that sounds more like a coffee-clatch than a news show, has always struck me as the ultimate come-down. "The View" seems almost designed to prove that women are biologically determined to be gossipy, shallow, and unserious. And now the show has reached a new low. Rosie O'Donnell's public feud with Donald Trump is playing out with all the dignity of professional wrestling.

Sadly this makes Rosie only slightly more ridiculous than the crop of talking heads scattered across the cable dial. Anchors no longer deliver news. They bloviate. From Bill O'Reilly's projection about everyone else's bias, to Tim Russert's pandering/badgering intensity, to Chris Matthews bullying and obsequious "I agree with you" brown-nosing. And while the left has its intellectually satisfying Keith Olbermann diatribes, one could hardly confuse his pontificating with objectivity. Wisdom and surprising literacy, but not objectivity.

The whole of broadcast news, which once held promise as a medium for disseminating information, has devolved into self-parody. It's a cheap carney side show which I half expect to start featuring geeks biting the heads off live chickens.

Fox News has gone through the looking glass with grammatically challenged spokesmodels, spouting McCarthyesque agitprop:

GRETCHEN CARLSON: You talk about the hostile enemy, obviously being Iraq, but hostile enemies right here on the home front. Yesterday Senator Ted Kennedy, proposing that any kind of a troop surge should mean there should be congressional approval of that. A lot of democrats not coming to his side on this. But obviously this is not going to be an easy sell on Capitol Hill, even if it’s not an easy sell to the American Public.

But tragically the rest of the industry has followed it through to the Red Queen's court.

None of this is news to blogosphere, I'm sure; which functions as one of the few watchdog venues for an industry which seems to have no adequate check or balance. But lately I find myself thinking back to the early days when a much missed Media Whores Online began its crusade to remind the Fourth Estate of its proud heritage. Watching Scarborough last night I came to the sad realization that the wreckage of Benjamin Franklin's legacy has declined still further and shows little hope of regaining the high ground.

Americans across the political spectrum confuse what can only be described as self-righteous indignation with refreshing honesty. Who wants the dry, impartial reporting of a Walter Cronkite or a young Barbara Walters, when they can get their factoids from carnival barkers and blond chippies in push-up bras? I'm left waxing nostalgic for a time when the empty-headed Bill Boggs and the crass Morton Downey Jr. represented the lunatic fringe of a profession yearning to be taken seriously. Today their antics seem tame by comparison.

What accounts for broadcast journalism doesn't belong on a "news" channel. It should be fought out in the Roman Coliseum, awaiting the thumbs up or thumbs down from Emperor Bush. Entertainment for the hoi poloi to distract them from our crumbling empire.

Defining Deviancy Down

The MADD mothers have dumped Miss Teen USA. Thank goodness someone in this whole, ridiculous melee is capable of acting like a grown-up. Certainly no one can argue with the reasoning.

"In the past, MADD has teamed with Miss Teen USA to raise awareness about the serious and often deadly consequences of underage drinking. However, we do not feel, at this time, that Ms. Blair can be an effective spokesperson on underage drinking and will not ask her to represent MADD in future initiatives," Heidi Castle, a spokeswoman for MADD, said in a statement.

Full disclosure: I have no love for beauty pageants. I have this crazy, radically feminist notion that women should be judged by the content of their character. I know that pageant organizations have long emphasized the crucial role of talent and an abiding concern for world peace in their contests. Yes, the ideal woman can sing an aria, is congenial, and just happens to look great in a bathing suit. Pageants have to work very hard to elevate the idea of parading women around and judging them by their appearance above the obvious objectifying sexism. They do it by insisting on broader criteria that includes things like morals clauses. When Donald Trump gave Tara Conner a "second chance" he gave the lie to the whole business and reminded the world what beauty pageants are all about. Pretty matters. Character, not so much.

Madman in the Marketplace did an excellent job of putting this charade into a broader cultural perspective. There are different standards for pretty white girls from prominent families.

