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Spoiled Ballots

I cast my absentee ballot today, and, yes, I voted for Nader just to be contradictory. I had the odd timing of being at the Board of Elections at the exact time they were running a public demonstration of new voting machines. In New York, we’ve been voting on the same machines that sent Kennedy to the White House. New machines have been long promised (or threatened, depending on your perspective). Apparently fearing voter backlash, the New York City Board of Elections shied away from a full-on computerized ballot. Instead, the Ballot Marking Device is a clunky touch screen and computer ballot that looks like a 1970’s version of the “future.”

The paper ballot never entirely leaves your hand. You feed it in to the machine, like a Scantron test sheet from when you were in school. A nigh-on unresponsive touch screen runs you through the various contests and prompts you to mash your thumb closest to the candidate you hope to vote for. You might miss and pick the other guy, but, don’t worry, the clerk advised me. You’ll have three chances to get it right. Review your choices, press “done” and the machine will print little black bubbles next to the candidates you selected on the paper ballot. Unless it misses, or runs out of ink.

Sample Ballot

A switch to any new voting machine after 50 years is likely to produce voter confusion and long lines. These cheap and clunky “Ballot Marking Devices” only makes things worse. Look for them to really break down that special election on term limits we might have.

Should we have a special election on term limits? No! We had that election. Twice. Truth be told, I am against term limits in principle, and, in fact, I voted in favor of extending our limits to three terms in 1996. But I was outvoted. The people spoke. Move on. It is the absolute height of hypocrisy for Mayor Bloomberg and the current City Council to attempt an end-run around the people’s will. It is, however, disingenuous for the Working Families Party and others to narrow our protest to making sure that any vote on term limits is done by referendum. With the past votes in favor of term limits so recent and so overwhelming, why should we waste taxpayers’ dollars on another plebiscite that will produce the same predictable results? That money could be better spent on other things, like, say, new voting machines that work.

Finally, let’s just come out and say what we really mean: Mike Bloomberg should go away. We don’t need a billionaire to protect us from the big bad recession. Any asshole in a three piece suit could raise property taxes and slash services, which is all he’s going to do anyway. The very idea of a billionaire mayor, with his $1 a day salary, private jet and “financial independence” is corrosive to our democracy. Allowing ourselves to be conned into begging him to stay would be the nail in the coffin. Mayor Bloomberg has to go, even if we have to vote twice to make it happen.

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A Real Hat

After a morning that saw me put a bid in on a spacious two bedroom apartment with a formal dining room in Bay Ridge – $10,000 down with 75% financing and a very adult activity, if ever I engaged in one – I decided to go shopping for a new hat. I’ve been wearing hats for a little over a year now: a straw hat followed by a light felt black fedora. Fashionable as it might otherwise be, a black hat clashes with the navy blazer I’ve taken to wearing lately. This is another dubious sign of maturity. As the Clash song goes, “You grow up and you calm down / You start wearing blue and brown.” A grey hat seemed in order, so I made my way to Bencraft Hatters.

Bencraft has two locations in Brooklyn. The original is located in Williamsburg, not far from where my paternal grandfather lived when he married my grandmother. It’s probably where he purchased (or, more likely, rented) the top hat he wore on their wedding day. The other, which I frequent, is in Borough Park. Inside of Bencraft, you will find the kind of intense debates, measurements and arguments over hats that made most American men heave a sigh of relief when J.F.K. attended his inauguration bare-headed. Being a Sunday, I found a dozen Jewish men (customers and salesmen) engaging in heated debates over coloring, brim size and the ever-ephemeral quality of “quality.”

A family – two older brothers and their father – fretted over the difference of a quarter of an inch of brim for the youngest of their clan. A 10-year-old girl rejected her father’s new hat as “not as good” as his last one, and chastised him for losing his yarmulke inside of a display hat and thus exposing his chrome dome to Yahweh. At the sales counter, an agitated little man complained of a barely detectable “bump” in the crown of his new hat. “I wouldn’t complain, except that this is the fourth hat I purchased from you this week,” he explained. The salesman countered, “In every hat in this store, could I find an imperfection? These are handmade hats, they will never be 100%” Finally, though, the salesman agreed to steam the hat in an attempt to work out the bump, although, he complained, Sunday was a bad day for it. He gestured to the long line of Hassidic men waiting to have their hats steamed and cleaned.

As for me, I meekly requested a grey hat in the same cheapo style as the “lite felt” fedora I was already wearing. None in my size, the salesman apologized. He did find a slightly-more-expensive Stefano. “It’s a real hat,” he explained, “as we say in the business.” Almost thirty, a real home and a real hat. How could I refuse?

