The first person I fell in lifelong-love with was a woman. Though I would later return to my straight roots and marry a man, at the time I was completely immersed in her, her, her, and most especially, in our future. I was sure we’d be together forever.

But our concept of gay marriage, circa mid-1980’s, was not sophisticated. It generally involved a gay bar, one woman in white and another in a tux—or two in tuxes, or two in dresses—and a “commitment ceremony” given by a Unitarian minister.

When the commitment faltered, there was no huge fall-out. We were young, we didn’t own a lot, and when we fell apart, the gossip would fly for a time, and then our ex- would show up with a previous ex-girlfriend and somehow the incestuous-ness of the circle would right itself and all would be well again. Clearly we were not thinking of “gay marriage” in the mature sense of the phrase.

Yet certainly we thought of ourselves as progressives, even activists. Our change-the-world focus was on “gay rights”—meaning, legal protection from getting kicked out of an apartment, losing a job, or having the family kidnap and “brainwash” us back into heterosexuality. (Yep—no joke—that really happened back in the ‘80’s.) Gay marriage as an institution wasn’t really on the map, and gay families had not yet entered the cultural mainstream.

Fast forward twenty-plus-years later, and the whole landscape has changed. My ex-lover (still a dear friend) and her partner have a jointly-owned 5-bedroom house, two children 10 and 8, two “big” jobs, and a lifestyle that’s American-dream-approved, save for the gay part. My close girlfriend, S., has two teenaged twins, a house, a boat and a cabin, and an ex-girlfriend who is still a primary parent in all things financial, logistical and emotional. My male friends K. and B. have two houses in L.A., one fourteen year old son, and a joint-visitation/parenting agreement.

Essentially, in the mainstreaming of gay coupling and gay families, our eighties “fight” against oppression, marginalization and invisible-izing has been substantially overcome. Gay men and women are a right-there part of our everyday culture, and though regressive bigotry still abounds, for most of us who live in the hip, urban, centralist locales, or even in mid-sized suburbia, it’s hardly an issue.

So, why-oh-why does our country have such an Anita-Bryant-reaction to the thought of gay marriage? Even television—that bastion of conservative, advertiser-controlled public opinion—portrays gay life. Why is it so astounding to us, then, that gay marriage should emerge as a need when gay men and women are living together as partners, raising kids and owning property—just like married people?

God knows our country’s capacity to go blank where human rights are concerned has been historically huge. And our denial around sexuality has been gargantuan. But what’s obvious here is very simple: gay men and women are doing all the things that married people do and don’t have the rights of married people. In our country we call that discrimination.

What’s not so obvious here is what’s underneath our inherent beliefs about sexual preference, and it deeply influences our cultural reaction to gay marriage. Our inherent belief (emotionally, now) is that gay identity is about sex—and probably includes a prejudice of “kinky” or “deviant” sex—and not about love and life partnership. We have yet to admit that.

Several years ago an ex-boyfriend called me up and asked if I would have a romp with him and his new girlfriend. When I asked why they asked me—since I’d never met her and never shared any such inclinations with him—he said, “Well, you’ve slept with a woman before, so we thought you’d want to.”

Never mind that my experience with a woman was twenty years ago. Never mind that I was in love and planned to have a life with my partner. Never mind that—oh, who cares. It’s too stupid. But his perception was at the exact heart of our cultural belly-aching about gay marriage. His perceived notion of “gay” was sexual rather than heart-full, and there was no acknowledgement that “gay” and “love” and “life partnership” could actually go together in one sentence.

And it is in that large, looming landmine of disparate values that our trouble with gay marriage lies. We—as a society—see marriage as a love choice. Sex based on love and commitment. Gay sex still reads “unseemly,” or defiantly provocative at best, and that bias gets up under our skin when we think of “marriage.” The two don’t line up for us in our social conscience.

But the fact that our culture has issues with sexual identity and love does not change what’s actually happening in the realm of gay partnership. Put simply, it’s time for America to grow up. It’s time to admit and fully recognize that gay life means much, much more than mere “sexual preference.”

The fact that our ultra-conservative Vice President has a publicly “out” daughter should clue us in: whether or not we approve of gay partnership, it is happening, and it is creating homes, families, and children. And those families, children and partnerships deserve the rights of every other “family” that works, achieves, creates and reproduces.

One of my favorite wake-up calls is, “if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck.” If it works like a marriage, loves like a marriage, and partners like a marriage, then it’s probably a marriage.

Anyone who’s ever fallen in love and spoken the word “forever” knows the power of creating a home and future with a loved one. It’s time we got our blinders off and stop marginalizing based on self-righteous standards of what is and what isn’t marriage. Gay marriage is already happening. All that’s left is the piece of paper. Be a mensch, I say, and give it up.

Posted on April 21, 2008 by truthdig: digging beneath the headlines

For presidential candidates, celebrity endorsements can be a mixed bag—especially when the star in question is a polarizing figure, as is the latest famous figure to give the nod to Barack Obama: audacious auteur Michael Moore. The documentary filmmaker aired his thoughts on the Democratic front-runners in a blog entry Monday, critiquing Hillary Clinton’s campaign choices of late and laying out his reasons for backing Obama (while also acknowledging that the world hasn’t exactly been waiting for this bit of news from him).

From www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=225:

My Vote's for Obama (if I could vote) ...by Michael Moore

Friends,

I don't get to vote for President this primary season. I live in Michigan. The party leaders (both here and in D.C.) couldn't get their act together, and thus our votes will not be counted.

So, if you live in Pennsylvania, can you do me a favor? Will you please cast my vote -- and yours -- on Tuesday for Senator Barack Obama?

I haven't spoken publicly 'til now as to who I would vote for, primarily for two reasons: 1) Who cares?; and 2) I (and most people I know) don't give a rat's ass whose name is on the ballot in November, as long as there's a picture of JFK and FDR riding a donkey at the top of the ballot, and the word "Democratic" next to the candidate's name.

Seriously, I know so many people who don't care if the name under the Big "D" is Dancer, Prancer, Clinton or Blitzen. It can be Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Barry Obama or the Dalai Lama.

Well, that sounded good last year, but over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I've watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name "Farrakhan" out of nowhere, well that's when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the "F" word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama's pastor does -- AND the "church bulletin" once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin!

