Libertine

When I was a kid, the towns I lived in always made a big production out of the Fourth of July.   There were outdoor festivals, public and private barbecues, parades, and the town always sponsored a fireworks celebration, usually held at the high school football stadium.  

When I was in high school, I was in the band, and we marched each year in a parade that culminated at the Revolutionary War battlefield in my town, which was across from the southern end of Philadelphia, near the Navy Yard.  It was a good time and I always enjoyed doing it.

And the year of my high school graduation, 1976, was the biggest 4th of July celebration I'll likely ever see in my lifetime, as it was the Bicentennial Year.  I have to say that the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, really outdid itself that year and I remember being quite proud to have graduated the year that I did.

Over the years, I've seen the celebration of this holiday slowly decline, though the town I currently live in still put on impressive fireworks displays as recently as the mid to late 90s.  I remember taking my son to the annual fireworks show down by the lake, at which half of the spectators watched from their own boats in the lake.

That's long gone, now, unfortunately.  Last night, there were no public fireworks celebrations whatsoever in my town, nor any parades or public barbecues.   The holiday passed relatively unnoticed, barring some obnoxious kids throwing firecrackers at passing cars and people in yards lighting sparklers and bottle rockets.

A shame, really.

A recent article on Alternet, For Many, Marriage is Sexless, Boring, and Oppressive:Time to Rethink the Institution? by Amanda Marcotte, asks the question:

Formalized marriage and monogamy began for practical reasons, unrelated to any religious notions of "sanctity". Once ancient hunter-gatherers settled into agricultural societies and ideas of private property and inheritance came about, socially sanctioned monogamous marriage began as a way to control women's sexuality so men would know which children were actually theirs. Polygynous marriage existed for the very rich, but the women in such marriages were still monogamous, though men were not. It is because of this original reason that women are punished more severely for infidelity than are men, as men couldn't be sure of who their children were unless women's sexuality was tightly controlled.

Religious insistence on monogamy was soon added, as it gave the force of law to a practical idea in societies where religious leaders were the law. "God said it" leaves no room for debate.

People did not marry primarily for love until around the 18th century. It was strictly a practical arrangement, a vehicle for joining powerful families for the rich, along with inheritance reasons, and to have a socially sanctioned partner to have children with and work together for survival for the poor. Love, if it happened, was icing on the cake, not the reason to get married in the first place.

People lived shorter lives then, so "until death do us part", did not include decades of the "empty-nest syndrome". Most people were lucky to live long enough to see the youngest child to adulthood. Life itself was harder and more survival oriented, thus people did not worry overmuch about love or personal fulfillment then.

Still, infidelity occurred all throughout history for both sexes, despite sanctions against it, as it's very difficult to overcome basic human nature. It's always been a big scandal for women, but not so much for men until the 19th century or so. The feminist movement no doubt influenced the increasing disapproval of male infidelity, rather than freeing women to male norms.

Today, we marry for love, life isn't strictly about survival, DNA tests prove paternity, overpopulation discourages large families, we live longer lives, women can support themselves, and the abolishment of legal distictions between marital and nonmarital children have removed much of the valid reasons for legal marriage and monogamy. Thus, marriage as it's currently understood has become maladaptive for modern needs. It's no wonder we're seeing what we're seeing.

In light of this, marriage needs to be redefined if it is to survive in a workable form(s) and adjusted to reflect the realities of modern life and human nature. One of the first steps would be to cease mandating monogamy.

I've not picked on the advertising industry in awhile, so here goes. 

I've been hearing different ads lately that talk about "that guy".   "That guy" is usually a bumbling, figure of universal scorn; someone who isn't quite all man, somehow.  Naturally, use of the product being advertised will save the men from the shame of being "that guy".

For instance, there's a radio spot for STP oil treatment with Richard Petty telling us not to be "that guy".  In this instance, "that guy" doesn't know a thing about cars, barely knows how to raise the hood of the car, calls parts of the engine "doohickeys" and "thingamajigs", and so on.  You get the picture.

The next buzz word I'm hearing, though not limited exclusively to the realm of actual commercials is "rebrand".   From what I can gather from context, "rebrand" means to change one's image, usually used in the context of changing a corporate image.

The mental images I take away from this, however, are skittish already-branded cows running awy from psychotic cowboys holding red-hot branding irons who want to brand them again.

Another trend I've noticed is a fascination with Tuscany region of Italy.  Restaurants all over have popped up with Tuscan style dishes of various kinds, I see travel agency ads promoting trips there, I see ads promoting Tuscan style home decorating, and so on.

