I need to catch up on my reading. My parents bought me a gift subscription to the New Yorker and I’m at least two issues behind. I also have at least half a dozen novels on my bookshelf that are silently accusing me of neglect. I really do need a new bookshelf. The one I have dates back to my law school days and it has books piled on top of each other every which way. It could easily kill someone if it ever fell over. And I’m in the mood for a really bad movie, so I rented League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I read the comic, which was excellent. I’m confident I won’t be able to say the same for the film.

I’ve been thinking about the way disability is portrayed in the media. This may surprise you, but I think comedy series do the best job of portraying people with disabilities in an honest and sincere manner. South Park is a good example. Timmy and Jimmy, the show’s two characters with disabilities, are two kids who are definitely not angelic innocents. They swear; they get in fights. In one episode, the two of them get into a knockdown, drag-out fight that left me in tears. It was so funny because it reminded me of the countless school yard fights that I had witnessed involving some of own friends with disabilities. It’s funny because it’s true. Curb Your Enthusiasm is another comedy that frequently features characters with disabilities. And like South Park, they’re depicted as real people. Some are jerks, some are decent people. I think comedies do a better job with disability themes because they’re such a self-reflective medium. Comedy works because it points out our flaws, our skewed perceptions of reality. And disability is one area of human experience that is subject to all kinds of skewed perceptions.
I received in the mail today my settlement check from the record industry. All thirteen dollars and eighty-six cents of it. Isn’t the American legal system the shiznit? Time for another iTunes spree.

Well, the culture wars are back on. Bush’s support of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is the worst kind of cynical, manipulative election-year politics. It’s a bone tossed at the religious right, who will drool and gnaw on the damn thing until election day, which is the idea, natch. Bush must know the odds of such an amendment’s passage are highly unlikely, but that’s not the point. The point is to mobilize the base.
Any law forbidding a fundamental right to an entire class of citizens is un-American and repugnant on its face. It was repugnant forty years ago when interracial marriage was prohibited in parts of the South. It was repugnant a century ago when eugenics laws mandated the sterilization of thousands of people with disabilities. This is no different. in some ways, this is worse because Bush and his ilk are attempting to sully a noble and grand document–the Constitution–with their own petty agendas.
Sigh. Do you ever get the feeling that there are two separate Americas, divided by a million invisible borders?

For once, Arnold Schwarzenegger and I agree on something. The Constitutional requirement that the President be a natural-born citizen is archaic and disqualifies thousands of people who would otherwise be excellent candidates. For example, should the simple fact that I was born in Germany preclude a potential run for the presidency? It’s not that I have any political aspirations, but it would be nice to know that the option is available to me. I think I’d make a rather good President, though. I have the kind of rhetorical style that demands one’s attention. I could be the nation’s first blogging President. FDR already has the First-President-in-A-Wheelchair title all wrapped up.

Some of my fellow Democrats are all in a tizzy about Ralph Nader’s imminent decision about whether he’ll run for the presidency. I think they’re unwittingly playing into the man’s thirst for attention. Let him run, if that’s what he wants. Most left-leaning voters with any political sense will realize the stakes are simply too high to even consider Nader. And the ones who do won’t be enough to matter. Nader won’t have the benefit of any party structure to get him on the state ballots, which I believe will hinder him greatly. We need to get acknowledge and accept that the US is a two-party nation, for better or worse. Third parties may eventually win a place in state legislatures and Congress, but the presidency is simply not an attainable goal without the support of a major party machine. Nader is only a threat if the Democrats can’t draw a bright line between themselves and the Republicans. And in 2004, that shouldn’t be difficult. So whatever Ralph decides, it should be met with a collective yawn.