Month: January 2023

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When Paul Pelosi was attacked by a home intruder in October there was some speculation in the Conservative gutter press that he was having a homosexual assignation with the intruder. This speculation was just that — speculation. The police never said sex was involved. Paul Pelosi certainly did not nor did Pelosi’s attacker. But some conservatives never let facts get in the way of malicious speculation. If a Pelosi was involved, there had to be something rotten and, brave souls that they are, they weren’t afraid to speculate how rotten it was.

Amazingly these fevered fanatics, with absolutely no tangible evidence to support them, spun a scandal worth spreading in the press. Pelosi was attacked. He must have deserved it. Pelosi lives in San Francisco a known gay mecca. If San Francisco is in the story, something gay must be afoot. Then Pelosi was in his underwear. Why was Pelosi so scantily clad? Their argument boiled down to a San Francisco man dressed in his underwear was attacked by another man. For them, this screams Gay. Gay. Gay. Based on this slim gruel, they created a lover’s quarrel that ended badly. While wallowing in this sexual scandal they created, they also down played the possibility that the attacker had any political motive even though there was far more evidence to support this version. The attacker is nudist. He is a vegetarian. He lives in the Bay Area. He couldn’t possibly be a right-wing nut.

The conservative press worked on this version of the story. Pelosi was complicit in the attack because he was on the prowl for illicit sex. If Pelosi was made to look guilty of some sin then the attack, while unwarranted, happened because he was looking for sex outside of his marriage. There is, of course, no evidence to support this version. These stewards of morality hinted that maybe if you are looking for sex on the dirty streets of San Francisco, you might deserve what happens to you. The story became Paul Pelosi’s sex life instead of a right-wing nut job attacks Paul Pelosi.

A very crafty move and, in this particular case, it was factually wrong. There is no evidence that any of their story was true. The explanation that the police and Pelosi gave at the time looks to be true. The police recently released the tapes of the attack. The video shows the attacker spewing anti-Pelosi rants. And, if this wasn’t convincing enough, then the attacker proudly goes on Fox News to brag about the attack. From this new evidence, it sounds like the attacker did have political motives for his actions and not personal ones. You would think that would end any further speculation about what happened to Pelosi. And you would be wrong.

Charles Glasser, in his analysis in the conservative blog Instapundit, still maintains nothing refutes the possibility of Pelosi being involved in an affair with his attacker. The attackers diatribe against the Pelosis is ignored while, for some reason, Glasser wants to know more about why Pelosi is in his underwear. It that really that shocking? The attack happened in the early morning. If you broke into my house at 2AM in the morning, you would definitely find me in my underwear. Why does Glasser need more explanation? Why isn’t “I just got out of bed to find out what all the noise was about” enough?

Glasser chooses to believe the speculation while ignoring the facts. He still wants to pursue the sexual encounter story even though there is little evidence to support this story while completely ignoring the plentiful supply of facts that supports that a nut job fueled by right wing hate rhetoric took a hammer to Pelosi’s head. I am not sure why anyone would want to argue about this anymore. Nancy Pelosi is no longer the speaker. This, at best, is a side show. But conservatives can’t quite bring themselves to follow this route. They need to keep the dubious story in play because the truth would raise questions about the violent nature of some individuals on the Republican right wing. This would force them and the press into a different conversation, one they definitely don’t want to have. Better to make Pelosi a closeted gay adulterer than tell the truth.

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Michael Walsh, conservative columnist, believes that a repeal of a number of Constitutional Amendments needs to take place in order to save the republic. The 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote is one of the amendments Walsh would like to repeal. In Walsh’s mind, the republic has fallen apart since women received the franchise. Walsh is, or at least I hope, is trolling his audience but it is difficult to discern if this is true because he goes all in for repeal. He wants to limit voters along the lines of ancient Greece and Rome which boils down to two groups — men who have served in the military and male property owners. This, of course, deprives a lot of people the franchise – all women and men who don’t own property — well over fifty percent of the present voting population.

