Oh dear, look what I’ve started. My sister now has a blog entitled The Fighting Socialist. She doesn’t appear too militant in her picture, though. No beret, no AK-47 cradled in her lap, not even a clenched fist raised in defiance. The least she could have done is put on one of those Che T-shirts. Oh well, I guess I should be flattered. First she decides to go to law school, and now this.

Okay, I want everyone to go to her blog and leave comments asking her to explain why, as a child, she made her poor crippled brother hit himself in the face for her own twisted amusement. No, I don’t know why she looks up to me, either. Now, just go do it. Heh.

On behalf of all decent Minnesotans, I apologize for the recent comments of native son and NPR luminary Garrison Keillor regarding gay parents. Here’s a direct quote from his piece in Salon:

The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men—sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control.
Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and
black polka-dot shirts. That’s for the kids. It’s their show.[emphasis added]

Dan Savage goes all kinds of ballistic on Keillor’s ass, and rightfully so. Keillor may have some clever things to say about the president, but bigoted statements from a liberal are just as inexcusable as anything uttered by James Dobson or Ann Coulter. I think this is further evidence in support of my theory that the sooner the Boomer generation packs itself off to Arizona and Florida for endless days of golf and salsa dancing lessons, the better off this country will be.

And now I have yet another reason not to listen to Keillor’s creaky radio show.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve tended to have more female friends than male ones. In grade school, I hung out with the girls at recess. In college, I had female roommates and was a frequent audience for impromptu performances of “My Boyfriend Is A Total Asshole”. My professional life has largely evolved in work settings where women are in the majority. Even now, while I certainly have a few close male friends, my relationships tend to skew female.

There are probably a few explanations for this state of affairs. From an early age, I think I’ve subconsciously regarded the opposite gender as more likely to be accepting of me and less likely to be freaked out by my disability. All the time I’ve spent around nurses and teacher’s aides–two professions dominated by women–may have subtly influenced my own social affinities. And perhaps I’m just a damn fine listener and witty conversationalist.

The plethora of women in my life has prompted some strange reactions from others. I’ve been asked on more than one occasion if I’m gay. I’ll concede that I’m a sharp dresser, but I find it both amusing and a little sad that a man can’t have several female friends without his sexuality being questioned. To be sure, I’m not the world’s most eligible bachelor, but that has more to do with my own persistent anxieties and a dubious self-image (a psychoanalyst could make a career out of my neuroses).

I wonder if other men with disabilities have similar experiences. For what it’s worth, my associations with women have made me a better person–a better man. And not in a corny “getting in touch with my feminine side” sort of way. I would not be the person I am now without the encouragement, tutelage, and pure grace of the women who have passed through my life.

We’re about halfway into the legislative session and the DFL is treading a little too carefully for my taste. Last week, the Senate unveiled a budget plan that doesn’t include any discussion of raising taxes–a political cop-out if I ever saw one. I don’t think voters will react harshly to modest tax increases if lawmakers speak plainly and sincerely about the need for adequate funds to educate our kids, make our commute times shorter, and provide health care to the vulnerable and working families. Meanwhile, proposals to fund transit through a metro-wide sales tax and to give local government agencies the option to provide domestic partner benefits to employees are moving ahead, but could be derailed by a gubernatorial veto.

I’m assuming that the DFL is beginning to look ahead to the endgame of this session and prioritizing the items on its wish list. I’m hoping they can armtwist Pawlenty into compromising on some of these issues. He can’t veto everything without looking stubborn and beholden to his base. And if Pawlenty does harbor ambitions for higher office, he might want to burnish his moderate credentials.

Of all the former Warsaw Pact nations, East Germany had the unfortunate distinction of having one of the most paranoid and repressive regimes. The secret police–the Stasi–had countless civilians under electronic surveillance and it recruited hundreds of thousands of people to inform on their co-workers, neighbors, and even family. This understated but compelling thriller, set in East Germany during the mid-80s, addresses the toll such constant scrutiny exacts on both the watchers and the watched.

Wiesler is a humorless Stasi agent who is fully committed to his work as a “sword and shield” of the state. He is assigned to surveil Georg Dreyman, a writer who appears to be a faithful Party servant but nonetheless is regarded with suspicion by some officials. Wiesler begins his assignment full of grim determination to find evidence of seditious behavior on the part of Dreyman, but Wiesler’s constant absorption in the life of his subject begins to affect him in ways he does not anticipate.

The film works as a straight thriller, but it also serves as an allegory for the power of the artist to resist tyranny and ultimately redeem at least a few of tyranny’s collaborators. At a time when Americans demonstrate a disquieting acceptance of domestic surveillance, this film demonstrates that a culture of observation makes all of us less free.