Fairness - The Commentary

Over and over again we must remind ourselves that the right-wing dominating the Republican Party, has a “logic” of its own. We have to stop asking questions like: “Don't they understand?” “Don't they see that this doesn't make any sense?” “Why do so many vote against their self-interest?” If we're stuck in the kind of analysis these questions represent, we don't understand what's going on in right-wing and, more broadly, conservative politics today. And we'll spend a lot of time trying to get them to “understand” while they work to effectively manipulate the means of power. “Don't they understand the importance of a good education?” Wrong question. They see education as a means of liberalizing people. “The facts,” as  Rachel Maddow paraphrased Stephen Colbert , “have a liberal bias.” So their goal is to control education at all levels by defunding it so it fails and then moving it under the control of corporate forces that have a profits-over...

2014 ended with another child's suicide in the news. This time, it was a twelve-year-old boy who couldn't take the bullying anymore. Yes, it was in California, where all the right laws and policies are in place. Still, death seemed better to Ronin Shimizu than enduring his community. And what was he doing to bring what's known as gay-bashing on? Well, it wasn't about sexual orientation - whom he was loving or having sex with. He was only twelve. But the taunts from bullies at Folsom Middle School seemed overwhelming. This little boy who killed himself on December 3 rd , was taunted because he was a cheerleader. A cheerleader – oh, the horror! Because of the bullying, his parents had switched him to home-schooling in the sixth grade. And how did the school district's spokesperson respond? “Well, we were aware of allegations of bulling. I can’t speak to specific allegations, but like all allegations, we investigate them fully.” That's it. And those...

Ten years ago, my “Minor Details” column raved about the best book to come out of any political season before or since: “Stop whatever you’re doing. Drop whatever you’re reading – even if it’s one of my books. The most important political book of the year is out and it’s a $10 paperback of only 124 pages. (So, you know Bill Clinton didn’t write it.) “I thought Thomas Frank’s  What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America  (Metropolitan Books) was the most insightful book of 2004. It’s still number two, but the new book by well-known Berkeley Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics, George Lakoff, has trumped it. Entitled  Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate  (Chelsea Green), this popularly written manual with a forward by Howard Dean, is, as the cover says, 'The Essential Guide for Progressives.'” Ten years later, let me repeat: it was, and still is the essential guide for progressives, especia...

“The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church,” wrote second century Christian theologian Tertullian. And during his June 30 th  mass this year, Pope Francis agreed: “The Church grows thanks to the blood of the martyrs. This is the beauty of martyrdom.” There's a sense, then, in which Christianities have historically wavered between a persecution complex and the desire to dominate over and control the world's morality. Christian denominations have had as their goal, after all, the conversion of everyone to their own position as if the old saying is: “The more the truer. “ And they're not alone. Modern defenders notwithstanding, Buddhist religions have flourished most when they were embraced by governments as have multiple Islams. Confucian ethics became culturally Chinese when the Han dynasty enforced it as a political philosophy, and Shinto has always been tied to the status of the Japanese emperor. Even Hindu sects became strongest when the kings of India endowe...

In 2002, when Pulitzer Prize winner, Chris Hedges published  War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning , he wrote in depth about the warrior culture that is the USA. “The communal march against an enemy generates a warm, unfamiliar bond with our neighbors, our community, our nation, wiping out unsettling undercurrents of alienation and dislocation," he wrote. “It gives us purpose, meaning, a reason for living.” In 2014 the American military-industrial-media complex is still salivating for war to further line its pockets. And a president elected to get us out of two wars in which we were mired, displays caution but finds himself pressured on many sides to do something warrior-like. The drumbeat includes the usual: ramping up of fear against an enemy, claims of a threat to what's now called the “Homeland,” and images of cruelty that invoke the sense that “we can't let them get away with that, especially when they do it to Americans.” Few are interviewed in mainstream medi...

Heterosexuality seems to be a widespread human condition, and yet science hasn't found its cause. Maybe that's due to an absence of available funding for the research or just plain lack of interest. There have been studies to determine the origins of homosexuality, usually in males, but they've all been small and, frankly, inconclusive. Nevertheless, we're still in the dark about why there are people who are attracted romantically and sexually to a different gender than the one with which they identify as if they have problems loving the very gender they themselves embody. Probably this lack of scientific curiosity has to do with the fact that the majority of people – mostly heterosexuals, but not always – consider unadulterated heterosexuality to be the norm with anything else a deviation. And much medical and psychological science studies abnormalities rather than what's just assumed. Consider the host of studies in the last two centuries of others conside...

It's hardly news anymore that a growing number of Americans are checking the box “none” on surveys of religious belief. According to Pew Research Center  polling , one-fifth of the public and a third of those under thirty are unaffiliated with any religious entity. Among those left who still report being affiliated, the percentage of fundamentalists and other conservatives is increasing. It's the pie that's shrinking and leaving the right-wing to have a bigger share. Relying on figures publicized by denominations or the religious is  problematic . There are convenient ways for memberships to be counted. But even the granddaddy of right-wingers, the Southern Baptist Convention,  reported this year  that it's losing members and baptizing fewer people. Their response, of course, wasn't to question their teachings but to assume they needed better marketing. Those who are religiously addicted never question what they're teaching. They're so invested in ...

The recent episodes of now routine American gun violence have sparked discussions of the role of white male anger in it all. This is hardly a brand new strand of analysis, though. Michael Kimmel, director of the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities at Stony Brook and author of  Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era ,  wrote last November : “Today's Angry White Men look backward, nostalgically at the world they have lost. Some organize politically to restore 'their' country; some descend into madness; others lash out violently at a host of scapegoats. Theirs is a fight to restore, to reclaim more than just what they feel entitled to socially or economically -- it's also to restore their sense of manhood, to reclaim that sense of dominance and power to which they also feel entitled. They don't get mad, they want to get even -- but with whom?” Kimmel admits that: “There are plenty of angry men of color and plenty of angry white wom...

The first openly gay player drafted into the NFL, Michael Sam, kissed his boyfriend, Vito Cammisano, a swimmer for the University of Missouri from 2009-2012,  right there for the world to see on TV . And, yes, that meant America would watch a black man kissing a white man, to top it all off. The couple wasn’t trying to rub it in. They knew they were on TV, and knew there’d be a reaction for sure. They weren’t naïve. But, anyone watching could see that they were expressing human emotions of relief at the conclusion of a series of events that ended happily for two people who love each other. They weren’t in any closet. From that moment on, people all over were talking about “the kiss.” Though some, gay or straight, who are annoyed by public displays of affection expressed discomfort, the media actually invaded what was a private residence. Reporters seeking ratings and sensation were tantalizing viewers to stay tuned. Emotions are emotions, common to all human beings who allow...