What's the sudden appeal of Tuscany, I wonder?   Twenty years ago, I never saw references to this part of Italy.   I imagine it's a temporary thing until the next foreign flavor of the month takes its place, as Tuscany has apparently supplanted the chipotle mania of a few years ago.

/rant over

What's your favorite Michael Jackson song? Bonus points if you share the video.

I'd have to say Billie Jean, with the strong bass line in it.  I've never been a rabid Michael Jackson fan in general, but I always liked this song.

The other day I was having a conversation with someone and we were discussing whether or not it was likely that South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford would resign his office.   The other person -- a Republican -- took the attitude "why should he resign -- Bill Clinton didn't!"

Yes, both men strayed from the monogamous straight and narrow, but the difference is that Bill Clinton ran his job while doing so instead of going AWOL for a week like Sanford did.

I think he should resign, but it's not because he had an extramarital affair.   That is a private matter between him, his wife, and the other woman involved and I wouldn't give a flying fuck who he screws as long as he ran his job.

Rather, I think he should resign because the man disappeared without anyone, including the Lieutenant Governor, knowing where he'd really gone and was incommunicado for that week.  He wasn't running the job he'd been elected to do. That is the real scandal.

Thoughts?

The other day, I had the misfortune to listen to Neal Boortz ranting about health care reform. 

Boortz believes that even employer-provided health insurance should be cut to the bone and not cover any type of routine medical care; that it should be reserved solely for complications from routine medical matters and catastrophic health problems.

As an example, he asserted that one's health insurance should not cover routine childbirth and prenatal care, because people "choose" to have children.    He estimated that a garden variety vaginal birth costs about ten thousand dollars nowadays and that if people cannot come up with ten grand over the space of nine months to pay for having a child, then they had no business having children in the first place.  He went on to say that with the cost of raising a child to age 18 estimated to be about a quarter of a million dollars (in his estimation), that ten grand is a "paltry" amount.

Where to begin?  For one thing, even if his estimate of the cost of raising a child to 18 is anything at all realistic, it wouldn't be that high for everyone and it's a cost that one doesn't have to come up with all at once.  Ten thousand dollars is a big chunk of change to come up with in a limited time frame for many people, even those in the middle class, 

Boortz betrays his elitism and implies a belief that only those above a certain income level have any business having children at all.  He's being rather shortsighted here, because I'm guessing he doesn't expect the little spoiled scions of the blueblooded families he so reveres to grow up to flip the burgers, fix the cars, drive the taxis, and so on.

He believes that people should save their money for routine health care and personally pay for such care out of their own pockets.  Never mind that people nowadays are having trouble paying their mortgages and even basic survival expenses in an economy beset by massive layoffs and cutbacks in the employment sector.  This might have been a valid argument in 1945 when my much-older brother was born and the entire cost of labor, delivery, and a ten day hospital stay for my mother was a whopping $73, but it's highly unrealistic today.

For more serious illness, he believes that everyone should buy private health insurance with a high deductible; five thousand dollars was his suggestion.  Again, he assumes that it's no big deal for anyone to come up with that sum, either not realizing or not caring that this would be impossible for many people.  I can only assume that he thinks those who cannot cough up five grand should do the world a favor and quietly crawl into a hole and die.

Boortz also has the curious convoluted belief that government supported health care is "stealing" parts of people's lives from them; in the form of the taxes they pay represented by the time it took them to earn the money that is paid in such taxes.   He views it as nothing less than putting a gun to the heads of taxpayers and taking their money.   I never hear Boortz make this argument about the taxes we pay to fund the military, for example.   I guess it's only an outrage when one's tax dollars go to help the less fortunate. It's fine with him when it comes to things such as the military, though the time spent to earn the tax money that is "stolen" is just the same.  It's the fact that it's going to help people that galls him about government assistance with health care costs.

He also went on a tear about his belief that a big reason why GM is going under is because of all the money they have to spend on health insurance for their employees, which in turn makes them less profitable and unable to compete with foreign automakers..

The man blithely stated this opinion, unaware that he'd painted himself into a corner with this reasoning.  Did it not ever occur to him that the employees of such foreign automarkers live in countries with GOVERNMENT provided health care and that it would help American automakers similarly if we followed suit with our own health care?

After this point, my head was about to implode from listening to him, so I didn't hear what else he had to say on the subject.

Thoughts?

Summer is finally here! What are your plans?