Why Walsh would propose such a repeal is a bit mystifying. Most importantly, it is hugely unpopular. Since women presently have the vote and make up more than 50% of the population, how would this even be enacted in the present system? His very vague plan is that women will willingly surrender the vote when they all have a strong man to care for them. He also dredges up the old canards that women are too fickle and too emotional to be given such an important privilege. For proof of these weaknesses, he goes, again, back to ancient Rome. The Sabine women who were carried off by the Romans interceded to stop the war between their new husbands and their old families. Why women don’t have the sense to leave their kidnappers and rapist to return to their families. Men would never do that.

There are many problems with Walsh’s argument but I will stick to two. He provides no evidence that women are too emotional and too fickle to vote. Or that men only vote based on cold hard data and never let their emotions guide them. He bases is case on old stereotypes about women rather than, how shall I put this delicately, cold hard data. Given his supposition is based on the rational thinking man deserves the vote, he might have, at the very least, thrown is some data that proves his point. He doesn’t. In fact, his is an emotional response to how women vote instead of an exercise in rational thinking. Women vote Democratic and he doesn’t like it. Not liking something without data is just a tantrum but certainly not a demonstration of a reasonable being.

Then Walsh assumes that men took their role as husband and father seriously in the good old days. They didn’t. Women had husbands who drank their wages away, husbands who disappeared when they couldn’t fulfill their responsibilities, husbands who didn’t work and expected their wives to fulfill both roles as the provider and the family caretaker, and husbands who stiffed their wives on alimony and child support. Since some men failed in their obligations, women were left at the mercy of the men who ran the country. Given the male’s unemotional and rational approach to government, this meant very little help for any woman unfortunate enough to marry a loser. They should have made a wiser decision before walking up the aisle. At this point, many women reasonably, I dare say, decided to seek political power as a way of offsetting the feckless behavior of their husbands.

What Walsh really wants is to limit the franchise to people who vote Republican and eliminate potential Democratic voters. This can be clearly seen in the comments section of Instapundit where I initially found Walsh’s article. Again, probably more trolling done here, but the commenters want to limit the vote even further than Walsh. One person wants to eliminate all unmarried voters since they have no children and thus have no stake in the future. Another person shows in color coordinated blue and red maps that if voters were limited to white males that the Republicans would win every election.

What is missing here is how conservatives and Republicans might make their case to the wider franchise. Walsh and his commenters are admitting that they only appeal to white male voters and given up on persuading women to vote Republican. Instead Walsh proposes limiting the franchise to voters who already vote Republican. Given that women are so emotional and fickle, I find it difficult to understand why these superior male minds can’t come up with a scare tactic that will push these thoughtless creatures into voting Republican. What is more baffling is that they aren’t even trying very hard to persuade women to vote differently. Really, if you can’t outsmart people who you believe to have a weak and irrational mind, what good is your superior intelligence in the first place?

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If you needed another example of the criminal malpractice of the present media networks, I give you George Santos. Why are they still talking about him? He is unimportant and his reputation is ruined. The only thing that could possibly revive his career now is if the press continual spotlighting of him creates sympathy among the perpetually persecuted wing nuts on the Republican right. The press is doing everything it can to make this possible.

Santos, a freshman congressman with little political power, may have been an important story as long as Republicans defended him. Once he was unmasked as a serial liar, most Republicans, at least the establishment ones, have abandoned him. The Republican leadership may allow him to stay the next two years in order to keep their slim majority but Santo himself is done. Any future opponent for his house seat, Republican or Democrat, will have ample examples of his perfidy and the voters of his district can remove him from his position.

Yet the media headlines his every lie as if the already multiple lies they have revealed before weren’t enough to convince the public he is a liar. Santos said this, Santos said that, every lie he utters makes a new headline with talking head round tables outraged at his brazen inability to tell the truth. For a business that runs on trying to capture the public’s attention with the new and the sexy, this seems like a peculiarly boneheaded move. There is nothing new about it and Santos is far from sexy. Why bother to read every new outrageous lie? I am convinced. Tell me something I don’t already know but Santos is no longer worth my time.

The Santos story is easy pickings. Santos, narcissist that he is, will continue to talk. If he talks, he will be lying. The average high school news reporter can google the information and discover the lie. Why the media has latched onto this story like a dog with a bone is a mystery. Their continued interest and piling on of Santos, they risk making him sympathetic to the already prodigious number of media haters. The enemy of my enemy and all that, see Donald Trump if you are interested in more details.