We like to say that we’re a land that believes in second chances, that if someone is sincere about changing their life we Americans will support and welcome them when they’ve picked themselves up, and we’ll do everything we can to help them. This is, of course, utter bullshit. You get second chances if you’re of the right class, the right race, the right connections. Otherwise the full weight of our government and rapacious tabloid media will be brought down on your head....if a darker pretty girl in it had been tested positive for drugs, she’d be far more likely to be facing charges than a stay at a celebrity rehab center. Our enormous prison system is bulging with people who did the same things that Miss Perfect American is reported to have done. Unlike her, many who get caught doing drugs or acting out in public are put into the system, and once in the odds of them getting a second chance disappear...

It would surely be grand if our culture genuinely supported the idea of treatment for addicts, rather than punishment. But there is a difference between the draconian nature of our criminal justice system and simple consequences. Tara Conner faces neither. I doubt Miss Conner is an addict. She's more likely a kid acting out. But lets say for the sake of argument that she really is an addict in need of treatment. If so, Trump has done the worst possible thing he could have done if his intent was to help her. He's enabled her addiction by depriving her of the opportunity to experience the consequences of her behavior. She violated an agreement. She should have been fired. Period.

Perhaps that's what Rosie O'Donnell was on about in her latest bout of verbal diarrhea. I suppose she means well when she tries to remind viewers of "The View" about simple decency. It's unfortunate that she can't seem to do it without equally indecent ad hominem attacks that will likely land her in a slander suit.

I seem to remember a time when public figures acted with a certain level of decorum. I was very young then, I think. It all seems like a memory in my dreams now; an America that strove for a certain cultural standard, even it never quite achieved it. News was presented with a sense of gravitas by men like Walter Cronkite, rather than the screaming hysteria of a Rosie O'Donnell or Bill O'Reilly. And beauty pageants were shiny, child-friendly spectacles, whose winners usually slipped into a kind of quiet, wholesome obscurity. I don't know. Maybe it was Utah.

The Dumbening

Just when you thought it was safe to be an American again... You know I almost didn't write this entry; being as it is a rumination on the decline of American civilization. I've been so heady since the election. We have turned a corner as a nation and perhaps put the brakes on our steady slide towards cultural entropy. Tuesday night I felt relief... even optimism. Then I read this:

As gas prices have plunged since topping $3 a gallon this summer, a startling shift is taking place in the car market. Hybrid sales are slowing and SUV sales are speeding up.

Come again?

That’s right: the megawatt popularity of hybrids is dimming and Americans are rediscovering their favorite automotive guilty pleasure, gas-guzzling SUVs.

Yes. Like a coop of chickens slipping into blissful slumber when their heads have been forced under their wings, Americans giddy on an artificial, transparently political, dip in gas prices, jump behind the wheels of those hideous, resource gobbling, behemoths. SUVs exemplify everything that is wrong and stupid in this country; the gluttony, the ignorance of history, the lack of foresight, the love of style over substance, the persistent belief that perception is reality... For instance, ask the average SUV driver "why?!" and he will usually say "safety." But SUVs are not safer. They are more likely to roll over, they lack a number of the safety features of smaller vehicles, and they are far more dangerous to everyone else on the road. Could there be a more perfect symbol of the mentality that has pushed this country to the precipice? As long as I feel safe who cares if I actually am safe or if I pose a mortal threat to everyone else; how many little cars I crush or how many tiny nations are turned to rubble in my pursuit of an illusive sense of security.

I've been pondering "the dumbening" of America for some time, but particularly over the last couple of months. Throughout our search for a new home and a difficult move, it was glaringly apparent to me that we are a nation in decline. As the housing boom goes bust, the country is littered with prefab catastrophes waiting to be bought. We saw listing after listing of cosmetically adorable lemons. Not only are they made of particle board and spit, almost to house they are designed with air conditioning/forced air, gas heat units. Cheap for the builder, expensive and inefficient for the home owner. Heat Rises. Cold falls. Does anyone not know this? Having experienced the wonders of forced air in a couple of rentals -- that delicious combination of dry, baked air, and the total lack of actual warmth -- and paid the attendant energy bills, I turned my nose up at 99.9 percent of the listings. I explained to our baffled realtor that to buy a house with a forced air system, just as energy prices are going through the roof, is a little like saying, "Hey gas is $3 a gallon. Time to buy an SUV." The joke fell flat and after reading Newsweek, it's pretty clear why. People keep buying their cardboard dream houses with the heating vents in the ceiling, and they keep buying SUVs.

