Eric The Blue

Four more things

I am excited as a heterosexual Scandinavian person can be about what happened in New York over the weekend.  Herewith a few more scattered thoughts.

1. In my last post, I quoted two of the four New York Republican state senators who voted for marriage equality, thereby giving short shrift to the other two--Mark Grisanti, from Buffalo, and Stephen Saland, from Poughkeepsie.  Grisanti's floor speech, announcing his intention to vote Yes, may be viewed here.  Money quote: "I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is the same rights that I have with my wife."  The quietest of the four was Saland, but he may have been the most heroic.  With two Republicans committed, the bill needed one more Republican vote to pass.  Both Grisanti and Saland informed Governor Cuomo that they were prepared to vote Yes but were reluctant to be the decisive 32nd vote.  Cuomo privately told each of them that there was another Republican vote, so that neither of them would be the single fall guy.  When Grisanti wavered, Cuomo told Saland that he could no longer guarantee him that his Yes vote would not be the one that passed the bill.  I'll let the Times pick up the story:

Reluctantly, Mr Cuomo said he would understand if Mr Saland backed out of his commitment to vote yes. 

Mr Saland said he needed to think it over.  After hours of anxious waiting, Mr Cuomo heard back.  If the governor needed him to be the 32nd vote, Mr Saland told Mr Cuomo, he would be the 32nd vote. 

"I will be there for you," Mr Saland said.

And he was.  On Friday, both Mr Saland and Mr Grisanti voted for the marriage bill--neither of them officially being the 32nd.

2. The people who change their minds on this question all move from "opposed" to "support."  There is no movement in the other direction.  Grisanti, noting in his floor speech that he had campaigned against gay marriage, said, "A man can be wiser today than yesterday."  David Frum's account of his conversion is here; he says that "the case against gay marriage has been tested against reality"--and reality won.  Margaret Talbot describes the general phenomenon, which makes me think it's not just wishful thinking to suppose that marriage equality will prevail.

3.  Does the whole debate expose a fissure in the Republican party?  There are the rich guys, who want to keep all their money but don't much care if the gays marry each other.  Plus, they think their daughters should be able to have abortions.  Then there are the Christianists.  Many of them are so moralistic they virtually forgot to earn a living.  The rich and the upright need each other to have any chance of winning elections, and the prospect of them divorcing is pleasant to contemplate.  But now I probably am indulging in wishful thinking.

4. James Wolcott demonstrates why he is on my Blog Roll.  Here is the link.  Here is the whole post:

O Frabjous Day

In a stunning, overdue setback to the drag-ass forces of chicken-cluck reaction represented by Donald Trump, Ann Coulter, Maggie Gallagher, Darleen Click, Kathryn Jean Lopez, and Rick Perry's smirking hair, the New York Assembly has legalized gay marriage, one of the rare unambiguous bits of good news to fall from orbit recently.

It is a victory for fairness, equality, tolerance, enlightenment, conscience and integrity (exemplified by those Republicans who voted for the bill, knowing that the flak will be pocking their reelection bids from irate conservatives), Governor Andrew Cuomo (let's run him in 2016), Lady Gaga, and, of course, wedding planners.

Now Rick Santorum and Glenn Beck are free to drop the pretense and teasing and gay-marry, and, after the honeymoon cruise, serpent-kiss each other on the couch as they discuss "raising the debt ceiling," an obvious double entendre.

 

Love and marriage in New York

Not everyone is happy about the passage, in New York late Friday night, of a bill extending the right to marry to same-sex couples:

Brian Brown, president of the conservative National Organization for Marriage, vowed to seek defeat of the New York Republicans who helped the marriage bill pass.  He also predicted victory for the amendment to ban gay marriage next year in Minnesota, and said this would belie the claims that the same-sex marriage campaign would inevitably prevail nationwide.

"We've won every free, fair vote of the people," Brown said Saturday.  "Backroom deals in Albany are not an indication of what people in this country think about marriage."

New York's state senate has 62 members.  Currently, 32 are Republicans and 30 are Democrats.  Among the Dems, the vote was 29-1, and, among the Rs, 4-28.  That makes 33 for and 29 against--a new law soon as Governor Cuomo could sign, which he has now done.  It might seem that Mr. Brown and his group should have more than four targets, but, happily, it is only with the Republicans that they have any pull.  Roy McDonald, from Saratoga, is one of the four Republicans with wrong thoughts about marriage.  Here he is explaining himself:

"You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn't black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing," McDonald, 64, told reporters. 

