Voting with the Middle Finger

Weird weekend with the Democrats caucusing in Nevada but the Republicans voting in the South Carolina primary.  The Republicans will caucus in Nevada this week, and next weekend the Democrats vote in South Carolina.  Or maybe this separation should be viewed as symbolic, of two different democracies.

In any case Donald Trump triumphed in South Carolina.  One of the voters there explained why--he was "voting with my middle finger."  Hillary Clinton won in Nevada.

Now that some numbers exist, political pundits feel more comfortable in predicting the final outcome of the nominating contests.  Various of them made strong cases that this weekend's winners are going to be the candidates.

Jonathan Chait made the salient point that Rubio's second place tie--ten or so points behind Trump--is less impressive than he'd like it to look.  He needed to win South Carolina and didn't.  He's not utterly out of it, nor is the universally despised Tailgunner Ted, but fighting for second place is not going to be enough.  Even with establishment GOPers starting to line up behind him, the only ray of hope that South Carolina provided Rubio is that late deciders broke for him, not for Trump.  But if Trump keeps notching victories in March, it's very probably over.

Meanwhile, Chris Danner's roundup of punditry makes the case that Bernie Sanders has peaked.  They base this on numbers, but a rationale is not hard to develop. Sanders is the Democrat's anti-establishment candidate, though his appeal isn't to anger alone but to hope.  His supporters ask that people vote "with their hearts."

But if these pundits are right, Democrats are also checking their heads, as Dems are wont to do.  Barack Obama won their hearts, but in debates, town halls, speeches and in response to real world events, he demonstrated an ability to handle the job of President.

 Bernie Sanders has an intriguing record.  I first became aware of him when he was the socialist mayor of Burlington, Vermont.  (I was following the local rebellion against a proposed giant shopping mall, which turned out to be the first such project stopped by citizen action.)  Sanders turned out to be both a creative and pragmatic mayor, and if memory serves he was voted as the best mayor in the nation by his fellow mayors.

That was a long time ago, and it remains to be seen if Sanders can convince heads as well as hearts that he is up to the full range of presidential responsibilities.  But the nominating process is a matter of accumulating delegates, and he is rapidly running out of time.

That of course is not even a question being raised by the finger-voting GOPers who support Trump.  If we needed a reminder of how extreme all the surviving GOPer candidates are--and how that extremism is growing--here's one from the New Yorker's Amy Davidson.

The Republican party is becoming the party of the middle finger.  Whether it destroys itself in immense defeat in 2016 or destroys the country in victory is the open question.  Even an immense defeat in congressional elections may not prevent the GOP from functionally destroying the Supreme Court.

Hillary Clinton has not proven to be an especially skillful executive of her own campaigns, or even of the State Department, but at this point, voters may calculate that she's as close to a stable transition to a better country as we've got running. The GOPer friendly columnist David Brooks is not the only one who is already beginning to miss President Obama.

Our Psychotic Politics (and the P Word)

First, the politicians.  Are they crazier and more vicious than usual?  It's strangely comforting to be reminded of past precedent, as President Obama did in his Illinois address and elsewhere.  Thomas Jefferson was accused of being---wait for it--a Muslim, and some opponents warned that his election would mean that murder and rape would be openly taught.  Lincoln was called the obscene ape of Illinois, and worse.  And of course (though Obama didn't mention this) some of Lincoln's political opponents conspired to assassinate him, his vice-president and secretary of state on the same night.  One succeeded, at Ford's Theatre.

Apart from outright violence, there are plenty of other examples of outrageous charges and insults, and of persistent obstructionism.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt experienced both, during the Depression and even during World War II, which was not the unanimous national effort as depicted in surviving imagery.

But historical precedent, while calming, creates comfort that soon grows cold. President Obama spoke about the danger to democracy posed by political officeholders who can't civilly contend or eventually compromise, for political reasons.  But that's only one danger, and only one reason for it.  We have officeholders who can't civilly contend because their ideology forbids it, or because their political ambition and personal agenda mandate their inflammatory talk and action.  We have officeholders who are not equipped, intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, for the job they were elected to do.

We have a new communications environment with new power.  Demagogues have often arisen and flourished in new communications environment--newspapers, magazines, especially radio.  Now in the television plus social media environment, we have new and so far successful demagogues, exploiting the new possibilities of these combined media.

Yet there are echoes.  The transit of Donald Trump--from an underestimated joke to the candidate others leave alone as they fight among themselves, to a populist figure trading on specific fears and prejudices as well as an image of personal power--tracks pretty well with the rise of Hitler.

Ted Cruz is more of a Joe McCarthy figure (that, plus his physical resemblance, prompted political scientist Jonathan Bernstein to dub him Tail Gunner Ted, since McCarthy was known as Tail Gunner Joe.)  Cruz operates in a different way from Trump. He uses political professionals and local conservative leaders to build political machinery to form a power base.  There's a lot that's subterranean about his candidacy.  He uses code words with far more aplomb than Rubio.

  While it may be impolitic to call fellow politicians idiots and fascists (as President Obama said), those of us who are not politicians must call them as we see them, and some of these guys are idiots, some are fascists, and some are both.

Political support for obstructionism comes from powerful organized groups or, these days, a few billionaires.  But crazy pols--or evil pols that just talk crazy--also need response from the crazy side of ordinary people, who vote, or at least talk to opinion pollsters.

So, the people.

"Because when people are scared, then strange things can happen in politics. When people are nervous and feel threatened, then we can get a politics that is not about bringing people together, but is about “us and them,” and looking for somebody to blame."--President Obama

We typically deal in labels and shorthand abstractions, like income inequality or political discontent.  But people don't live in the abstract.  They live every day.

First, there's the normal darker side of human nature.  It isn't necessarily predominant, as has been pretty much the majority view of professionals who misunderstand evolution (sometimes willfully) or who believe that human nature is basically sinful, and cannot be otherwise without the intercession of an omnipotent being.

On the other hand, it's silly to deny that the darker side exists and is often expressed.  When President Obama spoke about getting our politics to align with how the American people approach their daily lives, it must be said that in terms of how some people live their daily lives, it is so aligned now--with aggressive, aggrieved, resentful, deluded, angry, clueless and/or greedy behavior.  I'm not sure having our politicians behave as some parents do at Little League games (one of Obama's examples) will be any improvement over how Republican candidates behaved at their last debate.

But there is also good--there is the impulse and commitment to civility, there is kindness, generosity, fair mindedness, cooperation, compassion, empathy, altruism and grace. As well as intelligent common sense. There is a balance we might call sanity that permits the better side to guide behavior.