This sleazy attempt to smear Obama was brilliantly explained the following night by Stephen Colbert. He pointed out that if Obama is supported by Ted Kennedy, who is Catholic, and the Catholic Church is led by a Pope who was in the Hitler Youth, that can mean only one thing: OBAMA LOVES HITLER!

Yes, Senator Clinton, that's how you sounded. Like you were nuts. Like you were a bigot stoking the fires of stupidity. How sad that I would ever have to write those words about you. You have devoted your life to good causes and good deeds. And now to throw it all away for an office you can't win unless you smear the black man so much that the superdelegates cry "Uncle (Tom)" and give it all to you.

But that can't happen. You cast your die when you voted to start this bloody war. When you did that you were like Moses who lost it for a moment and, because of that, was prohibited from entering the Promised Land.

How sad for a country that wanted to see the first woman elected to the White House. That day will come -- but it won't be you. We'll have to wait for the current Democratic governor of Kansas to run in 2016 (you read it here first!).

There are those who say Obama isn't ready, or he's voted wrong on this or that. But that's looking at the trees and not the forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate.

That is not to take anything away from this exceptional man. But what's going on is bigger than him at this point, and that's a good thing for the country. Because, when he wins in November, that Obama Movement is going to have to stay alert and active. Corporate America is not going to give up their hold on our government just because we say so. President Obama is going to need a nation of millions to stand behind him.

I know some of you will say, 'Mike, what have the Democrats done to deserve our vote?' That's a damn good question. In November of '06, the country loudly sent a message that we wanted the war to end. Yet the Democrats have done nothing. So why should we be so eager to line up happily behind them?

I'll tell you why. Because I can't stand one more friggin' minute of this administration and the permanent, irreversible damage it has done to our people and to this world. I'm almost at the point where I don't care if the Democrats don't have a backbone or a kneebone or a thought in their dizzy little heads. Just as long as their name ain't "Bush" and the word "Republican" is not beside theirs on the ballot, then that's good enough for me.

I, like the majority of Americans, have been pummeled senseless for 8 long years. That's why I will join millions of citizens and stagger into the voting booth come November, like a boxer in the 12th round, all bloodied and bruised with one eye swollen shut, looking for the only thing that matters -- that big "D" on the ballot.

Don't get me wrong. I lost my rose-colored glasses a long time ago.

It's foolish to see the Democrats as anything but a nicer version of a party that exists to do the bidding of the corporate elite in this country. Any endorsement of a Democrat must be done with this acknowledgement and a hope that one day we will have a party that'll represent the people first, and laws that allow that party an equal voice.

Finally, I want to say a word about the basic decency I have seen in Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton continues to throw the Rev. Wright up in his face as part of her mission to keep stoking the fears of White America. Every time she does this I shout at the TV, "Say it, Obama! Say that when she and her husband were having marital difficulties regarding Monica Lewinsky, who did she and Bill bring to the White House for 'spiritual counseling?' THE REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT!"

But no, Obama won't throw that at her. It wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be decent. She's been through enough hurt. And so he remains silent and takes the mud she throws in his face.

That's why the crowds who come to see him are so large. That's why he'll take us down a more decent path. That's why I would vote for him if Michigan were allowed to have an election.

But the question I keep hearing is... 'can he win? Can he win in November?' In the distance we hear the siren of the death train called the Straight Talk Express. We know it's possible to hear the words "President McCain" on January 20th. We know there are still many Americans who will never vote for a black man. Hillary knows it, too. She's counting on it.

Pennsylvania, the state that gave birth to this great country, has a chance to set things right. It has not had a moment to shine like this since 1787 when our Constitution was written there. In that Constitution, they wrote that a black man or woman was only "three fifths" human. On Tuesday, the good people of Pennsylvania have a chance for redemption.

Yours,
Michael Moore
www.MichaelMoore.com
MMFlint@aol.com

For more news that digs into the truth, visit www.truthdig.com.

Fifty years ago, Herbert Matthews of The New York Times interviewed a rebel-with-a-cause most people thought was dead. Matthews’ scoop in the tangled jungle of Cuba’s Sierra Maestra proved the man was alive. His name (which in its entirety was but four syllables) would soon come to be known the world over. To his followers, the first two syllables would suffice: “Fi-del.” Castro’s quest to topple Cuba’s strongman, Fulgencio Batista, captured the imagination of millions.

Victory, secured after only two years of urban insurrection and guerrilla warfare, catapulted the 32-year-old former lawyer and son of a wealthy landowner into the ranks of revolutionary stardom. After the catastrophes and crimes that had befallen the 1917 Bolshevik project, Castro seemed at first to herald something new.

His was the first socialist revolution, after all, to have been made without the central participation of the Communist Party (and even, it appeared, against the party). (Six years before, in the aftermath of Castro’s failed attack on the military barracks of Moncada in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953, its apparatchiks had denounced him as a “putschist” and an “adventurist.") All previous socialist revolutionaries had seemed grimly puritanical; by contrast, Castro’s barbudos appeared almost to be bohemians with guns. Democracy and radical reform were poised to replace dictatorship and social misery......

For the complete version, please visit truthdig: drilling between the headlines at www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/20080410_steve_wasserman_on_fidel_castro.

Steve Wasserman, literary editor of Truthdig, is managing director of the New York office of literary agency Kneerim & Williams at Fish and Richardson P.C. Since first visiting Cuba in 1970, he has returned on numerous occasions. Some portions of his essay have appeared, in slightly different form, in past pieces he wrote for the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic and the (London) Times Literary Supplement.

MoveOn.org Political Action, one of the largest Political Action Committees in the country, brings real Americans into politics to fight for a more progressive America and elect progressive candidates.

1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has "evolved," yet he's continued to oppose key civil rights laws.1

2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain "will make Cheney look like Gandhi."2

3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.3

4. McCain opposes a woman's right to choose. He said, "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned."4

5. The Children's Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children's health care bill last year, then defended Bush's veto of the bill.5

6. He's one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a "second job" and skip their vacations.6

7. Many of McCain's fellow Republican senators say he's too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."7

8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.8

9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his "spiritual guide," Rod Parsley, believes America's founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a "false religion." McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church "the Antichrist" and a "false cult."9

10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0–yes, zero–from the League of Conservation Voters last year.10

John McCain is not who the Washington press corps make him out to be. Please help get the word out–forward this email to your personal network. Check out more of MoveOn's work at www.moveon.org.

