As we approach the ten year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, every media source overflows with stories about 9/11 heroism and the lasting effects of that terrible day on our country. As Abraham Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address, “it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.” The anniversary marks another chapter in the healing of our nation.
The sense of pride permeating our culture in the days leading up to the anniversary is palpable, and while I share in the pride, I also feel cautious. Many in our country practice justified patriotism, but unfortunately, there are also those that ascribe to dumb, blind nationalism.
George Orwell described patriotism as the “devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people.” Conversely, he described nationalism as the feeling that your way of life, country, or ethnic group is superior to others and warned this feeling can lead a group to impose their way of life on others. In simple terms, patriotism is good, but nationalism is dangerous and can lead to war.
If you are proud of the troops defending this country, that is justified patriotism. If you wear red, white and blue pajamas to bed and every night before you go to sleep you yell out your window, “These colors don’t run”, that is dumb nationalism. Being proud of the lasting effects of the Bill of Rights on the world political landscape – patriotism; believing a kid from Mexico named Miguel picking strawberries for 35 cents an hour is the reason the taxes on your house just increased – dumb nationalism. Beaming during the singing of our national anthem – patriotism; arguing that the act of helping people in need brings us one step closer to socialism – dumb nationalism. I could go on and on, but I’ll end with this example – If you believe in freedom of religion but don’t understand the irony behind your anger at a mosque being built near ground zero, then you are the number one culprit of dumb nationalism in 2011.
The intersection between patriotism and nationalism was at a forefront in the days following 9/11. I loved seeing all the flags flying and the spontaneous patriotic singing on 9/12. It made me proud to be American. Then on 9/13, my good friend, a practitioner of the Sikh face who wears a turban to express his beliefs, was run off the road in his car and punched in the face without explanation. He wasn’t even Muslim, but his dark skin made him a target for ignorance. I’ve never been more ashamed of my peers. The FBI reported that hate crimes against people of Middle Eastern origin or descent increased from 354 attacks in 2000 to 1,501 attacks in 2001. Not one of those can be justified as patriotism. They were all a product of dumb nationalism.
Several months ago I was talking to a stranger in a bar in Indiana. Our conversation turned to the situation in the Middle East and he postulated, “Muslims are everything that’s wrong with the world today.” I respectfully disagreed. While I strongly disagree with the conservative practices of Islamic states, we should be angry about fundamentalism not Islam. Fundamentalism is the celebration of extremism and fanaticism. As Winston Churchill said, “a fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” Unfortunately, fundamentalists exist in every faith, Christianity included. The people of the Westboro Baptist Church may not kill people, but they spread a lot of hate with signs that read things like “Thank God for dead soldiers.” If we keep lumping all Muslims together, then we keep practicing dumb nationalism.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the American and French Revolutions of the late 18th Century spawned the concept of nationalism. Before the American Revolution, there was no concept of “America”. We existed as individual colonies and identified ourselves as Virginians, New Yorkers, etc., not as Americans. It wasn’t until we were faced with a common enemy in the British that we bandied together and began formulating a national identity. I’ve experienced similar phenomena when I try to approach a group of girls in a bar only to watch them join forces and expel the common enemy, me. My favorite example of dumb nationalism is the song Yankee Doodle whose chorus includes the lyrics “stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni.” The British actually wrote that song and sang it to make fun of the colonists during the Revolutionary War. Macaronis were fashionable British men who dressed and spoke in an affected, epicene manner. In the song Yankee Doodle, the lyrics mean that colonists are so dumb we’d stick a feather in our hats and think it makes us the height of fashion. Instead of being angry, we were filled with so much dumb national pride we said, “That’s a catchy tune! Let’s teach it to every second grader in America from here on out.”
The Yankee Doodle example is hilarious, but too many examples of dumb nationalism are scary and dangerous. America helped found dumb nationalism, now let’s rise above it. Let’s make our country better – that’s the best memorial we can give to the victims of 9/11 on this anniversary weekend.
We are looking for a production designer for the pilot episode of a new comedy web series. The pilot will be short at various locations around the Bay Area.
Responsibilities: design the visual feel of the film, location scouting, obtain props, dress sets, various aspects of pre-production and production.
Commitment: several hours per week for the next few weeks and all day June 25 & 26 when we’ll be shooting.