Worse, Santos is a distraction from more important issues. There can only so many headlines, so many talking head roundtables. If they are all talking about Santos, they aren’t talking about inflation or the Russian war or the meth epidemic or any of the million and one bigger problems than George Santos.

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I learned a new phrase for going to the toilet. I never liked the ones presently available as they are a bit too crude for my taste. So I am watching an old television show — Supernatural, season 4 if you must know and discovered the use of Releasing the Hostages. This euphemism perfectly encapsulates, at least for me, the bowel movement process. I can’t wait to use it.

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My doctor sent me a bill for $1, 300. My insurance company had denied my claim with a code 23. Code 23 means that the bill exceeded the insurance company’s contractual agreement. This could mean that the insurance company and the doctor are going to duke it out and I need to wait to find out who pays or it could mean that I have to pay. It wasn’t clear from either the doctor’s bill or the insurance company’s denial.

I go to the insurance company’s web site because the insurance company doesn’t want you calling them. They do everything to discourage it. If you ever do call, a recorded message will encourage you to go to their web site for faster service. I try finding my answer on their web site. They explain in minute detail about what they will pay for. I am sure that the author is a lawyer trying to help the company fend off law suits and not by a person interested in answering an actual person’s customer service question. After reading as many explanations as I can stay awake for, I realize I still have no idea who is supposed to pay the bill. On the plus side, if some pissy customer service agent asks whether I tried using the company’s website, and they do ask that question, I feel like I can truthfully answer yes I tried.

The doctor’s bill is due in a week or so. I am not going to pay the bill until I find out who is responsible. If you pay the bill, both the doctor and the insurance company loose interest in the answer. Unless you plan to spend hours on the phone arguing about this, never pay the bill until you know you need to pay the bill. Someone has to be waiting to be paid in order for you to get any action and it is best it is the doctor and not you. I wait a couple of days to see if I get a revised bill from the doctor with the insurance payment or directions that I am indeed responsible.

The revised bill never comes. Which is a crisis. I now have to call the insurance company’s Customer Support for an answer. This will consume a good hour of me waiting on hold, getting transferred to several other customer support agents, and explaining my story numerous time. I prepare for the call — get a few snacks in case I get hungry, find some chores that can be done on my computer while I wait and have every document I need ready for any questions I might receive. Once I am fully prepared, I make my call.

The recorded greeting directs me to the website. The message assures me that it will be faster than waiting for a customer support agent. I want to scream I have tried the website already that is why I am calling, stop telling me to use it when it was useless. I restrain myself as it is pointless to scream at the recorded greeting, I continue to listen for further instructions which brings me to dreaded phone tree.

You climb the phone tree in order to get routed to the correct person. This is rarely my experience. First, and most importantly, you have to listen carefully to your options. If you lose focus even for a second, you might miss your option. You can then find yourself listening to dead air with no way to get back to the tree or having to leap from the tree and begin climbing again. Instead of starting over, I have found randomly depressing a number sometimes connects you to a person. It might not be the right person but then they will help you to the right person. And, really, chances are you, even if you used the phone tree, you were going to wind up with the wrong customer service agent any way, so this is actually a time saver.

Anyway, I listen to my phone tree options with laser like focus because I know this was going to be a long call. I go through the phone tree options. I choose one that best fits my need and I am finally connected to a person. Step one complete.

The first Customer Service representative was perplexed. He was confused about the denial. He saw the same explanation I saw but couldn’t determine who should pay the outstanding amount. He asks me to hold. He doesn’t actually put me on hold though so I hear the whispered conversation he has with a nearby associate. After five minutes of this, and without letting me know, he puts me on hold. I know I am still connected because I begin to hear recordings again which includes a message about using the company’s website for faster service and also letting me know that the company had just won some customer service award for customer satisfaction. I find this difficult to believe. Ten minutes later the customer service agent returns to tell me he needs help from a supervisor, can I continue to hold.