"You might not like that.  You might be very cynical about that.  Well, fuck it, I don't care what you think.  I'm trying to do the right thing."

I do like it.  Here is McDonald's colleague, Jim Alesi, Republican from the Rochester area:

I'm a Republican. I was born that way. . . .   There was a time when I had anguish over voting on marriage equality.  I no longer have anguish.  I am voting yes. . . .  [I've] lost what I thought were a lot of good friends, people that supported me.  And when I told them . . . I am committed to giving people that live in America what every American wants, they told me I was no longer their friend.  [Pause.]  I think I have some new friends.

It appears to me that these fellows can hold their own against Mr. Brown and the National Organization for Marriage.  Nevertheless, it is fun to try and fill in the spaces of the argument.  First, decisions rendered by judges are illegitimate.  Now the vote of the New York legislature, and the approval of the governor, all individuals voted into office by the people of New York, is likewise a nullity.  They have no idea "what people in this country think about marriage."  When people vote, as they will in Minnesota in 2012, then we'll see "what people in this country think about marriage."

It seems that the argument against same-sex marriage is just a querulous and increasingly dubious appeal to public opinion.  The young are for it, and some of the not-so-young, like Jim Alesi, from Rochester, and Roy McDonald, from Saratoga, are changing their minds. 

Some advice for Poor Angus from Robert Pinsky

Our eight-year-old and I have evolving bedtime rituals.  The current one involves Shel Silverstein.  She has his book of children's poems, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and we take turns reading aloud our "favorites," first her, then me, then her, then me, and so on, till I put an end to it.  Her favorites tend to be long ones, so as to extend her day.  I actually have only one favorite, "Poor Angus," which goes like this:

Oh what do you do, poor Angus,
When hunger makes you cry?
"I fix myself an omelet, sir,
Of fluffy clouds and sky."

Oh what do you wear, poor Angus,
When winds blow down the hills?
"I sew myself a warm cloak, sir,
Of hope and daffodils."

Oh who do you love, poor Angus,
When Catherine's left the moor?
"Ah, then, sir, then's the only time
I feel I'm really poor."

I think I like "Poor Angus" mainly because it reminds me of this poem, by Robert Pinsky, which I like quite a lot more:

Samurai Song

When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.

When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.

When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.

When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.

When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.

When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.

Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.

Here is Pinsky himself performing the poem in an elevator. 

 

Fittingly austere.  Poor Angus needs to learn to court his sleep. 

Minnesota Senate District 48: Meet the incumbent

Senate District 48 in the Minnesota State Legislature has been represented since 2003 by Michael Jungbauer, a Republican who, according to his website, "still lives on the East Bethel farm where he was raised."  That he hasn't left home reminds him, he says, of "his humble roots and the natural beauty and resources he is fighting to protect."  I've been to East Bethel and am sorry to say have missed all the "natural beauty."  It's one of those exurban landscapes filled with an eclectic mix of strip centers, bait shops, auto body repair shops, motorcycle and snowmobile outlets, newer beige townhouse developments, and at least one oversized shopping center--the kind where the sprawling parking lot serves side-by-side-by-side warehouse-sized stores and is broken up by a few smaller businesses, like franchise restaurants.  Jungbauer says he lives on a farm, but he gives his occupation as "wastewater treatment designer," so he's not the kind of farm resident who farms. 

In a word: Bachmann-land.

As Don Shelby points out in a recent Minn Post column, Jungbauer's website includes a few other stretchers. For example, under the heading "Education" he lists Anoka-Ramsey Community College, Moody Bible Institute, and Metropolitan State University.  It would be a mistake, however, to think that he had graduated from any of these institutions.  He does not have a bachelor's degree.  He has a "certificate" from Moody Bible Institute.  The "about Mike" section of his website says that he is a pastor--a claim that is justified, I guess, by his affilitation with Christian Motor Sports International, which, according to its website, provides "chapel services, pastoral care, outreach and Christian fellowship" at "races, car shows, cruise-ins and tractor pulls."  Now that sounds a little more like East Bethel!

A life-long learner, Sen. Jungbauer says that he "spends his free hours pursuing a degree in Environmental Policy at Metropolitan State University."  When Shelby pointed out to him that Metropolitan State University does not offer a degree in Environmental Policy, Jungbauer replied, according to Shelby, "Well, that's what they told me."  I'm telling you that Sen. Jungbauer's website is not a good advertisement for any of the schools he has attended.  Here is an example of his sparkling prose style: "A degree from Moody Bible Institute also prepared Jungbauer for years of youth ministry and coupled with his professional experience, enabled he and his family to join church members on several missions to build safer water quality infrastructure in third world communities."