Compensation: The pay is negotiable. It will be low as this is a pilot episode with a trimmed down crew and budget. If the series gets picked up, there is opportunity for future work with larger budgets.
If you’re interested, please contact grant@grantlyon.com
About the Project:
Podcasting keeps getting more and more popular. People start recording new podcasts every day, even people that don’t have any idea what they are doing. “The Podfather” is the comedic tale of two rival podcast gangs and the podfather that’s pulling the strings behind the scenes. It’s “The Godfather” meets “West Side Story” without the music. Six episodes are already written but we want to shoot a pilot for episode one and pitch to IFC, Atom, MSN, among others. If the pilot is picked up by one of these networks, then we will film additional episodes.
About Me:
Grant Lyon is a stand-up comedian, writer, and producer in Los Angeles. He has won the DC Screenplay Competition, been a finalist in the Slamdance Screenplay Competition, the LA Comedy Shorts Screenplay Competition, and placed 2nd in the Vail Screenwriting Competition. He performs stand-up all across the country and has opened for names like Robin Williams and Bobby Lee. He has produced sketches that have been featured on the home pages of such sites as Funny or Die and Rooftop Comedy.
On January 31st, one of the daughters of former President George W. Bush, Barbara Bush, appeared in a video for New Yorkers for Marriage Equality in support of gay marriage. In the video, a project of the Human Rights Campaign, Barbara Bush endorses full marriage equality and claims that, “everyone should have the right to marry the person that they love.” George W Bush was caught muttering under his breath, “Leave it to the brown haired one to be into lesbians.” Okay, that last part didn’t happen, but you can bet W choked on his Coors beer when he saw the video. After all, he did push for a constitutional amendment banning gay unions. (On a side note, I theorize W drinks Coors for two reasons. 1) because Coors funds anti-gay propaganda and 2) because Coors is an awful beer and W suffers from a lack of judgment.)
Barbara Bush is one of an increasing number of Republicans coming out in support of gay marriage. The list includes former Vice-President Dick Cheney, former United States Solicitor General Ted Olson, and former First Lady Laura Bush.
All I can say is, finally, finally, finally. The conservative Tea Party movement must be livid at Republicans for breaking rank from the established position of their spiritual leader. No, not Jesus, Sarah Palin. I bet if Sarah Palin passed out at a house party and someone drew a vagina on her face with a black sharpie, she’d rub bleach on her face just to make sure the ‘gay gene’ didn’t infect her.
I don’t understand why anyone opposes gay marriage. Opposing gay marriage doesn’t make sense because gay people will be allowed to marry sooner or later regardless. Sure, the progress isn’t as fast as I would like, but as the Swiss philosopher Henri Frederic Amiel once said, “A thousand things advance; nine hundred and ninety-nine retreat; that is progress.” The United States is built on progress, that is what makes us great, or at least gives us the potential for greatness. Remember, we used to be a nation full of slaves. When the American people demand change, change comes. Back in the 1990s, we demanded a pizza with cheese in the crust, and dammit, we got pizza with cheese in the crust. That is real progress.
As recently as the 1960s, it was illegal for a black person to marry a white person in America. The 1883 Supreme Court case Pace v Alabama established the constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws by claiming that since whites and blacks were punished in equal measure for breaking the law against interracial marriage, it did not violate the 14th Amendment. I wish I could have used that logic in high school. I would have cheated on my math AND English tests and it wouldn’t have been wrong because I was treating every subject the same. It wasn’t until the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia in 1967 that the ban on interracial marriage was lifted. And now you don’t hear any political pundits railing on the evils of whites marrying blacks because, as we all know, interracial babies are the cutest babies in the world.
My point is just that 100 years ago it seemed unfathomable to some that white people and black people would be allowed to marry. But they can. Now those same people argue that one gay person can never marry another gay person. But they will. There are too many people committed to change. Stop fighting something that is bound to happen.
The walls of homophobia are already being torn down in the United States. On December 19th, 2010, “don’t ask, don’t tell” was repealed by the Senate, and gays will be able to serve in the U.S. military for the first time ever.
