We have to confront these things. We have to confront that civilizations can die. Maybe they live on through history, but they do have lifespans and they do die too. Sometimes their death is progressive in the sense that evolution of philosophy has lead to higher levels of knowledge and capability and room must be made for the new by removal of antiquity.

Can civilizations die too early? Maybe. Are their cataclysmic events that man cannot prevent regardless of if he tries? When are we going to start to answer these questions. I am not speaking as a doomsdayer or in reference to biblical messages. I am speaking as a human being on planet earth who enjoys life and civilization, and if we don’t blow ourselves up with our own atomic weaponry, I am simply concerned that their could be elements outside of our own wars that could bring about our demise.

Knowledge is only as workable as it can be used. If there were a chance that a comet or planet could somehow drift into our system and cause significant changes in climate on all of the planets in this system and orbital changes, would this be something that mankind is prepared for?

I want to be real here. If our philosophies are only built in our world to help us cope better with conditions that cannot be avoided, then I don’t want them. But I don’t believe that is true. I believe that our philosophies exist in order for us to pose problems that have hitherto not been proposed in order to protect the furthering and advancement of mankind and our civilization.

Now that most of America has finally gotten over the fact that in a few weeks the leader of the free world is going to be a black man, I’ve got a real shocker for y’all and you might wanna sit down for this one…

The man whose birthday that you go in debt celebrating every December 25th…

Well, he was black too!

Not only that. But he was a black man who was baptised by a radical preacher named John the Baptist and hung out with a reformed terrorist named Simon Peter.

So, you might want to get a refund on that new $100 nativity scene that you just brought from WalMart because that pale skinned Christ child laying in the manger in your front yard is, well, an impostor

Since, the last election many white folks have been busy patting themselves on the back bragging about how America has finally become tolerant of all cultures and racism is a thing of the past.

But hypocrisy for most folks goes but so far.And when you start messin’ with the traditional image of some one’s religious icon, all bets are off!

Traditionally, the image of a caucasian Christ has been as American as apple pie. Whether you, personally, despise the taste, you swallow it anyway. That’s the sacrifice of being a patriotic American.

However, with this sudden embrace of diversity, can America finally accept that in all likely-hood, Jesus (Yeshua) probably resembled the new president elect, Barack Obama more so than the 43 presidents before him?

From a geographical standpoint, it would be virtually impossible that a person born in the region of the world commonly known as “the Middle East” courtesy of a man made ditch known as the Suez Canal which separates it from Northeast Africa could have pale skin and not get a terrible sun burn. Also, he could never have hidden in Egypt for so many years, incognito.

Now, we’ve all heard the much parroted argument that his skin was like an “olive.”

(Yeah, but more like one of those black olives that they put on your sandwich at Subway.)

Historically speaking, the image of the blue eyed, blond haired Jesus is the result of artistic license taken by European artists such as Michelangelo who used his family members to pose as Biblical characters. And since Pope Julius II gave the painting a thumbs up, no one questioned it.

But after nearly 500 years, don’t you think that it is time to change the traditional image of Christ to one more reflective of historical accuracy than ethnocentric bias ?

For many white folks this is much to do about nuthin’. But your ancestors didn’t get brought here by Captain John Hawkins in chains on the “Good Ship Jesus of Lubeck.” Neither were you told that your servitude was divinely ordained by the same image that’s on the Christmas cards that you get every year.

Now if you are one of those highly intellectual scholars who believes that “Jesus” is simply an esoteric concept that should not be subjected to historical scrutiny, the color of Christ is a moot point.

However, if you are one of those Bible thumpin’ Evangelicals who believes that everything in the Bible is the 100% unadulterated word of the Creator, than in 2008, you’ve got some explaining to do to convince me that Jesus was not a man of color.

Especially, since people have been preaching the Gospel of cultural diversity for the past year. If a predominately white congregation wants to prove their cultural and religious tolerance to me, all the pastor has to do is replace the white fellow with the straight hair above the pulpit with a black man with dreadlocks. Then we can break out the eggnog and sing a soulful rendition of Silent Night, together.

Let’s face it. This is a new day in America and now that the Pandora’s box of cultural diversity has been pried open, don’t be surprised if you start seeing black Jesus figurines popping up all over the place.

So, to all my white Evangelical Christian friends, I leave you with my Hip Hop version of a popular song of the season.