Our comrades over at Truthdig originally posted this piece by Stanley Kutler on Mar 29, 2008.

With our economic and financial crises deepening, government insiders reportedly are debating whether we need to restore some regulation—or not. Given the state of things, we can expect further woes and no regulation.

Why have regulation when JPMorgan can gobble up Bear Stearns for peanuts, with the backstage encouragement and acquiescence of the Federal Reserve Board? The Fed’s concern for the big investors is no surprise, and it needed no cue from John McCain to reject any thoughts of helping the victims of the banks’ sting operations. Meanwhile, JPMorgan has offered bonuses to Bears Stearns’ top brokers to stay on, though many of them are probably responsible for the subprime loans Bear Stearns so aggressively pursued.

George W. Bush and his cohorts have quietly dismantled more than a century of regulatory history—and good history at that. If we truly are to have “change” in Washington, the “changers” must begin by restoring those proven, efficient and protective elements of the regulatory state.

Last week also brought news of a “passport scandal,” and it reflects the other side of the Bush administration’s coin of the realm. Accounts of the incidents consistently say that the perps involved were “contractors.”

Not until later did we learn the names of several District of Columbia-area State Department private contractors in the case, and the information reflects the exponential explosiveness of private contract work in the public sector.

Perhaps the unauthorized scrounging around in the passport files is merely an instance of mischievous political elves and fairies anxiously seeking to expose controversy. Imagine an Ann Coulter acolyte: “Let’s riffle through Obama’s files.” Or a Rush Limbaugh Dittohead: “Let’s find the dirt on Hillary, and don’t forget McCain.” That is the benign view. Just as likely, they were planted political apparatchiks—who probably never heard the word—deliberately deputized to seek out political “intelligence.” Here we have private “contractors” working for the State Department in a sensitive area. Why not? The Bush administration has substituted a vigorous program of “privatization” to both replace and expand government programs. Top-secret security clearances are routinely granted to private companies that now do “analyses,” “reviews” and “critical studies” for the Pentagon or the CIA.

We are now familiar with DynCorp International and Blackwater USA and their operations as a private, free-booting, unaccountable arm of government. We talk of a “surge” to provide security within Iraq, but it is clear that the security will be maintained by Blackwater and others to shore up an undermanned, overworked American military. The last eight years have profoundly altered the nature of government operations. Coincidentally, with the passport news we learn that the State Department’s use of private contractors has grown on an immense scale.

Much of that has been for Iraq operations for which the State Department maintains oversight functions, though not too well as it turns out. The State Department has created the Office of the Procurement Executive. Its Web site, written in advanced bureaucratese, portrays itself as the facilitator, not the auditor, for all dealings with private contractors—without mentioning them, however. Its self-proclaimed mission is “to ensure the timely delivery of quality goods and services that directly results in creating a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community.” Enter the keepers of passport files in this Brave New World.

Privatization is a prevailing creed for this administration. It readily takes credit for “limiting” the growth of government by freezing or depleting the mandated bureaucracy, but at the same time it provides boundless largess to the private sector. Meanwhile, less than sensational stories expose the myth that privatization is a cost-saving venture. A new report of Pentagon auditors found excessive reliance on outside contractors, who often cost more. Last year, the Defense Department spent $158.3 billion on services, a 76 percent increase over the past decade. Buried in that report was the observation that private contractors assume unintended responsibilities.

The dismantling of government programs and regulation with the concurrent growth in privatization goes beyond the present regime. The Bush administration merely has implemented a radical extension of a process long under way. For 30 years, so-called centrist Democrats, anxious to shed any scarlet mark of liberalism, have eagerly sought consensus and accommodation with conservatives, largely by adopting their creed of small, cheap government—government that would fuel the private sector. Thus the seduction of “deregulation” and the accompanying creed of “privatization.” How and why they abandoned a faith that had served them and the nation so well and for so long is a mystery.

The irony is that the failures and crimes of Richard Nixon so discredited, so debilitated the ideology of their opponents. Anyway, the result has been the prominence of the Democratic Leadership Council, the crippling compromises of the Clinton administration, and the spectacle of Good Old Joe Lieberman accompanying John McCain on his foreign tour—as what, vice president in waiting? Secretary of state-designate? Sancho Panza?

We always have recognized the place of the “Fourth Branch” of government—meaning the plethora of alphabet-soup agencies with an admixture of executive, legislative and judicial functions, which exist largely to regulate the economy. Now, it appears, 20th century political science is mostly consigned to the dustbin of history. As always, “reform” and “change” have had their unexpected consequences.

The unwarranted search of private passport files raises important issues for the future of government and our familiar constitutional order. Juvenal’s timeless conundrum will not go away: Quis custodet ipsos custodes?—Who will guard these self-same guardians? What is the future of all this privatization? Will we insist on the accountability—the checking and the balancing—which has been the hallmark of our constitutional system? Or will we continue the administration’s weapon of choice: a blanket policy of legal immunization, such as is enjoyed by Blackwater?

Stanley Kutler is the author of The Queendom of Passports, in his The American Inquisition: Cold War Political Trials. For more conscious reading, check out www.truthdig.com.

Dear Friend,

Big phone and cable companies are trying to get rid of Network Neutrality, the fundamental principle that prevents them from discriminating against your favorite Web sites and services.

Unless we speak out to our members of Congress they could move to allow large telephone and cable companies to control what you do, where you go and what you watch online.

To learn more, visit www.savetheinternet.com.

—The Editors
Last week saw Big Media deliver a powerful one-two combination of punches that may knock out today's wide open Internet. First, in a speech delivered by Motion Picture Association of America President Dan Glickman, the nation's media conglomerates vowed to fight increasingly vocal calls from policymakers and the public for "network neutrality" -- a requirement that broadband Internet consumers be permitted to access the lawful content of their choice. That's hardly a revolutionary concept, unless you're a broadband gatekeeper like Comcast that makes its customers' choices for them by discriminating against some websites and favoring others.