I put the phone on speaker and continue with my chores. After another ten minutes, the Rep comes back on the line and tells me he has to transfer me to another Customer Service Rep at another office to answer my question because the phone tree directed me to wrong person. I am no longer a company employee and I am using COBRA to pay for my company insurance. Which seems like a pretty lame answer because I am paying to have exactly the same insurance as someone who is an employee of the company. I get exactly the same benefits as an employee. Also if COBRA employees should call a different number is the one I should call, why does my insurance card give his number. An awkward silence follows, until exasperated with the absence of an explanation, I agree to be transferred. Before the Rep transfers me, he gives me the right phone number to call in case he accidentally disconnects me during the transfer process. This is not reassuring.

The new Rep answers and proceeds to irritate me. He is way too friendly for my taste. He speaks American Bro like we are old pals and not a customer and a company representative tasked with helping the customer with a problem. I don’t encourage him whatsoever. But he is one determined dude. He spends a good five minutes trying to connect with me. He notices I live in San Diego and talks about a trip he took to San Diego many years ago. He loved San Diego. I mutter a few monosyllable answers when he feels it important to include me in the conversation but, for the most part, he doesn’t really need my participation. He is on speaker and I am doing other things and I can wait for him to exhaust his faux friendliness.

He finally winds down and asks me what my problem is. This makes me a little testy. I tell him that I have already explained it to the other Rep, didn’t the other Rep explain it to him. Maintaining his Bro demeanor, he lets me know that he just wants to make sure he has the correct information. I want to ask him to just give me the information he has because I suspect he doesn’t have any information whatsoever. But I’m pretty sure the Bro would try to bond further with me so I surrender. I explain,for a second time, my problem.

He does some quick tapping on his keyboard and then stops talking. The first time he has stopped talking since we connected. I hear the clickity clack of typing on a keyboard, an audible “this is interesting” and then he told me he was going to put me a hold for a moment. I wait. Like the previous Rep, he doesn’t put me on hold. I hear him talking to the person next to him. After about five minutes of a whispered back and forth, Bro tells me he has to talk to his supervisor and for me to continue to hold. This time he means business because I hear the recording which tells me that I can get faster service if I go to the website.

After another 10 minutes, Bro comes back on the line. “Mr. Fitzpatrick.”

I knew I was in trouble then. Nobody calls you Mr. when they have good news. He asks if he can give me a call back in a few minutes as he is still trying to determine who is responsible for paying the bill. I give him my phone number. He tells me he will call back in a few minutes. Then, because I have had problem with insurance companies and doctors not leaving messages on my recorder because they don’t know if other people use the phone and they are afraid they will be sued for divulging private information, I tell him, “that he can leave a message on my recorder if I don’t answer.” He assures me it will only be a few minutes and that he can give me an answer. He wants to give me this information directly. I tell him it is unnecessary to speak to me directly if, for some reason I don’t answer, all I need to know is who is responsible for the $1,300.

“Mr. Fitzpatrick just know I have taken a personal interest in this and I will get back with you by the end of the day.” I thank him for his help and wait for Bro to call back.

He doesn’t.

I call back the next day. I will spare you the ordeal of the recorded messages, the phone tree, and the transfers even though the original Customer Service rep gave me the correct phone number to call. I finally get a supervisor who explained code 23. She tells me that, even though the code as defined by her company means that bill exceeds the insurance company’s contractual agreement, what it really means is that I hadn’t met my deductible yet. I asked her why the company didn’t use a code that says I haven’t met my deductible instead as I would have understood this immediately and it would have saved me hours of customer service calls. She said technically code 23 is correct because the cost did exceed the contractual agreement regarding my deductible. I asked then why doesn’t anyone at her company know this. I spoke with two different reps who spoke with their associates and supervisors and nobody seemed to know this all encompassing meaning of code 23.

She gives this a think and then replies, “I will let my supervisor know.” She isn’t going to engage in a pointless argument with me over bureaucratic mumbo jumbo that she doesn’t have the answer for. She can’t do anything about it, so she lets me know that she will pass on my complaint to someone who could. I am absolutely positive she did not tell her supervisor.

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We are trying to buy train tickets with the Spanish Rail online system. I get all the way to the point of purchase and when I try to buy, for some unknown reason, the system fails and delivers an ambiguous error message – something to the effect system unable to complete transaction, please try again later. Thinking that there is something wrong with the internet or the Spanish Rail’s computer system or there is a bird sitting on the cable line, I try again later. The sell fails again with the same message. I try again later. And again, the purchase fails. Thinking that there is something wrong with my computer or my browser or I am simply too blind to see what I am doing wrong, I ask Bob to try. Fresh eyes, you know. He, unfortunately, has exactly the same response.

