The Paris attacks strike at the mother democracy and culture, but they’re the continuing consequence of 15 years reckless militarism in the Middle East. More of the same will solve nothing.
I Identify As American
Political independence is easy. The unalienable right to choose who and what we want to be down to our most basic identity, including one’s race, religion, sex and culture, has been harder to secure.
April 13, 1975
April 13, 1975, marks the first day of the Lebanese Civil War. On the 40th anniversary, FlaglerLive editor Pierre Tristam remembers that day as he lived it in Lebanon, and reflects on what the date has meant for two generations of Lebanese.
Indiana and Arkansas Retreat From Hate Laws. Florida Plows Ahead.
Between Sen. Frank Artiles’ war on transgender people and a House bill protecting discrimination against gay parents, Florida verges on making bigotry state policy again, harkening back to Jim Crow days, but against the LGBT community.
Ebola Isn’t a Problem in the U.S.
Hysteria and Xenophobia Are.
There is not going to be an Ebola epidemic in the United States. There isn’t one now. But there is a an epidemic of hysteria and cowardice that’s costing more lives in Africa, and that could threaten the West if segregationists have their way.
Maya Angelou, On the Pulse of Mourning
Starting with ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,’ Maya Angelou’s seven-part autobiography redefined the art of memoir writing while giving voice to a form of literary jazz and blues that trace the liberation and triumphs of a black woman in a culture that, as a result, bears her mark.
Global Warning Olympics: Closing Ceremonies for Winter
Watching the Olympics requires too much of a suspension of disbelief to make the effort worth the time or the self-deception. There was an added and quite massive invention to these games: faking winter in a warming world, though in that regard we’re all self-deluded Russians.
The Diagnosis
FlaglerLive Editor Pierre Tristam learned he had cancer over the holidays. He describes the experience and his travels since, mostly down and up the abyss that becomes a premier tourist spot for many of those coming to grips with the diagnosis, even though death row appears, in his case, a very long way off.
The Shame of Guantanamo, 11 Years On
The irony should not be lost on us that our congressional district is represented by Ron DeSantis, the sort of fanatic who had no trouble advertising his brief service in Guantanamo’s kangaroo courts as a badge of honor while leaving silent his employment with a more legitimate Florida corporate law firm. With political charlatans like that in Congress, it’s no wonder Guantanamo endures.
Before Florida Made an Ass of Christmas, Philadelphia Gave Us a Founding Nativity Scene
The Rick Scott administration’s illiterate interpretation of the Bible and the first amendment turned the Florida Capitol rotunda into a comedy of absurd Christmas displays and discrimination, all of which could have been avoided with a reason and respect–for the holidays and the Constitution.
Holding a Candle to a Citizenship Oath
Twenty-seven ago today I was one among a few hundred Technicolor-skinned and Babel-tongued immigrants who jammed into an enormous hall in Federal District Court in Brooklyn and recited the oath of citizenship. A candle-lighting has marked the occasion every year since.
Pam Bondi’s Pot Problem
It’s a matter of time before marijuana is legalized, for medical uses or not, even in Florida. But Attorney General Pam Bondi is doing her best to preserve a prohibition that relies on disinformation to benefit cops and jails at the expense of greater safety, less crime and more compassion, were marijuana to be legalized.
Mother’s Day Confidential: News of My Mom’s Death Was Slightly Premature
Receiving a condolence note about my mother sent in error by the hospice company caring for her should have been disturbing. It was merely disappointing–for not being true.
Facebook Effect: For Workers On or Off the Job, Individual Rights Are Dead
Employers’ presumptions on workers’ behavior on and off the job have more in common with the inquisition or police states than with the bill of rights. Transgressors are routinely humiliated, silenced, censured or fired over speech or behavior companies should have no right to police.
Don’t Cram Your Heterosexuality Down My Throat
Several years ago around Christmas I was standing at a Walmart checkout counter with my son when a stranger behind me felt compelled to make me his homophobia’s bosom buddy. “What’s wrong with that?” I told him. “My son is gay.” My son was 2 at the time.
Missing Memorials to Two Lost Wars
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war, but as Iraq and Afghanistan have been lost, the focus of memorials has shifted from wars to the cult of the soldiers, while victims of war are as always passed over in silence.
Ben Webster’s Danny Boy
Ben Webster played with Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Cab Calloway, Benny Carter, and was overshadowed by the likes of Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, but only in his lifetime.