We found our smart, efficient little bi-level. We love the house, but the move was horrifying. Why? The dumbening. Before moving we hit all the wickets, including setting up our new phone service. But even after two emails confirming that our phone would be turned on the day we moved in, it was not to be. So I called Verizon (on my cell, obviously) and was told that they had been unable to process our order. It took over half an hour and 3 different customer service people to arrive at the reason. They didn't have our old phone number. Why they didn't have it I still don't know. Why they didn't contact us to get the necessary information I still don't know. I do know that even after providing it so they could process the order, they still could not turn on our phone for another 3 weeks. I received a number of mutually contradictory reasons for this, but my favorite was "the weather." I guess it's never rained in the North East before and they were just flummoxed by it.

When I rented my first solo apartment over 15 years ago, a single phone call had my account set up and my phone turned on the day I moved in. During those three weeks while I parceled out my anytime minutes like canteen water in a desert, I had plenty of time to contemplate how it could possibly be that in the "age of communication" getting phone service has gone from nearly effortless to an herculean feat. I had no phone, no internet... and no television. My Sony lies in pieces in our new garage. Why? The dumbening. How else to explain professional movers so idiotic that they piled my husband's weights on top of it. More remarkable, they apparently delivered it into storage as a crushed pile of rubble and left it there without comment, signing off on the shipment like everything was cool. The loss and damage of this move was the worst I've experienced, and thanks to the wonders of bureaucracy it will be years before I see even partial recompense, but that I guess is not a terribly new phenomenon.

What is new, and I why I think America is dumbening is that no one seems to notice or care anymore that everything works like crap. What amazed me more than anything about my laborious conversations with Verizon was the seeming astonishment of the customer service reps that I was, how say, dissatisfied, at being forced to wait for 3 weeks for phone service through no fault of my own. Gone are the days when the customer was always right and sales people cared about your business. Today's service industries are typified by a prevailing sense that they are entitled to your money and a customer's unhappiness with either product or service is his problem.

It almost doesn't surprise me that Verizon reps seemed shocked by my lack of complacency. Complacency has become the hallmark of American culture. Now, I'm as thrilled as anyone that Dems have taken back both houses of Congress and it truly gives me hope, but look at just how bad things had to get for the tide to turn. Torture scandals, the loss of habeas corpus, unauthorized wiretaps, open cronyism, an illegal war; this litany of criminal offenses goes on. But what finally turned public opinion en masse? The lesson for today is that if you want to create massive political shift in this country, a President publicly shredding the Constitution is not enough. What you really need are some good sex scandals. Not just any sex scandals either. They have to be GAY sex scandals.

We have pulled ourselves back from the precipice and I have hope again. Hope that the self-loathing-gay-Republican-led zeitgeist will translate into a broader reawakening of an American populace grown far too comfortable in an environment of utter wrongness. For against this backdrop of unprecedented government excess and criminality, what I see ambling about town is a people whose biggest concern is which $2,500, flat panel television to dig themselves deeper into debt with. Because as credit card interest surpasses usury rates, you surely cannot have enough debt. (I'm not kidding. Since that beacon of Democratic ethics Joe Biden green-lighted bankruptcy reform, I'm waiting for the revised customer agreement notice that tells me that they can break my legs if I'm a day late on payment.) It's worth it because every American home should have a Fahrenheit 451-style "wall." And if cable rates are rising several times the rate of inflation, so be it. What's important is that we all know what's happening on American Idol.