To justify allying with Comcast, ATT, and their ilk in a mega-million dollar lobbying campaign to beat back government action that might prevent such anti-competitive, anti-consumer discrimination, the media congloms cited the need to combat piracy of their valuable content over broadband networks. But as much as we also support fighting piracy, the MPAA's invoking that fight here is a diversionary smoke screen for what's really going on. The existing FCC policy principles that call for network neutrality, as well as every proposal to turn those principles into enforceable rules, speak to ensuring that broadband providers allow consumers "to access the lawful Internet content of their choice."

By definition, pirated content is not "lawful content." Big Media's claim that Net Neutrality rules will prevent it from combating piracy goes way too far, as evidenced by Comcast's recent blocking and slowing of its customers' access to content distributed by BitTorrent. In kneecapping BitTorrent, Comcast didn't just block pirated content, but all BitTorrent content, including legitimate un-pirated content such as a file containing the text of the King James Bible, and video that BitTorrent was distributing on behalf of its clients Fox, Time Warner, and Viacom - all card-carrying members of the MPAA!

Now consider the second powerful blow Big Media leveled against the open Internet last week. On Wednesday, Hulu.com went "live" after months in beta, streaming video of film and television produced by most of the media congloms that make up the MPAA. [BTW, as Nikki Finke asked, how is it that this NBC-Universal and News Corp. (FOX) "joint venture" to distribute via Internet content owned by these companies, plus that of Sony, Warners, MGM-UA, and others, doesn't violate antitrust laws? After all, not even the Bush administration's "anything goes" antitrust regulators would allow these same alleged competitors to create a "joint venture" to distribute their content via movie theaters or a Dish Network-type satellite system.]

Allowing Comcast, ATT, and other broadband gatekeepers to discriminate against video content delivered by the BitTorrents of the Internet world vastly strengthens Hulu's competitive position as the leading and "safe" web distribution method for video. And can there be any doubt that as a condition of Big Media's allying with the broadband providers to fight net neutrality that there is a clear understanding between them that Hulu will never be discriminated against in the way BitTorrent was? Look for all the Big Media companies currently using BitTorrent and other distribution over the Internet to sign up soon with Hulu. Following that, to ensure they are not discriminated against by broadband gatekeepers and placed at a competitive disadvantage, look for many more video content creators to place their content on Hulu. In a world without Net Neutrality, linking up with Big Media's Hulu -- and its insulation from Comcast-style discrimination and degrading -- will be a matter of self-preservation.

Kudos to the Independent Film and Television Alliance (IFTA) for immediately calling out the MPAA and exposing its anti-competitive collusion. Writes the IFTA:

That openness [of the Internet] is threatened by the power of a small number of broadband providers to discriminate unilaterally against some categories of users or types of traffic or to accord preferential treatment to certain content providers over others, all under the ambiguous claim of "network management." While these providers may have some legitimate issues related to the technical management of their networks, there have already been cases of different treatment of users and it is clear that there must be transparency, equal treatment and an avenue of redress when the providers' private decisions trespass fair rights of others and the public interest. Thus, the issue is not whether government should regulate the Internet, but whether there will be effective oversight to prevent a handful of corporate giants from imposing their own version of private regulation to the public's detriment.

Last week's opening of Hulu and the MPAA's vehement denunciation of net neutrality are intimately related, a double-barreled shot aimed at the heart of the open Internet. With its back-to-back denunciation of Net Neutrality and its launch of Hulu as its anointed site for streaming TV, films, and video, Big Media's goal is nothing less than to turn today's wide open Internet into a closed system more akin to cable television. The likely result: as we've documented in cable, independent and diverse voices and their content will be inexorably marginalized or silenced.

To prevent this Big Media alliance with Big Cable/Telco from cornering and controlling the Internet, it is time for the government to implement reasonable network neutrality oversight that protects consumers and content creators, and preserves the open Internet we enjoy today.

This week's guest blog comes to us thanks to writer Jonathan Rintels, Executive Director of the Center for Creative Voices in Media. It was originally published by The Huffington Post www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-rintels/does-big-medias-onetwo-_b_91777.html.

Our last guest blog stated the case for Obama, but we don't want you to go blindly into the hopeful night without truly knowing the measure of the man and why, even if he is elected, it is going to be necessary to pressure him to live up to being the promised change agent rather than another corporate-kissing, militaristic pol. Obama has grown during the campaign and seems more independent and promising than what this guest blogger says about him, showing some signs he is returning to his earlier social activist roots (even as the opportunistic I-will-sell-you-out pol side of him showed through in his appalling letter to the UN on Gaza, which I mentioned in the last blog). Aside from that, no doubt his feet are being held to the fire by his remarkable wife Michele who would surely be the most interesting and compelling First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt.
Published by www.BeyondChron.org
Written by Matt Gonzalez
Feb. 27‚ 2008

Part of me shares the enthusiasm for Barack Obama. After all, how could someone calling themself a progressive not sense the importance of what it means to have an African-American so close to the presidency? But as his campaign has unfolded, and I heard that we are not red states or blue states for the 6th or 7th time, I realized I knew virtually nothing about him.

Like most, I know he gave a stirring speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. I know he defeated Alan Keyes in the Illinois Senate race; although it wasn’t much of a contest (Keyes was living in Maryland when he announced). Recently, I started looking into Obama’s voting record, and I’m afraid to say I’m not just uninspired: I’m downright fearful. Here's why:

This is a candidate who says he’s going to usher in change; that he is a different kind of politician who has the skills to get things done. He reminds us again and again that he had the foresight to oppose the war in Iraq. And he seems to have a genuine interest in lifting up the poor.

But his record suggests that he is incapable of ushering in any kind of change I’d like to see. It is one of accommodation and concession to the very political powers that we need to rein in and oppose if we are to make truly lasting advances.

THE WAR IN IRAQ

Let’s start with his signature position against the Iraq war. Obama has sent mixed messages at best.

First, he opposed the war in Iraq while in the Illinois state legislature. Once he was running for US Senate though, when public opinion and support for the war was at its highest, he was quoted in the July 27, 2004 Chicago Tribune as saying, “There’s not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage. The difference, in my mind, is who’s in a position to execute.” The Tribune went on to say that Obama, “now believes US forces must remain to stabilize the war-ravaged nation, a policy not dissimilar to the current approach of the Bush administration.”

Obama’s campaign says he was referring to the ongoing occupation and how best to stabilize the region. But why wouldn’t he have taken the opportunity to urge withdrawal if he truly opposed the war? Was he trying to signal to conservative voters that he would subjugate his anti-war position if elected to the US Senate and perhaps support a lengthy occupation? Well as it turns out, he’s done just that.