That he does not have a degree from Moody Bible Institute isn't the only thing wrong with that sentence. 

When it comes to the issue of global warming, Sen. Jungbauer leaves his humility on the farm.  He has studied the science.  Indeed, he has "studied all thirteen disciplines of science."  Presumably, it is this scholarship that will allow him to realize the goal of "educating the citizens of Minnesota and the legislature about the real science surrounding global warming."  Here he is in professorial mode:

 

He knows how to use that whiteboard! Wrong info?  Wrong conclusion!  If you have an appetite for installments 2 and 3, they are available at the global warming section of his website.

It's really quite remarkable that the unemployment rate is around nine per cent and this guy has a job representing people in the Minnesota legislature. 

Bloomsday, 2011

Each June 16, as both my faithful readers know, I devote a post to James Joyce, whose novel Ulysses concerns a day in the life of Dubliner Leopold Bloom.  The exact day is June 16, 1904, which had personal significance for Joyce, as he went out that evening with Nora Barnacle, his future wife, who permitted him considerable liberties.  So, June 16: Bloomsday (meaning: Bloom's Day), the closest thing we have to a literary holiday.

Elizabeth Minkel collects here a New York-centric menu of Bloomsday activities this weekend.  You can read Joyce no matter where you are, and, as Ulysses cannot be conquered in a day, I have always recommended the long story "The Dead," which brings Dubliners to a close.  If you don't like "The Dead," forget about Ulysses; if you do like it, read Dubliners through from start to finish.  Your reward at the end will be that you get to read "The Dead" again, and you can then proceed to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, then Ulysses, then (if you're more ambitious than I) Finnegan's Wake. 

For the beginner, the main difficulty of Ulysses has to do with Joyce's method.  Previously, novels had always given a kind of artificial focus to human consciousness.  When characteres think, it's as if they are writing essays in the style of the author.  Joyce attempts to reproduce the fluidity of human consciousness-- the way in which walking down a street, for example, a store sign, or bit of overheard conversation, might set off a kind of reverie having to do with a sexual experience, or a memory from earliest youth, or an argument with one's spouse, which reverie, while in progress, might take another sudden turn when a work worry obtrudes as a businessman passes walking in the other direction.  You can guess how this might be challenging for a reader accustomed to friendly, omniscient narrators who responsibly provide commentary, notes, and smooth transitions.

The aspect of Ulysses that appeals most to me is the mock-heroic.  Bloom's "adventures" on his day parallel those of Ulysses making his way home from war in the Homeric epic, but Bloom is no Ulysses, and it is gradually revealed that his wife is no Penelope, either.  There is a literary anecdote about a young Columbia University English professor who, feeling intimidated when Lionel Trilling asked him why he thought Ulysses was such a great book, mumbled something having to do with the revolutionary technique, the stream-of-consciousness narrative, etc., etc.  When he came to the end, Trilling said he thought Ulysses was extraordinary mainly because it is the first novel in which the hero sniffs his toe jam.

The Republicans debate. . .

. . . and I go to the grocery store.  I understand that, in this crowd, Michele Bachmann showed to good advantage.  The only thing that says more about the condition of the GOP is the Onion headline, "MITT ROMNEY HAUNTED BY PAST OF HELPING UNINSURED SICK PEOPLE."

Here are some of Eric the Blue's golden oldies on some of the Republican hopefuls.  Newt Gingrich.  Michele Bachmann.  Tim Pawlenty.  Sorry, nothing on Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, or even Mitt Romney.  Now, if Sarah Palin were to get into the race. . . .

I guess John King, of CNN, asked the candidates some silly "this-and-that" questions, such as "Elvis or Johnny Cash?", in order that those not grocery shopping or watching a ballgame could "get to know the candidates as people."  Probably the only good thing to come out of that is this riff on Johnny Cash by Amy Davidson.  I really like her Close Read Blog at The New Yorker.  Also, since I've linked to myself five times in the above paragraph, it might be prudent to begin building a defense against the charge of solipsism. 

Back to Mitt Romney's health care "problem": it's a symtom of the illogic of the general Republican position, insofar as their general position can be logically explained.  How is it that a reform that would deliver millions of the previously uninsured into the hands of private insurers is "a government takeover of health care"?  Republicans seem to be okay with the requirement that private insurers be barred from turning away people with preexisting conditions, but they are apoplectic about requiring people to buy insurance.  Has it not occurred to them that, if those with preexisting conditions cannot be denied coverage, then it is necessary that everyone participate?  (Else, people would not buy insurance till they got sick and needed it.)  Actually, once you start imposing conditions on the private market, which the Republicans say they are willing to do, you are implicitly admitting that health care does not lend itself to markets and the profit motive. The argument for preserving a private system thus lapses into incoherence.  Amy Davidson's colleague James Surowiecki has more on this theme. 

