Sunday, March 11, 2007

Okay, Okay...I Know There are Much BIGGER Things than This Wrong Around Us...

But I really want to talk today about trains. Like tens of thousands of other people, I use public transportation to commute to work in a major metropolitan area. For the most part, I'm happy with it. Sure, the train runs over a commuter every now and then or hits a car whose driver couldn't spare the four or five minutes he might have had to wait at the gate, and that holds things up a bit, but for the most part, it's smooth going. The trains are relatively clean and relatively comfortable, having someone else driving means that I can sleep or read or work or knit or create a popsicle-stick rendition of the Golden Gate Bridge on the way to work and back, and most of the other passengers are either Friendly or Unobtrusive.

There's one kind of passenger, though, that drives me to rage every evening. It's not out of self-interest, either--I always manage to find a seat, and if I don't, I'm young enough and game enough to sit on the steps in the vestibule or wherever I might find an empty space. But there are certain commuter trains in the evening that are so packed that people are sitting on the stairs, standing in the vestibules, standing in the aisles...and inevitably in every car you'll see two or three people who have their briefcases carefully set up in the seat to make sure that no one sits with them, or who are sitting in the outer seat and blocking an empty inner seat, or balacing a bag of popcorn there, while people search in vain for somewhere to sit down. Invariably, these people sit up very straight and stare straight ahead, as if they are entirely unaware of the scramble for seats going on around them. They're apparently unable to HEAR in that position as well, because the announcements the conductors make have no impact, either.

Every once in a while someone will stop next to one of them and say pleasantly but quite firmly and loudly enough for those around to hear, "Could you move that, please?"

I love when that happens. I never DO it, but I enjoy it tremendously. I'm in favor of larger action, though. The airlines have a great solution for this kind of problem...if you need two seats, you pay for two seats. So I think the conductors should pass through the cars when the train is crowded and politely inquire of each of these inconsiderate riders whether they'd like to share their seats or purchase an additional ticket.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Ann Coulter - What the Hell?

Mounting evidence not withstanding, I'm pretty sure that Ann Coulter is not retarded. Since I know that many intelligent people will (reasonably) challenge this assumption, let me explain how I arrived at that conclusion.
She's not only famous, but she has a following.
Yep, that's it.
Of course, I know that there are many rich, famous people with followings who aren't especially intelligent. Certain pop stars, for instance, whom I choose not to name. You get the point. But each of them has some sort of appeal--a great voice, a certain style, a charismatic sparkle, just flat out drop-dead good looks.
Ann Coulter looks like a transvestite. Yep, I said transvestite. I said looking like one was a negative thing. I meant it. I contend that it's not insulting to transvestites, because transvestites don't aspire to look like transvestites, and the successful ones don't look like transvestites. They look like women, often very beautiful women. Ann Coulter does not.
Second, Ann Coulter sounds like that moronic kid in the seventh grade who brays like a donkey at his own cleverness and fails to notice that everyone around him is laughing at him, not with him. Or, even more often, simply hoping he'll go away quietly and never return.
What I'm saying, in a nutshell, is that Ann Coulter has no appeal. Zip. No apparent talent, certainly no physical charms, no wit...nothing that would explain her rise to "stardom". Thus, I conclude that she must be smarter than she looks. It's the only reasonable explanation for her ability to manipulate such a large sector of the American society without offering them anything in return.
With that assumption in hand, I also assume that Ann Coulter is smart enough to know that using a term commonly associated with a particular group as a "schoolyard taunt" is insulting to the group in question. If one hurled the "n-word", for instance, at a person who was not of African American descent, in a clearly derogatory manner, what would it mean? Obviously, that the speaker thought that being associated with, or being accused of being, one of those nasty n-folks was an insult.
I had a related experience during the Gulf War. I happened to live in a University town during the war, and took part in a number of non-violent protests. During one of those protests, a march populated largely by University students and faculty, a carful of hecklers drove along the streets shouting "Arab lovers!" at the protesters.
It was a revelation to me about their mindset, that "Arab lover" was considered an insult. Did they think that we'd be insulted? I'm a Christian. I try to love everyone. Arab, European, Chinese...I'm not picky. We're all children of God. We're all imperfect, and we're all worthy of human respect and dignity. I didn't mind being called an Arab lover, but I minded very much that there was apparently a sector of society that thought it could cut me to the quick by accusing me of loving other humans. They must, I think, have been lacking in any but the most basic intelligence and insight. I suspect, although Ann Coulter certainly speaks as if she is similarly lacking, that she is not. And so I am quite certain that when she used a term commonly associated with gay people as an insult, she was insulting gay people. I think, however, that her protestations of innocence may be sincere. I think it's entirely possible that it's so obvious and instinctive to Ann Coulter that "gay" (or any of its colloquial synonyms) is an insult that it never crossed her mind to think about exactly what it meant or how it would be received.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