Barbara Bush came out in support of gay marriage because there is no good way to argue against it. The most popular argument of course is that the Bible says it’s wrong. But it wasn’t until the last few hundred years that anyone even brought up this argument. As the historian John Boswell argued in his book Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality, the Roman Catholic Church had not condemned gay people throughout its history and, in fact, actually celebrated love between men at times.
Other people argue that being gay is a choice. Even if it was, so what? Aren’t we a nation founded on the right to choose? You can’t deny someone basic rights because they choose something you don’t like. I hate artichokes. I really do. I want to ban people who eat artichokes from having the right to peaceably assemble together, but unfortunately, my family insists on eating that devil vegetable in front of me.
So thank you Barbara Bush for supporting gay marriage. You just became the better twin in my book.
Last night I had a weird experience - it made me laugh at the same time it filled me with guilt. I was hanging out in a bar talking to some comedian friends after a show. The bar filled rapidly with a mix of hipsters and vapid, dolled-up girls that want to go slumming with a hipster at least once so they can laugh about it ‘ironically’. When a bar fills with people that quickly, you are bound to bump elbows with somebody and start a conversation with somebody. Unbeknownst to me, I picked possibly the best or worst person to talk to, I still haven’t made up my mind how I feel about him. I’m not going to give names because quite frankly I don’t know the name of anyone in this story. They were all bar folk that I probably won’t ever see again, and yet I’ll never forget.
So I bump elbows with said best/worst gentleman and we strike up a conversation. “Christmas, you say? Why I love Christmas. It is positively the most swell day of the year!” - that’s how I talk in hipster bars, he approved. We were both there at the bar sans lady caller, but a group of young attractive girls stood just feet away. The best/worst gentleman told me I should go talk to them. I am a huge wimp that still believes I’m in sixth grade, so I said, “Nuh-uh, why don’t you go talk to them for me?” And he did! He walked over with me at his coattails and said, “Hello ladies, how is your evening progressing?” The leader of the group, the head honcho, the matriarch, the grand dame of the party, the headmistress of sorrow snapped at us, “Can’t you see I’m texting someone? You should leave us alone.” Jesus lady, you suck. I’m a pretty mellow dude, but even I know that was pretty rude. You are definitely on Santa’s naughty list.
The best/worst gentleman and I retreated back to our previous corner location and began to pull the splinters out of our pride. In a fit of passion I said, “We should put gum in her hair.” Well … it just so happens that best/worst gentleman had some gum in his pocket and a pretty good throwing arm. He chewed up the gum, rolled it into a ball in his hand, and we actually paused with remorse - “We probably shouldn’t do this, it’s pretty fucked up. We’re awful human beings for even thinking of this.” But just as our resolve faded, the headmistress of sorrow shot us an icy glare as if to say ‘what are you gonna do?’ Oh, I know what we’re going to do. We are going to underhand flip a piece of chewed gum into your product infused dyed hair. My thoughts went like this: “HaHa! Eureka! Success! Great throw! The gum stuck! Her hair is getting tangled into it! She doesn’t even know it’s there! Haha, Hilarious … Oh shit, the gum stuck. Oh my God, her hair is getting tangled into it. Oh no, she doesn’t know it’s there. I feel awful.”
I laughed so hard for 5 seconds and then felt so guilty for the rest of the night. She was a horrible person to be sure, but now we were just as bad. And that was the lesson I learned - gum is only funny for a few seconds. It loses its flavor and its punchlines. New Year’s Resolution Number One: no more throwing gum onto other people’s person.
Since September 22nd, a group of residents in King, Tennessee have been standing guard round-the-clock to protect a Christian flag hanging near a war memorial in Central Park. Last month, the city council of King decided to remove the Christian flag from above the war memorial monument in Central Park after a resident complained the flag violated the separation of church and state. The decision to remove the flag angered veterans groups, churches and others and led to the vigil. The protestors are planning an October 23rd rally to support their ultimate goal, which is to have the city restore the Christian flag to the permanent pole on the memorial. Most lawyers are recommending against that goal because flying a Christian flag at a public memorial is a clear violation of the separation of church and state. If we allow Christian flags at public memorials, then I’m going to start putting Torahs in every courthouse and Korans in every public high school locker room.
