Not every challenge to someone at a restaurant is a First Amendment violation

Right winger religious bakers and pharmacists don't want to serve gays or women using birth control. Left wing secularists and gays and lesbians (who come in all political and religious flavors) don't like to serve right wing, anti-gay Fascists at restaurants. I get the difference, which is that gays are seeking civil rights to participate in the community, and this particularly high level Fascist, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is judged more on her character and particular political positions than something she cannot control, such as being a heterosexual white woman. It is not like there is what the law calls "invidious" discrimination against Fascists in a presidential administration. 

Still, I think this was a teaching moment for the restaurant owner and staff, and they may have decided instead to have served Ms. Sanders and her small group. Let's begin with the practical effect, and recognize there are far more places where left wingers--think, for example, Jane Fonda, will be kicked out of more bars or restaurants than welcomed. The restaurant employees could have shown more respect for the institution, i.e. the restaurant, and simply served Ms. Sanders and her small group. The restaurant owner could have easily taken over the service duty if a gay or lesbian server just could not bring himself or herself to serve someone anti-gay or anti-lesbian. I know, for example, many Jews who, if they were servers in a restaurant, would not want to serve David Duke or Richard Spencer. Me? I would have. And I would have let them know I'm a Jew and I'm taking care of their table for the evening. Let them be the ones to say they want to leave. Let them face the teaching moment, even though we know David Duke and Richard Spenser have no interest in change. To be willing to change would undermine their brand. But wouldn't it have been at least as effective to have served them, said what I am saying, "I'm gay, have transgender friends, but I am here to provide service to you tonight," and shown them a dignity that may have given at least one or more of the group some reason to pause--and then go to the social media platforms to say what happened?

At some point, we have to work through First Amendment theories, and decide when there is a true First Amendment moment. I, of course, sided with the gay couple against the baker in that now infamous Supreme Court case. I also recognize that, while Sarah Huckabee Sanders represents an administration that is truly reprehensible in multiple ways, we are not quite at the level where kicking her out of the restaurant was the only course available. It is one of those cultural moments where I would not say the restaurant owner was wrong, as in legally wrong. It was clearly, however, an awkward moment, and one fraught with potential constitutional implications, at least to some who may not be as well versed in First Amendment and civil rights laws. For laypersons, I just think, however, that as trial courts are supposed to find ways to avoid having to confront constitutional questions in given moments, perhaps, next time, it may be better to be a little more flexible with each other at a restaurant. Ms. Sanders is not long for this administration anyway, and I think she may have found another reason to leave had the staff been kind and helpful to her.

Oh, and the ethics guy? Overblown and bureaucratic: His first analogy about the ATF guy flashing a badge is not at all what happened with Ms. Sanders. She was acting as a private person and was not touting her status as a press secretary to the administration, at least from what I've read. When he got to the law regarding the use of official social media platforms, however, he was correct. As with Hillary Clinton, these public officials need to have separate social media and cellphone platforms and recognize more clearly the distinctions and limitations for what the official platforms and cellphones are for, and not for.

Socialist feminism? Even Salon.com never heard of it.

You wanna know why our nation is failing?  Just read this article from Salon.com about interviews with women from elite universities who also obviously live in a world of money and class status that many women in the United States do not have.  

Then, after reading the article, let's reflect on the lack of the words "democratic socialism," "social democracy," or any compare and contrast with Europe or Canadian policies and experiences, within the article.  Not one of these women who graduated from the elite college appear to have brought up what elite women in Europe and Canada know, and what women who may be leaders in local unions or other positions there know, which is that policies providing for state subsidized childcare, which pays those who work in that realm good coin; national health insurance; policies promoting unions, which in turn promote and provide for limits on hours worked, more vacation time, laws stating the employer cannot contact you on your cell phone while you are on vacation, and lunch hours that are true lunch hours; policies where there is a promotion of mass transit to avoid the burdening cost of cars....All of these have more of a positive effect on the lives of women to avoid the type of harsh, rarely go back, decision making that women even in elite backgrounds often face.