First we are not technophobes. We embrace new technology. We bank, shop, communicate on line. We very rarely chuck it all in and call for help. When we do call, we really have tried everything. We search for a very well hidden customer support line. I always think it I am just one link away from finding the information I need, so I never give up looking no matter how long it takes. Finally, after about 30 minutes of searching we locate a phone number. It, however, is a Spanish phone number and not a toll free American number. We decide to wait until we get to Spain to purchase tickets. No big deal.

We arrive in Barcelona. Both of us, at different times, attempt to buy tickets. Both of us fail miserably when we try to purchase. It is the same ambiguous message so we don’t know what our mistake is or how to correct. We check with the clerk at our hotel. He is young and we, or at least to his eyes, are old. He gives you that condescending look that says, “OK Grandpa, this is going to take me about 10 seconds to figure out and you are going to look so dumb when I tell you what you did wrong.” I grit my teeth and wait for his help. He keys in all the information. Tappity, tip, tap – faster than the speed of light, one handed and holding a piece of paper with our details, the other hand typing. I am indeed impressed. He has my full confidence that he will figure it all out.

When he tries to purchases, the sale fails. His face looks perplexed. How could this be? He tries again. He fails again. And again, and again he fails. We tell him that is exactly what happened to us. He now believes we have a genuine problem instead of a user problem. He calls Customer Support for Spanish Rail. He gives our details to the agent. The purchase fails for her. The desk clerk explains that is exactly what happened to him and to us. She puts the clerk on hold in order that she can check into the error messages and determine what the ambiguous messages mean. After a few minutes, she explains that the problem is that we need a pin code for our credit card and because we aren’t entering it, our credit card company is rejecting it.

Which is weird because I called the credit card company before I left and let them know we would be travelling in Europe and what countries we would be going to. Additionally, I have used the credit card all over the globe and I never had to enter a pin number before, indeed in the last week we have used the credit card in Greece, Montenegro and Italy. Furthermore, why now, at the end of our trip, is the credit company requiring it? This is said, of course, to the hotel clerk in well thought out clear statements that takes about five minutes for me to relay. In agitated Spanish, he relays this information to the customer service agent in about 10 seconds. I hadn’t realized that Spanish translations of English were so concise.

She can’t explain why but she does know that a pin number is what we need. We explain that we don’t have a pin number for this credit card because we only charge purchases to it and never use a pin. She doesn’t know what to do, so she thinks it is best that we make the purchase at the computer kiosk at the train station. No not that. We try to get her to book tickets for us. She explains that unless we have a pin number, she can’t help us. Then why would booking at the computer kiosk at the train station be any better, Bob asks.  Because there are Spanish Rail employees walking around the train station and, if they see us in trouble at the computer kiosk they will be able to assist us. This makes no sense whatsoever if what we need is a pin number. But, we are beaten down and decide to go to the train station.

In order to get to the train station, we need to use the Barcelona Metro. This means buying tickets at a computer kiosk because this Metro stop has no ticket sellers. We start out well, using the English instructions on how to buy tickets. But soon enough our first roadblock is put up. Our options for tickets are an all day ticket, a multiple-day ticket, a packet of 10 trips, to a ticket to Barcelona Airport. We are unable to locate a round trip ticket to a specific point on the Barcelona Metro. We see no help. After several frustrated attempts to find what we are looking for, we decide to buy the full day pass. We get to the point of purchase and the sale fails. The failure message is in Spanish and the screen instructions now turn back to Spanish and all of our previous information is deleted. We have start again.

Bob spies a young man standing next us who is having trouble as well. He knows the trick to get help. He presses a small red button on the wall which brings out a Metro official. We wait patiently as she helps him with his problem. We grab her before she can slip back into the bowels of the Barcelona Metro. We explain our problem and tells us our problem is that we need a pin number in order to approve the sale. I realize that our debit cards have pin numbers and I tell Bob that this is the solution to both of our problems. I used my debit card, type in my pin number and voila we have two round trip Metro tickets to the train station.