It's Just Too Damned Easy to Get Married in This Country

For as long as I can remember, I've heard people complain that it's too easy to get divorced in this country. In fact, some states are enacting laws that will allow couples to enter into a kind of "super" marriage, a "covenant" marriage, that will be harder to end. It's nonsense.

Are there too many divorces? Sure. But the problem isn't that it's too easy to get divorced. The problem is that it's too easy to get MARRIED.

Think about it. Why do we always hear that "it's too easy to get divorced"?

  • People have unreasonable expectations about marriage being "perfect".
  • People don't want to do the hard work.
  • People have no sense of commitment.
The list goes on, but the objections are generally all in this same vein. And they're all things that relate to the state of mind and the expectations and the investment people make WHEN THEY GET MARRIED.

Remember when it wasn't so easy to get divorced, and hardly anyone did it, and it was socially frowned upon? Well, I don't either, but I know there was such a time, and I know that fewer people got divorced--but I know something else that no one ever seems to think about: it was pretty damned rare in those days for someone to pop off to Vegas and marry someone he or she had known for three days then, too.

In some states, you have to wait a few days to get married after applying for a marriage license, but if that's too long to wait you can always pop across the border. The Catholic Church is about the only institution in our society that puts any kind of restrictions and delays on the right to get married, and what happens? Lifelong Catholics--not nominal Catholics, but believing, practicing Catholics--get married outside the church so that they won't have to "jump through the hoops". That's a significant decision when you consider that the Catholic church doesn't recognize marriages of baptized Catholics that take place outside the church without permission. But it's even more significant when we think about how it bodes for a marriage. It essentially says, "This is the commitment I'm making for the rest of my life--I'm giving up my individual life to become one with you, and committing to sacrifice whatever is necessary to make you happy and to make our marriage work--but I can't wait six months and attend four classes. Let's cut some corners."

So we go into marriage determined to Get What We Want Now. Most people, I'm sure, don't go into marriage contemplating divorce, but it's always an option, isn't it? Surely that changes things. What if you knew when you got married that it really was a lifetime commitment, that you really couldn't change your mind, that you really were going to be waking up next to that person every day for forty or fifty or sixty years, no matter how you came to feel about him? Would you make the same decisions?

Yes, there are too many divorces. But the answer isn't to stick people in bad marriages, usually without the tools to make them workable, but to discourage bad marriages in the first place, to require the time and space and investigation necessary to let people make good decisions about marriage before they enter into it. Then, making it a bit harder to get divorced might be a good accompanying step. It might help to reinforce the seriousness of the commitment. But reinforcing the seriousness of a commitment never really made or understood, explaining after the fact that you've signed on for something you never intended or even recognized, isn't to anyone's good.

Let's forget about revising divorce legislation and require a six month waiting period after you apply for a marriage license.

Let's forget mandatory counseling sessions before a divorce petition can be filed and make couples counseling or marriage education classes a PRE-licensing requirement.

And let's assume that anyone who is too impatient, too bent on instant gratification and having things his own way, to "put up with" those requirements lacks the maturity for a successful marriage, anyway.

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