The policies we should promote, therefore, are less ideological than they seem, and provide freedom of individual opportunity for that near-half of our human population, and along the way, give freedom to men, too, in the form of kinder and gentler workplaces and longer vacations, for example.  However, it is clear there is ideological baggage carried with those who stand opposed to these policies, and, in the U.S.A., there has been in place, for over seventy years, a propaganda system within the corporate-owned media world that continually ignores or, when confronted, castigates us against developing any language that would recognize these policy solutions.  Too often the feminist narrative is expressed in terms of individual autonomy, which is important.  However, there is a feminist-socialist narrative that our children are starting to feel their way towards--thank you, Bernie Sanders once again!  But that feminist-socialist narrative is not quite re-born yet.  And maybe, just maybe, we may begin to re-learn that "housewife" work has tremendous economic value, even though it is unpaid.  Again, our corporate assumptions have so driven our very comprehension of such things that we do not even know how to engage in public policy discussions about the significance of that single fact.

In short, there should be no dichotomy between identity politics and socialist oriented politics.  We just have to decide both are important and promote policies where both work together.  The problem I have had with Clinton/Obama/Biden types is they promote what I call "corporate Human Resources department" liberalism.  It is the liberalism of Sheryl Sandberg, and her "lean in" garbage.  Such a perspective lacks what Barbara Ehrenreich was trying to teach us along the way in "Nickel and Dimed," which is that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour will help millions of women, many of whom are moms mired in lower paying jobs with terrible work hours that they do not actually choose, and where they fear for their jobs each time one of their children fall sick.*  

Oh, and I must say this.  By focusing on elite colleges or universities, the authors appear to be ignoring the "leg up" in our society given to those who attend those elite colleges and universities these days.  It is now approaching early capitalist accumulation period England, circa 1830.  I once met a person who was friends with a human relations manager at a prominent national law firm.  She said, "We don't hire people who graduated from a law school near a freeway."  That was her way of saying not even UCLA or Boalt Hall (Berkeley) law schools were good enough.  It was strictly Ivy League and Stanford grads only.  This has occurred across the board in various professions over the past 15 years and has been a relatively sudden change.  Yes, there are exceptions, but let's not let the exceptions fool ourselves into sanguinity.  For the vast majority of women and men, there are barriers to economic stability that require far more work to overcome than Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers ever had to overcome.

*Here is Ehrenreich at a graduate school level of theorizing that shows her versatility in The Monthly Review, a venerable Marxist journal founded by Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman in the early days of the Cold War, and which still functions in this still-young century.  Ehrenreich remains one of the greatest minds of the past forty years.  Her writings since the 1970s are paradigm-changers when reading her.  Best place to start: "Hearts of Men." Hands down.  Reading that book truly enlightens one's perspective of post-WWII America, one's idea of feminism, and one's sense of how we got here--and to start to wonder where we need to go.

Thank God I'm a Central Jersey Boy!

This Colbert bit was as much fascinating to me as funny. I had no idea the entire time I lived in NJ (1959-1979) that there was anything really significant to North and South Jersey "cultures," though I was aware that southern Jerseyans were more often in the Philly orbit, and northern and central Jerseyans were in the NYC orbit.

As with Bruce Springsteen (born in Long Branch, grew up in Freehold), Meryl Streep (grew up in ritzy Summit), Bon Jovi (middle and working class Sayerville), Jon Stewart (born in NYC (!) and grew up in more rural Lawrenceville), I grew up in Central Jersey. I have always said I live, and later am from, "Central Jersey," and never thought anything of it, nor was I ever corrected by anyone in North or South Jersey, both areas where we had relatives and family friends. It sure looked like many of those interviewed were speaking tongue in cheek, and I think it is funny that I, as a Central Jersey guy, did refer to the foot long sandwich as either a sub or hoagie, too, meaning I used the terms interchangeably. I did say Taylor Ham, but I knew what people meant when they spoke of a pork roll. I don't think Gov. Murphy (who did not move to Jersey at all until adulthood as an employee of Goldman Sachs) is playing politics there as much as showing he really is speaking as if he was a true born "Central Jersey" guy.

Historically, there is what we would, in presentist terms, call a Red-Blue divide between much of southern Jersey and northern Jersey, outside of Camden and Trenton, of course. In the Civil War years, southern Jersey, including Camden and Trenton then, was understood to be an area where there was little support for the Union and much sympathy with the Confederacy. Much of southern Jersey continues to consist, though less and less so I suspect, of more rural and estate areas.* To me, the strangest part of seeing this Colbert bit is I have long said the way to divide Jersey is East and West, less so North, Central or South. The western part of the State is mostly farmland, and it is why it is not a misnomer to call NJ the "Garden State." For many decades into the late 20th Century, though again I am not so sure about the present, NJ was either the first or second largest producer of tomatoes, to take one example. And it is true that many vegetables continue to be produced or grown in NJ farmlands.