 

Twins on the radio

Eight-year-old's softball game last night was played in drizzle that intermittently qualified as a shower.  On our way home, I turned on the car radio, partly to see how the Twins were doing and partly to hear something other than "I'm cold" and "Why did we have to play in the rain," in time to catch the summary of the visitors' half of the second inning: "For Texas, seven runs on six hits, there were two errors by the Twins and one runner left on base: after an inning and a half, Texas leads, 7-0."

Nice!  Two and a half soggy hours later, a 9-3 loss was in the books, and the Twins, winners of seven of their last nine games, nevertheless have a season record of 24 wins and 39 losses.  Those with arithmetical inclinations might note that the team has played 63 games, which means there are 99 to go, and that to finish 90-72 the Twins therefore would have to win exactly two-thirds of their remaining games.  Ninety wins is probably not enough to make the playoffs.  The Twins' best-ever winning percentage for an entire season is less than 0.66 (it's 0.63).

With the possibility of a pennant race and its pleasures vanished, we fans will have to find other ways to enjoy the long season.  Having arrived at home, I turned on the kitchen radio and advanced on the supper dishes.  Michael Cuddyer led off the Twins' third with a double, then was thrown out trying to tag and advance to third on a fly to right.  The announcers started swapping stories.  For years the Twins' play-by-play guy was Herb Carneal, who never criticized a player and rarely noted anything unpleasant.  Once, when Dan Gladden, having exchanged words with a teammate on a plane ride, next day drove to the teammate's house to "settle the disagreement like men" (as manager Tom Kelly put it), Herb referred to the fistfight as "a family squabble."  Now Gladden is one of the announcers.  While I was drying dishes he told of the time when he went on a winter PR tour of some rural Minnesota towns for the Twins.  Besides Gladden, there were a couple of other players or former players, and also Herb, who emceed the events.  "Interesting group," noted Gladden.  They got back to the Twin Cities late at night and dropped Herb off at his home.  His wife came outside to greet them and noticed when a few empty cans tumbled out as Herb exited the vehicle. 

"How many of those empties belonged to Herb?" asked Gladden's partner.  After a few seconds of no sound but the low murmur of the baseball crowd, Gladden said, "Well, I don't think we had Herb's flavor."

Unchaste thoughts

I understand that Rep Anthony Weiner, D-NY, has been in the news?  "Keep a chaste mind," advised Henry David Thoreau, but lord, it's hard.*  I surrender.

One bit of conventional wisdom relating to political sex scandals holds that "politicians think they can get away with it."  As Hendrik Hertzberg points out, the exact opposite is the case.  In one of Woody Allen's movies, his sister calls him after a disastrous date in which it became evident, late in the evening, that the seemingly okay fellow derived sexual pleasure from an activity that most of us believe should be confined to a room usually found across the hall from the bedroom. Stunned by her story, Allen muses out loud that (as I recall the lines) "in the realm of human sexuality, 'normal' is not a useful concept."  The definition of "abnormal" is pretty close to "other peoples' secrets, publicized"--and for your secrets to be publicized you have to be someone like Anthony Weiner.  (I could get away with it, had I ever performed an impure action.)

I like, also, Hertzberg's remark that "lying is an inherent part of adultery."  I remember trying to make this point, during the Time of Bill and Monica, to a Limbaugh enthusiast of my acquaintance who, adopting a posture of moral sternness leavened with end-of-the-century sophistication, insisted, "It's not that he had sex with her, it's that he lied about it." The benefit that the self-appointed upright confer upon themselves is material for comedians.  The answer to You should have taken a cab is, If I'd been sober, I'd have known that, too.

*One cannot write on this subject without letting drop an unintentional double entendre.

 

Our Mutual Friend (on my Nook)

Have been happily sunk for more than a month now in Our Mutual Friend, the last novel Dickens completed before dying, age 58, in 1870.  If you are at all interested in Dickens, I recommend this podcast of Andrew Martin's conversation with Robert Gottlieb on the occasion of Gottlieb's essay, "Who Was Charles Dickens?", appearing in The New York Review of Books.  The podcast includes a link to the essay, which, happily, is available in its entirety and not hiding behind a subscriber wall.