Consistent sanity under extreme pressure can waver and break, leading to desperation, obsession and a lashing out.  So we talk about income inequality, or poverty, or unemployment, or working three jobs to make ends meet, or health problems.  What we don't talk about much in our political discourse is pain.

The P word is not politics or psychosis.  It's pain.

There have been many articles commenting on the news that the death rate in America has risen for only one category--middle-aged white men-- and that much of the rise seems attributable to suicide and drug addiction.  One of these articles, in the Guardian, pegged its abstractions on the story of an individual, a man who was in constant pain--not just the "broken heart" that Bill Clinton attributes to the political disenchantment of white men, who are the most prominent supporters of right wing politics--nor the pain of not having enough money to pay the bills or help a child in trouble.  But actual physical pain.

The article centered on a middle-aged white man in Montana whose health was ruined partly by overwork, which was necessitated by poor pay.  That used to be called exploitation, now it's called normal.  He had health insurance, but with deductibles and copays and a lot of operations etc., he went heavily into debt just for medical care alone. It took government five years to process his application for disability, but even a large lump payment for back benefits went entirely to medical bills, and that wasn't enough.  He remains heavily in debt, and doesn't have the money to even file for bankruptcy.

This is a man who did not smoke or drink, and once built homes for Habitats for Humanity alongside Jimmy Carter.  He has never owned his own home.  And he has chronic pain.  It's an everyday experience.

Each story has its particularity.  But medical costs continue to be a burden in the US that they just aren't in other countries.  Partly because of the financial vagaries of the so-called healthcare system, many men especially don't see doctors when they are sick or injured.  Couple that with the physical results of a toxic environment loaded with chemicals etc. that attack human bodies, as well as poor nutrition and other unhealthy behavior pushed by the consumer economy, and what you get is a lot of people who are in pain.  It's hardly coincidental that the fastest growing category of drug abuse is painkillers.

There's also the ordinary pain of working badly paying jobs--even running from one to the other-- that are likely unpleasant ways to spend those hours (awful and questionable work for petty tyrant bosses enforcing decrees of distant corporations, and perhaps dealing with rightfully angry and frustrated customers)  while juggling family concerns and expenses, in a round of sleeplessness and walking exhaustion.  The physical costs of standing or sitting and repeating rote physical and mental tasks are high, if not as obvious as coal mining.  This is a life of different kinds of pain that is itself insane, and the body and mind experience it as such, even if it isn't defined out loud in these terms.

People like the Montana man never achieved what others with their education and background did in the previous generation.  Others who were able to carefully assemble some financial support and as close to an independent life as most people get--i.e. a home and some savings--were wiped out by the Great Recession.  And while the millionaires and billionaires made their money back, most others did not.  Their lives are harder and more painful.

More and more Americans of retirement age don't have the means to retire.  Contrary to almost universal belief, social security is often not adequate to stave off poverty, especially for people who never earned much in a given year.  Medicare--whether "Medicare for all" or as currently constituted-- is not free medical care, but comes with monthly premiums and high deductibles, as much or more than private plans in recent years.  So older people work as long as they can, regardless of pain, and live with pain when they can't afford medical care except when they can't avoid it any longer.

So again it's not surprising--however shocking--that whereas a man in the top half of income in the early 1970s could expect to live about a year longer than a man in the bottom half, the difference is now 14 years.  (And this is one category where men and women are about equal, for those born in 1950 and after.)

When people are in pain of all kinds, when the pain is relentless, their remaining energy can turn to desperation and anger.  They lash out, without much regard for accuracy.  Anyone with more power seems like an appropriate target.  And many are really victimized by government bureaucracy, and increasingly by corporate indifference, hiding behind "customer service" that can't be contacted, leading only to endless waiting and scripted response by badly paid workers across several oceans with whom communication is frustrating if not impossible.

For their general plight they may blame other groups, especially when they come to believe the easy answers of false information (that black people don't work and are supported by government in lavish style, or Obama gives them cushy jobs etc. or even that Mexicans are taking their jobs.) Such misery loves company, and the illusion of power, fueling another increase in the number of hate groups, including armed hate groups.

 Even anarchy seems just if you are in constant pain.  Why not?  How much worse can it get?  Maybe if others feel some pain, they might understand.  Politics as justice easily becomes politics as vengeance, most often against those who aren't the cause.

Pain and powerlessness fuel the need for guns.  (Somebody wasn't really wrong years ago when he talked about people clinging to their guns and their religion.)  So the symbol of this insecurity kills the people with guns, as well as their children and total strangers who are trying to help them.

There is all kind of pain in this society, and it isn't reserved for white men without a college education.  The affluent society, the pressure to conform to materialist goals and career tracks, must still alienate some young people.  Women who must deal with gender discrimination and sexual predators.  And people of color confronting the realities of racism and white supremacy, as so surprisingly and well described by Hillary Clinton recently in Harlem.

Only distance can provide a sense of irony about white male privilege to white men who have never felt many of its benefits.  Race doesn't trump class, nor does class trump race.  The combination these days just gives us Trump.

There are lots of reasons for the rise of psychotic politics in our time, including geographical and cultural pockets of mutually reinforcing darkness.   Perhaps the climate crisis, as nuclear bombs in my generation, is an underlying cause of fear and despair that cannot be named, it's just too big.  But there's one everyday contributing cause.  Pain.  Because pain drives people crazy.

Our Self-Destructive Politics

We'll start with the long view, and a rational analysis based on ideals central to the American identity, at least until now.

Last week President Obama spoke about the current state of American politics to the Illinois legislature, where he began his elected public service, and where--nine years to the day--he announced his candidacy for President.

  After some ruefully funny stories about his early days there as a rookie and in the minority party, he detailed some of the relationships between Republican and Democratic members that grew over the years, as well as among members from cities and downstate rural areas, and from different ethnic groups.

"I don’t want to be nostalgic here -- we voted against each other all the time," he said. "And party lines held most of the time. But those relationships, that trust we’d built meant that we came at each debate assuming the best in one another and not the worst... And we didn’t call each other idiots or fascists who were trying to destroy America. Because then we’d have to explain why we were playing poker or having a drink with an idiot or a fascist who was trying to destroy America."

It was this experience, he said, that gave him confidence in a better kind of politics.  Because that spirit mirrored how constituents talked and went about their lives, the people that they represented. "And it convinced me that if we just approached our national politics the same way the American people approach their daily lives –- at the workplace, at the Little League game; at church or the synagogue -- with common sense, and a commitment to fair play and basic courtesy, that there is no problem that we couldn’t solve together."