So, yes, I'm optimistic. But with a Democratic Party that seems hell bent on snatching defeat from the jaws of an historic victory, I still have... concerns. I worry that we are a nation grown fat and happy on a literal and metaphorical diet of empty calories. Couch potatoes staring dumbly at ever larger, more crisply defined, images of pundits telling us what we think and feel, until our critical thinking muscles have gone utterly flaccid. Last Tuesday was a reminder of what can happen when the public flexes. We have a choice now between continued vigilance and a consumer culture more intoxicating than the waters of Lethe.

From the Annals of Our Cultural Entropy: What is Going On With Our Food?

Originally published: Wednesday, March 01, 2006

I'm worried about our food supply. No, I'm not terribly concerned that terrorists will contaminate our grain silos with bio-toxins. As with so many things, Americans have become our own worst enemies, when it comes to food. I stopped buying food in supermarkets, for the most part, years ago, because what sits on those shelves isn't food. It's processed chemicals with elements that may or may not be derived from organic matter. There's no food in our food.

I do most of my grocery shopping in Whole Foods – a luxury that may force me to take out a second mortgage at some point – and Trader Joe's. But what I saw at my local Trader Joe's the other day has thrown my relationship with that store into peril. I've written them a letter.

Here is the text:

Dear Lauree Bradley, Director of Product Information
Trader Joe's Company
538 Mission Street
South Pasadena, California
91031-6270

During a recent shopping trip to Trader Joe's in [location redacted], I observed a situation that imperils not only food quality but safety. I reported this situation to two store managers and my concern was received with total nonchalance.

I have been purchasing Trader Joe's frozen chicken parts for years. On Friday, when I attempted to take a bag from the freezer bin, I observed that the bags near the top were completely thawed. Other bags were thawed to varying degrees. I assumed that the freezer was broken and informed the first employee I saw. He assured me that it was a natural result of the defrost cycle of the freezer and began to remove the chicken that was completely thawed and sloshing in its juices in the bags. I asked to speak to a manager.

The manager also assured me that the situation was due to the defrosting of the freezer and said she was sorry that I "had to see that." She offered me a bag from the bottom of the freezer that appeared to be completely frozen. I said, no thank you. How could I tell what bags may have been reshuffled to the bottom of the freezer and refrozen? Depending on how completely that chicken has thawed, there is a serious risk of contamination, let alone the loss of quality caused by even partial thawing and refreezing. I was assured by the manager that it wasn't a problem, because the frozen chicken sells so quickly. I disagree.

After purchasing the rest of my groceries, and heading for the car, I noticed that I had been overcharged 50 cents for a bottle of Marsala wine. I went back into the store and located another manager, who checked the shelf and conceded that I had been overcharged and would be refunded. I took the opportunity to inform him of my disgust over the condition of the frozen chicken. He also assured me that it was just part of the defrost cycle and that it wasn't a problem, as the thawed chicken was removed when it was observed by staff or customers. This, I informed him, is not a system of regulation! He graciously refunded me the entire cost of my Marsala, which I now realize I have little use for, as I have no chicken.

I don't know what disturbs me more; the fact that I observed perishables thawing in the freezer bins, or the fact that store managers exhibited so little concern over a potential public health risk. Those bins also contain frozen prepared meals, raw shellfish, and stuffed meats. Such items are far less forgiving of thawing and refreezing than meats alone.

I have a small child. As of now, I am not comfortable feeding her anything from a Trader Joe's freezer bin. I cannot be as cavalier about her health -- nay, her life -- as the managers and staff of the [redacted] Trader Joe's.

I am left with a number of nagging questions:

1) Was an episode of violent nausea I experienced a couple of weeks ago after eating a meal including Trader Joe's frozen chicken caused by that chicken or some other factor? I consumed the rest of the bag without incident, so I assumed it was a fluke. Now, I'm not so sure. Perhaps I just got lucky.

2) How is it that my own freezer remains frost-free without periodically thawing out all my food, when Trader Joe's freezer bins are incapable of the same feat?

3) Is the management of Trader Joe's aware of the risk posed by food poisoning?

