Tag Archives: politics

I Blame Norman Lear

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I do.

Well, not for everything that’s wrong, but for one specific American obsession that’s causing us no end of trouble at this moment. That obsession is our unbridled romance with “The Tell-Off.”

Let me back up. I am a huge fan of Norman Lear, and the above statement is mostly tongue-in-cheek. The late, great Mr. Lear brought us, beginning with All in the Family, entertainment that challenged our deepest-held beliefs and forced us to consider the topics that nice people just didn’t talk about. He gave us the Jeffersons, Sanford and Son and Good Times, changing as he did the way the majority of America saw an important minority group– onewhose history was just as “American” as that of countless families of White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. He gave us Maude and One Day At a Time, making us take a hard look at the roles of women in America. He founded People for the American Way to stand up to the Moral Majority, and he shared with me a great love for the Declaration of Independence.

But, if you watch enough of his shows, you see something happen again and again: The Tell-off. Many, if not most, of the episodes climaxed with one of the main characters, dripping with moral outrage, wreaking verbal havoc on the episode’s “big bad,” making their opponent look small. It was immensely satisfying. Some of those beats were brilliant: Edith finally telling Archie to “Stifle!” is the standout, but I also loved George Jefferson’s response to a boorish client who told him that, because he stood up for his maid Florence, he could kiss their proposed contract goodbye. “I ain’t gonna tell you what you can kiss,” quoth George.

Classic 70s put-down.

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Testing the Limits of the Welcome Mat

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Many of my readers (and a lot more readers than I often have!) congratulated me on last week’s post, the text of my Friday night speech at Farpoint. A lot of members of the audience congratulated me too. That was very kind of all of you, and it’s nice to know my words hit home. A writer is a performer, and all performers live for audience feedback.

Unfortunately, last Saturday evening, the parameters I had laid out, for who is and should be welcome at our convention, were tested. That test has caused me a lot of soul-searching.

Here are the facts:

One of our regular attendees approached me late Saturday night to complain that another of our regular (so I was told) attendees was wearing a MAGA hat. The complainant wanted the other woman to remove her hat for the duration of the weekend and suggested that at least the hat and possibly the woman did not belong there. [There was a D.J. playing music.]

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Does That Make You Less My Friend?

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This weekend is Farpoint, my annual Star Trek and science fiction convention, which is why the blog is two days late. The last-minute planning for a three-day event tends to eat up all the days in the week before. Especially when you just closed a show the weekend going into that week. If you missed it, I just performed The Seagull with the Rude Mechanicals. So I’m the emcee for Farpoint’s opening ceremonies. I don’t always give an actual speech, but, given the tenor of the times, I wanted to say a few things to my local S.F. community. I had actually planned to use them as the basis of this week’s blog, and that decision was reinforced when more than one audience member asked me to do just that. So here is my opening address to Farpoint 2025.

I started this con when I was 27.

I didn’t start it alone, but I was the one that year who jumped up and said, “Hey kids, let’s put on a con!

People thought I was too young and reckless and feral to run a con, but, here it is and here we are, and  This year I turn 60.

It’s been a long and eventful journey for me, for Farpoint, and for Baltimore fandom. We’ve gained new friends and we’ve lost dear old ones. We’ve seen new incarnations of the thing that brought us together originally, which was the three-season 1966 series Star Trek. 

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Robert A. Heinlein’s Friday – Them and Us

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So I’m reading — for the seventh or eighth time–Robert Heinlein’s Friday. I’ve reviewed it before, 13 years gone. This time, I’m struck by some of the events portrayed against the background of a pseudo-dystopian future. They’re all too… familiar to a reader in 2025 America.

Heinlein was a very perceptive social critic. He could see past the conventional wisdom of the times he was living in and caught some trends and developments most people didn’t. That vision made him fairly prophetic. In Friday, he predicted multinational corporations taking ownership of whole countries and becoming nations themselves. Surely as American billionaires have re-launched the space race, once the province of nation states only, we can see that next step as plausible.

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Popper’s… Cop-Out?

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A while back, a friend of mine shared on his Facebook timeline that he had just confronted the problem of having civil discourse with some homophobic relatives. When I was growing up, it was pretty much standard issue to have an older relative, out of step with the times, who made judgmental and even bigoted comments at family gatherings. It was so common that one of the most-watched TV shows of the 1970s centered around such a character. Google “Archie Bunker” if this is ancient history to you. Trigger Warning: Archie says all the words.

I sympathized with my friend and was yet a little surprised when someone commented to the effect that he simply should not have anyone homophobic in his family circle. And the old observation that you can pick your friends but not your family came to my mind, as Harper Lee summed it up in To Kill a Mockingbird, “You can choose your friends but you sho’ can’t choose your family, an’ they’re still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge ’em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don’t.”

We live in intolerant times. One might say I grew up in intolerant times as well, hence Archie Bunker. I guess that’s true, but I feel American society at large has grown more, not less, intolerant. Instead of pitying the Archies of the world, who are, in the end, ignorant and frightened, not evil, we meet intolerance with intolerance, hate with hate, and we quote philosophy to back up our two-wrongs-make-a-right approach.

In past blogs, (here and here) I’ve made a appeals for tolerance toward those with whom we disagree. Both times, I was advised in feedback to have a look at Popper’s Paradox. I did have a look at it. I’ve never really shared my reaction to it. So here it is: I think Popper’s Paradox is a cop-out. Nothing more than an excuse to behave badly.

