I was at a reception most of the evening for the Minneapolis Mayor’s Advisory Committee on People with Disabilities, so tonight’s entry will be short. With the Red Sox looking World Series-bound, I’m beginning to think that some justice remains in this world.
John Kerry will be in downtown Minneapolis tomorrow and yours truly will be there in an effort to score another shameless photo op. Will the wheelchair work its mojo again? Stay tuned…
So who got me the Playboy subscription? When my nurse checked my mail today, I was a bit surprised to see the November issue mixed in with the standard junk. I don’t remember signing up for it and I can’t figure out who else would have ordered it for me. Not that I’m complaining. There was a time when I would have freaked out a bit because I’d be concerned about offending my nursing staff. Now, I really don’t care and I suspect most of my nurses won’t either (as long as I don’t plaster centerfolds over every wall) Actually, Playboy has a kind of quaint innocence to it in this age of the Pornification of America. So in it goes the magazine rack with all of the other stuff waiting to be read. Now I can find out how to mix a really dry martini, how to find my imaginary girlfriend’s g-spot, and other useful knowledge.
Oh, for crying out loud. Early voting began in Florida and they’re already having some problems at polling stations in South Florida, a traditionally strong Democratic region. The national media needs to start covering this story now. We cannot afford to allow these kinds of problems go unnoticed until Election Day or afterwards. If Governor Bush and his allies are trying to suppress votes, they’re being awfully transparent about it. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, Republican operatives tried to relocate 63 polling places that were originally in predominantly African-American neighborhoods in Philadelphia; an effort that failed once the local media exposed it.
I am taking Election Day off. Ron Suskind’s piece in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine was enough to push me over the edge. A Bush aide said the following to the author of the article:
The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’
I can’t begin to deconstruct all the Orwellian and Kafkaesque overtones in this statement. An administration that perpetuates such delusions of grandeur within its ranks is a threat to the people it claims to serve. This nonsense about the “reality-based community” is indicative of a president whose own tenuous grip on reality is spreading amongst his advisors like a virus. Both Republicans and Democrats can see that. And I can either sit here and write about it or I can try to do my small part to change our collective reality.
Oh, and by the way…GO SOX! Great win tonight.
The bittorrent of Jon Stewart’s recent Crossfire appearance, where he dished up a scathing critique of televised partisan political theater disguised as serious debate, has been making the rounds on the internet and I finally got a chance chance to check it out this morning. Stewart clearly has no patience for these guys and their daily bullshit sessions. He’s especially insightful (and funny) in this exchange with Tucker Carlson:
CARLSON: Let me ask you a question on the news.
STEWART: Now, this is theater. It’s obvious. How old are you?
(CROSSTALK)
CARLSON: Thirty-five.
STEWART: And you wear a bow tie.
View it for yourself if you can. I predict that Stewart will land a late-night spot on CBS or ABC within the next two years. What I’m not so sure of is whether he’ll be able to maintain the biting, frat-boy-meets-Ivy-League tone that works so well on The Daily Show. The over-35 crowd may not see the humor in Stewart calling someone a “douchebag.” Let’s just hope it’s not Bush and Cheney who are still the douchebags.
And now I’m going see if the Packers can manage to win a game. A 1-4 record; yeesh. Reminds me of all those bleak seasons during the 1980s, back when we were stuck with coaches like Bart Starr and Forrest Gregg.
I can’t believe the Mary Cheney thing is still getting play in the media. I don’t think it’s enough to change any votes, but as soon as the debates ended, so did the media’s ability to focus on substantive issues. Will some Republicans actually not vote for Bush because the V-POTUS has a gay daughter? That possibility feels remote to me, but the Bushites seem concerned enough to keep harping about it.
Slept until almost eleven today and I’m feeling a bit groggy for it. I think this overcast, rainy weather we’ve been having has something to do with it. So now I’ll probably be up past two tonight. I developed these late-night habits during college and law school and I can’t seem to shake them. Even now, I rarely get to sleep before midnight on a weeknight. If I do, it usually takes a while for my brain to shut up.