"And that was the vision that guided me when I first ran for the United States Senate. That’s the vision I shared when I said we are more than just a collection of red states and blue states, but we are the United States of America."

"Now, over these nine years, I want you to know my faith in the generosity and the fundamental goodness of the American people has been rewarded and affirmed over and over and over again," he said, and gave examples.  But he also acknowledged that America's politics has not gotten better, but a whole lot worse.

In a preview of what we're likely to hear after he leaves the White House, he outlined structural changes that could counter entrenched divisiveness.  He spoke (Bernie Sanders-like) about the "corrosive influence of money in our politics."  He called out the Citizens United decision, and said exactly what I've said here: "I don't believe money is speech."

 Because of gerrymandering, most congressional seats belong to one party, so the greatest threat to a congressperson is somebody from their party attacking them from (for GOPers) the right or (for Dems) the left--pushing both parties to extremes, and demonizing compromise.  So drawing congressional districts has to be reformed (again, always.)

And the best way to make politics more responsive to peoples' needs is for more people to vote--and so voting should be made easier, not harder.  He went on to talk about American and democratic ideals, about reason and compromise, and ended with a subtly breathtaking metaphor.  He's often talked about the phrase "a more perfect Union," and how we're in a continual process of perfecting that Union.  But this time he layered it with another union:

And that’s the thing about America. We are a constant work of progress. And our success has never been certain, none of our journey has been preordained. And there’s always been a gap between our highest ideals and the reality that we witness every single day. But what makes us exceptional -- what makes us Americans -- is that we have fought wars, and passed laws, and reformed systems, and organized unions, and staged protests, and launched mighty movements to close that gap, and to bring the promise and the practice of America into closer alignment. We’ve made the effort to form that “more perfect union.”

America as the struggle to create a more perfect union between ideals and reality, the promise and the practice of American democracy--it's a beautiful image and a real inspiration.  To have such a vision can inform action and commitment at every given moment.

With that vision in mind, President Obama's prescriptions for structural changes made a lot of sense.  Increasing participation, opening up the process, not only further the goal of this better union, but lacking them does help explain why our politics today are so awful.

But they don't explain everything.  The next day after this speech, President Obama appeared at a party fundraiser north of San Francisco, among people who have supported him since the 2008 primaries.  In the course of his remarks, he spoke to them about income inequality, and its effect on this year's politics:

"And people are deeply concerned about inequality in the sense that the system is rigged against ordinary folks. And they’re not wrong that lobbyists and narrow special interests have disproportionate influence in Congress, and that big money and unaccountable, undisclosed money is distorting our politics in ways that are going to be damaging over the long term.

And that disquiet, that concern is expressing itself in the Republican Party as well as the Democratic Party. And we have to listen to that, and we have to pay attention to that and be mindful of it. Because when people are scared, then strange things can happen in politics. When people are nervous and feel threatened, then we can get a politics that is not about bringing people together, but is about “us and them,” and looking for somebody to blame."

And that last paragraph will be the text that begins my next sermon on this here site--on psychotic politics.

Blue, Too

And while we're on the feline circuit...Back in 2010, I wrote about a cat that had befriended me during the previous fall.  I called her Blue, for her eyes. She disappeared at the end of a semester, and so I assume she'd had a student owner, and left with her or him.

In 2015 I was befriended by another cat, much in the way as that one, also with striking blue eyes.  I called him Blue, Too.  Or Blue for short.

Blue was a skinny young cat when he started coming around.  (Although Margaret thought Blue was a she--and thanks to surgery, there was no easy way to tell--I always felt he was he.)  He tried to get inside the house, tried to cozy up to Pema, with little success.  He liked me, though.

Because of Pema, Blue couldn't come inside but we spend time together on the back porch. When I sat in the chair he would come up my chest, nuzzle my neck, and make an entire transit from one shoulder to behind my head to the other shoulder.  Other times he would just sit in my lap, occasionally falling asleep. (Once he fell asleep lying on his back--I've never seen a cat do that.)  And in an odd coincidence, one night we both saw a shooting star, just as the first Blue and I had watched the sky during a purported meteor shower (but didn't see any that time.)

I began seeing Blue so often that I worried he was homeless.  Students leaving cats behind is not unknown in this neighborhood.  So I gave him some dry food in a plastic cup.  He devoured it.  (That was very different from the first Blue, who was indifferent to food.)

It soon became apparent that Blue was bulking up, so he was probably eating somewhere else as well.  At first, assuming Nurse Margaret was right about gender, I thought Blue might be pregnant.  So of course I worried even more about food, shelter and where (and when) the kittens would drop.

But time passed, and Blue was filling out more than in the belly.  So that panic passed.

Still, I left a permanent bowl out on the porch for him, and put food in it when he came around.  I would see him on the back porch at all hours, so I left one of the cat beds Pema doesn't use anymore in a protected place.  But during the night he preferred to sleep on the chair.  Still, on many sunny afternoons I saw him asleep in the cat bed.

We spent this past Thanksgiving with Margaret's daughter, son in law and grandson Beckett in Menlo Park, six or so hours down the coast.  Monika, who works at Northtown Books and also does cat-sitting, lives nearby and came around twice a day to feed Pema.  To our usual feeding instructions, I added a note that this neighborhood cat with the blue eyes was apt to come around when he saw her, and if he did, please drop some dry food in his bowl on the porch.

Pema remains very shy of anybody but us, so in the two times Monika has taken care of her while we were gone (several days each time), Monika has never even seen Pema.  But this time she certainly saw Blue, who was very insistent on being attended to, and fed.

When we came home and I opened the car door, Blue was right there looking up at me.

Since then Margaret met our new neighbors across the street--a young family.  They told her that Blue was theirs, and that cats of his breed often adopt another household, and are generally very friendly.  And yes, Blue is male. Only they didn't call him Blue.  They named him Richard.

Even bulked up (likely an effect of castration at any early age) Blue (because I still call him that) is a beautiful cat.  The placement of black, brown and white is striking and various.  As the rainy season began and nights were colder, I don't see him around as much, especially at night.  But usually not more than 2 or 3 days go by without a reunion.  Sometimes he's distracted, but sometimes these are quite joyful reunions.  He still likes me to pick him up (which Pema still does not) and he can still do that transit from shoulder to shoulder.  We're buddies.