This is the second time this week the separation of church and state has come to the forefront of America’s consciousness. On Tuesday, Christine O’Donnell, the Republican Senate nominee from Delaware, questioned, “Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” Ummm, that would be the First Amendment Ms. O’Donnell. Welcome to politics. My four-year old niece could answer that question and she can’t even read.
The current debate over the separation of church and state highlights the feeling of much of America that the Christian foundation of this country is being attacked. One of the residents of King, James Joyce, said, “We’ve let our religious freedoms and constitutional rights be stripped away one by one, and I think it’s time we took a stand.” Sir, telling everyone they should be Christian doesn’t count as religious freedom. The separation of church and state exists to protect religious freedom by not allowing the government to promote one religion over another.
Besides, does anyone really think this country is going to cease to be predominantly Christian if religion is kept out of the public arena? America was founded primarily by Protestant settlers seeking freedom from religious persecution. We are still a Christian nation - there is a Bible next to the bed in every hotel room in America. So when you bring a drunk girl back to your hotel room after a night of boozing you will think “What would Jesus do?” and get shamed back into God’s arms. I would love to see the look on the face of some guy opening up that drawer in a hotel room and finding a copy of Atheist Manifesto instead of the Bible. In fact, I’m going to pitch that to NBC as a new hidden camera reality show called “Where’s Your God now?”
Christine O’Donnell’s comments on the separation of church and state were made in regards to the subject of creationism in classrooms. Many people feel that creationism should be taught in public schools as a rebuttal to evolution. In 2004, the school board of Dover, Pennsylvania became the first in the nation to mandate discussion of intelligent design within the science classroom, but the U.S District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania ruled that intelligent design is not science, but another form of creationism, and is therefore a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
I’ve talked to some people that say that if we teach evolution, then we have to teach creationism because that is the other major theory on the genesis of man. However, the theory of creationism has no basis in science and therefore should not be taught in science classes. A poll done by Newsweek in 1987 found that there were 700 scientists out of 480,000 scientists in American who give credence to creation science. That is a whopping 0.14% of scientists. That is why creationism is not taught in biology class. We can teach creationism in a religious theory class in public school, but creationism has about as much scientific clout as my theory that my brain is actually in my big toe and that’s why I don’t wear sandals.
The separation of church and state is good for both liberals and conservatives. It doesn’t just prevent creationism from being taught in science class. It also prevents evolution from being taught in Sunday Church services.
Yeah, let that house in Obion Tennessee burn to the ground! We don’t need the fire department! No more socialism, no more socialism, NO MORE SOCIALISM!
I’m joking of course. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, a private home in Obion Tennessee recently burned to the ground as the fire department watched because the homeowner, Gene Cranick, hadn’t paid his $75 fee for fire protection.
One of the trendy arguments presented by the Tea Party these days is that Obama and the Left are trying to transform America into a socialist nation. Socialism is a system advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production. The Tea Party doesn’t acknowledge that socialism already exists in America in the form of public services like the fire and police departments, Medicare, and Social Security. These services exist for the greater good of the public, not to ruin America from the inside. I hate it when a cop pulls me over for a speeding ticket, but if that same cop prevented someone from stealing my car, I would kiss him on the mouth. We need police officers to keep the peace, and I’m willing to lock mustaches to show that.
If we do away with socialism entirely, then we are left with the situation in Obion Tennessee where a man’s house burned to the ground because he hadn’t paid for his fire protection. To be correct, the situation in Tennessee was a public fire department that was choosing to provide service to a remote area, and a man opted not to pay for that service. But it illustrates what would happen if all socialist institutions were abandoned in favor of private replacements. If fire protection was privatized and each citizen had to pay for their own private fire protection, then your house could burn to the ground because a clerical error at the fire office said you hadn’t paid, because you were on vacation and your protection expired, because your trained carrier pigeon that was flying your bill to the fire department flew too low and got hit by a bus and the check never arrived.