Armed with this new knowledge, we confidently ride to the Barcelona train station. There are more computer kiosks at the train station than slot machines at a Las Vegas casino. Row after row, lining the center of the station, every empty space had a computer kiosk near by. We stride up to one, type in our details, use our debit card with pin numbers and confirm our round trip tickets to San Sebastian. The screen prompts me for the PIN number. YES, I have one. Tappity, tip, tap. We are on our way. I enter the pin and depress enter. The same ambiguous error message appears. “But we have a pin number,” I scream. We go looking for help. Which, after all, was the main reason we came all the way to the Barcelona train station in the first place. All the help we would receive from the Spanish Rail clerks that were all hanging out there just waiting to help frustrated passengers. But they weren’t any. We stand at computer kiosk. I wave my hand like a drowning man going down for the third time. Blub. Blub. No help.

Bob gets in the ticket line and I get in the information line. Bob’s line moves faster and he joins me with the news. He was told that they were only selling tickets for today’s trains at the ticket desk, that, if we had a trip for a future date, we needed to use the computer kiosk. Bob tells the guy that we had been trying but we had problems. He said go back to computer kiosks, try again, and that there were Spanish Rail customer service agents walking around the computer kiosks who can help us. Bob explained that nobody seemed to help us and we definitely needed help. The ticket agent assured Bob that someone would eventually help us and to go back to the computer kiosk.

I am deflated, as I am certain that I will get exactly the same response from the Information Desk clerk. As I am now at the front of the information line, I figure it is worth a try. I explain my dilemma. The woman kindly tells me to go to the computer kiosk and somebody would help me. I explained that we had already tried and nobody came to help. As if she doesn’t believe me, she stands up at her position, cranes her neck and does a 180 degree scan of the station floor, trying to find us help. She finds no one. YES. Finally. Surely she will have to help because we are obviously passengers in trouble and there is no one to help us. NO. She directs us to return to the computer kiosks and says that there is someone out there and they will eventually come find me. But where? She says that, and, on this point, I completely believe her, the Customer Service agent is probably helping someone else.

We return to the computer kiosk and try to book our tickets. I get so fast that I can race through the first seven or so steps in seconds because I have memorized them due to the screen returning to the first step every time a sale fails. Bob looks around for help. I curse, I scream, I sweat profusely, doing everything I know to look like a customer in distress, hoping that my performance would capture the attention of the customer service agent. My performance fails miserably. No one comes to our aid. “Don’t I look like I am having trouble with the computer?” I ask Bob. “Maybe you should cry or something?” I try but I can’t. I am too damn mad to cry. I do loudly declaim, “Can someone please take my money? I just want to give someone my money so I can get some damn train tickets.” Nobody is listening.

After several attempts at trying to book round trip tickets, which is what I want, I try booking a one-way ticket which would, at least, get us to San Sebastian. Which, to my surprise, works. I can’t believe it. Two one way tickets pop out of the machine. I am overwhelmed with joy. I want to cry. Then Bob reminds me that we still need return tickets but I push him out of the way. I am so happy that I grab the tickets, spin around like a movie star in a musical and the camera is watching me from above. I dance, I sing. Nobody in the Barcelona Train station notices.

For the record, we spent 2 hours in the USA trying , we spent another two hours trying in Barcelona, the hotel clerk tried to help us for another hour, then we spent 20 minutes buying our Metro ticket, then a 20 minutes trip to the train station and then another hour and half fighting the computer kiosks – it took us a grand total of 7 hours and 10 minutes to book one half of our round trip train ticket to San Sebastian. Our return trip took all of 2 minutes to book. The San Sebastian train station is much smaller than the Barcelona station and the man at the ticket booth was happy to book our return tickets for us.

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I keep up with Conservative thinking just to make sure I know what exactly is going on in their fevered minds. On the other hand, keeping up didn’t mean I wanted to spend too much time exploring their murky depths. I decided to pick one website and to read that website religiously. I can’t recall exactly why but I choose Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit site. I wasn’t disappointed. Reynolds is easy to read and links to a wide variety of Conservative and Libertarians writers that range from the slightly unbalanced to the completely wacko. He was clearly connected to Conservative and Libertarian thinking so I felt a wise choice in my pulse taking endeavor.