Meditating with Pema

Pema the cat joined our household almost ten years ago.  She was a young feral cat, who friends found in their barn, near starvation.  We named her Pema after Pema Chodron, the Buddhist nun who has written several books and made many recorded talks about meditation.  In the past several months, Pema the cat has come more fully to her name.

Pema did know about stillness.  She used to sit in one spot outside and look around.  And as she's gotten older, she's spent more time being, well, still.  But she recently made this a more formal practice.

In recent years, when the television came on sometime after dinner, Pema made herself scarce.  I think it was when we had to put speakers on the floor--something about the sound alarmed her.  But recently Margaret and I revived our after dinner practice of meditating.  At first we went the traditional route, on our old meditation cushions in front of the couch.  But after a knee problem Margaret retreated to her chair.  Not wanting to her to feel out of place (and willing to seize on any excuse), I moved my meditation to the couch, where I sat upright.

Our stillness and silence attracted Pema like a magnet.  She can't get up on Margaret's chair as easily as she can hop on the couch, so she joined me.  With just a little hesitation she moved onto my lap.  And so Pema the cat joined us as Pema the meditation cat.  She has adopted this as part of her routine.

Of course, I am expected to pet her, rub her head, cheeks, ears etc., which pretty much disallows single point meditation.  However I try to stay in the moment.
And there are forms of meditation that this should allow or even enhance, such as the kind practiced by...Pema Chodron, of course.

Clearing the Air

The sudden death of ultra-conservative Republican Supreme Court Justice Scalia and the likelihood that the Republican Senate will at least try to maintain this vacancy for a long time is also likely to result in a number of important no-decisions that will fracture federal law, as lower court rulings that conflict with one another will rule over different parts of the country.

But the negative effect of at least one recent Court decision--to postpone federal regulations on carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act--is likely to diminish. Even before today, despite the dire headlines, that decision was probably not going to have a major impact anyway.

While that stay issued last week does delay formal implementation of the regulations, it was likely only a delay.  As Jonathan Chiat noted: "Because the Supreme Court ordered the regulation of carbon in the first place, there’s little doubt that some kind of power plan could be designed that would pass legal muster."  This might require a different approach to the regulations, which would further delay implementation, but not ultimate success--as long as the executive branch wants those regulations.  Which means a Democrat in the White House.

Even a delay could weaken American leadership in the global effort to address the climate crisis that the world formally engaged in Paris 2015.  But as a practical matter, there may be no delay--because US power companies are going forward with their plans to meet the carbon goals.  The Washington Post reported:

"Executives for electricity producers and industry trade associations say they expect little deviation from what was already an industry-wide move from coal-burning to cleaner and cheaper forms of energy to produce electricity. The shift is likely to accelerate further in the near future, industry officials and analysts said, meaning that many of the administration’s carbon-cutting goals may be met regardless of what courts and lawmakers ultimately decide to do."

But now the legal fate of the regulations in the near term is clearer. The Supreme Court's stay on the regulations is to be in effect until the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals makes its decision on the merits.  Chiat today:

"The stay indicated that a majority of the justices foresee a reasonably high likelihood that they would ultimately strike down Obama’s plan, which could jeopardize the Paris climate agreement and leave greenhouse gasses unchecked. Without Scalia on the Court, the odds of this drop to virtually zero. The challenge is set to be decided by a D.C. Circuit panel composed of a majority of Democratic appointees, which will almost certainly uphold the regulations. If the plan is upheld, it would require a majority of the Court to strike it down. With the Court now tied 4-4, such a ruling now seems nearly impossible."

This is going to be obvious to everyone involved, and further motivate electricity producers to go ahead with changes to limit carbon pollution.  Once that happens, even a Republican in the White House wouldn't be able to do much about it, because after all that investment, power companies aren't going back.

President of the United States

As for the impact on the election of Scalia's death and the Republican's open demand that the Constitution be violated and the President of the United States not appoint a Justice to fill the vacancy, at least one analyst believes it could further the likelihood of a Democrat being elected President in November.  John Cassidy in the New Yorker:

"If the Republicans block the nomination without properly considering it, which also seems likely, a huge political row will ensue, enveloping the Presidential race. (In fact, it has already done that, as the Republican debate proved.) Come summer and fall, the Democratic candidate, be it Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, will be able to go the country and appeal for support in preventing the Republicans from humiliating President Obama and making a mockery of democracy."

So in that case who would win the 2016 election? By bringing to the polls the coalition that elected him twice:  President Obama.

Update: A summary of other views on how Republican "strategy" on the Supreme Court vacancy could hurt them in November and beyond. 

Listen

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Black Lives Matter, the Oscars So White, the primaries move to predominately black South Carolina--all during Black History Month as it becomes ever more starkly clear that the existence of President Obama has brought racism back out of hiding behind codewords and euphemisms.

So some of the most stimulating writing I've read on the Internet lately has been about such issues as reparation and white supremacy, and written by black writers. The best example is, not too surprisingly, Ta-Nehisi Coates, who received a lot of attention (including a National Book Award) for his book Between the World and Me.

Coates has been named as successor to James Baldwin, and in at least one sense has taken that on, since this book owes its form to one of Baldwin's.  In the early 1960s, Baldwin's books (The Fire Next Time was the first I read) made me conscious of racial history and the costs of injustice, more deeply than any other writer or speaker or events.

  I learned also--more instinctively than consciously at first--that the experts on experiences you haven't had are the people who have had those experiences.  They may help you educate your empathy.  But imaginative projection is limited.  And there are other factors at work within you.  As I wrote more recently in a related context: Sometimes you can imagine what things look like from another’s perspective. Sometimes you can’t. You just have to listen.

That's what makes listening to these voices--for what experiences you have in common and what you don't--is so important. Apart from blatant out-front racism, and the institutional and historical meaning of these concepts in the real world, white supremacy or white privilege is expressed in this way--by not listening to those voices.  It's not just that the Oscars look past black actors when they can.  It is that Hollywood won't give African Americans their own voices, to describe their own experiences in cinematic art.

I haven't read Between the World and Me.  So I can't say that the reviews I read do or don't accurately describe or characterize it.  But I have read several of Coates articles, essays and blog posts in the Atlantic, and his voice there is not what these reviews describe.  He's a careful, logical as well as eloquent writer, and the case he makes for the idea of reparations is very strong.  His perspective allows him to find and expose aspects of history that are ignored in the standard tellings.  And he tells that history well.  (Having written about some of the same history---like post-World War II suburbia--I am made very aware of what I missed.)