In Obion, the fire department sprang into action when the fire touched a neighbor’s property, a neighbor who had paid for fire protection. But what if the fire happened in a city like San Francisco where homes literally share walls? Imagine your neighbor is a lazy pothead and hasn’t paid for fire protection. One day he decides to make pot brownies in the oven. He puts the brownies in, but he forgets about them and goes to the park to meditate and ‘find himself.’ While gone, the oven sparks and catches the house on fire. However, the private fire department refuses to respond because lazy pothead neighbor doesn’t remember things like paying for fire protection. So the private fire department waits until the fire spreads to your house because you are a responsible adult and you put “pay for fire protection” on the big calendar that hangs above your bed. Only thing is, once the fire spreads to your house, it has already burned down a whole shared wall and now it’s pretty big and strong, so it actually burns half of your house before the private fire department can put it out completely. I don’t know about you guys, but sign me up! Protected homes will burn because unprotected ones do too. That sounds like an amazingly efficient system. (And that sentence sounds like sarcasm).
I’m not saying I want America to switch entirely to socialism. America was founded on the sense of ingenuity and innovation that results from competition. But it is also foolish to try to privatize everything. For instance, our private health care system is not serving the needs of most Americans. In 2007, the US spent about $7, 290 per person on health care, by far the highest amount for any developed country. In contrast, the UK spent the average amount for developed countries, $2,986. We spent over twice as much on health care as the average developed nation, and yet we don’t even break the top 20 in overall health statistics. That sounds about as efficient as privatized fire protection.
The biggest current debate over privatization is whether to privatize Social Security. It’s clear that Social Security needs to be reformed because the current system is not sustainable in the long-term. The Social Security Administration projects that by 2016 the costs of benefits will exceed tax revenues. However, privatizing is not the answer. Social Security exists for the greater good, just like the fire department. If we privatize Social Security, that basically puts peoples’ retirement money at the whim of the stock market. People who retire in a bad year for the market will essentially have to watch their home burn to the ground while the fire department does nothing. Do you want to put your retirement in the hands of Wall Street? Let me remind you, this is the same Wall Street that caused the recent financial crises and still received record bonuses. They don’t care about the common man, they laugh at the common man while sitting in a bathtub made out of solid gold. They don’t have rubber duckies that float; they have gold bars that sink. If Social Security is privatized, it won’t serve the greater good, it will put millions of dollars in brokerage and management fees into the pockets of Wall Street. For instance, private retirement accounts in the UK that started in 1988 have had management fees and marketing costs eat up an average of 43% of the return on their investments. That sounds about as efficient as privatized health care, which sounds about as efficient as privatized fire protection, which sounds about as efficient as doing laundry by constantly buying new clothes and burning the dirty ones.
So while some people yell, “No more socialism”, I’m going to continue yelling “A fair amount of socialism to protect the general good, please!”
Christine O’Donnell’s election in Delaware’s Republican Senate primary on September 14th was a big surprise and a big win for the Tea Party movement. This is the same person who argued that masturbation was a form of adultery. Even Karl Rove said about O’Donnell, “there’s just a lot of nutty things she’s been saying.” When a crazy person accuses you of being crazy, that’s bad. That’s like an alcoholic who prefers beer disparaging another alcoholic because he drinks whiskey. That doesn’t change the fact that they both wake up on the bathroom floor with a black eye and missing shoes. Yeah, I speak from experience.
Christine O’Donnell and the rest of the Tea Party movement love to say that America is Number One! Yet it is precisely the candidacy of people like O’Donnell, Sarah Palin, and Alaskan Senatorial candidate Joe Miller and the generally extremist language of the Tea Party as a whole that are devaluing America around the world. How can you see a poster of Obama with a Hitler mustache and not think we’re a nation full of crazy people? Tea Party members are so ridiculous they could see a baby with a smudge of dirt right below his nose and accuse that baby of supporting Hitler and hating America. They might even call that baby a communist, not knowing that communism and fascism are entirely different things.
The argument that America is number one always makes me laugh because people say it with no sense of history. People act like we’re supposed to be number one forever. Did you graduate 8th grade social studies class? History books are littered with the rise and fall of empires far greater than our own. Remember Rome, Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt? I don’t think Romulus Augustus, the last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, was walking around wearing a shirt resembling the Roman flag chanting “we’re number one, we’re number one.”
We don’t have to go back to ancient times to find former number ones. Portugal, the same country that is now an afterthought for rich white kids planning their European summer vacation, once had the largest empire in the world. During the 16th Century, Portugal controlled all trade in the Indian Ocean and established colonies throughout the world. However, due to its smaller population and inability to defend all of its trading posts, Portugal was overtaken by Spain as the most powerful country in the world. Spain enjoyed a nice run on top but they got greedy and tried to attack England, and the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 shifted power from Spain to England. Then a bunch of rowdy colonists ruined British supremacy. My point is that you don’t see any of these countries getting all butt hurt over their place at the dinner table now.