“May your days be merry, not wack”

“And may all your Christmases be black”

From Magic’s 1991 transcripts:

“First of all let me say good after — good late afternoon. Because of the — the HIV virus that I have attained, I will have to retire from the Lakers — today. I just want to make clear, first of all, that I do not have the AIDS disease — ’cause I know a lot of you are — want to know that — but the HIV virus.

My wife is fine. She’s negative, so there’s no problem with her. I plan on going on, living for a long time, bugging you guys, like I’ve [sic] always have. So, you’ll see me around. I plan on being with the Lakers and the league — Hopefully, David [Stern] will have me for awhile — and going on with my life.

And I guess now I get to enjoy some of the other sides of living…that because of the season, the long practices and so on. I just want to say that I’m going to miss playing. And I will now become a spokesman for the HIV virus because I want people — young people to realize that they can practice safe sex. And you know sometimes you’re a little naive about it and you think it could never happen to you. You only thought it could happen to, you know, other people and so on and all. And it has happened, but I’m going to deal with it and my life will go on. And I will be here, enjoying the Laker games, and all the other NBA games around the country. So, life is going to go on for me, and I’m going to be a happy man.

Now, medical questions that you have, you have to direct them to Dr. Melman [phonetic] and he can answer all those questions for you. Anything concerning the Lakers and so on, we have Jerry West here, I’m sure. Of course the league — our commissioner who I want to thank. I want to thank everybody up here, as well as my teammates, because they’ve been behind me all the way. I want to thank Kareem [Abdul Jabbar] for coming out, him and “Coop” [Michael Cooper] who — who stood side by side and won a lot of battles. Larry Drew, another good friend of mine who I played with.

But the Commissioner, David Stern, has been great in supporting me. And I will go on and hopefully work with the league and help in any way that I can. I want to thank also Jerry West for all he’s done. Dr. Kerr [phonetic]. Dr. Melman [phonetic] — he will tell you who my other doctors are that have helped me through this — as well as, like I said, my father, in a sense, Dr. Jerry Buss, for just drafting me and me being here.

Now, of course, I will miss the battles and the wars, and I will miss you guys [the reporters]. But life goes on.

Now, any other questions medical-wise, you can ask, like I said, Dr. Melman [phonetic]; anything with the Lakers, Jerry West — or anything with the league. I’ll take a few questions about myself and my plans.”

For public health advocates, Magic’s announcement was a victory in the battle to create greater public awareness. But in the years since, we’ve seen the broader social acceptance come at a price. Despite de-stigmatizing the epidemic, Magic’s experience distorted the viruses significance. Today, an energized, well-fed Magic, who lives without any AIDS-related symptoms and an undetectable virus load, has inspired urban myths of a “secret cure.”

This unrealistic characterization of Magic’s status has become a dangerous epidemic of its own, infecting people with the belief that HIV is not such a big deal. Kanye West captures the sentiment in his song “Can’t Tell Me Nothin” when he raps: “No, I already graduated… And you can live through anything if Magic made it.”

As this nonchalant attitude grows, infection rates are following suit, particularly among blacks, who now make up a staggering 50 percent of new HIV cases.

So if it is true that we can’t tell this generation nothin’ when it come to HIV and AIDS, how do we measure the success of Magic’s efforts? In hindsight, has Magic done more good or bad in defeating the AIDS epidemic? If he has done more good, are we due for another celebrity testimonial? If so, who would have the most impact? Furthermore, what other initiatives are necessary in changing the way people perceive the disease?

On the same day the nation elected Barack Obama, America’s first black president, Californians voted in favor of Proposition 8, which overturned a California Supreme Court ruling that upheld the rights of same sex couples to marry. Californians voted by a 52.2% majority on election day not to extend the legal rights of heterosexuals to homosexuals. Let me break it down. Califonians decided… (excuse me, I’m trying to wrap my brain around this one, so we’ll take it slow)… to outlaw gay marriage… after the supreme court of their state… said that to do so would be unconstitutional. And they voted that… the supreme court… was wrong? … Because… their CHURCHES told them to? California. The state where the gay rights movement started, what, 35 years ago? Where people began to realize that homosexual people are, well, people? Where carbon caps are being put on everything, and hybrid cars are fashionable, and artists of every stripe proliferate, and alternative lifestyles are fairly normal? I’m confused.