Then begin reading Dickens.  Or, as Vladimir Nabokov said, in his lecture on Bleak House, which follows upon the one on Mansfield Park:

We are now ready to tackle Dickens. We are now ready to embrace Dickens.  We are now ready to bask in Dickens.  In our dealings with Jane Austen we had to make a certain effort to join the ladies in the drawing room.  In the case of Dickens we remain at table with our tawny port.

In my case, with my Nook.  Am not sure it is the best tool for this particular work, rather intricately plotted as it is and, according to its Wikipedia article, featuring nineteen "major characters."  When you are proceeding at the rate of one or two chapters per day, you sometimes feel the need to reacquaint yourself with someone who has been for awhile off the stage, and the Nook does not lend itself so well as an old-fashioned physical book to backward leafings.  So if you are me you just give it up and keep up the forward momentum, basking in all the richly detailed present moments, this one and then that one: several weeks' worth at the rate of my progression.  Here is a recent one:

Mr and Mrs Lammle's house in Sackville Street, Piccadilly, was but a temporary residence.  It has done well enough, they informed their friends, for Mr Lammle when a bachelor, but it would not do now.  So, they were always looking at palatial residences in the best situations, and always very nearly taking or buying one, but never quite concluding the bargain.  Hereby they made for themselves a shining little reputation apart.  People said, on seeing a vacant palatial residence, "The very thing for the Lammles!" and wrote to  the Lammles about it, and the Lammles always went to look at it, but unfortunately it never exactly answered.  In short, they suffered so many disappointments, that they began to think it would be necessary to build a palatial residence.  And hereby they made another shining reputation; many persons of their acquaintance becoming by anticipation dissatisfied with their own houses, and envious of the nonexistent Lammle structure.

It's the world of Eliot's wasteland only with Dickensian gusto substituted for the tired, sad voice.

More on the Electoral College

I sent a version of my recent post on the Electoral College to the Star Tribune, which published it as a letter to the editor earlier this week.  My letter (you'll have to scroll past the first one) includes a link to the op-ed, by Andy Brehm, that I was attempting to rebut, and many of the online comments amplify points I made.   I mentioned, for example, that the states (and citizens) of New York, Texas, and California, which together have more than a quarter of the country's population, are ignored by presidential candidates during the general election campaign.  The commenter known as "mvymvy" elaborates:

The current system of electing the president ensures that the candidates, after the primaries, do not reach out to all of the states and their voters.  Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind.  The reason for this is the state-by-state winner-take-all method (not mentioned in the US Constitution, but since enacted by 48 states), under which all of a state's electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who gets the most votes in each separate state.  Presidential candidates concentrate their attention on only a handful of closely divided "battleground" states and their voters.  In the 2012 election, pundits and campaign operatives agree already, that, at most, only 14 states and their voters will matter.  Almost 75% of the country will be ignored--including 19 of the 22 lowest population and medium-small states, and big states like CA, GA, NY, and TX.  This will be more obscene than the 2008 campaign, when candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their campaign events and ad money in just 6 states, and 98% in just 15 states (CO, FL, IN, IA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NM, NC, OH, PA, VA, and WI).  Over half (57%) of the events were in just 4 states (OH, FL, PA, and VA).  In 2004, candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their money and campaign visits in just 5 states; over 80% in 9 states; and over 99% of their money in 16 states.  2/3rds of the states and people have been merely spectators to the presidential elections. . . . 

That was at 9:27 a.m. on May 16, the day Brehm's piece was published in the print edition.  Sixteen minutes later "mvymvy" weighed in again, this time to demolish Brehm's contention that, in a national popular vote presidential election, a candidate could prevail simply by running up big margins in the country's major cities.  The demographic and electoral arithmetic just does not add up.  Moreover, by the logic of Brehm's argument, states should adopt some sort of Rube Goldberg machine, along the line of the Electoral College, to give some clout to voters in small towns and rural areas in statewide elections, such as for Governor or US Senate.  But no one is calling for such a "solution" because the problem does not exist. 

Brehm's argument is so weak that one searches for hidden motives.  Another commenter, willysand, wonders how all this ink can be spilled over the Electoral College without a single mention of the election of 2000, when George W Bush, having lost the national popular vote by more than a half million ballots, nevertheless became president after the Supreme Court awarded him Florida's electoral votes.  When the Electoral College is up for discussion, that "election" is the elephant in the room, and Brehm, a Republican party activist, may feel obliged to defend the indefensible.  A vote for Bush counted more than a vote for Gore, and if you don't like it, you are an "orthodox majoritarian."  Horrors! 

One more time, louder: support National Popular Vote.