In fact, as number ones go, we’ve had a pretty short run on top. We’ve really only been the most powerful country in the world since World War II. A Tea Party member would never admit it, but the main reason we became the most powerful country in the world is that World War II was not fought on our soil. We received all the benefits of economic stimulation and none of the disadvantages of having our homes bombed. It’s amazing how you can jump to number one when you don’t have to jump over big piles of rubble.
Members of the Tea Party movement love words like freedom, honor, pride, and they say things like, “We’re the only nation like us in the world.” I agree with this point. I would go so far as to say every country in the world is the only country like it in the world. Maybe that is why it is an independent country. In fact, every country is number one at something in the world. Estonia is number one in the world for adult literacy, Italy is number one for caesarean sections, and Australia is number one for car thefts. Maybe we should be more specific when we say America is number one. Or maybe we should celebrate our number one status by eating cake, and then we can overtake American Samoa as the number one country for obesity in the world.
America is definitely not going to be number one if the Tea Party movement continues to gain steam. Even most Republicans seem less than excited by O’Donnell’s win. The National Republican Senatorial Committee simply said, “We congratulate Christine O’Donnell for her nomination this evening after a hard-fought primary campaign in Delaware” and offered no predictions for November while Karl Rove went on Fox News and delivered his “nutty” remarks.
However, maybe Christine O’Donnell can overtake Sarah Palin as America’s number one political cougar.
I just finished reading a book, “Lincoln and his Wife’s Hometown”, because I need to maintain my status as a history nerd. Believe me, you have to read the right things if you want to keep the ladies away. Mary Todd Lincoln grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, the largest slaveholding area of the Bluegrass, and the book documents how Abraham Lincoln’s visits to this city defined and shaped his views on slavery. The book also made me realize how much the slaveholding power of the antebellum South reminds me of the oil industry today.
During its time, the slaveholding faction exerted more influence on the government than any other special interest group, just like the wildly wealthy and influential oil elite. They had so much power in fact, our founding fathers purposely excluded the word “slavery” from the Constitution in order to avoid the subject for fear of angering their slaveholding constituents. They thought if we avoided it, it would eventually just go away. Then the Civil War happened and George Washington felt pretty awkward in Heaven. That’s how powerful the slaveholding elite was – we fought a war over it. And God knows we would never fight a war to protect our oil interests. That would be silly.
In some respects, the Civil War was inevitable. Lincoln recognized that anti-slavery agitation in states where slavery already existed only sank it deeper into the vitals of the body politic. The more people castigated slaveholders, calling them wrong and immoral, the more entrenched these slaveholders became in their peculiar institution. That realization prompted Lincoln to give his famous speech in 1858 saying, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” And he was right. We tried to compromise for years to appease the slaveholding minority, but it never worked. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which established the Mason Dixon line, was lauded by most at the time as an end to the slavery debate once and for all. Then thirty years, lots of frustration, and even some bloodshed later, the Compromise of 1850 repealed the Missouri Compromise and strengthened the Fugitive Slave Act. The decade of the 1850s centered around little other than the slave question after it had supposedly been solved years earlier. Eventually Lincoln realized “this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.” Thankfully, we exist all free. I’m pretty tan so I could very well be cooking dinner for a master right now if things had gone differently.
Similarly, the oil industry is not going to give up its domination without a fight. They are making too much money to do so, and who wants to give up a new Ferrari? Just like in the antebellum South, we are compromising to appeal to them, but in the end, these compromises are just delaying an inevitable showdown, not ending the need for it. For instance, our government has promoted and given tax breaks for hybrid cars. It seems like a nice gesture, but the problem is that hybrid cars run on oil. Some people argue that hybrid vehicles are a step in the right direction, but I disagree. They are a sideways step because they simply prolong our dependence on a finite resource. We give ourselves a pat on the back for being so environmentally conscience while the oil industry breathes a sigh of relief because at least it’s not wind or god forbid, solar energy. You know, something actually sustainable. They can’t make money off of sustainable, but the hybrid vehicle just gave the oil industry another 30 years to take baths in piles of money.
