Sleepycatz

Best Cat Toy Ever

We gave this to our cats just before Christmas. There’s nothing that says happy holidays more then watching your cat tear into a George W. Bush stuffed with catnip.

WGA Thoughts

I have to admit it: I have a warm spot in my heart for unions –not for union leadership, nor for union politics, but for the unions themselves. I have been a member of a few unions in my lifetime, and like all members have complained and bitched about the dues, the corruption, etc. But when push came to shove the union was there to back up my brothers and I. There is an ineffable power to being in a union: I felt it when the Teamsters refused to cross our UAW line when we voted to strike against Phillips in the mid-80s; I felt it again ten years later when we in the IBEW refused to cross the line of our brothers in the Bricklayers and Mason’s Union. It is a sense of a shared struggle –a struggle to make everyone’s life better.

This is the primary reason conservatives despise unions as much as they do. Unions represent a shared burden and a shared goal. It is far more profitable to pit one worker’s salary and benefits against another then it is to deal equally and justly with all workers. It is easier to mistreat people if you can convince them that they are alone and isolated then if they stand together as a group. While conservatives love to proclaim that we all share a moral agency as Americans, to support the troops or support the president, or as Christians, to control women’s bodies, or discriminate against gays and lesbians, they loudly deny that we share any economic bonds. The ‘market’ they say should determine if you work 5 or 7 days a week; they market will decide if children should mine coal or not; the market will weed out unsafe workplaces, etc. The truth, of course, is that as a country, as a people, our shared economic interests far outweigh any trumped up culture war. It does matter if I buy tubesocks made in a sweatshop China versus those made in a union shop in South Carolina. One may be cheaper, but the other helps feed my neighbors, funds their schools, and pays their taxes.

A couple of months ago the Writer’s Guild of America (West) voted to strike over residuals for new media payments. Frankly, like many of my friends, I assumed the Guild would fold in less then 60 days –after all, we’d all watched as unions have broken over the past years, and had little hope for the WGA. But something unexpected happened: the writers fought back using the Internet, and they came to see themselves as a union of workers, linked with other workers. The issues surrounding the WGA strike are issues of basic fairness and pay, both StrikeTV, and United Hollywood, lay out the issues involved. The success of the WGA strike effects all of us — not simply because it save us from yet another tedious award show. The WGA is fighting for issues which will effect the future of media in this country; they are fighting for a living wage for their members; they are fighting for all of us, because we are all in this together.

FDL has a petition up where you can contact executives in charge of your favorite show and inform them of your support for the WGA. I urge you to sign it.

Merry Christmas

I wish you all a happy and joyous holiday.

Integrity

It seems so rare to find anyone of integrity and purpose among the ruling elite of our nation today. We have become a democratic state of cynics, ruled by cynics. We see ulterior motives in every action, every vote, and every speech. The result of this cynicism is that our representatives, our nation’s leaders, believe that provincial notions such as law, justice, and equality are simply maudlin platitudes to be thrown about between kissing infants on the campaign trail. So when integrity rears its head within the stinking milieu of our national politics it is literally stunning to behold.

The past few weeks have been filled with consternation for those of us involved in telecommunications and civil liberties issues. This week, two of the major issues came to a head: FISA reform and Telecom Immunity. Senator Reid (D) announced last week that he would violate Senate traditions, ignoring Senator Dodd’s hold, and bring the highly flawed Bush administration FISA bill, S.2248, to a vote. Aside from expanding warrantless, unsupervised, surveillance, the bill would grant retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies which may have broken the law repeatedly over the past six years. Senator Dodd vowed he would filibuster the bill.

While numerous Democrats claimed they opposed the bill and telecom immunity — including Sen. Reid– few actually stood to oppose it. Sens. Clinton, Biden and Obama found they could not leave the diners and palm pressing of Iowa to return to Washington to perform the job they were elected to do. My own Senator, Durbin (D), refused to answer my inquires or discuss his position on the bill. But Senator Dodd sped from the campaign trail to defend the principles of the fourth amendment and equality under the law. While I listened to the floor debate on Monday, I was both infuriated, by the obvious mendacity of those standing for the bill, and inspired by the integrity of Sen. Dodd and those few who stood with him. In the end, Senator Reid was forced to withdraw the bill until next year. For those of us involved in this issue, it was as close to a moment of true democracy that we have seen in ages. Nearly magical.