So I’ve been researching what happened, and although I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this kind of thing anymore, I’m still disgusted. I mean, I know on a rational level that people being hateful to each other for no reason is part of our heritage. We’ve been warring with each other since before recorded history, since probably before we lost our hair and started walking on two legs. But, even if we ARE just big hairless apes, we are still hairless. We HAVE evolved beyond other apes. We DO have bigger brains. And we HAVE been using them for a while now. Right? So how is it that we continue to be so horrible to each other? What is it in our genetic makeup that plunges us from the heights of philosophy and artistic achievement in a technological age, back into the darkness of disgustingly backwards primordial goo? Why do we do this?

Ok, ok, Lag, calm down. Let’s look at the facts. It’s not like there was a landslide at the polls, which might anger me more, because it would suggest a level of prejudice I simply couldn’t tolerate. But then again, if Proposition 8 HAD been passed by a large margin, there would have been little room for argument or reaction. I might have been able to just shake my head at people’s narrow-mindedness, reaffirm my lack of desire to ever move to California, and move on.

But as it is, the 14 words added to the California State Constitution on November 5th, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California,” were voted in by only 52.2% of voters. And the small margin was determined almost entirely by those responding to calls by different RELIGIOUS groups to ‘get out and vote.’ It’s kind of gross to think that religious groups are spreading prejudice and hatred instead of love, but that’s nothing new. What makes it particularly upsetting, however, is that even groups from outside the state of California, who don’t live near them but are somehow still personally offended by gays, got involved, feeling compelled to hand their morality across state borders into the lives of Californians. Specifically, the Mormon church asked its members to donate to pro-Prop. 8 organizations like protectmarriage.com. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from outside the state responded with huge and numerous contributions that helped get more closed-minded Californians to the polls.

Ok, so, …The Mormons. Wait, what? The Mormons? Aren’t they the only Christian group in America that allowed multiple marriages? And although they no longer officially permit it, don’t many members still engage in polygyny? Excuse me for being religiously intolerant here, but, how is it that these people think they have the right to tell other people who to marry? How does this work in their heads? Apparently their theory that “the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan” excludes homosexuals… because… they don’t want to let them adopt any of the millions of children in the world who currently have no parents. Because homosexuals can’t procreate in the typical biological way, Mormons have decreed that their matrimonial union would be a threat to families rather than an opportunity to create more for children who have already been brought into this world. The Mormons, who bemoan the fate of the “innocents” who have been aborted, don’t seem to give a damn about the kids who managed to be born but who nobody wanted. …ok, ok, maybe I’m going overboard, but… seriously?

The whole religious involvement thing does make sense on one hand, as religious groups have strong opinions about the institution of marriage. Marriage is a cornerstone of most moralistic theologies. Traditionally it has been touted as a holy sacrament in Western societies (at least ever since St. Thomas Aquinas called it that in the 13th century), and as a union between a man and a woman in many belief systems. Which is all well and good. In America religions are free, as privately led institutions, to back up whatever moral systems they choose. Their believers are free to hold those moral systems dear and to internalize them as their own personal beliefs, or natural truths, or whatever. If it makes them feel closer to their god, then I have no quarrel with them, so long as they do not hurt anyone doing so.

The last bit, “as long as they do not hurt anyone”–ah, there’s the rub. Because–here’s the thing–people trying to force their religion, or religious beliefs on others in a way that discriminates against them socially, legally and economically – is hurting people. When church groups bring their issues with other people’s sexuality into the realm of law, forcing their morality down people’s throats, into their bedrooms and bank accounts – they hurt people. And it’s violating a dictum that our founding fathers set down hundreds of years ago, one that has become as sacred as they are allowed to be in our legal system: the separation of Church and State.

Given this edict, which hangs over all government proceedings like the necessarily absent word of God, how does the government justify poking its nose into people’s bedrooms and private lives on the basis of religiously-fueled public sentiment? All forms of government and law enforcement exist in this country to protect the people from physical, economic, and psychological harm. And while they are to act in accordance with the will of the voting public, I can’t help but be disgusted that they are allowing nothing short of prejudice and discrimination to be part of their public agenda. I hardly need mention that prejudice and discrimination hurt people. Have we forgotten about Jim Crow and what it means to allow bigotry, fear, and hatred to hold sway in public life? Have we forgotten that people have died before and will die again because of laws that allow discrimination get out of control? Have we lost sense of the time in our history when white people considered other races to be ‘naturally inferior’? And doesn’t it seem strange that now we’ve allowed people who consider gay marriages to be ‘unnatural’ to write our laws?