But it is always wonderful to see NJ spoken of in a major market based show, as too often NJ gets poor and disrespectful treatment from NYers and sometimes Philly folks. The very idea that the football "New York" Giants are still called "New York" when they have played in New Jersey for over four decades is one example. Another is this: Not one of my friends or family in NJ would ever say "what exit" do you live off of. That was a total invention from the always-overrated Saturday Night Live. The problem I used to find with New York City dwellers, and we in Central Jersey were mostly closer to the NYC orbit, is they would say, "Are your from Joisey? Hey, do you know so-and-so?" As if NJ was some village instead of having seven to eight million people residing there. So kudos to the NJ writers at the Colbert show to give a shout out to the Garden State! Now if they can only get John Pizzarelli on to unite all New Jerseyans with his rousing song about New Jersey (Yes, that is his father, the legendary jazz guitarist, Bucky, with John in the clip)...

*The leading 20th Century historian regarding the history of New Jersey remains the late Richard McCormick, who wrote at least two books on the history and politics of New Jersey, and books on Rutgers University. He taught for decades at Rutgers, which included one or two courses on the history of New Jersey from pre-colonial days to the then present. I was privileged to have him as a professor in the late 1970s for at least one of the NJ history courses, back when I was attending Rutgers-New Brunswick, the so-called "main" campus of the Rutgers University system. His books and his lectures had a mischievous wit that I think captured the ultimate kindness and heart of the man. He was a total New Deal liberal and had the scholar's eye for recognizing his own bias and trying to be fair to those with whom he disagreed. I regret I did not keep my copies of his books, as I took very little when I left NJ for The Greatest State in the Union (TM) in June 1979, and did not begin collecting books until some time in the mid-1980s. And now for some relatively short words about Professor McCormick's arrogant, dingbat son, who, as Rutgers President in the first decade of this still young century, stupidly and arrogantly thought he should spend tens of millions of dollars to turn Rutgers football into Notre Dame football, and, all he produced from the effort was Ray Rice. When I met him at an alumni gathering on the west coast when he first became president of the university, I was struck by his arrogance, and the fact he looked disgusted when I mentioned how much I loved his father's history of New Jersey course. It was as if he did not wish to be reminded of his father. It was a strange experience, but one that made more and more sense to me when I saw how much money was being funneled into the football program, something that would have made the father, if then a younger historian not an old man, blanch with derision. Me? I've always been partial to the type of university leadership of a Clark Kerr or Robert Maynard Hutchins. Both men are often caricatured, and misunderstood about their faults, particularly Kerr. However, both men understood the primary purpose of a university is eduction and research development, and that, in a modern society, knowledge drives an economy.

Reaping what we sow. Trump is the consequence of the Cold War and Pax Americana

Poor Paul Krugman.  Always thinking the corporate trade deals represented some sort of ideal that is consistent with promoting the nation's people as a whole.  The trade deals of the 1990s were designed from the start to beggar American workers, with the word that was used among the class representatives promoting it, to "discipline" American workers, as if the wealth generated for the white working class from the late 1940s through late 1960s must not happen again, and not spread to those with darker skins who also lived in the US.  And, globally, the trade deals were designed to create new proletarian classes around the world, moving the masses of peasants from subsistence farming when we were not bombing them into submission.  Michael Harrington called fellows like Cordell Hull, who The Krug lionizes in his little essay, "vulgar Marxists" on behalf of the business class.  See here for Andrew Bacevich, a Cold War general who came in from the "cold" as in Cold War, and look for his reference for Hull.  Bacevich gets what Harrington was saying very well.

There was an alternative way to develop the world without beggaring people who used their hands to earn their living, and without decimating entire communities in the industrial areas of our nation, and rural areas of our nation.  However, having done away with the Socialist and certainly Communist Left after World War II and through the 1950s, we destroyed the language of socialism and exulted the language of capitalism, even as we continued to have policies such as Medicare and Medicaid, and even as we recognized that government should have some role in helping people of limited means.  Eventually, though, those of us Baby Boomers went from hippie to libertarian to fascist as we aged.  Our children, whose first political campaign they followed was, luckily, Bernie Sanders, were taught that it was okay to use socialist language as part of evaluating social problems and public policy analysis.  This may explain, at least in part, why so many of us Baby Boomers are so hostile to  our children, reliving the hostility our oldest Baby Boomers had for our parents, but now inverting that hostility by using the language of our parents, calling our children "self-entitled," "lazy," etc.  