Forgive them, dziadzio

There are a number of things I generally avoid talking about because they force me to apply logical arguments in opposition to irrational, racist, ignorant, or hateful rhetoric. But in today’s media landscape –where even the most irrational arguments are accepted, if they tow the authoritarian line– it seems that thoughtful people must continue to battle against stupidity. While there is much stupidity around now a days, Tom Tancredo has managed to rise above the extraordinary levels set by his blowhard compatriots this week and earn a heartfelt “STFU, you ignorant jackass” from me. In defending his decision not to participate in the Univision GOP debate, tonight, Tancredo issued a statement in which he asserts,

“It is the law that to become a naturalized citizen of this country you must have knowledge and understanding of English, including a basic ability to read, write, and speak the language,” Tancredo said. “So what may I ask are our presidential candidates doing participating in a Spanish speaking debate? Pandering comes to mind.”

According to the Immigration and Nationality Act an immigrant must show the “ability to read, write, and speak English” in order to become a naturalized citizen of the United States. Additionally, they must show “a favorable disposition towards the United States.”

So, Tancredo is asserting that if you are a naturalized citizen and you don’t speak english you’re not only breaking the law but you are unamerican. He is suggesting that multi-lingualism is something new and frightening. Since the first immigrants arrived in this country they have brought with them their own cultures and languages. My great-grandmother –a naturalized citizen– never did converse in english, preferring her native polish. My great-grandfather ran for councilman and served his constituents in their native tongue. Was he illegal, Tom? My grandfather, who served in the Pacific as a mechanic on Bougainville and other hellish hotspots, was completely bi-lingual and chose to live in a neighborhood where polish was the everyday language of commerce and life. Was he unamerican, Tom?

There is nothing new or different about immigrant groups retaining their language for two or three generations. As a boy, when I visited my grandfather’s house, I remember seeing the local newspapers in polish, hearing the local polish radio stations, and watching the badly dubbed polish TV — in fact, the first time I saw “It’s a Wonderful Life” it had been dubbed into polish. The nature of media is to serve its audience, to pander to them in some way to get their attention. It is assinine to assert that an immigrant is somehow less American because they have not fully discarded their native language.

A little history lesson may be beneficial for for Tom, and his followers. The idea of a national language was broached early on in the days of our republic, it was dismissed as impractical and pointless. The leading languages our founding fathers considered for their new country, Tom, were french and greek — with some calls for hebrew. English, it seems, was too much associated with the monarchy they had just fought to free themselves from. By not choosing a national language, our early statesmen and thinkers allowed America to do with language what it does best with all things: assimilate, adapt, and grow. If we were to characterize American english as a person we would have to characterize it as (with some apologies to my feminist friends) a happy slut. Our language gleefully takes vocabulary where ever it finds it –a greek prefix here, a latinate suffix there, a spanish noun, a turkish title, it doesn’t care. English has grown in use around the world not due to US military might, but because it adapts and remains relevant. English is never lacks for vocabulary to describe the world. Why? Because it accepts all comers and adapts itself to the world. People, Tom, do not assimilate countries and languages do –otherwise they become irrelevant.

Language is not what defines us as Americans. The english language is simply a way in which we express our culture. The question of what it means to be an American goes back to the earliest days of the original colonies. It’s a question which is at the heart of American literature and art. To some degree, Americanism can be defined as the ability to survive in a new land away from home and loved ones, to seek a better economic and civic life for yourself and your loved ones, to define a new country as it defines you. This has never been a easy process, as bigotry and hatred have always followed newcomers. But one would think that our country would have learned by now that it is those who dare to leave all, or those who standup against the injustices of their migration, which bring to this country the courage which is so desperately needed.