Instapundit also serves as an alternate to a cup of coffee in the morning. Every day Reynolds and company serve up some tidbit that will spark my rage. Yesterday I was jolted awake when I read Reynolds discussion with David Bernstein regarding race classification. Bernstein believes that the present racial classifications are dated, arbitrary and eventually going to be meaningless with the increasing popularity of intermarriage between the races. He claims that in the not so distant future 80% of all Americans will have some minority status that will qualify them for minority business enterprise designation. Because of this racial mixing, racial classifications will cease to have any meaning, much less any use.

To a point, I agree. What percentage of racial makeup makes someone black? Does one grandparent make one Black or must someone have four grandparents one Black? What if you have significant black heritage but your pigmentation is white — can you still be called black? If you have to wade through a your gene pool to determine your race, what is the point of racial classification?

The future sure sounds great. The problem is we aren’t quite there yet. People still use racial classifications because people still see race. I googled Black incarceration statistics and quickly found an example. Eugene Volokh wrote in Reason about the difference in incarceration rates between Blacks and Whites. Volokh says Blacks commit more crimes than Whites which explains why they are jailed more than whites. Well, then, how is Volokh defining race? Is it anyone with any black heritage? Is it one, two, three or four grandparents? Or is it someone who has black pigmentation? Or is the person self-reporting? You can’t say racial classifications are meaningless when people still use them when discussing issues like crime and poverty because Racial classification definitely mean something to Volokh. More importantly, his audience understands what he means when he uses racial classifications. Are Reynolds and Bernstein suggesting eliminating racial classifications when discussing crime and poverty? Would elimination of these classifications help us to understand the best way to address these issues?

The problem here is that, while making progress, Americans still see racial differences. Maybe 50 years from now Black and White won’t mean anything. Right now they have a powerful meaning. It isn’t as if Blacks created the distinctions. Whites did. First to distinguish slave from master and then to know when to practice discrimination. To suddenly say these are now meaningless lets White history off the hook. Discrimination is illegal now so racial classifications no longer have a purpose. To White conservatives maybe, but not so for Blacks.

Racism didn’t end with the passage of Civil Rights Legislation in 1960’s although many Conservatives like to think it did. It still lingers on and has an effect of Black people’s lives now. Slavery happened. Discrimination happened. Lynchings happened. Blacks, the largest minority group for the most of American history, suffered horribly . In didn’t happen in quite the same way to the Irish or to the Italians or to the Japanese or to the Pakistanis. These other groups undoubtedly experienced difficulties but they don’t compare to the crucible that Blacks endured. So until people stop seeing race, how do you measure racial discrimination? People will need to see that things are getting better with data, how would you prove your point?

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Whenever someone starts complaining about how bad the younger generation is, I think what exactly is missing. Much of the time, the person wants to bring back some form of corporal punishment. All the kids of today need is a good smack in the face and all will be right with the world. Lionel Shriver, in her recent column, adds another missing element — ignorance. She writes that modern culture is turning out messy empty individuals instead of good characters that society used to produce. Shriver starts her column with the controversy regarding trans children even though she contends her point is a much broader point and is about all modern children. Shriver feels that modern institutions (read here parents and schools) listen too much to the children’s feelings instead of guiding children like in the good old days. Then, based on these children’s feelings, society lets them make important decisions like gender identification about their lives.

I have some issues with what Shriver’ thinking. Sometimes children do know what they feel and they are right. Take for example what hand a child should write with. In the good old days, children who were naturally left handed were told to write with their right hand since most people write with their right hand, it was obviously the correct hand to use. Adults, wrongly, guided children to behave against their nature. These adults thought they knew better than the child. They were, however, wrong and they did damage to these left handers.

Then Shriver argues that children couldn’t possibly know anything about gender identity problems because they don’t know enough about gender to make these decisions. Shriver may be right but there is no way to determine this because, in the past, parent and schools pretty much ignored sex except at the most fundamental level. They certainly didn’t discuss homosexuality or gender confusion so how can she determine that the society handled this better in the good old days.

