Category Archives: Random Blogging

I Guess I Pissed Him Off….

A couple of years ago, after receiving a particularly nasty (unsigned) letter presumably triggered by one of my columns in the Indianapolis Star, I posted a rebuttal of sorts. In it, I noted my frustration with people who respond to ideas with which they disagree by calling names rather than specifying the nature of the disagreement.

Today, I received the following message from the IPhone of one Steve Hunsicker:

It’s a crime to think people like you are at our university’s teaching. Look in the mirror, it’s professors like yourself that are dangerous to our kids.

I have no idea what set this person off. Since the email came to me through the IBJ, I assume he found my most recent column for that publication objectionable; of course, from the message, it is impossible to know what he disagreed with or why.

This is the sort of behavior that baffles and depresses me. I understand disagreeing with someone’s opinion. I understand getting angry about it. What I don’t understand is firing off an insult rather than initiating a conversation–or even an argument–about the substance of the disagreement.

When I read or hear something I find ridiculous, mendacious or just plain wrong, I consider the source. If the author is someone who seems amenable to reason, I may engage that person through correspondence or conversation. If, however, the author of the statement is one of the ideologues or yahoos that increasingly populate our political universe, I turn off the television or leave the website. It would never occur to me to respond with an ad hominem attack–why bother? What possible good would it do? And who has the time to tilt at the ever-proliferating windmills?

I guess that’s what I find so puzzling. What did Mr. Hunsicker think he was accomplishing? Did he think a hateful message bereft of any substance would make me reconsider my policy positions?  I have much the same question about all those people who spend hours posting angry, incoherent diatribes on newspaper websites. (Where do they get the time?? Don’t they have lives? Maybe not.)

Oh, well. As Kingsley Amis once said,  “If you can’t annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.”

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Voting on the Word of God

My husband and I attended a “Straight for Equality” event sponsored by PFLAG yesterday. PFLAG–for those who don’t know the acronym–stands for Parents, Friends and Families of Lesbians and Gays; the organization has 350+ chapters in the US and abroad.  “Straight for Equality” is an advocacy campaign the national organization has just launched.

The President of the national board this year is one Rabbi Horowitz, who actually was the assistant Rabbi at Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation back in the 1970s. He was an entertaining speaker, if a bit long-winded (a common “clerical error”). As he made his pitch for taking the “Straight for Equality” campaign into faith communities, he said something that struck me as both totally new and–upon reflection–self-evidently true.

He said the word of God is subject to vote.

Think about it: The way congregations read their holy books is inescapably influenced by the culture the congregants inhabit. It wasn’t so long ago that most Christian denominations read the bible to require racial segregation and the subordination of women. Some still do, but the vast majority no longer interpret the text in that way. The culture changed, and so did religious people’s understanding of God’s commandments.

When I was researching God and Country, my book about the unrecognized religious roots of contemporary policy preferences, I quickly recognized that even our most fundamentalist contemporary Christians, those who insist the bible is the literal word of God and thus unchanging (God presumably also handled the various translations), hold beliefs that would be shocking heresies to fundamentalists who lived 100 years ago.

We are all creatures of our times. We share the sensibilities of our cultures no matter how stubbornly we resist, and we bring those sensibilities to our interpretations of religious texts.

When enough members of a congregation recognize both the humanity of gay people and the justice of their claim to equality, those members’ attitudes–their “votes”– change doctrine. We’ve seen plenty of examples, as one denomination after another reinterprets rules that previously kept gays from being ordained or married. That process will inevitably continue, no matter how hysterically some try to fight it.

I had always thought of this as the process of social change. The Rabbi calls it “voting on God’s word.”

However we think about it, it reflects the reality that we humans create gods in our own image–which is a good reason to get serious about self-improvement.

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Must…Hang On…Almost Tuesday….

I can’t imagine what life is like for people who don’t have TIVO. Our live TV watching is limited to the evening news–we can skip commercials otherwise–and we are drowning in negative, content-free bilge. Not to mention the colorful fliers in the daily mail–you know the ones I’m referring to: Candidate A would let women who’d been raped abort, and thus is not really pro-life. Candidate X cheated on taxes; Candidate Y isn’t really a Hoosier; Candidate Z once talked to a Democrat and is clearly unfit for office.

There aren’t any Democratic primaries in my district, or the number would undoubtedly be greater.