Furthermore, how can people not see that the “protection of marriage” line that’s being recited en masse by proponents of Proposition 8 makes no sense? Someone please explain to me how heterosexual marriages are threatened by the extension of marriage to others? Are people worried that married gays will somehow break up heterosexual couples? Is the extension of tax and healthcare benefits to more people going to somehow rob the bank accounts of homophobes? In the genius words of Lewis Black, are there some “gay banditos” out there who will get married and then go from house to house, interrupting idyllic American dinners by f**king each other in the ass - in tasteful pumps - just to destroy the American family? The answer to all these questions, no matter how many times I look at them from different angles, is “NO.” Of course not. The only people who will be hurt economically, socially, and possibly even physically by prejudicial attitudes being written into our laws and state constitutions are homosexuals who want to be treated the same as heterosexuals. And the only ones hurt by those attitudes being written OUT of our laws would be… nobody. Maybe some religious fanatics would be upset, and homophobes would squirm a little, but nobody would be HARMED.

The way I see it is this: if a church or an entire religion want to ban homosexual couples from sharing in their definition of marriage, well, that’s the business of that church or that religion. Nobody should be able to stop them, just like nobody has been able to stop the Boy Scouts from keeping gay men out of their leadership. They are private institutions, and people are free to choose whether or not they want to participate in their ceremonies and beliefs and sacraments, just as they are free to choose whether certain people are allowed to participate. Marriage as a religious ceremony and institution is fair game for the morality of the religion that is joining its believers in matrimony. No skin off my nose. But when those religions try to start influencing the law, then I start getting angry. And when the law starts acting like a privately controlled religion, well then I get a bee in my bonnet.

A state’s legal code, according to American democratic philosophy, should have nothing to do with religiously-biased morality. If we can’t agree on who should be allowed the legal benefits of marriage, then we should all have to go without. Telling someone that he or she can’t have something just because somebody somewhere thinks that he or she shouldn’t has no place in a government that celebrates the notion of “all men created equal.” If we can’t agree on whether homosexuals should be granted civil unions versus marriages in the eyes of the law, then in order to prevent prejudicial treatment, we must not allow anyone to benefit from marriage on a legal level. Discrimination based on sexuality is still discrimination, and therefore should not be part of any legal code in our country. Tax benefits should never be withheld due to one’s choice of partner, any more than it should be on the basis of race, sex, or intellect. Therefore, I say, let churches handle marriage and grant whatever rights or sacraments they see fit to those couples they deem worthy of union. And let civil unions be the territory of our laws and taxes and constitutions. Let’s all pay the same taxes once we’ve been unified civilly, and join ourselves in matrimony in whatever churches will accept us.

And… that’s it. I just can’t think about this anymore without my head exploding out of frustration and confusion. At a time when we’ve just moved so far ahead, electing our first African American president, acknowledging the errors of our wasteful ways, and turning our backs on the culture of fear that President Bush has forced fed us for eight years, I just don’t want to wallow in bigotry any more.

To Barack Obama from Ralph Nader

Dear Senator Obama,

In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words “hope and change,” “change and hope” have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not “hope and change” but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.

Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?

To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.

You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an “undivided Jerusalem,” and opposed negotiations with Hamas- the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored “direct negotiations with Hamas.” Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote “Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state.”

During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League’s 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.

David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: “There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President.”

Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, “of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. ŠEven the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli’s use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli’s assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its ‘legitimate right to defend itself.’”

In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government’s assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on “the heart of a crowded refugee campŠ with horrible bloodshed” in early 2008.

Israeli writer and peace advocate- Uri Avnery- described Obama’s appearance before AIPAC as one that “broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama “is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future- if and when he is elected president.,” he said, adding, “Of one thing I am certain: Obama’s declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people.”

A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.

Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled “Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama” (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled “Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque.” None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans- even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.

Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.

Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to “tumultuous applause,” following a showing of a film about the Carter Center’s post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!

But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the “middle class” but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the “poor” in America.

Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke “change” yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the “corporate supremacists.” It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics- opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)- and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.

Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. “Hope” some say springs eternal.” But not when “reality” consumes it daily.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

November 3, 2008

So we’ve had a little over a week now to get used to the idea of President Barack Obama. The way that transformed from a “wouldn’t it amazing if…” into reality is a great thing to contemplate–not the least of which is because, if you voted for Obama, you’re in the majority. In the America we’ve lived in for the last decade, being all about a guy named Barack Hussein Obama, who runs on a platform of ending a stupid war and treating people with less money more compassionately, has not been the sort of thing that gives you much in common with your neighbors. It’s why I like to talk about football.

Even if the strangers I meet are all Minnesota Vikings fanatics, we can at least find middle ground in our overwhelming hatred for Brett Favre.

[morning in america] But what the fuck? These days, even Brett Favre is off my enemies list. I understand for the first time why America found it so easy to root for that interception-prone son of a bitch, after ten weeks of watching him scramble around the field in a Jets uniform. Get him out of the green and yellow and he’s just an old dude trying to make a go of things in a tough world, and who can’t show some love for that?

Even Bears, Vikings, and Lions fans can show some love for the man they’ve hated for over a decade if he’s using his powers to dismantle the New England Patriots. Hell yes. These days, we hate our own quarterbacks up in the NFC North.

Well, not our starters. It’s the backups who fill us with loathing. Ask a Vikings fan how eager he is to see Tavaris Jackson back in purple, or a Lions fan how excited he is for John Kitna to return to the field. Ask me,an angsty Chicago Bears fanatic who desperately hopes Rex Grossman contracts a fatal case of whooping cough before the end of the season, how excited I am for Kyle Orton to return to the field. The answer is fucking very. Rex Grossman? Jesus, I hope a house falls on his dick.

[that's what they said about kerry collins, too] You know who agrees with me on that? President-Elect Obama. He might not be able to say it publicly–he is the President of all Americans these days, including the failed quarterbacks and useless backups who should have never been allowed in the league in the first place–but the rumor hovers that he spent the week prior to the beginning of the regular season on the phone with Bears head coach Lovie Smith, lobbying him to give Kyle Orton the starting job over Grossman. One can be fairly certain that he spent at least part of this past Sunday afternoon gripping the armrests of some plush chair, frustrated and staring at the injured Orton on the sidelines as the Bears struggled to get outside of their own ten yard line under Grossman’s tutelage… He did, after all, make time for football even during a busy campaign season, and this is the most relaxed period he’s likely to see over the next several years.

So who knows what the future holds? The world is open to relative newcomers like Barack Obama and Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco, and it has plenty of love left for older men experiencing an unexpected second act like Collins, Favre, Kurt Warner and Joe Biden. The only people it’s being cruel to at the moment are the ones who flew too close to the sun, only to end up a frightening disappointment- your Matt Leinarts andRex Grossmans and Sarah Palins.

[what are you talking about?] Well, metaphors like these do my heart some good, but they don’t actually say anything about the world in which we live. And who cares about that right now? It’s Thursday night, and the Patriots are being beaten like a gong by the New York Jets. Barack Obama is going to be the President soon, and there isn’t much to complain about tonight. Tonight, we can just enjoy musing on the world as it is, not as we wish it would be. Hell, who can tell? We may actually get to see something not too far away from that if we keep at it.

The fee is being pushed primarily as a way to earn revenue for the city. Broken down into pieces, 5 cents goes to the city and 1 cent to individual businesses. According to the Times “city officials estimate that the fee could generate $16 million a year” from New Yorkers too busy or too lazy to bring their own bags to the store. But bleeding-heart environmentalists like myself are hoping that after the initial shock to New Yorker’s wallets, the fee will drive down plastic bag use dramatically and produce little revenue as we switch over to reusable bags. A heartening example of this comes from Ireland, where a 33 cent tax was imposed on bags in 2002. According to the International Herald Tribune, in Ireland, “Within a year, nearly everyone bought reusable cloth bags,” and “plastic bags became socially unacceptable.” If the Irish can do it, so can we.