Arming Teachers Isn’t Enough: A Proposal of Modest Caliber
The NRA’s Wayne LaPierre is proposing having an armed guard in every school. That’s insane, because it’s not enough: teachers, principals, librarians, counselors, bus drivers should all be armed, and of course children, too, should be armed.
Showing Cops the Middle Finger
When John Swartz was arrested for flipping off a cop, he sued, and appears headed for a win–as he should: rude expression is not a crime, and the obscenity is far surpassed by that of cops exercising arbitrary authority over bruised egos.
The Soft-Core Terrorism
Of Florida’s Gun Worship
Florida’s gun-worship is part of a lethal, juvenile romance for guns and a national disease that doesn’t hesitate to lock and load the words “gun” and “hobby” in the same chamber while vilifying those who’d imply a connection with the consequences.
Morning Sickness: From Kate Middleton To a Dead Woman on I-95
Between a nameless, homeless woman killed on I-95 Wednesday evening and Kate Middleton’s pregnancy, only one of those two items is news. Our media’s pornographic interest in royal exhibitionism ensures that it’s the wrong one every time.
Mocking the Pledge of Allegiance
A reporter is fired after only reluctantly mentioning that a city councilman refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance in the latest example of ignorance replacing the very values the Pledge stands for, values that apply especially for those who choose to sit it out.
Florida Republicans’ Poll Tax Nostalgia
Hoping to minimize Democrats’ turnout, the GOP-dominated Florida Legislature is going out of its way to make voting more of a privilege than an absolute right. There are a few ways to get around the voter-suppression schemes.
Obama’s Clobbering
Mitt Romney demolished the Obama mystique in Denver while Obama surrendered: This is the Obama flincher we’ve come to know. The man of a thousand retreats. The prevaricator. The terminated.
Two of My Favorite Jews
Sam and Dave Markowitz celebrate birthdays with Duke Ellington, from behind the paywall of Volusia County’s Evin prison.
Where Obama Fear and Loathing Comes From
Charles Kesler’s new book on Barack Obama loathing is a window into the closing of the conservative mind, which Mark Lilla’s review opens a notch to let in a breath of wit–unusual for unusually dour liberals.
Editorial Notebook: September
Vagrant scratches and notes from FlaglerLive editor Pierre Tristam on issues of the day, fugitive quotes, hit-and-run readings, insurgent observations and reflections picked up from the cutting room floor.
From Beirut to 9/11:
When Barbarism Follows Barbarism
Revulsion over the losses in New York and Washington aside, the attack triggered a succession of fears: That the barbarism I so gladly left behind 23 years ago is here.
A Lifeguard’s Soul,
Outsourced to the Bottom line
Thomas Lopez was fired by Jeff Ellis and Associates, the private company to whom Hallandale Beach outsourced its lifeguard services, when Lopez tried to save a drowning man beyond his jurisdiction. It’s an example of privatization’s immoral priorities.
Gator Shame: Why I’m Relieved My Daughter Won’t Be Attending the University of Florida
Athletics aside, Florida doesn’t take its public universities and public schools seriously, making it difficult for top students to stay here–or for the state to depend on more than tourist ghettoes, sunbathing spreads and Medicare colonies.
Rick Scott’s Obsession With Other People’s Urine
Anyone other than my doctor who’d ask me to pee in a cup isn’t just out of line. He’d be out of his mind. Yet an entire industry thrives on such cup-holders, Gov. Rick Scott among them, and millions of Americans are not only complying with the docility of circus animals. They’re encouraging the indignity and asking for more.
The 4th Amendment, Stripped and Degraded
The Supreme Court’s decision allowing the strip-searching of anyone booked into jail–no matter how small the charge, no matter the presumption of innocence of the accused–is merely the latest in a long series of constitutional violations, enshrined by conservative justices.
Stonehenge Justices: The U.S. Supreme Court’s Stuffy Ban on TV Cameras and Live Audio
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ban on television cameras or live audio feed for its arguments, including this week’s on the health law, is absurd. The justices opposition to cameras rests on shabby reasoning and stuffed up conceits.
Flagler’s and Florida’s Economic Development Hoax
Florida lawmakers and their local replicas seem hypnotized by the buzz of economic development, nattering about it with great stamina. But it’s a hoax, and a costly one. The assault on public and higher education of the last few years proves it.