A few years ago, I told my husband that I was long past voting for someone I actually liked, and even past voting for the lesser of two evils. Henceforth, I would be voting for the people who pander to the people who seem less dangerous.

If my television, email and snail mail are any indication, this crop of candidates is pandering to people they believe to be incredibly stupid, rigidly ideological sexist bigots.

I have yet to view or receive a campaign ad suggesting that issues are complex and well-intentioned people may disagree about them. I have yet to see one defending the belief– deeply rooted in our Constitution and especially the First Amendment–that diversity, especially diversity of opinion, is necessary to the achievement of sound ideas. I am still looking for the ad that respects the candidate’s opponent or the intelligence of the recipient, or one that actually discusses an issue rather than labeling and dismissing it.

I don’t know whether this intensely disagreeable political season says more about the integrity-free candidates willing to indulge in this bile, or the voters who actually respond to it.

I do know, I will be very happy on Wednesday. At least until September…..

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Five More Days….

…until the primary election is over.

If you are like me, you are fed up/disgusted with the incessant negative television spots that tell you nothing about the candidate who has “approved” them and the constant stream of email messages “urgently” requesting money so that good can overcome evil. I’m just hiding under my desk until next Tuesday.

But while I’m under there, I’ll share a message I got from a reader yesterday, commenting on his own political observations and concerns. He wrote:

I’d like to focus on the peculiarities of the primary election in the former 4th District of Indiana. First, with the exception of Lafayette, West Lafayette, and a couple of other cities the District exhibits one-party rule. The consequence is that, in most cases, except for statewide contests, the Republican primary is the election. The media, outside of Tippecanoe and Clinton County, therefore focuses almost exclusively on the Republican primary candidates, ignoring the Democratic candidates and the local general election. Civic, business, media, and school organizations frequently sponsor debates and forums for the primary elections but rarely for the general election. This system is facilitated by the widespread indolent habit of general election voters to vote straight-party ballots in the general election avoiding an actual confrontation with the names of their elected representatives on the ballot. As I have greeted voters my required distance from the polling places on the general election day, I have found that fewer than 50 percent of voters actually know the name of their current U.S. Representative. Many will still not know when they emerge from the voting booth.

Second, I would note the conveniences and inconveniences of the current Indiana voting system. We have essentially monthlong voting here. If I am not mistaken, more than a third of Tippecanoe County voters cast their ballots before Election Day. I have been voting early for years, because I have been busy speaking to voters on my behalf or on the behalf of other candidates on Election Day. In Tippecanoe County we are blessed with an efficient and convenient Vote Center system. There is some disadvantage to candidates for precincts that cover only part of the County who wish to target their messages to voters on Election Day and obviously one can’t reach in the days before the election the substantial numbers of voters who have already cast their ballots, but the general advantages outweigh these concerns. In contrast, we have the earliest closing polls in the country, which makes it quite inconvenient for working people to vote. Lines can be quite long at lunchtime or at the end of the day.

Third, in the 2010 Republican U.S. Representative primary there were, I believe, 13 candidates. It was remarkable how in the majority of responses to questions they would each mouth identical right-wing platitudes. Name recognition is probably even a more significant contributor to success in the primary election than it is in the general election.

Finally, I don’t think it would be appropriate to ignore the component of race in the primary elections. I recall that there was a well-known African-American candidate on the Republican primary ballot who was unopposed. In the Indianapolis donut/white-flight counties this candidate only received two-thirds of the number of votes that other unopposed Republican candidates received. In a Democratic primary contest a mostly unknown candidate with a name that one might guess was African-American (the candidate was not, in fact, African-American) did much better in precincts with large African-American populations than in other precincts. There was a dramatic and sad ethnic-name based outcome in the 2010 Democratic 5th District primary. It should also be noted that Indiana was one of the first states to institute the Voter ID laws, which are racist in intent and discriminate on a racial basis in practice. It is claimed that they are designed to prevent voting fraud. No evidence has been provided to demonstrate that this form of fraud has existed in Indiana. Voter ID laws are the modern version of the racist poll taxes. I know that Voter ID laws have been found to be Constitutional. Poll taxes were evidently Constitutional too until there was a specific Amendment banning them.

In conclusion, I encourage people to be informed voters. Go beyond the names and party affiliations. Get to know the candidates, whether they are honest, and their positions on the issues.

Your thoughts?

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