The fee would be a leap forward for large American cities on several levels – environmental and other (although San Francisco already completely banned plastic bags in 2007). Of course, it fowards our efforts toward “greening”. New Yorkers now use about 1 billion of the flimsy petroleum bags every year. Those billion bags, even when recycled or re-used, eventually end up clogging up storm drains, tangled in trees, choking ocean life, or just sitting in a landfill for 1,000 years waiting to biodegrade. And although they are currently free at stores, the bags exact a price in oil, resources, and man-hours for production. Not to mention, the oil and resources needed to deliver them to stores. Fewer bag benefit the environment and the urban landscape, and are less of a hassle for New Yorkers, many of whom have seen their bins, cupboards and corners completely overrun with extra bags that they hope to use “someday.” But who ever really sees the end of that never-ending pile? Nobody I know. In the end, most of them end up being tossed out without being re-used, a nuisance to everyone until the very distant end–1,000 years in the future.

The proposed fee is a not-so-gentle reminder that all the aggravation these bags cause is extremely easy to avoid. Of course, the plan has its critics, as does everything in this city of stubborn people. Keith Christman, the senior director of packaging for the American Chemistry Council, is quoted in the Times saying, “a tax on plastic shopping bags would be regressive, with the most severe impacts on those who are least able to absorb them.” Charging people for plastic bags, he claims, would be “making it harder for those who are already struggling to make ends meet in a difficult economy.” While I understand his thinking, anybody with an ounce of economic sense would realize that buying a few reusable bags, which are available, and very inexpensive, at most checkout counters, would cost less in the long run. Paying a higher price once, rather than a small price many times over, ends up costing less. And since it is usually those in poverty who pay the highest price for pollution of all kinds, encouraging the purchase of reusable bags might actually benefit the poor by lowering the health costs of air pollution from plastic bag production and delivery, and the literal cost of cleaning up landscape pollution in poorer neighborhoods.

David Chen of the New York Times expressed a complaint I have heard from many New Yorker’s myself. While the idea of using a cloth bag might be good, he says, “remembering to bring that bag is another matter altogether. After all, New York is a place where people are programmed to do things impulsively, because it is so easy to just hop into a bodega or a deli or a 99-cent store to buy anything, anytime, no forethought required.”

All I can say to that, like other environmentalists, is: “Boo hoo.” New Yorkers, who pay more than the rest of the country for just about everything , might have to pay a few cents for something they don’t need? Oh no! Poor New Yorkers, exposed to the finest quality goods every day on their commutes, might forget to bring bags to put them in? Horror of horrors! New Yorkers might complain, but know from experience that the surest way to remember something is to have forgotten it a few times in the past. Furthermore, there are many reusable bags out there that are designed to be folded or rolled up into units so small they can be carried in purses, pockets, or briefcases with minimal effort. They can be purchased in the checkout lines or online. See them here. And any cloth bag can be folded up and secured with a rubber band, even if it’s not specifically designed that way.

The main point here is this: using reusable bags is not difficult. Critics can naysay all they want, but the fact is that people around the world have been doing it for most of history, long before the plastic bag became prevalent. Forgetting to bring a bag a few times and paying a fee will not kill us. Eventually we’ll get used to it. Most people across the world do it already. But then again, most of them are not Americans. We here in the Land of the Free are so programmed to waste indiscriminately that even as reasonable an idea as reusing our bags is being called difficult and ridiculous. The rest of the world might be ready to fight, as Susan Dominus put it, “the absurdity of the uselessly new,” but Americans, for all our talk about wanting a greener world, have a long way to go. But what better way to start than by discouraging this absurdity with a meager 6 cents?

Whether you’re a conspiracy buff or a skeptic, know that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for a “truly global society” to manage the world’s economic crisis. “The alliance between Britain and the US, and more broadly between Europe and the US, can and must provide leadership, not in order to make the rules ourselves, but to lead the global effort to build a stronger and more just international order,” Brown said Monday, speaking at the annual Lord Mayor’s banquet in London.

Questions: Are we headed toward a New World Order? Is it inevitable? If not, what can we do to reverse it? What is Obama’s role in all of this?

It seemed as if half the people he saw downtown had followed him uptown and their sense of white privilege seemed to make anything past 110th street even more pallid and bare and base–and licit.

The settlers arrive like thieves in the night.

What is it they are looking for?

But there were no understanding necks on that train or brooding eyes that get what he’s talking about, that feel the pain flowing because they too have the itch jerking in their vessels.