 Here's a link to get started.  And a long interview with Amy Goodman at Democracy Now to get acquainted.

It was in the Goodman interview that Coates reluctantly answered the question of who he would vote for, and it was Bernie Sanders, despite a couple of columns criticizing Sanders' views on reparations.  Meanwhile, another black writer with the big megaphone of the New York Times, Charles Blow, was chastising Sanders for paternalism in relation to black voters, but making many of the same points that Coates has.

From a popular culture point of view, Rembert Brown in New York has a fascinating piece on white privilege.  All of these offer not just eye-opening points of view to non-African American readers, they are (especially by contrast with most online political and cultural writing) refreshingly substantive and well-argued, while honoring the complexity of the subject.  Though the subject matter is often painful, the writing is a pleasure to read.

NH 2016

With his first victory (a massive one to boot) Bernie Sanders gave a succinct victory speech that hit all his right notes.  He also said very early in the speech that in a few months all Democrats (and Democratic candidates) will have to unite to defeat any of the possible--and uniformly horrific--Republican candidates for President.

In 2008, Barack Obama made his most famous speech--the now-mythic "Yes We Can" speech--in conceding New Hampshire to Hillary Clinton.  Does anybody remember what Hillary said?

In  2016, Hillary may have given the equivalent for her campaign.  Her concession was the best speech I've ever heard her make, not only in content but in delivery.  Will it do for her campaign what Obama's did for his?  I guess we'll see.

The Top Two Jaw-Dropping Lists

Internet news sites are chock-full of two things: the kind of cheap sensational ads that used to appear in the back of cheap sensational magazines, and lists.  There's at least one such site that features nothing but lists.  They've "contributed" a new word: "listicule" or an article that is structured as a list (or more accurately perhaps, a list that is structured as an article.)

But the form has yielded some gems.  I'm noting two of them, for different reasons.

The first is not really a list per se, but an aggregation.  The New York Times published Donald Trump's Twitter Insults: the Complete List (So Far.)  Since it was last updated on Monday, such categories as "Ted Cruz" have swollen somewhat, but the immense range of targets--plus the repetitive insults--feeds the Trump Response (amused disgust) at first, but winds up in true Trump territory: demagogue scarytown.

The second is the New York Magazine Culture Vulture's The 100 Jokes That Shaped Modern Comedy.  It turns out to be not really a list of jokes but of comic moments, complete with film and TV clips.  I've gotten only part way through it because it is so thorough, and the clips are too tempting to pass over.  Most such lists are click bait, but this one is bookmark bait.

Memorial

There have so far been three fatal disasters in the US space program, and though separated by decades, they each happened within five days of each other on the calendar year, in late January and early February.

They also represent three of the four parts of a space voyage.  Apollo 1 was running a pre-launch test on January 27, 1967. when fire ignited, killing astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chafee.  The Challenger space shuttle exploded moments after lift-off (pictured above) on January 28, 1986, killing its seven crew members.  And on February 1, 2003, the shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entering Earth's atmosphere after a successful voyage, killing its crew of seven.  There has yet to be a major disaster in the main part of the voyage, in space.

The anniversaries are naturally noted at this time of the year.  This year the media focused on Challenger, since it was the 30th anniversary.  For a few moments on that morning in 1986, the Challenger crew and I were in the air at the same time.  I was a thousand or so miles north, flying into Portland, Maine.  When I disembarked for a speaking engagement, the people who met me had ashen faces.  When they told me the shuttle had exploded, at first I thought they meant the New York to Washington shuttle.  I hadn't known that Challenger was going to be launched that day (it had been delayed before). Aboard Challenger was Christa McAuliffe, a teacher in neighboring New Hampshire.  Lots of children watched the launch, and the shuttle disappearing in smoke a minute or so later.

Gus Grissom, one of the astronauts on Apollo 1, was the second American in space, a major contributor to the Gemini program, and slated to be the first human to set foot on the moon.

 I was in high school when John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth, the next Mercury mission after Grissom.  I was editor of my high school newspaper, and from a magazine I copped a photo of the seven astronauts with Alan Shepard (the first American in space), Grissom and Glenn together at the end,  clipped everybody off except those three, and printed it with a brief celebratory story.  I sent copies of the story to all three.  All three replied in some fashion.  Grissom sent a letter and enclosed the clipping I'd sent.  At first I was taken aback, until I noticed that under each figure in the photo was a signature.  He not only signed it himself, but got Shepard and Glenn to sign it as well.

Each of these disasters had causes both mundane and mysterious.  Apollo 1 had a number of fairly outrageous design flaws that combined to seal the fate of the astronauts, but the actual source of the fire itself was never found.  Columbia's fate was sealed by what current astronaut Mark Kelly describes in his memorial this week as "a pizza box-sized piece of insulating foam" that had flaked off the spacecraft, dooming its re-entry.

The Challenger disaster, attributed to tiny O rings that failed because of the cold during launch (although that's been disputed since), had the most protracted and public evaluation.  I followed it and wrote about it at the time, but until I read this article last week I was unaware that politics may have played a part--President Reagan reputedly wanted to refer to the teacher in space during his State of the Union address, so Challenger was launched despite the engineers who pleaded for a postponement because of the cold.

If there is anything in common in the causes of these disasters, it might be the flaws in communication and decision-making at least as much as technical flaws.  Each catastrophe resulted in better spacecraft and procedures.  But all three were avoidable, and so even as we remember the fine people who were lost, these disasters should haunt the process as it continues.  With the necessary audacity, we need humility.

Trumped

The Iowa caucuses gave some definition to the GOPer field, though in fact it doesn't much matter which candidate emerges--they're all frightening bigots, blowhards and incompetents.  But Trump unexpectedly lost--he very nearly slipped to third place--and although no one else is saying it yet, I believe his failure to debate played a role.  Update: Actually, now Trump is saying it.

Ted Cruz won on organizing Evangelicals, but he is likely to come in no better than third in New Hampshire, and who knows from there. The reaction today is to wonder if the Trump is all trumpery, an image inflated by entertainment value, that may deflate like (in Frank Rich's phrase) a big fat balloon. But it's likely that there are now three viable GOPer candidates and though the order may change (in New Hampshire my guess is Trump, Rubio, Cruz--although a fourth could sneak in somewhere there, i.e. Kasich is popular) that's likely to be the race.