The main difference between oil and slavery is that we know for a fact oil isn’t going to last forever. Many proponents of slavery pointed to passages of the Bible and to periods of history like ancient Rome to argue that slavery was a human institution and would be around for all of humanity. But oil is a finite resource. Once we use it up, it’s done. A new system will have to be developed or it’s back to the Middle Ages for us all. Have fun pushing your handcarts and trying to avoid the Black Plague. We know this, and yet we still allow the oil industry to dictate and dominate our politics and corporations.
The oil industry is not just going to shut things down and say, “Thanks, we had a nice run on top.” Those on top don’t know how to retire – look at Brett Favre. Slaveholders worked solely in their own interest because an end to slavery meant the end of their personal prosperity and way of life. The oil industry is working with its own interests in mind too. Recently, it was exposed that BP pressed for the release of convicted Pan Am Flight 103 bomber Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi who famously blew up a plane over Scotland and killed 270 people in 1988. I hate to break the illusion, but BP and Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi are not old college buddies. BP wanted his release to secure valuable oil concessions in Libya. They put their own commercial interests above the safety of humanity. That makes me feel really safe. Maybe they can come over to my house and read me a bedtime story.
In the years before the Civil War, the slaveholding elite passed laws and lobbied the government to preserve their special interests. For instance, the state of Kentucky forbade free African Americans to settle within its borders and even rejected the ballot system of voting because it might prove injurious to slave interests. The oil industry has taken its cues from this example and has always acted with its own interests in mind. In the early 1900s, Los Angeles was covered with a network of rail lines and electric streetcars. At the time, only one in ten Americans owned cars and most relied on public transportation. But beginning in the 1930s, a network of businesses, including General Motors, Standard Oil, Mack Truck and Phillips Petroleum, began buying up and decommissioning the railway system in Los Angeles. Alfred Sloan, who ran General Motors at the time, was quoted as saying “If we can eliminate the rail alternative, we will create a new market for our cars.” Yeah, thanks for the favor oil industry; you really had my back on that one. Now when I’m late for an audition because I’ve been sitting in the same spot on the freeway for 45 minutes, I’m going to roll down my window and curse your name. Oh wait, I don’t want to roll down my window, there’s too much smog.
The oil industry wants us to believe it is on the side of progress, but that is simply not true. In July of this year, The Huffington Post revealed that the American Wetlands Foundation, an organization with the stated mission of preserving our nation’s delicate wetland ecosystem, received most of their funding primarily from major oil companies, the same companies that are largely responsible for the degradation of our coastal wetlands. Talk about a conflict of interest. That’s like trying to save the whales by showing how delicious they taste. The oil companies are holding up a giant sign that says “We care about the world” but they’ve got their fingers crossed behind their backs.
Regardless of the moral argument against slavery, there were numerous economic studies during the 1800s that proved that slavery was not a profitable economic system. A workforce being required to work against its will is not a productive workforce. However, slaveholders always had some convoluted argument to justify slavery’s existence. Slaves were lazy and wouldn’t work at all if free; anarchy would be the rule of the land if slavery ceased.
Nowadays, the oil system may be profitable, but for whom? The wealth divide in America is larger than it has ever been. And I, for one, am tired of eating Top Ramen.
The new Arizona immigration law, SB 1070, goes into effect this Thursday, and it is obviously and rightfully a contentious issue at the moment. As if you haven’t already heard everything about it, here is my unwarranted opinion. Hooray!
In case you enjoy living under a rock, the law makes the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and gives the police the power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. So basically, you will be detained and harassed if your skin is brown, if you have a thin mustache, if you have more than two people living in your house, if you listen to Spanish radio stations, if you know how to conjugate the word correr (to run, which will happen), if your car is painted purple, if you eat tongue burritos, or any number of other bullshit, superficial, racist reasons. The police don’t have to provide any proof, they just have to suspect you. And we all know that police officers would never abuse that power.
Can you imagine how white people would react if we had a similar policy against Canadians? If you could be detained simply on suspicion of being a Canadian immigrant? Every time you ordered pancakes with maple syrup you’d have to show your I.D. Every time you went to a bar to watch a hockey game you’d need to show your driver’s license. Every time you wanted to wear a winter hat with ear flaps you’d have to sing the star spangled banner. White America would be livid, and yet many people show no empathy in this situation.