The quotidian beat of an urban ghetto is the same as a suburban village…

Although he had a place to sleep, it did not feel like “home” and he was anxious to have his own “home” again. And what he had just paid for a bedroom in a three-person share—they were now all cramped into a unit he had once paid for an entire apartment twice the size. His friend, Jose`, had gotten him the place when he was still working as a muralist. And what a great place it was (or had been). Eventually, Jose` gave up art in the city and flew back to join his folks in Puerto Rico. He said he could no longer take the dreariness of the city and that he knew he would die soon, and if he were to die he wanted to see clear, blue water. That was all. Something pure. He always warned Leroy about “the shift”–he knew “the shift” would come and when it did–all would be forgotten, all would be lost, all would be…frozen.

Jose` was not a learned man, but he was an artistic one. He possessed magnificent vision and incredible foresight. He always warned his friends. Leroy cursed himself for having given up the two leases before that fatal morning and before he slid into his deep freeze, but he knew–or at least began to sense–that he was lucky. But being “lucky” to him never really mattered. He never believed in luck or in karma or any of those words that people in the media seemed to address and use when explaining someone’s success or misfortune. It was now becoming more and more apparent, however, that if you had a place to rest your head – you were lucky. Period.

And that talk about luck would have been fine and dandy if he didn’t feel like he was living in a construction zone. Or war zone. Or airport. Or broken sewer—or Somewhere in between all three.

His flat-mates were less agreeing. “This neighborhood’s always been noisy,” one said.

“Anything’s better than gunshots,” the other mocked. They both laughed. “Besides, in one more year – we’ll be living in the center of sin city! This place is gonna be hot. You’ll see, Leroy.”

“See what?”

“That this place is gonna be hot. Our landlord upstairs just told us he bought the building across the street. He’s gonna make it into a café-concert hall.”

“Landlord? He lives upstairs?”

“Well, yeah, like – isn’t that cool?”

“It’s not a problem; I just didn’t know that he lived there. That’s good, I suppose. In case there’s a problem or something.”

“Well, yeah, dude, that’s the thing – you know, he’s close by.”

“Maybe he can help me get my window open.”

“In your bedroom? Oh, that’s just ‘cause they painted over it. You know, he like – just wanted to make it look nice and fresh for you. Dude, tell me it looks the way it did online, right? Aren’t you pleased?”

“Yeah.”

Leroy felt his flat-mate wasn’t too swift. Shouldn’t all apartments be decent? Shouldn’t they all look the way they do in the ad? Of course he realized this was not always the case, but he was getting tired of feeling “lucky.” Especially when it was coming from kids who had no clue as to where they were living and what it meant or what had occurred before. Kids who hadn’t known the meaning of the Lenox Lounge or Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard or the significance, say, of the old Renaissance Theater and Casino.

“Well, you mustn’t be a prisoner of history,” the other one said.

“Yeah, that’s like Nationalism.”

“Yeah,” the other one said plopping down on the couch, burping, “that’s how the fascists always end up getting riled up.”

Leroy sighed, went into his room and looked out the painted over window. The room was stuffy and the smell of paint inflamed his sinuses. He strutted back into the living room.

“What time does our landlord get home?”

“Oh, he’s always home. He works from home.”

“Well, what’s his number?”

“It’s on the fridge,” the other one said, as he hooked up his play-station.

“But he’s not here right now.”

“Oh…”

“He’s in Seattle for, like, the next week. But you can always leave a message. If you want, I can call him at his mom’s house.”

“You know his mother?”

“Yeah, totally, dude. His mother used to feed us all the time after school.”

Leroy stepped out into the night and squinted as the flood-lights and trucks beamed and flashed white light far up into the New York sky; perhaps it was a signal to the Martians, or homage to Brecht: space invasion and unemployment in a New York sky.

He sauntered by the construction site. An entire block along Second Avenue had been completely excavated. Looking into the street, below the surface – it was like seeing the organs of a tormented dinosaur; an ancient orifice whose juices still flowed, but whose mystery was no longer respected. Leroy knew something was afoot; he used to work in construction. Unless there was an emergency or a sewer-break, there was no reason why anyone in their right mind would be digging past 10PM at night in the middle of a major street, behind residential buildings.

Leroy walked up to one of the construction workers who paused in between his jack-hammering.