Hillary Clinton escaped Iowa with a very close win, while Bernie Sanders demonstrated both the weaknesses in her candidacy and the future of the Dems, as Eric Levitz argues persuasively in New York magazine online.  This bodes well for those who believe that corporate capitalism as it is currently constructed is unable to effect the changes necessary longterm to address the climate crisis.  As well as Sanders actual key issue, the increasingly debilitating gap between the rich few and the many left behind.

Yet that future is not now, and Hillary is the electable present, the alternative to GOPer apocalypse with one of these dangerous idiots in the White House together with a GOPer House and Senate.  The spectre of Sanders as Nader is too scary to dismiss, though there are a lot of primaries to go.

The scariest possibility broached so far is quoted in the Frank Rich piece, in which her email situation leads to an indictment or special prosecutor, after the Dem convention in the summer.  If there's anything the electorate wants to avoid, it's another Clinton pursued by another special prosecutor.  In which case, welcome to the American apocalypse.

Trumped?

Viewed from afar, the Trump debate affair is intriguing, if not actually interesting.  It could be consequential.  If the Fox debate ratings are actually higher (within the realm of possibility), Trump is wounded, perhaps mortally.  The debacle may also signal the beginning of the end for Fox's hegemony, as the spectacle of the lunatic right in blood combat with themselves continues.

If Trump triumphs on the ratings and then in Iowa, it does seem to put the in in inevitable.  But Cruz went on the attack in the day or so between Trump's fascist move of demanding to choose his interviewers--admittedly a common practice for more than 30 years in entertainment "journalism" but new to electing a President. If Cruz continues tonight, Trump can't answer him.

It comes down to how many Iowa caucus voters are put off by Trump refusing to debate his opponents, a violation of an almost sacred practice in this particular ritual of presidential campaigning.

A NY Times story suggests that voter registration figures don't support the idea of a Trump voter surge in Iowa anyway.  (Nor for that matter for Bernie Sanders.)  We'll see.  Only then will there be informed speculation on whether this debate or its ratings made any difference.

Trump is not going to be President, ever.  Nor is Bernie Sanders.  So the possible interest is in what effects their candidacies will have on the campaign and the parties.  Trump sinking Fox may be good enough.  Sanders showing the latent leftward idealism in the electorate and pushing the inequality issue can only help the Democratic party.

Update: The early consensus of those who were paid to watch the GOP debate is that Ted Cruz blew a golden opportunity.  Without Trump, he was the most prominent target for the others, and they went after him effectively, or so many thought.  Contrary to my expectations, Cruz did not go after Trump with any consistency, although he did mention that his absence showed his lack of respect for Iowa voters.  But he wasn't alone in this--Perry Bacon at NBC.com noted that no one attacked Trump, the frontrunner in Iowa, which is inexplicable, unless...Trump designed this whole thing to get Cruz and the others to self-destruct.

Update 1/29:  The overnights are in and the GOPer debate trumped Trump's competing event, by 12.5 million to 2.8 million in viewers.  Trump can trumpet that the ratings are down, which they are from their high points for GOPer debates, but clearly Trump's absence gave the others an opportunity--which, according to the pundits, none of them successfully grasped.  If the debate made any difference, they say, it will likely show up in Iowa by who comes in second.

On the Democratic side, I'm betting that Iowa and New Hampshire split.  In 2008, Barack Obama blew everybody away by convincingly winning in Iowa, and he had a clear lead in New Hampshire.  But contrarian NH voted for Hillary, and that meant a long contest into May.  If Bernie wins the Iowa caucus, the same seems likely to happen in New Hampshire--having voted for Hillary once, they'll do it again.  If Hillary wins Iowa, she will be anointed as the near-certain nominee, and New Hampshire will feel comfortable in voting for their Vermont neighbor, Bernie Sanders.

A Republican American Tragedy

Update 1/28: Further evidence of GOP government cynicism: the state gov provided bottled water for state employees in Flint beginning at least a year ago.

The tragedy of Flint illustrates the major features of the current Republican destruction of the American political process.

First, the demi-fascist takeover of cities by the Michigan state government, who appoint an "emergency manager."  Nearly all of the white representatives of the Republican politico-corporate complex rule over minority majority cities,  industrial ruins made more ruinous by racism.

Then the refusal to believe any reality that runs counter to rabid right ideology.  Then the incompetence bred by contempt for government, resulting in political appointees or corporate stooges.  Then the deflection of responsibility to others while the high priced ass-covering goes droning on for years.

Amy Davidson at the New Yorker has the basic story. To save some money, the Flint manager stopped getting water from Lake Huron that had been clean and safe for years, and tapped into the highly polluted local river in Flint.  Not even copious chlorine could sanitize it, and either from gross incompetence, contempt for the non-white non-rich of Flint (Davidson's emphasis) or another attempt to save money--likely some combination of all three--they failed to add an anti-corrosion agent to the water.  It was flowing through lead pipes, and the lead began to corrode and crumble into the water.  The citizens of Flint--including the most vulnerable, growing children--were being poisoned.

And the state government headed by new GOPer darling Rick Snyder insisted it wasn't happening, the water was fine, just a bunch of lazy whiners in Flint, as per GOPer mythology--sorry, GOPer Gospel.

 Meanwhile their supposed environmental people were doing a heckava job trying to support their governor's contention with bad or downright fraudulent testing.  Because polluted lead-infested water is a liberal hoax, like global warming.  Just a lamestream media fantasy.

Meanwhile, the citizens of Flint were getting hit with exorbitant bills to pay for the water that was poisoning their children and possibly killing them.

The regional branch of the federal EPA was not blameless either, and it took citizen agitation and the independent research of a whistle-blowing professor who had previously exposed danger in the DC water system during the GW Bush administration. But eventually even a GOPer darling governor had to face the poisonous reality.  Though some heads rolled, the state investigations illustrate another facet of corrupt GOPer governance: investigation of state actions under GOPer control by GOPer state officials, in this case directed by an attorney general who both defends and investigates the state government he hopes to lead (pronounced "leed") by running for governor in the next election.

Meanwhile, starve-the-government conservative Gov. Snyder is complaining that the federal government isn't giving him enough money to pay for all the damage done as a consequence of his style of non-governance.   Flint is reconnected to the Lake Huron water now, but the pipes may carry lead poison until they are replaced.  Which in Flint may mean never.  It hasn't gotten any less black or poor, after all.

Reality has consequences, and this will for years, not only feeding layers of lawyers and investigators for years, but the illnesses and conditions and stunted growth and disabilities that well may accrue.  Not to mention that it's all going to turn out to be much more expensive, further hobbling the economic future of Flint.  (And let's not forget the folks in  the auto companies and their industrial satellites that polluted those waters and the pols who refused to deal with that reality.)