Do Kiss, Do Tell, Do Show
The homecoming picture of the gay Marine kissing his boyfriend has the same iconic feel as Alfred Eisenstaedt’s Life magazine shot of the sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on V-J Day. Both images capture the essence of liberation on a large scale.
Lady Liberty at Flagler Palm Coast High School: When Veterans Get Patriotism All Wrong
Veterans complained to the Flagler County School Board that student portrayals of Lady Liberty they say at FPC “desecrated” her and the flag and should be removed. The veterans were wrong, and were themselves desecrating American values.
Komen and the Smear on Planned Parenthood: Swiftboating Tactics From Abortion Zealots
The Susan J. Komen foundation had a choice with Planned Parenthood: Stick with rational neutrality or surrender to the political contamination of reactionaries’ echo chambers and the bogus war on abortion. Komen surrendered. The war on cancer–the only war worth fighting–and women will suffer.
Whether It’s Romney or Obama, Democracy Is Losing Big
No wonder so many people don’t see the point in voting. While the rest of us play one man, one vote in democracy’s delusional sandbox, a bunch of donors who add up to a cocktail party’s guest list are sealing the campaign’s fate.
The Live Profile:
Who The Hell Is Saul Alinsky?
Saul Alinsky: a profile of the author of “Rules for Radicals,” dead since 1972, whom Newt Gingrich names as the reason to oppose Barack Obama. But the Saul Alinsky Gingrich creates never existed. The invention is more revealing of Gingrich than it is of Alinsky. A corrective to both.
Don’t Ban Internet Cafés. Regulate Them.
Internet cafés may be a pest, and their proponents make laughable arguments when they claim they’re not about gambling. But it’s not government’s business to ban them while swinging from the lottery’s levers. Regulation is the key.
Flouting the First:
Florida’s Slouch Back To Religious Favoritism
Florida’s proposed “Religious Freedom” amendment and a bill that would enable prayer at public school events project the false impression that religious expression in the public sphere is under siege, when the reverse is closer to the mark–as a bias particularly favoring Christianity.
The Florida Family Association’s Un-Christian Jihad on TLC’s “All-American Muslim”
In their war on TLC’s “All-American Muslim,” a few aberrant fools at the Florida Family Association are yearning for “No Muslims Allowed” signs everywhere and smearing this state’s reputation while drafting Lowe’s to their bigoted crusade.
My 10 Predictions for 2012
Obama is reelected, the world doesn’t end except for Tim Tebow, Jim Landon and Sharon Atack look for other jobs and the News-Journal goes into the cemetery business: predictions worthy of James Ussher.
We Don’t Need Another Payroll Tax Cut
We can all afford less tax coddling and more fiscal responsibility. But don’t expect to hear that from allegedly conservative Republican and our blandly, irresponsibly centrist president, who’s bribing his way to a second term.
Philip Roth’s Everyman
In Everyman, this is the Philip Roth writing the eulogy from behind the ordinariness, the Roth who reads hearts like America’s best social cardiologist, still writing like it’s a midday office tryst he can pull off with as much virility as Portnoy in his prime.
Obama’s Roosevelt Envy–And Ours
Obama’s version of Roosevelt Lite won’t cut it if he can’t back up his rhetoric with a more serious program of defending the middle class against corporate predators and rich-class irresponsibility.
0.2% Stupor: Protecting 350,000 Millionaires At the Expense of 160 Million Workers
There’s a very simple way to ensure that this country goes the way of old, bankrupt empires, and it doesn’t take flying planes into building or suckering the world’s mightiest military into pointless wars halfway around the globe. All it takes is voting Republican.
In Praise of Tom Wicker, Antidote to the Age of Reagan
Tom Wicker, the Times columnist for 25 years, wrote as if he’d seen the country’s best days. He probably had even then, having witnessed the eight years of Reagan taking out a second, third and fourth mortgage on the nation’s prosperity while making Americans feel like a million bucks.
Our School District’s Uniform Follies
The Flagler County School Board’s push for uniforms is out of touch with the county’s struggling families and plundered budgets and revealing of a board too prone to selling out to charter-school gimmickry.
Lazy, Cheap, Irresponsible Palm Coast
This week’s dismal voter turn-out for the Palm Coast election is a reflection of a city and a council that mirror each other in laziness, misplaced penny-pinching and indifference to civic engagement where it actually matters.