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Of Rights, Radicals and Ridiculous Assertions – The United Health Murder

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When I was in 8th grade, my best friend’s parents gave me a copy of The Rights of Students – The Basic ACLU Guide to a Student’s Rights  (An American Civil Liberties Union Handbook.) I think it was a Christmas present. Maybe it was for my birthday. We studied American Civics that year, ably taught by Mr. Haddaway and Mr. Rosin. I was very fired up about the Bill of Rights and about the idea that people who had not reached the legal age of majority should still be treated as, well, people.

One passage from the book that struck me and has always stuck with me was this: 

Can students be prohibited from expressing their views if those who hold opposing views become angry and boisterous. 

No… courts have consistently held that the rights of those who peacefully express their views may not so easily be defeated.

The ACLU has fallen significantly from its perch as a champion of free speech rights since 1977, when the book was published; but, at the time, their stance was strong. I took a broader interpretation away from this question / answer couplet, which was that a person who is exercising his right to free speech cannot be held accountable for illegal actions performed by others. 

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The Highland Clearances… coming to a suburb near you?

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After promising a weekly blog, I posted on two successive Fridays, then skipped two Fridays and did a Monday. I started this one resolved to miss only one week, assuming I posted it by Friday, August 26th. Then I realized that I needed to do a lot of background research to write this piece, and that was not a realistic date. I did another review in the meantime, and now, here’s the piece I intended to run. Hopefully I’ll be back on a weekly track through the Fall.

I missed a few postings because I went to Scotland. It was an eight-day trip. We left on a Thursday, on a 10 PM flight. Which meant getting to Dulles International by 7 PM. Which meant leaving home about 5:30. We rolled in the door of our house a little after 7:30 PM the following Thursday.

But this isn’t a travelogue. I’m writing about one particular part of our trip, and how it got me thinking. What better part of a trip is there?

On the morning of the Glencoe Massacre, villagers, forewarned of the attack, crossed this treacherous mountain pass in search of a safe haven.

We went to the Highlands by bus from Edinburgh, ostensibly to see Loch Ness. Our guide for the charter was Rose, a Scottish National Storyteller (a seanchaidh, in Scottish Gaelic. The Internet disagrees, but she pronounced her calling “Sen.uh.shee”). It’s a prestigious title. I believe Rose said there are less than 100 of them. She has interned for 20 years, has just finished her 20 years of practice, and will now mentor for 20 years.

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Freedom? That is a Worship Word… You Will Not Speak It!

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Terrible episode, right? If you’re of a generation of fan that doesn’t recognize any Star Trek quote other than, “Khaaaaaaaannnnnn!!!”, I’ll explain.

Gene Roddenberry, aka the Great Bird of the Galaxy, creator of Star Trek, developed a script early on in the production of Trek—so early that it was a contender for the show’s famed second pilot episode—called “The Omega Glory.” The premise was that there was a planet of two primitive, but apparently immortal, tribes of people called the Yangs and the Kohms. They had a hereditary feud. The Kohms presented as basically civilized, the Yangs were mute and apparently savage.

They were mute, that is, until Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, imprisoned with two Yangs, mentioned that they needed to somehow attain their freedom.

“Freedom?” said the big, male, mute, shocking the two Starfleet officers. “Freedom?” And, as above, he told the outworlders that they were not to use the sacred word.

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“We Don’t Serve Their Kind?” or “The Advanced Trait of Mercy?”

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Few fans of science fiction do not remember the moment in Star Wars when Luke Skywalker enters the cantina at Mos Eisley, accompanied by C3PO and R2D2 and is told “We don’t serve their kind.” Luke is confused, and the barman explains that ‘droids are not wanted in his establishment. So the ‘droids glumly go to wait outside while Luke and Obi Wan meet Han Solo.

Nothing else happens related to this incident. The hateful behavior of the barman is not addressed. We’re left to assume, I suppose, that someone is always at the bottom rung of the social ladder, and such people are always discriminated against. In the Star Wars universe, those disenfranchised people are ‘droids. The moment stands that hate is a fact of life.

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If You Force Me to Choose Sides, You May Not Like the Side I Choose

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A few years ago, it was rumored that an unpopular President had called the Constitution of the United States, “just a goddamned piece of paper!” And those who even considered the possibility that he had actually said the words were outraged. The very idea that our Chief Executive would express disrespect for the document which defines our government! Now a retired Supreme Court Justice is calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment, one of ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights. I am, again, outraged. Only my outrage will be permanent. This is not a rumor. Justice Stevens called for it on the Op Ed page of the New York Times.

While, it’s true that I actively despise Hillary Clinton, I do not consider myself a conservative, nor, in spirit, a Republican. Yet if the anti-gun lobby decides to follow his lead, they will have accomplished something that Hillary never could during Election 2016. They will have forced me to choose sides. And in this silly battle of false dichotomies, I shall choose to stand with the Bill of Rights, and with the party that can successfully oppose its dissection.

Justice Stevens’s words are not a call for common sense or school safety. They are a call to take a knife to a set of principles which have protected our freedom for more than two centuries. Democratic party be warned: if you go down this path, you’re not only losing the middle ground, you’re actively pissing all over those of us who are standing on it.