May Day! May Day!
This May First, hundreds of thousands of activists will march through the streets of New York. This won’t be a traditional May Day parade, not even a watered down “Workers Memorial Day”. No, if anything, this “May Day” is more in the nautical vein of “Save us!” On that Sunday, United for Peace and Justice and Abolition 2000 will lead a march down First Avenue, past the United Nations, down 42nd Street and back up to Central Park for a massive rally against the war in Iraq and in favor of complete nuclear disarmament.
It was two years ago, on May 1, 2003, that George Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln, thrust his stuffed crotch in the general direction of a salivating press corp and declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq. Of course, the war has just gotten bloodier and more hopeless in the ensuing time.
Meanwhile, the United Nations will debate whether to renew the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in May. This global agreement, signed long ago, was meant not only to stop the spread of nuclear arms to new countries, but committed the declared nuclear states (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China) to dismantling their own nuclear arsenals. Of course, the U.S. has flagrantly violated this treaty, keeping over 5,000 nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert, while the Bush administration publicly contemplates a first use policy against “rogue states” like North Korea and Iran.
The Bush crew alleges that those last two angles of the “Axis of Evil” have nuclear ambitions. Well, why shouldn’t they? The world’s only remaining superpower has true weapons of mass destruction pointed directly at them, just waiting for Bush to press the button. Moreover, the United States’ disrespect for the Non-Proliferation Treaty has inspired Israel to build a huge nuclear arsenal that is the worst kept secret in the world and sworn enemies India and Pakistan to loudly test their own nukes. Russia refuses to decommission its own nuclear weapons until the United States does likewise, leaving the world’s terrorists a handy stockpile of poorly guarded nuclear material.
There is no question that Bill Clinton should have taken advantage of the end of the Cold War and his Democratic majorities in the House and Senate to push the U.S. to finally live up to its treaty obligations and save the world from the nuclear threat. He failed us, and Bush has aggressively made matters worse. There’s a real risk that the nations of the world may abandon even this thin tissue of an agreement to spare the world from our own destruction. This could lead to a real nuclear free-for-all. This is why UFPJ has chosen now to demand a complete abolition of nuclear weapons.
One final point, and that’s that the amount of money that the United States spends every year to service its existing nuclear stockpile (something on the order of $10 billion) is enough money to feed, clothe and house every single person on the planet. Where are our priorities?
That last statistic can be found in a power point presentation, and in other literature, that UFPJ will shortly make available on their website. Please bookmark it, and continue to visit. While you’re there, be sure to donate money to the organization. It takes slightly less than $10 billion to fund an anti-war movement, but you can be sure that they need every penny you can afford to give.
Does the NY Times Have a Homophobic Mandate?
Urban life for the straight guy is apparently quite the minefield these days. With all these homosexuals and metrosexuals running around, pinching bottoms and getting pedicures, a regular guy has to be ever-vigilant, lest an innocent dinner with another regular guy friend end in a mutual suck-fest. Thank goodness for those arbiters of social interactions at the NY Times Style section, who this week shine a light on an act that most adult men have been engaging in for as long as we can remember, but, well, might be a little gay: The Man Date.
Although the term was admittedly coined for the article, it already comes with a lengthy set of definitions and rules:
Simply defined a man date is two heterosexual men socializing without the crutch of business or sports. It is two guys meeting for the kind of outing a straight man might reasonably arrange with a woman. Dining together across a table without the aid of a television is a man date; eating at a bar is not. Taking a walk in the park together is a man date; going for a jog is not. Attending the movie “Friday Night Lights” is a man date, but going to see the Jets play is definitely not.
The author if this article, the absurdly named Jennifer 8. Lee, is clearly seeking the cultural cachet of coining a cutesy buzzword that will spread virally until it winds up in your grandparents’ vocabulary and Webster’s dictionary. And for this inauspicious goal she trots out tired old gay panic tropes? The Times deserves to get some letters about this.