Since taking office in January 2005 he has voted to approve every war appropriation the Republicans have put forward, totaling over $300 billion. He also voted to confirm Condoleeza Rice as Secretary of State despite her complicity in the Bush Administration’s various false justifications for going to war in Iraq. Why would he vote to make one of the architects of “Operation Iraqi Liberation” the head of US foreign policy? Curiously, he lacked the courage of 13 of his colleagues who voted against her confirmation.

And though he often cites his background as a civil rights lawyer, Obama voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act in July 2005, easily the worse attack on civil liberties in the last half-century. It allows for wholesale eavesdropping on American citizens under the guise of anti-terrorism efforts.

And in March 2006, Obama went out of his way to travel to Connecticut to campaign for Senator Joseph Lieberman who faced a tough challenge by anti-war candidate Ned Lamont. At a Democratic Party dinner attended by Lamont, Obama called Lieberman “his mentor” and urged those in attendance to vote and give financial contributions to him. This is the same Lieberman who Alexander Cockburn called “Bush’s closest Democratic ally on the Iraq War.” Why would Obama have done that if he was truly against the war?

Recently, with anti-war sentiment on the rise, Obama declared he will get our combat troops out of Iraq in 2009. But Obama isn’t actually saying he wants to get all of our troops out of Iraq. At a September 2007 debate before the New Hampshire primary, moderated by Tim Russert, Obama refused to commit to getting our troops out of Iraq by January 2013 and, on the campaign trail, he has repeatedly stated his desire to add 100,000 combat troops to the military.

At the same event, Obama committed to keeping enough soldiers in Iraq to “carry out our counter-terrorism activities there” which includes “striking at al Qaeda in Iraq.” What he didn’t say is this continued warfare will require an estimated 60,000 troops to remain in Iraq according to a May 2006 report prepared by the Center for American Progress. Moreover, it appears he intends to “redeploy” the troops he takes out of the unpopular war in Iraq and send them to Afghanistan. So it appears that under Obama’s plan the US will remain heavily engaged in war.

This is hardly a position to get excited about.

CLASS ACTION REFORM:

In 2005, Obama joined Republicans in passing a law dubiously called the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) that would shut down state courts as a venue to hear many class action lawsuits. Long a desired objective of large corporations and President George Bush, Obama in effect voted to deny redress in many of the courts where these kinds of cases have the best chance of surviving corporate legal challenges. Instead, it forces them into the backlogged Republican-judge dominated federal courts.

By contrast, Senators Clinton, Edwards and Kerry joined 23 others to vote against CAFA, noting the “reform” was a thinly-veiled “special interest extravaganza” that favored banking, creditors and other corporate interests. David Sirota, the former spokesman for Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, commented on CAFA in the June 26, 2006 issue of The Nation, “Opposed by most major civil rights and consumer watchdog groups, this Big Business-backed legislation was sold to the public as a way to stop "frivolous" lawsuits. But everyone in Washington knew the bill's real objective was to protect corporate abusers.”

Nation contributor Dan Zegart noted further: “On its face, the class-action bill is mere procedural tinkering, transferring from state to federal court actions involving more than $5 million where any plaintiff is from a different state from the defendant company. But federal courts are much more hostile to class actions than their state counterparts; such cases tend to be rooted in the finer points of state law, in which federal judges are reluctant to dabble. And even if federal judges do take on these suits, with only 678 of them on the bench (compared with 9,200 state judges), already overburdened dockets will grow. Thus, the bill will make class actions – most of which involve discrimination, consumer fraud and wage-and-hour violations – all but impossible. One example: After forty lawsuits were filed against Wal-Mart for allegedly forcing employees to work "off the clock," four state courts certified these suits as class actions. Not a single federal court did so, although the practice probably involves hundreds of thousands of employees nationwide.”

Why would a civil rights lawyer knowingly make it harder for working-class people to have their day in court, in effect shutting off avenues of redress?

CREDIT CARD INTEREST RATES:

Obama has a way of ducking hard votes or explaining away his bad votes by trying to blame poorly-written statutes. Case in point: an amendment he voted on as part of a recent bankruptcy bill before the US Senate would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. Inexplicably, Obama voted against it, although it would have been the beginning of setting these predatory lending rates under federal control. Even Senator Hillary Clinton supported it.

Now Obama explains his vote by saying the amendment was poorly written or set the ceiling too high. His explanation isn’t credible as Obama offered no lower number as an alternative, and didn’t put forward his own amendment clarifying whatever language he found objectionable.

Why wouldn’t Obama have voted to create the first federal ceiling on predatory credit card interest rates, particularly as he calls himself a champion of the poor and middle classes? Perhaps he was signaling to the corporate establishment that they need not fear him. For all of his dynamic rhetoric about lifting up the masses, it seems Obama has little intention of doing anything concrete to reverse the cycle of poverty many struggle to overcome.

LIMITING NON-ECONOMIC DAMAGES:

These seemingly unusual votes wherein Obama aligns himself with Republican Party interests aren’t new. While in the Illinois Senate, Obama voted to limit the recovery that victims of medical malpractice could obtain through the courts. Capping non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases means a victim cannot fully recover for pain and suffering or for punitive damages. Moreover, it ignored that courts were already empowered to adjust awards when appropriate, and that the Illinois Supreme Court had previously ruled such limits on tort reform violated the state constitution.

In the US Senate, Obama continued interfering with patients’ full recovery for tortious conduct. He was a sponsor of the National Medical Error Disclosure and Compensation Act of 2005. The bill requires hospitals to disclose errors to patients and has a mechanism whereby disclosure, coupled with apologies, is rewarded by limiting patients’ economic recovery. Rather than simply mandating disclosure, Obama’s solution is to trade what should be mandated for something that should never be given away: namely, full recovery for the injured patient.

MINING LAW OF 1872:

In November 2007, Obama came out against a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining Law of 1872. The current statute, signed into law by Ulysses Grant, allows mining companies to pay a nominal fee, as little as $2.50 an acre, to mine for hardrock minerals like gold, silver, and copper without paying royalties. Yearly profits for mining hardrock on public lands is estimated to be in excess of $1 billion a year according to Earthworks, a group that monitors the industry. Not surprisingly, the industry spends freely when it comes to lobbying: an estimated $60 million between 1998-2004 according to The Center on Public Integrity. And it appears to be paying off, yet again.

The Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2007 would have finally overhauled the law and allowed American taxpayers to reap part of the royalties (4 percent of gross revenue on existing mining operations and 8 percent on new ones). The bill provided a revenue source to cleanup abandoned hardrock mines, which is likely to cost taxpayers over $50 million, and addressed health and safety concerns in the 11 affected western states.

Later it came to light that one of Obama’s key advisors in Nevada is a Nevada-based lobbyist in the employ of various mining companies (CBS News “Obama’s Position On Mining Law Questioned. Democrat Shares Position with Mining Executives Who Employ Lobbyist Advising Him,” November 14, 2007).

REGULATING NUCLEAR INDUSTRY:

The New York Times reported that, while campaigning in Iowa in December 2007, Obama boasted that he had passed a bill requiring nuclear plants to promptly report radioactive leaks. This came after residents of his home state of Illinois complained they were not told of leaks that occurred at a nuclear plant operated by Exelon Corporation.

The truth, however, was that Obama allowed the bill to be amended in Committee by Senate Republicans, replacing language mandating reporting with verbiage that merely offered guidance to regulators on how to address unreported leaks. The story noted that even this version of Obama’s bill failed to pass the Senate, so it was unclear why Obama was claiming to have passed the legislation. The February 3, 2008 The New York Times article titled “Nuclear Leaks and Response Tested Obama in Senate” by Mike McIntire also noted the opinion of one of Obama’s constituents, which was hardly enthusiastic about Obama’s legislative efforts:

"Senator Obama's staff was sending us copies of the bill to review, and we could see it weakening with each successive draft," said Joe Cosgrove, a park district director in Will County, Ill., where low-level radioactive runoff had turned up in groundwater. "The teeth were just taken out of it."

As it turns out, the New York Times story noted: “Since 2003, executives and employees of Exelon, which is based in Illinois, have contributed at least $227,000 to Mr. Obama’s campaigns for the United States Senate and for president. Two top Exelon officials, Frank M. Clark, executive vice president, and John W. Rogers Jr., a director, are among his largest fund-raisers.”

ENERGY POLICY:

On energy policy, it turns out Obama is a big supporter of corn-based ethanol which is well known for being an energy-intensive crop to grow. It is estimated that seven barrels of oil are required to produce eight barrels of corn ethanol, according to research by the Cato Institute. Ethanol’s impact on climate change is nominal and isn’t “green” according to Alisa Gravitz, Co-op America executive director. “It simply isn’t a major improvement over gasoline when it comes to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.” A 2006 University of Minnesota study by Jason Hill and David Tilman, and an earlier study published in BioScience in 2005, concur. (There’s even concern that a reliance on corn-based ethanol would lead to higher food prices.)

So why would Obama be touting this as a solution to our oil dependency? Could it have something to do with the fact that the first presidential primary is located in Iowa, corn capitol of the country? In legislative terms this means Obama voted in favor of $8 billion worth of corn subsidies in 2006 alone, when most of that money should have been committed to alternative energy sources such as solar, tidal and wind.

SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE:

Obama opposed single-payer bill HR676, sponsored by Congressmen Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers in 2006, although at least 75 members of Congress supported it. Single-payer works by trying to diminish the administrative costs that comprise somewhere around one-third of every health care dollar spent, by eliminating the duplicative nature of these services. The expected $300 billion in annual savings such a system would produce would go directly to cover the uninsured and expand coverage to those who already have insurance, according to Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Obama’s own plan has been widely criticized for leaving health care industry administrative costs in place and for allowing millions of people to remain uninsured. “Sicko” filmmaker Michael Moore ridiculed it saying, “Obama wants the insurance companies to help us develop a new health care plan-the same companies who have created the mess in the first place.”

NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT:

Regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement, Obama recently boasted, “I don’t think NAFTA has been good for Americans, and I never have.” Yet, Calvin Woodward reviewed Obama’s record on NAFTA in a February 26, 2008 Associated Press article and found that comment to be misleading: “In his 2004 Senate campaign, Obama said the US should pursue more deals such as NAFTA, and argued more broadly that his opponent's call for tariffs would spark a trade war. AP reported then that the Illinois senator had spoken of enormous benefits having accrued to his state from NAFTA, while adding that he also called for more aggressive trade protections for US workers.”

Putting aside campaign rhetoric, when actually given an opportunity to protect workers from unfair trade agreements, Obama cast the deciding vote against an amendment to a September 2005 Commerce Appropriations Bill, proposed by North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan, that would have prohibited US trade negotiators from weakening US laws that provide safeguards from unfair foreign trade practices. The bill would have been a vital tool to combat the outsourcing of jobs to foreign workers and would have ended a common corporate practice known as “pole-vaulting” over regulations, which allows companies doing foreign business to avoid “right to organize,” “minimum wage,” and other worker protections.

SOME FINAL EXAMPLES:

On March 2, 2007 Obama gave a speech at AIPAC, America’s pro-Israeli government lobby, wherein he disavowed his previous support for the plight of the Palestinians. In what appears to be a troubling pattern, Obama told his audience what they wanted to hear. He recounted a one-sided history of the region and called for continued military support for Israel, rather than taking the opportunity to promote the various peace movements in and outside of Israel.

Why should we believe Obama has courage to bring about change? He wouldn’t have his picture taken with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom when visiting San Francisco for a fundraiser in his honor because Obama was scared voters might think he supports gay marriage (Newsom acknowledged this to Reuters on January 26, 2007 and former Mayor Willie Brown admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle on February 5, 2008 that Obama told him he wanted to avoid Newsom for that reason.)

Obama acknowledges the disproportionate impact the death penalty has on blacks, but still supports it, while other politicians are fighting to stop it. (On December 17, 2007 New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine signed a bill banning the death penalty after it was passed by the New Jersey Assembly.)

On September 29, 2006, Obama joined Republicans in voting to build 700 miles of double fencing on the Mexican border (The Secure Fence Act of 2006), abandoning 19 of his colleagues who had the courage to oppose it. But now that he’s campaigning in Texas and eager to win over Mexican-American voters, he says he’d employ a different border solution.

It is shocking how frequently and consistently Obama is willing to subjugate good decision making for his personal and political benefit.