Yet the GOP is so invested in its increasingly insular and detached from reality gospel that the likelihood that they learn anything from this approaches zero.

It's an American tragedy, different from the Greek.  In classical tragedy, the leader's hubris brings him down.  In American tragedy, the people pay for the leader's hubris, with their lives.  The leader may have to learn to survive on speaking fees and corporate board handouts.

Climate Sea Changes

We live on land--so we're obsessed with the impacts of the climate crisis on land areas, or at least the interaction of water, especially sea levels, and land.

But the biggest potential threat to humanity has always been the effects of global heating on the oceans.  We know very little about that.  The oceans are worlds in themselves, as ecosystems and other phenomena inhabit various depths, for instance.

We've known that the oceans--covering 3/4 of the planet--have been absorbing most of the heating--up to 95%.  A new study starts quantifying that:

Gleckler is the lead author of a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change finding that, in the past two decades, ocean heat content has been rising rapidly and that, much more than before, heat is also mixing into the deeper layers of the ocean, rather than remaining near the surface.

The Washington Post story goes on to conclude:

The consequences of upper-ocean warming are well documented. From the bleaching of corals to the potential for more-intense hurricanes, a warmer surface has profound consequences for anything living in the oceans (this is where most sea life is) but also on land. Heating the ocean also raises sea levels, because warm water expands.

The consequences of warming the middle and deepest layers are less clear and less immediate to those of us living at the surface, but they are also sure to be significant. The new study provided a global overview of increasing ocean warming, rather than any specific prediction of regional consequences. But warming the deep ocean could lead to changes in its circulation, Gleckler said.

Ocean circulation is a powerful driver of global climate.  Other weather-makers that begin in the oceans include hurricanes and the big daddy of the day, El Nino.  In an article tracking changes in the oceans over the past generation, Forbes begins by noting new research that concludes: While we can’t say that climate change causes El Nino, the evidence is mounting that the warming of our planet could be intensifying the natural phenomenon, which in turn can lead to some extreme weather events.

What we apparently don't know is the effects on ocean life, which is another existential threat.  We do know humans have been overfishing for decades, and yet another study says it's worse that we thought.  Partly through cynical manipulation of data, the amount of overfishing has been grossly underestimated, and as a consequence the quantity of fish being caught in recent decades has declined more than reported.

This means there is less resilience out there that previously believed, as the consequences of global heating play havoc with sea life.  That's apart from the effects of pollution, of huge dead zones and floating countries of garbage.   Millions of people depend on seafood, and ultimately we all do.  We've felt it locally in the US as species that used to be plentiful have all but disappeared.  As other easy sources of land-based protein become unsustainable (and unhealthy), we're growing more dependent on the oceans.

The effects of global heating on the oceans is still being determined.  On land, the effects are easier to see.  They finally were visible to the economists and others who gathered for the annual World Economics Forum in Davos, Switzerland.  Just last year there was a book of articles by various economists looking ahead a hundred years.  Few of them even mentioned the climate crisis as influencing the future.  But this year, a survey of 750 experts named climate change disasters as the biggest potential threat to the global economy in 2016.

So what's behind this change?  Nothing particularly has happened, other than the steady acceleration of accumulated disasters, requiring massive spending that rarely enters political discourse.  Maybe it's a psychological change.

Psychology itself is suddenly getting interested in the climate crisis, in the comical way today's psychological establishment does.  So far they think denial has something to do with it (big insight there), although they do come up with some fascinating examples: people so deep in denial that they contradict themselves within minutes.

Nobody wants to believe this is happening.  We all wish it weren't, and we'd all like to hide from it as long as we can.  But at certain point the weight of evidence and argument shifts the conventional wisdom, and what's acceptable, and accepted: a sea change.  This seems to be happening with the climate crisis.  Better late than never, maybe.

P.S./Update: The numbers are in and to no one's surprise, 2015 was the hottest year on record.  The newsworthy evidence though is that it was the HOTTEST year on record.  

Honoring MLK with Action

He is revered for his moral campaign against racial segregation, but the Rev. Martin Luther King also led protests for economic justice and living wages, especially in what turned out to be the last part of his life.  It was at the time one of those protests that he was assassinated.

On Martin Luther King Day 2016, Black Lives Matter protested in San Francisco, and several prominent black film artists announced they would boycott the Oscars, protesting the zero nominations for the second year in a row.  But below the radar, so to speak, there were protests at several US airports that were also in the spirit of Martin Luther King.

They were by airport workers protesting low wages, and advocating the $15 an hour federal minimum wage that President Obama has proposed.  The protests were held at 10 or more airports, including Miami, Chicago, Boston (where there were arrests), Newark, New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Portland and Seattle.

The wealth of a larger number of wealthy is extreme, especially in comparison to MLK's lifetime.  There is perhaps less dire poverty in America than in the 1960s.  But the relentless struggles of a large number of working poor form a scandal of our time.  Masked by economic indicators that usually only indicate how well the rich are doing, this is our prime area of invisible plight.

These protests shine a light. As time goes on without action, they should grow.  Is there any doubt that Martin Luther King would be saying so?  

Rivers

Update 1/18: The Eel did crest slightly above flood stage, and remains there, while the Mad River also overflowed its banks but apparently subsided.  The next dose of rain tomorrow is predicted to be less than the last storm brought, but that could be wildly off according to specific location.  And there are more storms lined up behind that one.

According to Lost Coast Outpost: "We’re at 28.2 inches of precipitation in Eureka since the start of the rain year, in October. That’s nearly 150% ahead of a normal year’s schedule."  Above is LCO reporter Andrew Goff's video of the Eel from the Fernbridge--an amazing sight to those who traverse that bridge and normally see far below them a mostly dry river bed.  The Martin Luther King speech soundtrack is a holiday bonus.

Back when I was driving down to Ferndale for Sunday matinees at the Rep, I crossed the Fernbridge: a long span, high above a wide expanse that was almost always dry.  Maybe a puddle here and there, or even a weak stream, to indicate that this was a river, the Eel.

Tonight the Eel is going to crest a couple of feet higher than flood stage at Fernbridge.  It happens, but it's hard to imagine.  An awful lot of water.

Other rivers hereabouts are at or near flood stage, as the "atmospheric river" (as those madcap meteorologists call it) is bringing El Nino-fed storm after storm.  We've gotten into a pattern of a day-long storm, followed by maybe 12 hours of lull before the next storm sends out its feelers, and comes barging in.