“People work around here, you know. And they need their rest at night, we need to sleep.”

“Oh yeah?”

And then he jack-hammered even louder than before.

On his way back to the apartment, Leroy stopped by his Grandfather’s old barber-shop, which was now a tiny boutique which sold overpriced second-hand clothes and jewelry. The sign said: “all hipster essentials.”

Leroy walked in to the store. He looked around. He couldn’t believe that after all these years of being dormant, of being abandoned that the vacancy had reopened and was now catering to people younger than he.

“Can I help you?”

“No, no. Just looking. My grandfather used to have a barber shop here.” He was proud.

She rolled her eyes; she was trying to close up. “Is there anything you want in here?”

He shook his head and left. He thought about Jose` on his way around the corner.

The next day Leroy noticed a small table set up in front of his apartment building with a man and a woman seated at either end, holding books. There was a sign on the center of the table. It read: Are You Stressed?

The couple smiled at Leroy as he stepped out to go on a job interview. He smiled back and nodded, but did not say anything and was off to the train station. On his way back from the interview, he noticed the couple was still there–even though the construction directly behind them was scattering dirt and tar and concrete. Leroy tried hard to not get hit by any of the showering debris, and he darted into the lobby of his building as if dodging a hail of bullets. And in a sick way, he thought that dodging a hail of bullets would be easier. In fact he had–once. But nothing could be deadlier or unpredictable than construction.

The couple at the table stood up and yelled: “You seem worried, would you like a stress test??”

That night, Leroy had a dream.

He dreamt that the New York accent had become extinct, a thing of the past. And people earned their living by performing Shakespeare monologues in full glorious New Yorkese in small cages with glass sliding doors. On each side of the cage was a Rockefeller octagon and above the “prisons” glared the words: “The right relationship…”

The only options the poor natives had was to perform in this ghastly JP Morgan Chase-New Millennium Freak Show, although some were allowed to retain their posts at the DMV, the police station, or local Social Security office. Some New York natives were left to fend for themselves as others died off quietly. A few rebelled and many lost their minds–but it was all so futile. Too much, too late.

Leroy awoke from the nightmare and realized that it was not a dream. But if so, why wouldn’t anybody say something?

But many had, many did…when Leroy was still asleep.

It was too late to call Jose`. He took comfort, however, in an email he received from an old lover who had settled back overseas. Although she missed him greatly, she wrote, she could not set foot back in New York. She begged him to visit when he had enough money, felt free again, and when he felt he had settled the score.

She didn’t understand. New Yorkers don’t handle failure well. And they seldom can admit when they have lost. But did he seem foolish to everyone else? What was he trying to prove?

He looked out the window and this time through the thin white layer of paint over his cell window, through the wire mesh and over the broken fence within the yard was a huge billboard of a pair of hands that had burst through the concrete jungle holding a newborn baby, with the words: And who are you? What will you do for yourselves? And below it, in smaller text was:

What you can’t do– the Believers of L.Ron Hubbard will!

The New Scientology Complex: Coming Soon in the New Year.

Leroy found a job working for a Virginian in a new restaurant in Chelsea. He had never waited tables before and he really missed the old odd-job or intermittent construction gig he could pick up every now and then before the digital revolution. He remembered working one Christmas season for a Hungarian painting & flooring company. The owner liked him so much that he offered him a full time job. Leroy was 20 at the time, a bit of a misfit, and not exactly stable. He thanked the man, but turned down his offer. Leroy had greater aspirations: He wanted to make a contribution to society, not floors. But now, working in this posh restaurant, feeling uncomfortable when people asked him about his accent, he yearned for the independence and authenticity of flooring and driving and working with his hands with other people who may not have liked him–but at least they understood him. They knew where he was coming from. They could respect his struggle.

So now that he was working, it only seemed right that he would have to lose his room in the apartment of the “Bo and Luke Duke” of the Slummers. They had asked him to move two weeks after he had just moved in. Apparently, the blonde had his girlfriend coming and the brunette was thinking about “renovating” and since he knew how sensitive Leroy’s sinuses were he thought it would only be fair to warn him and suggest that he find another place to live. He even said he would refer him to a few places and Leroy quickly advised him that that would not be necessary.

Leroy packed that night and slept at the restaurant downtown.

The couple selling stress tests and pamphlets downstairs moved into his room two days later.