I love the fact that the people that say they love this country the loudest are also the people that hate immigration the most, and they perceive no irony there at all. My impression of them: “America is the greatest country in the world! So God dammit, stop wanting to come here.” I’ve been reading some of the message boards on this issue, and one comment particularly stood out to me. Someone said “Why don’t we just pardon everyone in our jails and turn them loose in the streets? Because they broke our laws! This is an invasion - they are here illegally - do your jobs people and get rid of these criminals!” Granted, immigration must be controlled at some level, and I don’t have all the right answers, but to relate a person sneaking into this country with a violent criminal in our prison system is too far. An illegal immigrant’s crime is a crime of hope, not of hate. I’ve never met an immigrant who snuck into this country because of our lax laws on murder, arson, or rape. They sneak here because they are trying to forge a better life for themselves and their families. It may be misguided, but that is admirable, not deplorable. Next thing we know, we’ll be throwing teenagers into jail because they ‘hoped’ to get a sword for Christmas, but they didn’t have the proper weapons permit already in place.
Michael Hethmon, who helped draft SB 1070, recently argued that the law “was intended by its creators, myself among them, to provoke sustainable immigration reform.” The choice of the word provoke is pretty curious. That sounds to me like he wrote the law in order to force the federal government to take illegal immigration seriously and come up with a plan for sustainable immigration. Arizona has long been frustrated with the federal government’s actions on illegal immigration, and now they are trying to flex their muscles. Holy shit, that’s petty. We’re talking about the lives of millions of American residents, both legal and illegal, and Arizona is trying to compare dick sizes with the feds. They are like two kids bickering over a toy in the sand box, only the sandbox is the Arizona desert and the toy is every person with a tan.
I’m hoping this law gets overturned in the courts. Until then, don’t wear a sombrero when driving through Arizona.
Recently, a report in the Chinese newspaper “People’s Daily” alleged that the Afghan Taliban has begun training monkeys to fight along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The monkeys are offered bananas and peanuts as a series of rewards and punishments to teach them how to fire machine guns, trench mortars, and other weapons.
The practice of using animals in warfare is not a new one. General Hannibal led an army of elephants over the Alps to fight the Romans in the Second Punic War. During the Middle Ages, people used large catapults to hurl cows and other animals onto their enemy. During World War II, the USA used pigeons to relay messages and even considered fitting bats with bombs and turning them into Kamikaze animals. Unfortunately, the Kamikaze bats never materialized because it’s hard to strap an atomic bomb on a 4 inch creature.
Whether it is true or not, the threat that the Taliban is prepared to train fighting ninja monkeys illustrates their commitment to their cause. They are not only willing to risk their own lives for what they believe is right, they are willing to risk the lives of their fury friends. According to them, monkeys are good for more than just giving hilarious high-fives. I gave a monkey a high-five one time at the zoo. It was the most adorable thing that will ever happen in my life. Every time someone shows me a picture of their cute baby I respond “Not as cute as me high-fiving a monkey.” Nothing ever will be.
But pardon me, I digress. I think if we really want to understand and fight the taliban, we need to get on their level. We need to start training our own animals to fight in this war. What animals should we use? Lions are fierce but lazy. Dolphins are smart but too friendly. I think the answer is clear - guinea pigs. If the movie G-Force taught me anything, it taught me guinea pigs are bad ass fighting machines. They tore it up on the silver screen, now let them tear it up in the brown desert. It is obviously not a stretch of the imagination to use guinea pigs as undercover stealth fighters, we wrote a fucking movie about it. I say if we can dare to dream, then we can dare to make that dream a reality. Guinea pigs with lasers on their heads. Those monkeys won’t know what hit them. Guinea pigs are even more adorable than monkeys. The monkeys will try to pet the soft fur of the guinea pigs only to have their hand cut off by a laser. It’s genius! Hollywood, you’ve done it again! Drop everything FBI and get to work with guinea pigs. My next door neighbor has a guinea pig named Cinnamon that I would like to enlist. Cinnamon is very friendly, he could easily become friends with the monkeys and be our man on the inside. The movie G-Force was 3-D, but we can make it 3-D real life!