Obama aggressively opposed initiating impeachment proceedings against the president (“Obama: Impeachment is not acceptable,” USA Today, June 28, 2007) and he wouldn’t even support Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold’s effort to censure the Bush administration for illegally wiretapping American citizens in violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In Feingold’s words “I’m amazed at Democrats … cowering with this president’s number’s so low.” Once again, it’s troubling that Obama would take these positions and miss the opportunity to document the abuses of the Bush regime.

CONCLUSION:

Once I started looking at the votes Obama actually cast, I began to hear his rhetoric differently. The principal conclusion I draw about “change” and Barack Obama is that Obama needs to change his voting habits and stop pandering to win votes. If he does this he might someday make a decent candidate who could earn my support. For now Obama has fallen into a dangerous pattern of capitulation that he cannot reconcile with his growing popularity as an agent of change.

I remain impressed by the enthusiasm generated by Obama’s style and skill as an orator. But I remain more loyal to my values, and I’m glad to say that I want no part in the Obama craze sweeping our country.

Matt Gonzalez is a former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. To comment, email feedback@beyondchron.org.

In 1960, the U.S. State Department was financing counterrevolutionary broadcasts to Cuba from a radio station on Swan Island in Honduras. Program content ranged from telling Cubans that their children would be taken away to warning them that a Russian drug was being added to their food and milk which would automatically turn them into Communists. My friend Lyle Stuart was national treasurer of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which sponsored a trip to Cuba that December, and he invited me to come along.

On New Year’s Eve, at an outdoor dinner celebrating the anniversary of the revolution, 15,000 Cubans, including 10,000 voluntary teachers, were bidding goodbye to the Year of Agrarian Reform and welcoming in the Year of Education. Although Fidel Castro accused the United States of planning to attack Cuba, the few hundred Americans who had been invited were greeted with applause, cheering and kiss-throwing. At midnight the Cubans sang “The 26th of July Song,” and their cardboard plates went scaling through the air, mingling with a display of fireworks.

There was a full-scale learn-to-read-and-write campaign. In several industries, every employee would give one cent a day throughout the year to the Minister of Education. In the Sierra Maestra, where battles once raged, there were now under construction schools and dormitories for 20,000 children, to match the 20,000 Cubans who had lost their lives, many after torture, under the U.S.-supported Batista regime. At one of these educational communities, some young students removed the string that had been set up by a landscaping crew to mark off a cement foundation. Next morning, the school director lectured them about such immorality.

“Even a little thing like that,” he explained, “does harm to the revolution.”

The children of Cuba were being programmed for cooperation rather than competition. This sense of utter involvement in the revolution provided the rationalization Cubans gave when I asked about the lack of a free press, critical of the revolution.

“We get the New York Times,” I was told, “and that’s enough.”

On January 2, there was a parade, with female soldiers marching in conga fashion, heavy tanks ripping away at well-paved streets, and a Macy’s-type float that was actually the reconstructed American space rocket which had been fired from Cape Canaveral the previous November, only to be destroyed just after launching when it proved defective. Fragments had fallen in Cuba, killing a cow. Now the revolutionary slogan, “Venceremos” (“We Will Win”) was temporarily changed to “We Will Win, With or Without Cows.”

One evening, there was a reception at the Presidential Palace for several hundred visitors from around the world. When Castro arrived in the main ballroom, he was surrounded by an eager, protoplasmic circle of admirers and well-wishers. He stood tall and handsome in their midst, uniformed but hatless. The throng of people with Castro at the hub surged forward a few feet at a time toward the end of the ballroom and finally gave way to a line that formed to meet him, one by one. Some asked him to pose with them, which he did. A man with a camera stood on a plush chair for a better angle, but his wife, who was posing with Castro, yelled at him.

“Max! Don’t stand on that chair! This is a palace!”

I gave Castro a copy of my magazine, The Realist, and requested an interview. He told me to set it up with his secretary. Then a palace guard handed him a cablegram from President Dwight Eisenhower--in the final weeks of his lame-duck presidency--calling off diplomatic relations with Cuba. I asked Castro for a statement.

“I do not think it is up to me to comment,” he said, “since it is the United States that has broken relations. I will say only that Cuba is alert.”

There was no official announcement at the Presidential Palace, but the news spread rapidly among the guests as Castro strode across the ballroom and departed.

I had brought Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Coney Island of the Mind to Cuba. The next day, I was in my hotel room, sitting on the bidet and reading his long poem, “I Am Waiting,” while waiting in vain for a call from Fidel Castro’s secretary. But Castro obviously had more important things to do than answer my questions. In retrospect, though, I would like to have asked him, “How do you feel about term limits?”

—Paul Krassner

This interview first appeared on www.truthdig.com, which RealTALK recommends for keen insight on national and international issues, on February 14, 2008.

By Joe Conason

For the next month or so, the conservative valentines will arrive every day at the headquarters of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. The Illinois senator’s image will be illuminated by the bipartisan aura of admiration from prominent Republican commentators and strategists, as they savor the promise of his victory over Hillary Clinton, long the object of their hatred. He may well imagine that they really like him—and surely some of them do, at least for now.

Such happy feelings are easily conjured these days, when William Kristol hopes Democratic superdelegates will do “the good deed” of pledging their ballots to Obama, when George Will urges Democrats to choose Obama as “the party’s most potentially potent nominee,” and when Peggy Noonan promises that Obama will be “bulletproof” against Republican attack.

Meanwhile, in the bleaker precincts of the blogosphere, lesser figures prepare to welcome the Democratic front-runner should he secure his party’s nomination. Evidently, they will celebrate his triumph with poison gas and bombshells rather than confetti and champagne.

If you listen closely, you can already hear the test rounds exploding.

The target is Obama’s favorable but hazy persona, which Republican operatives must redefine in negative and even threatening terms. Assuming that the Republican nominee will be Sen. John McCain, they will aim to contrast his tough, aggressive stance against Islamist terrorism with his opponent’s alleged weakness and naivety. But as usual, they will do worse, spreading slurs and smears that depict Obama as a dupe or even a sympathizer of Islamic radicals.

False accusations about Obama’s religious affiliation have surfaced in anonymous e-mail campaigns, with little impact so far. But the easily denied charges about his supposed Muslim upbringing are gradually giving way to more concrete allegations. The latest round involves his political intervention in Kenya, the home of his late father, where violence between ethnic and partisan factions has erupted in the wake of a disputed presidential election.