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Woody Allen’s Later, Darker Ones

“Vicky Christina Barcelona” is the most thoroughly enjoyable hour and a half you could spend at the movies this season. At what point does Woody Allen’s “comeback” (as each of his last few movies have been hailed by critics) get to stick? Liberated from the upscale Manhattan locations that his characters could no longer afford, as well as from the crutch of casting himself or a famous impersonator as the romantic lead, Allen’s films have been consistently thoughtful, sober and darker than his proverbial “early, funny ones.”

Bankrolled by the Spanish tourism industry, the film is set in a clearly booming Barcelona (note the construction cranes that dot the skyline), which gets top billing along with the two American tourists (played by Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall) whose summer in the city fuels the plot-line. Vicky and Christina are propositioned by painter Juan Antonio for a weekend of art, wine and sex. Javier Bardem is charming as the oddly well-rounded and soulful lothario (particularly for a Woody Allen film). Hall’s Vicky opens her mouth and Woody incredulously rejects Bardem’s proposition (though she thankfully spares us an impersonation). Johansson’s Christina, however, is intrigued and accepts. Johansson is a very spotty actress, but she usually acquits herself in roles such as this, that are basically variations on the 20-something ingenue set adrift that she played in “Lost In Translation.” Like all mid-summer night’s sex comedies, everyone eventually sleeps together. This includes a refreshingly non-judgmental open relationship between Bardem, Johansson and Bardem’s tempestuous unstable ex-wife, Penelope Cruz (who’s a wicked delight every moment she’s on the screen).

Ultimately, every winds up alone with a little less faith in perfect love. This is a consistent theme in Allen’s movies. Remember, his best-loved romantic comedy is wistfully narrated after his break-up with Annie Hall. Love rarely lasts in Allen’s movies. And lust, particularly lust for a passionate but unstable lover, usually ends badly – either in murder (“Match Point,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors”) or institutionalization (“Stardust Memories”). Here, Penelope Cruz stabs and shoots at Javier Bardem. This is a comedy, mind you, and a very funny one.

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Hopelessness We Can Believe In

In a coffee shop in western Pennsylvania the morning after Barack Obama’s muted acceptance speech in the arena, I overheard a conversation that made me wonder ‘why bother.’ “Forget about it. It’s all over,” said one excited man, the ringleader of five donut-dunking middle aged white men. He went on to advise his compatriots, “Anything you own in your own name, get it out of your name before they take it away.” The others mumbled agreement, and added their own advice about changing obscuring Social Security numbers and hiding guns. You’d think the Bolsheviks were amassing outside of Pittsburgh from the way they talked.

The conversation grew more bizarro as the topic turned to military adventurism and terrorism. “Well, we won’t see any more terror attacks, because the terrorists love him,” said a man, who presumably will look back nostalgically on the days of airplanes-as-missiles after Obama makes peace with Osama. Finally, the ringleader concluded his rant on a note of resignation. “I don’t see what you can do, though, because people are so fed up and want change. People in this country are so stupid,” said the man who unwittingly underscored his own point.

Hearing this conversation, I wonder why the Democrats even bother pandering to polling numbers and so-called “undecideds.” Wear a flag pin or don’t, hold a mass spectacle in an arena or a cozy town hall, nominate a war hero or a Weatherman terrorist – whatever you do, you’re a bunch of godless communist atheists to these yokels and millions more like them. You can’t win them over, you have to outvote them. Whoever has the better ground operation wins, period.

So, John McCain has picked an inexperienced, arch-conservative lady politician in an attempt to win over Hillary Clinton’s supporters. It’s a move that reeks of desperation and deflates one of his biggest selling points (Experience!) and, again, why bother? Who will be truly won over by this? If Kathleen Sebilius was an unnacceptable VP on the Democratic ticket because she’s “not Hillary,” how is Phyllis Schafely Jr. any more acceptable? Any Clinton supporter still refusing to support Obama is using “the woman thing” as a cover for racism. They were never going to vote for Obama, so picking this silly woman from Alaska to court these voters is a wasted gesture that wounds McCain’s campaign message. That said, the poor Old Man really had no good options. Who else did he have? The billionaire Hairdo, whom he had recently ridiculed in the primaries? The “independent” who was not-too-long-ago mocked as “Sore Loserman” by the Republican base?

Meanwhile, don’t mistake this post for enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket, comrades. While the lesser of two evils argument is more compelling this year than any other, after I am done working my union’s political program, I will quietly cast a vote for Ralph Nader. See, there really is no winning over people. You just have to outvote them.

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