My plans are to avoid the heat and sunlight as much as possible.   Because I work at night, I stay inside all day under air conditioning and when I do go out during the day, it's only from the house to the car, then to the building of whatever place I'm going.   I never willingly spend prolonged time outside when the weather is hot.

I also spend much of the summer looking forward to the return of fall and winter.

As part of my habit of monitoring right wing talk radio as a method of knowing one's opposition, I regularly tune in to the Neal Boortz show.  As anyone who has read my blog regularly knows, I can't stand the guy.  He labels himself a libertarian conservative and his philosophy could be characterized as objectivism in the Ayn Rand vein.   But I just call him an elitist, as one of his favorite topics to harp on is what he calls "wealth envy", which is his particular spin on justifying selfishness and his disdain for poor people and others in unfortunate circumstances. 

But sometimes the man surprises me.  Recently, he's been getting a spate of callers of the tinfoil hat brigade variety who call in to rant about President Obama, saying he "hates America" and wants to "destroy our country."

To my surprise, and to be perfectly fair, Boortz always corrects such callers.  He tells them that the President doesn't hate America, nor does he want to "destroy" it, but rather that he's got a different idea from the caller (and him) on what makes America great.

True enough and a perfectly rational answer.  It's a shame he's not as even-handed about other topics with conflicting viewpoints as well.

But then he goes on to say that Barack Obama believes that government is what makes this country great, unlike himself and the caller who believe that America is great because of its people and freedom (which he defines primarly as economic freedom, especially from the perspective of the wealthy).  He implies that this also means that Obama believes the bigger the government, the better.

I find that highly misleading.  For one thing, all politicians, regardless of party,  "believe" in government in that they have been elected to it and seek to promote governmental policies that they believe are effective and useful.  They "believe in government in that they wish to effect changes by working within the system as elected representatives, instead of through the private sector.

And it doesn't logically follow that because Barack Obama is committing to working through the system to implement his policies on how to make our great country greater, that he would automatically think that simply making it bigger would be his goal.  Rather, he wants to work within the system to make government work better and more effectively, rather than simply increasing its size.

It's his perfect right to deride the role of government in our society, but unless the highly unlikely scenario occurs in that we turn into an anarchistic society, we will have a government of some sort.  It seems to me that it would be better to talk about ways of improving government, rather than denigrating its role in a civilized society at every given opportunity..

What is the most valuable lesson your father taught you? Bonus points if you show us your dad.

1.   You can put garbage in a closet, but that doesn't stop it from stinking

2.   There are more horse's asses in the world than there are horses

3.   Everything happens for a reason

4.   You can work with the devil himself, if it's to your benefit.(Advice about bad bosses)

5.   There's good and bad in all kinds

6.   Those whom you hold a grudge against, own you.

7.   It's a waste of time to try to argue with willful ignorance.

8.   Stupid people are always ignorant, but ignorant people aren't always stupid.

The news is full of stories about the latest political "sex scandal" of the day. 

Yesterday, Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign publicly admitted to having an extramarital affair while legally separated from his wife.  His admission was accompanied by the usual insincere, crocodile tears statement:

"Last year I had an affair. I violated the vows of my marriage. It is the worst thing I have ever done in my life ," Ensign said.

Spare me the treacly fake remorse,  Even among many of those who are much less permissive about sexual matters than I am, having a relationship while legally separated isn't identical to having an extra-marital affair while in an ongoing intact marriage.   Though one is technically "still married" when separated and the law would consider it adultery, the de facto reality is that it has already been acknowledged that the marriage has broken down and that divorce is soon likely to occur.   To remain "faithful" to a broken marriage is merely to perpetuate a useless fiction. 

The man was separated.  Obviously, he's not going to be able to get any from his wife.  Is he expected to remain celibate while in marital limbo?   I think most people would agree with me that this is an unreasonable expectation in modern society.

As sex scandals usually go, this one is pretty tame.  He didn't solicit a partner in a men's room, like Larry Craig, nor did he run around on a sick wife, as did Newt Gingrich, John Edwards, and John McCain, nor did visit a sex worker, a la David Vitter.

But like Gingrich, Craig, and Vitter, he is guilty of rampant hypocrisy.  Like these men, he is a social conservative, who has made many judgmental statements about the decline of "traditional" marriage, and is a member of the Christian conservative group, Promise Keepers.

But hypocrisy is nothing new in Washington.

This latest sex brouhaha doesn't rate more than a loud yawn from me.