4) Can Trader Joe's afford to eat the profit losses caused by spoilage of its frozen food -- even if it is confined to those items eye-balled by staff and customers -- or are those losses being passed on to consumers in the form of price increases?

5) Why do East Coast Trader Joe's stores pale in comparison to the West Coast stores, in terms of inventory, customer service, price/value, etc? I realize that's a separate issue. I just needed to get that off my chest.

If you were wondering how a nation of such vast wealth as the United States manages to produce 76 million cases of food poisoning per year, well, mystery solved. Let's put that number into perspective shall we? From Wikipedia: the United States logs 26,000 cases of food borne illness for every 100,000 inhabitants. The United Kingdom sees 3,400 cases for 100,000 inhabitants, and France, 1,210 cases for 100,000 inhabitants. We are devolving into a third world country. We have a population so uneducated that two store managers, responsible for food handling, looked at me like I was a crazy person, when I pointed out that frozen food should not be stored in warm freezers.

And don't expect government oversight to be the answer. Our government is too busy handing our port security over to countries with ties to terrorism and the writing of our legislation to the industries they are supposed to be regulating. We'll have to rely on our new found religion of "free market fundamentalism" to work it's corrective magic. John Stossel would probably tell me that Trader Joe's has the right idea, because now they can charge 10 times the regular price for those packages of chicken they can guarantee were never thawed and refrozen.

This morning I received two emails about pending legislation that will further undercut the rights of consumers to know what dangers lurk in their food. H.R 4167 will actually negate state labeling laws, forcing them to comply with the more lax federal standards. This effort is being spearheaded by Congressional Republicans – you know, the party devoted state rights – at the behest of Grocery Manufacturers of America. (So call your Congressperson.)

If you think federal labeling laws are sufficient, think again. Recently,
McDonald's "voluntarily" disclosed that their fries derive their flavor from wheat and dairy ingredients, to which some people are very allergic. I checked. It really is voluntary on their part, because the woefully insufficient labeling law -- a law that doesn't even require disclosure of allergenic substances in refined oils -- provides an exemption for restaurants. Here's my favorite part of the McDonald's statement.

McDonald's director of global nutrition, Cathy Kapica, said its potato suppliers remove all wheat and dairy proteins, such as gluten, which can cause allergic reactions.

Because everybody knows that potatoes come out of the ground just chock full of wheat and dairy.

For my part I swore off McDonald's fries after learning from the movie "Supersize Me" that they don't biodegrade. A jar of McDonald's fries left sitting on a shelf changes little over weeks, months, and years. Perhaps it's small of me but I'm a little put off by the idea of food that has a half-life longer than plutonium.

I write this with full knowledge that I may be sued for food disparagement. Many states now have laws to protect vulnerable corporations from citizens maligning their perishables. It was such a statute that Texas cattle ranchers used to punish Oprah for expressing her fear of mad cows. Oprah won that fight, and presumably a victory for speech, but that was before our political climate devolved into one of "first amendment zones" to protect the President from dissent If you haven't noticed, corporate rights trump consumer rights in nearly every arena now. So it's probably only a matter of time before publishing a letter of complaint to a grocer will land me in court. And if Oprah's experience is any guide, I'll have to hire Dr. Phil to help me "get real." That's an indignity I don't know if I'd survive. I'm a strong woman but I have my limits.

Nabisco Embraces White Power

Originally published: Thursday, February 23, 2006

I'm pretty sure this is a reflection of America's greater cultural entropy, but watching television is becoming surreal. Copy writing has truly gone to hell. Advertisers now get away with statements like "Titanium: The world's sharpest metal." This is bad enough, but when Nazi punks are pimping chocolate chip cookies, something is deeply amiss. I nearly choked on my racially tolerant Oreos and milk last night, when I heard the refrain, "Chips Ahoy. Oi. Oi. Oi." My husband came out of the kitchen with a stricken look on his face and said, "What's next? Enjoy a Triscuit and go burn down a darkie's house?" So far the "Oi" shouting cookies are not thrashing across my screen in Doc Martens with red shoe laces, but I fear that's next.