Fairness - The Commentary

An optimist, my favorite definition goes, is someone who falls off a skyscraper and as he passes the thirtieth floor someone hears him say: “So far, so good.” The profane Trump presidency, the accelerating corporate take-over of the US, and the further destruction of government social programs make it hard to be both a realist and an optimist. We can’t just look at the half of the glass that’s full and disregard the empty half. On top of it all, that glass is far from half full. It’s flowing over for the richest 10% or fewer of US citizens. Yet many of the other 90% -- so many of whom are deluded victims of this administration -- have been bamboozled into believing that the right-wing social agenda, including deporting foreign workers, restoring white supremacy, or undoing marriage equality, is the real solution to their problems. But an inability to be optimistic doesn’t mean that pessimism is the only alternative. No matter how we feel about the future, ...

No one is sure about who first claimed: "History is just one damned thing after another." But Henry Ford agreed: "History is bunk." Not true. In a time like this, we need to know our history to see how much is possible and to be aware of all that’s been accomplished by our predecessors. History tells us how we came to this place, for better or worse, and whether we're stuck here or not (usually not). And knowing how things have changed inspires hope that other things can too in spite of any current darkness. But in what sense does history somehow provide us with norms, tell us how things should be, or model what must be done? And are we victims of our past? Those are questions we need to ask when we hear someone use that loaded word: "tradition." That's because the basic issue is: just because something is labeled traditional, does that make it good, moral, humane, just, caring, or even valuable enough to preserve? Now, a lot of things ...

Teachers around the country, often in the reddest states, are organizing to fight the ongoing destruction of public education. For generations, politicians have targeted public schools, with major funding from the school privatization movement, to help create a two-tiered class-based system by crippling public schools and demonizing teachers. Past advocacy by educators as part of their professionalism has contributed to the conservative criticism of public education in the US and its scapegoating of teachers’ unions for any problems conservatives want to lay on the public school system. Back in 1970, for example, the AFL-CIO-affiliated American Federation of Teachers became the first major union to stand against discrimination against lesbians and gay men. In 1974, its larger national rival, the National Education Association, added sexual orientation to its anti-discrimination policy. Both unions have struggled with right-wing forces from within and witho...

For many grown kids, standing in front of the Mother’s Day cards at the store this month is an exercise in mixed feelings – hope, sadness, love, guilt, fear, denial, and confusion. Finding that one card that says exactly how you feel without giving in to Hallmark-induced fantasies about the perfect mother is a challenge as difficult as any we might face. An English professor friend claims that there are, in fact, no good poems about mothers in all of English literature. They all end up like those sentimental greeting card rhymes. Yet, our mothers have generally done the best they could with what they’ve been given about motherhood from a culture that’s filled with messages that extol motherhood while taking away as much from mothers as possible. And all the conservatives’ high-minded blather about valuing motherhood is suspiciously empty to mothers who suspect that something else is really going on around them, but are supposed to blame themselves for whatever i...