Shriver wants adult guidance so that when a girl says she wants to be boy, that some adult is guiding the child to a better decision. But then what does Shriver mean by guiding and what is a better decision? The best guidance would vary from child to child since every situation would be different. There is no stock answer that resolves all sexual identity questions. The only way for an adult to know how to proceed is to listen to the individual child. If all Shriver wanted was for people to be cautious when a child makes these statements regarding gender identity and to be extremely careful before allowing body altering surgery based on a child’s feelings, I am willing to listen to what she has to say; however if she is suggesting shutting down any conversation about what the child is saying and guiding the child to heterosexuality, then I think she is damaging the child.

But to contend that the character building regime of the old days was somehow better is quite a stretch. In fact, gender confused children or gay children had a pretty miserable life in the good old days which is something I can personally confirm. My parents told me exactly nothing about sex – heterosexual, homosexual, gender confusion, and how babies were made were all equally ignored– which, judging from the conversations with my contemporaries, was a fairly standard parental practice of the good old days. As I went to Catholic schools, I didn’t get much more from them until my senior year of high school. So when, a gay person or a gender confused person started having sexual feelings there was no one they could talk to much less get support from. My first attempt to learn more about homosexuality was from a Webster’s dictionary and, as you can imagine, it wasn’t much help.

How is not knowing anything about sex better than listening to the concerns children have about sex? Neither my education nor the parents of my generation gave enough information regarding sex for a child to know how to move forward in their character building. The good old days opted for ignorance over information. This didn’t stop anyone from having sex though. We ignorantly fumbled in the dark with our sexual desires because we wanted to have sex which is a pretty normal feeling for adolescents. Ignorance has its own problems because some poor kids suffering the consequences of young parenthood, abortion and sexually transmitted diseases. Even heterosexual children have a much better time now because people accept the notion that teenagers might have sex and educate them on how to handle these situations.

Then Shriver veers over to the young serial killers who shoot up American schools. She contends that the proliferation of mass casualty shootings have less to do with the availability of guns and more to do with the moral nihilism. Now moral nihilism may be good explanation for the mass killers’ feelings but how this supports her bigger point that all children are suffering from a lack of guidance and are left to their own devices when fleshing out their character is quite a stretch. She only discusses trans children and serial killers. She is extrapolating her theory from two incredibly small and troubled groups of children. How this affects the vast majority of children is a complete mystery.

The good old days, at least in Shriver’s very specific focus, have little to tell us about how to move forward. The good old days had precious little to offer the troubled child or the sexually confused child. The good old days didn’t even deal with these children. They ignored the sexually confused children and kicked out the nihilist trouble makers. Shriver believes that children need guidance in order to build character, yet, her reference point, the vast ambiguous but nonetheless good old days, offered very little in the way of adult direction even for the majority heterosexual population much less for gay and trans children.

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Bob and I were recently listening to Joni Mitchell’s song “California.” In the song, Mitchell sings about her desire to return to California. She wants it so badly that she will “even kiss a sunset pig.” Bob, who lived in Los Angeles at around this time, remarked that she was talking about the policemen who worked the Sunset Strip who had a bad reputation for breaking up protests going on then.

I was stunned. I thought she was talking about an actual pig. As soon as I heard his explanation, I knew I was wrong. I don’t know how I got it wrong because when I was young a lot of my contemporaries called the police pigs. Given that Mitchell wrote her song in 1967 when protests were frequent occurrences with the contingent police confrontations, the police definition makes much more sense than my pig. Somehow I conjured up an image of Mitchell holding a baby pig and attempting to kiss it while it squealed and struggled with her when she wanted me to think about a policeman.

Yet, even though my understanding was wrong, I actually liked the image of her kissing a pig more so than her being so desperate for home that she even would deign to kiss a policeman. The real meaning irritates me. It is a hard and unnecessary jab. My opinion of the song has changed. There is a meanness to it. It’s no longer just a sweet song about a homesick woman. I was perfectly happy with “California” when I thought she was kissing a barnyard animal. Now I am not.

It also makes me painfully aware of how I might misunderstand what other people mean. Even when I get the words right, I can miss the point. How often do I jump to the wrong conclusions because I understood words incorrectly or just differently than the speaker? Probably a lot more than I would like to admit.