Hold the Dressing, Please
Our brothers on the left have been throwing pies at unsavory capitalists and right-wing politicians at least since the days of Abbie Hoffman, but the frequency of such incidents has been trending upwards in the last decade. Perhaps it’s frustration at having our message so thoroughly locked out of the mainstream media, or maybe we’re becoming a bunch of sweet and tender hooligans. Last week was a busy one for the freedom food fighters. The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol got hit in the smacker with an ice cream sandwich at Earlham College on Tuesday, and two days later, Pat Buchanan got a face full of Ceasar dressing at Western Michigan University. The dressing came courtesy of a comrade in the Socialist Party, Sam Mesick.
Perhaps I’m just indulging my general bias against salad dressing (I mean, if I can’t stand having my greens drenched in the crap, I can only imagine how odious it would be to have my person drenched in it; this really is a Golden Rule issue for me), but I don’t think that this was the most effective means of furthering the cause.
Nevermind the fact that the vast right-wing conspiracy is already targeting academia as the last bastion of leftist thought in Bush’s America, and that incidents such as this will just be used to argue that the kids have been brainwashed by those ivory tower commies and they’re all running amuck! No, that’s to be expected. What’s worse is that these incidents make us on the left look like a bunch of incoherent brutes who are trying to shut down speech that we disagree with, without really offering our own alternative. Now, I’ve never met Cde. Mesick, and I’m sure he meant well, but if he managed to actually get on the stage with Buchanan, why couldn’t he have done a banner drop, or heckled or loudly rebutted the speaker. Anything that was more verbal would have gotten a message across better than “Viva La Cause.” What cause? Socialism? Fascism? Paul Newman’s salad dressing? What message was the audience supposed to come away with from that?
This incident reminds me of a visit that George Bush the Elder made to the campus of the University of Hartford in 1999. Two other comrades from the party, Jeff Rabinovici and Scott Jarzombek, took the opportunity to challenge the former President on his decision to invade Iraq and continue the economic sanctions during a Q&A session. Of course, their mic was cut and they got roughed up by the Secret Service for their trouble, but at least there was no mistaking their message, which was articulated clearly and loudly for all to hear.
I wish my brother Sam Mesick a long life on the left and many more opportunities to speak truth to power. I just hope he takes those future opportunities to verbalize his opposition.
Popeapalooza!
As the round-the-clock Pope Deathwatch coverage on the cable news channels shifted from Friday night to early Saturday morning, and the Pontiff stubbornly lived a little longer, I am a little surprised that CNN didn’t change their news banner from “Pope Nears Death” to “Pope: Not Dead Yet” or “Pope: Any Minute Now.”
However, as soon as he passed on (a day after April Fools, alas), the news channels and websites immediately rolled out their long-in-the-can obituaries, and sidebars on pomp and ceremony and Papal bookmaking.
The best so far?
The London Guardian’s obituary notes that the original author of the obit died long before Karol Wojtyla, in 1994 to be precise.
Fox News inevitably credits John Paul II with bringing down Communism. It’s amazing how many people it took to “single-handedly” defeat the Red Menace. Actually, Lech Walesa only gives him half the credit:
“Fifty percent of the collapse of communism is his doing,” Walesa told The Associated Press on Friday. “More than one year after he [visited Poland], we were able to organize 10 million people for strikes, protests and negotiations. Earlier we tried, I tried, and we couldn’t do it. These are facts. Of course, communism would have fallen, but much later and in a bloody way. He was a gift from the heavens to us.”
The Washington Post, in the most incisive and even handed analysis of the promises, disappointments and contradictions of John Paul’s papacy that I have read so far notes:
But over the years, it became less clear if his popularity translated into moral authority. Communism in Poland was an easy, familiar target and his victory was clean. But later in his pontificate, John Paul began to focus on more difficult targets such as capitalism. And here, the will of the people was not always on his side…Ultimately, he was hard to categorize in the American context. The terms liberal and conservative “just don’t apply to him,” said Mary Anne Glendon, the philosopher. He opposed abortion and the death penalty; he was equally passionate about the role of the male priesthood as he was about workers’ rights. Conservatives accepted his teachings on morality but played down his emphasis on social justice and the limits of the free market. Liberals did the opposite. “But you can’t pick and choose,” Glendon said.