Some bring wind, and the amount of rain is very variable according to location, which can be quite specific.  But this last storm, just tapering off at this hour, carried a lot of rain.  And since places north have been getting rain as well (often more than we have) the rivers are bringing that extra water through.

The storms also are feeding higher tides, which mean more erosion and coastal flooding as well.

Today in northern Humboldt there have been flooding on roads and streets, causing some closings, and in low-lying neighborhoods.  A rain-induced landslide has closed Rt. 299 indefinitely.  Another landslide temporarily closed the four lane 101, our north/south lifeline, and caught unfortunate drivers in the northbound lane around Loleta, just south of Eureka, causing what's described as a bad crash.

And if that wasn't enough, there was an earthquake offshore--in the fatal zone of plates rubbing that someday is going to bring the Really Big One--near Ferndale.  It was at least the third there recently, this one at 3.7, which is weaker than the strongest in the series.

The main difference from my recollection of the last big El Nino winter is that it seems mostly warmer.  This weather pattern is forecast to hold all next week, and quite probably longer than that.  The day or at least hours between bouts of rain help the flood situation, but increasingly less as the ground becomes more saturated and the volume in the rivers and streams continues to be high.  So stay tuned.  

The State of the Union

"Sixty years ago, when the Russians beat us into space, we didn’t deny Sputnik was up there. We didn’t argue about the science, or shrink our research and development budget. We built a space program almost overnight. And 12 years later, we were walking on the moon."

"Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it. You will be pretty lonely, because you’ll be debating our military, most of America’s business leaders, the majority of the American people, almost the entire scientific community, and 200 nations around the world who agree it’s a problem and intend to solve it."

"But as we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands. Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks, twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages -- they pose an enormous danger to civilians; they have to be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence. That is the story ISIL wants to tell. That’s the kind of propaganda they use to recruit." 

"The world will look to us to help solve these problems, and our answer needs to be more than tough talk or calls to carpet-bomb civilians. That may work as a TV sound bite, but it doesn’t pass muster on the world stage."

"We also can’t try to take over and rebuild every country that falls into crisis, even if it's done with the best of intentions. That’s not leadership; that’s a recipe for quagmire, spilling American blood and treasure that ultimately will weaken us. It’s the lesson of Vietnam; it's the lesson of Iraq -- and we should have learned it by now."

"But after years now of record corporate profits, working families won’t get more opportunity or bigger paychecks just by letting big banks or big oil or hedge funds make their own rules at everybody else’s expense.  Middle-class families are not going to feel more secure because we allowed attacks on collective bargaining to go unanswered. Food Stamp recipients did not cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did.  Immigrants aren’t the principal reason wages haven’t gone up; those decisions are made in the boardrooms that all too often put quarterly earnings over long-term returns. It’s sure not the average family watching tonight that avoids paying taxes through offshore accounts."

"It’s not too much of a stretch to say that some of the only people in America who are going to work the same job, in the same place, with a health and retirement package for 30 years are sitting in this chamber. For everyone else, especially folks in their 40s and 50s, saving for retirement or bouncing back from job loss has gotten a lot tougher...  That’s why Social Security and Medicare are more important than ever. We shouldn’t weaken them; we should strengthen them."

These are some salient excerpts from President Obama's last State of the Union.  For me it wasn't his best written or delivered speech in the past year or so, but he made strong and coherent arguments, both in support of what he has done and what he believes needs to be done in this "focus on the future."

 The last part of the speech, which focused on how to make American democracy work again, was trenchant and bold, even in stating the problem.  He outlined the causes and consequences, and some practical solutions, like making it easier for more people to vote.

He expressed regret that during his presidency "the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. I have no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide." Maybe--but not if Lincoln or Roosevelt were black.

 A speech of larger vision about the future might have mesmerized the Twits, distracting them from the zombie behind him who is now the House Speaker, or the color of Michelle's dress.  But probably not.  Part of the problem is the hyped-up partisanship, the inflation of partisan politics (as both ultimate morality and entertainment) over all other aspects of reality.

President Obama ended by trying to undermine this, and talking about the acts of citizenship and community, some extraordinary and the rest just ordinary, by "ordinary people."  The "you'd do the same for me" society.  This aspect of America led him to declare the state of the Union is strong.

Commentators seemed to miss this entirely, looking only for the politics.  And there is probably too much rancor for it to register among those who were actually listening rather than tweeting, texting and surfing.

The dissatisfaction with President Obama as he starts his last year is not entirely unusual--conservatives and much of the media hated Bill Clinton, and liberals were disappointed and embarrassed by him.  But Obama, guilty of being President while black, has less of a margin of built-in forgiveness for imperfection.  And then there's this irrational terror of terrorists to the exclusion of greater and nearer dangers--until Trump deflates and his trumped-up fear mongering is shown to have less appeal than it appears.

But I'm with Jonathan Chiat in a recent column: "In the light of history, the Obama administration is likely to be seen as a triumph. The sour perspective maintained by his supporters in his own time will be forgotten — or, if and when it is revisited, it will seem very weird."

R.I.P. Rickman and Bowie

Years ago when I realized that many of my favorite movie moments were musical, this moment--from one of my all time favorite movies, "Truly Madly Deeply"-- was near the top of the list.  It's fascinating that it's been rediscovered as a way of honoring and remembering Alan Rickman, whose death was announced today.

It's gratifying especially because Rickman was most famous for playing villains, notably the seemingly evil but in the end noble Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films.  "Truly, Madly, Deeply" was one of his few romantic leads, and an offbeat one at that.  It was Anthony Mingella's first film, and he, too died too soon.

Rickman in real life, as many said today, restricted his dark side mostly to the movie roles.  In real life he was a committed and accomplished theatre artist who was known also for kindness and good humor.  He mentored Daniel Radcliffe from the first time he played Harry, and in recent years he did what a true friend does in the theatrical realm--no matter where Radcliffe was performing in a play, Rickman would go to see him.

His long working friendship with Emma Thompson, his stage work with Lindsay Duncan, are all legendary.  He was one of my favorite actors.

Rickman was just a few months older than me.  The death of contemporaries like him and David Bowie (who his wife Iman praised as a real gentleman) stirs so many emotions, including shame at how little I accomplished in comparison, and yet here I still am.  But my admiration and vicarious pride in what they did and the kind of people, the kind of men they were, enhances my life.