As usual, the right-wing narrative melds half-truths and lies with facts to create a seamless indictment.

Leading conservative blogs and publications charge that Obama recklessly aligned himself with opposition leader Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement. Followers of Odinga, a member of the minority Luo tribe, have perpetrated horrific atrocities against members of the Kikuyu tribe because incumbent President Mwai Kibaki and the nation’s ruling elite are Kikuyu. One of the worst incidents occurred in the village of Eldoret, where dozens of Kikuyu Christians burned to death when they sought shelter in a church that was then set afire by their rampaging pursuers.

These events are set within the broader story line of an alleged Muslim plot to overthrow the Kibaki government, which is friendly to the United States and the West, and replace the secular constitution of Kenya with sharia law, creating a haven for al-Qaida—which blew up the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi a decade ago and still operates there, according to American diplomats. During the Kenyan election, the Christian evangelical movement in Kenya circulated a “memorandum of understanding” allegedly signed by Odinga and a group of Muslim clerics that would commit his government to instituting Muslim strictures against pork and alcohol, setting up sharia courts and ending cooperation against terrorism with Western governments.

Denounced as a forgery by Odinga and Muslim authorities in Kenya, which it almost certainly is, that document nevertheless still circulates via the Internet and is quoted by American publications. The point is to raise questions about Obama and his connections with Odinga—who claims to be his cousin—and to infiltrate those doubts into the mainstream media.

It is true that Obama, whose family is Luo, lent support to the opposition leader during a visit to Kenya two years ago—and that they have maintained contact ever since. While that gaffe infuriated the Kibaki regime, it proved only that Obama lacked diplomatic expertise. During the current crisis in his homeland, he has tried to play a constructive role by taping radio announcements for the State Department that urge both sides to stop fighting and resolve their differences without violence.

Yet the outlines of the coming assault on his fitness and character are clear enough, just as the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry opened fire many months before the public noticed. The Kenya tale is a single aspect of a multifaceted strategy to portray Obama as a callow politician with dubious associations, who cannot be trusted with power. He will be subjected to the same ruthless treatment as the last Democratic nominee. Let’s hope he is better armored to withstand the incoming fire.

Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer.

By Taylor Negron
We buy the tabloids to witness someone else's life go wrong, so we can feel a bit better about our own troubles. But the untimely death of Heath Ledger isn't like that. In his case, we were witnessing the demise of someone's life that had gone right.

This movie star's death stings me, haunts me. Perhaps it's because I've know so many actors like him in my twenty-eight years in the movie business. I understand what they have to bear—the loneliness and the artistic demands along with size of your face when it's projected on the immense screen. The inner pain and shadow that you must carry with you is hard to imagine, as is the recognition that for some, the weight of all that is just too much.
Comics know this as well as anybody—the weight of the shadow.
But sometimes the universe acts like a stern parent delivering a flash of deadly lightning, thereby defining the boundaries by shadows and confirming that life is scary and short.
A crowd estimated in the hundreds gathered around the street outside Ledger's apartment building, mixing with reporters, bloggers, and citizen journalists with cell phone cameras jostling www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/22/heath-ledger-dead-overhe_n_82747.html for a better view. But of what? It was all macabre and indecent, reminiscent of the unwashed masses that gathered at the guillotine hoping to see the heads of aristocrats roll.
Those people who should be ashamed of themselves gathered for a simple reason: they wanted an explanation for sudden and unexpected death. In that, there is something human.
Meanwhile, this morning, the rains came to Hollywood and life goes on. A leaky pipe forced me to call the plumber. The chipper voice at the other end said, "Rabonov Plumbing. This is Beth. How can I make you smile today?"
Without missing a beat, I said, "Bring back Heath Ledger."
After a long pause, Beth sighed, "Oh my god."
Like so many people, Beth was unable to really digest tragedy with out a Mickey Mouse voice or Dawson's Creek piano music and strings soundtrack. You couldn't really make me smile, Beth. Don't worry about it.
Life is deeply unexplainable and profoundly sad sometimes, despite what TMZ and the other media outlets want us to think. There is nothing to think, only to feel. What we might come to realize is that we are not armor-clad or impervious to life's punches, or to the degradations of time.
Most of us never met Heath Ledger, but we feel his loss, partly because we bond to those outsized talents on the big screen in the same way that we connect to a stranger crying on a public bus or at a Starbucks
I live in one of Judy Garland's houses. As a fan, I never much liked Judy Garland, but living here I feel like I have come to know her. People have given me a few of her possessions, and my neighbors have told me things that I wish I didn't know. But the resounding thing I have learned about Judy Garland was that she was funny—and I believe that she was in on the joke. She knew she was handed a freakazoid deck, but she played it and enjoyed her life, until she was found face down in her bedroom.
Everyone goes beyond the rainbow. I will, you will, and so will Heath's young daughter Matilda.
Each generation sees some person snuffed out before their time—someone modest, controlled, brilliant and troubled.
And then the vultures pounce down, the feeding frenzy begins, the unseemly, venomous scandal-mongering, the inaccuracies and rowdy speculations.
So now, here in Los Angeles, we are soaked by the rains; we see that we are not water proof. The roof leaks. We believe that there are UFOs over Texas. We learn that the rules that may apply at the Olive Garden for a conventional life don't apply to mercurial actors in Soho.
When next week's crappy tabloids come out, they will miss the story, the same way that they did when Diana exploded in that Parisian Tunnel.

People die. Nice guys sometimes go first. Sometimes you can steal wireless, and sometimes you can't. The real concern is how we can navigate in the dark when the shadow comes over the sun. It just may be the time to readjust our eyes and see things the way they sometimes are—unexplainable, grave, and rather poetic.
To honor Heath Ledger, I am going to take the day off, turn off the TV, have a massage, and listen to Judy's Carnegie Hall album. Maybe I will rent Brokeback Mountain to see again the many gifts that he's left behind for us and for the future.

Life goes on and the dead speak. They tell us to live. And sometimes we bask in the sunshine, sometimes we bask in the rain. But we know that the lightning can strike, anytime.

Taylor Negron is a well known comic, writer, and actor. Check him out online at www.taylornegron.com.