I’m debating whether to take Election Day off from work to do some volunteering, whether it’s driving people to the polls or being an election monitor or whatever. Part of me wants to do anything I can to make a difference. The more selfish part of me wants to accumulate some time off for another trip in the winter or spring. My family has a timeshare deal in Mexico–Playa del Carma, I believe–that I might want to check out. But my conscience is telling me to make a sacrifice for the greater good. Pesky conscience.
I have to send my $200 dollar Shure earphones in for repairs. For that amount of money, you’d think that they’d could design wiring that doesn’t short circuit. Good thing it’s still under warranty.
we please get different moderators for next election’s debates? While it’s nice to hear the candidates talk about their wives, I would much rather have heard about the issues. And there were a lot of issues missing from the final debate. Stem cell research. The environment. Civil rights. Education, for crying out loud. And then there was this gem of post-debate spin from Candy Crowley, a reporter for CNN.
“The debate was a wonkfest. I don’t think most people understood the first hour.”
Way to dis your audience, Candy. I’ll be dag-nabbed if I could make heads or tails of the whole thing myself. Thank heavens us stupid plebes have you on the TV to tell us what’s what.
Fucking arrogant corporate media.
Here’s another story about a cortical implant that enables a man with quadriplegia to write e-mail and operate a television simply by thinking about it. This kind of article seems to be popping up with increasing frequency. Just a reminder that I remain available for medical experimentation in regards to brain implants. Especially if I can use it to program my TiVo.
I wasn’t terribly thrilled with Edwards’s words yesterday when he invoked the spirit of Christopher Reeve:
If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.
Hey Senator, you won points from me when I met you last summer and you didn’t pat me on the head or any similar acts of condescension or pity. Don’t start letting me down now.
I may be asking too much for Kerry to put Bush away tonight. Bush’s domestic record gives Kerry all kinds of openings, but W could surprise everyone and somehow pull off a win. Kerry may feel the itch to deliver a knockout blow, but I think it’s more important that he maintain his image as a calm, articulate, presidential figure. He’s done a good job of cultivating that demeanor over the last two debates. Whatever it takes to keep riding the Big Mo into these crucial and final weeks.
Hits to this site had been steadily increasing over the last few days, averaging 80 or 90 a day. I have a feeling some of you may be coming here from Susannah’s site. Others, I have no idea. But it’s exciting to have new readers and I hope you’ll keep coming back.
A friend of mine let me rip Green Day’s American Idiot and I can’t stop listening to it. Holy crap, it’s good. I need to set aside some time to focus on the lyrics, but the melodies and the arrangements are amazing. It varies in style from emo-pop to punk to old-fashioned rock anthem, never sounding forced or insincere. It deserves comparisons with Radiohead’s OK Computer. My friend called it one of the best things he’s heard all year and I have to agree with him.
This campaign season, I’ve been a little leery of disability advocacy organizations like AAPD and their near-monomaniacal push for electronic voting machines like those made by Diebold. This Wired News article confirms my suspicions; it points out that many of these advocacy organizations receive money from manufacturers like Diebold. This isn’t advocacy; it’s lobbying. It troubles me that these organizations are acting as shills for an industry with a dubious product. I cringe to think what might happen if these machines produce unreliable results and the disability community finds itself in the role of unwitting scapegoat for a thrown election.
As has been widely reported, Christopher Reeve died over the weekend. Whether or not one agreed with his emphasis on funding for research to cure injuries such as his own (instead of increased funding for service such as personal attendant care), the disability community will mourn his passing. Reeve was perhaps the single most visible American in a wheelchair. Never before have people with physical disabilities had a celebrity in their midst. No, FDR doesn’t count because he deliberately concealed his disability from the public. Reeve became an icon of sorts because he presented such two sharply contrasting images to our mass consciousness. There was his Superman persona–a vivid symbol of the quintessentially American notions of strength and masculinity. And then there was the Christopher Reeve in the wheelchair–frail and dependent, but still with a certain charm and grace. While I may not have agreed with some of his political priorities, I think it’s good for our community to have icons. Not role models, icons. Icons can be the touchstones that enable the rest of us to define our own experience of disability. We may not get another icon for some time.
That’s why I’m glad Christopher Reeve was here and that’s why I’ll miss him.