But back to the problem of Krugman.  He never really understood why the trade deals were so bad for our Commonweal, and he is therefore unable to see that Trump's indirect attacks on Pax Americana are long coming.  There are a lot of dead bodies around the world who died needlessly, cruelly, and often with callous bad faith on the part of our leaders,  as every one of our presidents could fit snugly in the dock under the Nuremberg Laws.*  The Cold War destroyed secular Pan-Arabism, more out of fear of their Hamiltonian policies (as opposed to being dictators, as our leaders love dictators who do the bidding of US corporate conglomerates), and promoted the very Islamic Fundamentalism that breeds more terror and more despair--and the same sort of often religious-based anti-intellectualism that breeds Trump and similar candidates here and in Europe.  

Krugman will never recognize the neo-liberal policies he so often endorsed were part of the same immediate post-WWII Cold War attacks on the New Deal, and, finally, we are now beginning to reap what was long sowed.  We white Baby Boomers need to see our politics are two sides of the same coin: Clintonoids with their elitist, globalist tendencies, who still do not understand the utility of labor unions, even as they promote transgender rights, and right wing, racist, and fascistic folks, who long for days when they had the white privilege they so often deny exists.  It is the combination that gives the Republicans their majorities in Congress and handed Trump the presidency, and drives the discourse on immigrant rights, gun rights, and nostrums that make the Koch Bros. smile in their insatiable greed.  As I said at various points in the 2016 election, Baby Boomers chose the two candidates, Clinton and Trump.  Clinton represented the winners in the global economy and Trump the losers, with Clinton's campaign summed up as "I've got mine" and Trump's as "Get off my lawn." There is a distinction still to be drawn, largely on cultural issues, between Clinton and Trump, and Clinton, as she ran for the presidency, was beginning to recognize it was not 1992 anymore, and that she really had to start listening to people she did not respect, i.e. progressives.  A vote for her over Trump made sense then, and still makes sense in retrospect, though certainly it remains true that a vote for Sanders over Clinton was the right choice to have made--a choice too many otherwise progressive or liberal white Baby Boomers failed to make in that primary.

Oh, to my fellow, again, largely white Baby Boomers, we better start making plans to protect ourselves from our children.  We will reap what we sowed in about 15 or 20 years, when we are most in need of their support.  Self-entitled, lazy, etc. works in multiple ways.  And we have taught our children and their children well, and we Baby Boomers, white ones especially, may likely experience a Twilight Zone ending for ourselves--where we ask for what we want, and get what we deserve.

* I cracked up at The Krug's mention of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe where it installed dictators to oppress people.  I think if The Krug could speak with a fellow NY Times alum, Stephen Kinzer, and compare how the US has treated Central and Latin America, systemically, I mean, he may realize that the US Empire is far more cruel and murderous to that region than the Soviet Union was to Eastern Europe.  The Marshall Plan in Europe represented an exception to the policies of cruelty, imperial aggrandizement, and outright mass murder the US dished out to people in Central and Latin America, and in Asia--oh wait, those folks iN Europe were white people. I forgot.  Sorry.  Cue sarcasm alert here.

Thoughts on the latest American cruelty, courtesy of Trump

This all reminds me of the loyalty oaths used most often against Communist Party members and so-called "fellow travelers" of the immediate post-WWII period.  The Truman administration went along with right wing and then-increasingly midstream media demands that federal workers sign loyalty oaths, and that the Truman administration step up removal from government of anyone with so-called "Communist" sympathies. The Truman administration complied and did so, but with sometimes with less than consistent or full enforcement.

Enter a recently elected US Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph R. McCarthy in 1950.  McCarthy was reckless in his numbers, claimed to hold a document about Communist Party members in the State Department he did not have, etc.  But his main argument was that the Truman administration was not effectively using the powers the Congress, and Truman's administration, gave Truman and his Cabinet to "root out Communist subversion."  So what we who have studied the period from the end of WWII through the early 1960s know as the Red Scare saw, in the period from 1950-1956, a period mainstream pundits like to call the "McCarthy Era," when the "Red-hunting" and "Red-baiting" went into overdrive.

In this context of separating families who are either seeking a better life or more often asylum from Mexico, Central and South America, the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations did do some of the things that right wingers and corporate media punditry wanted in cracking down on such migrations. However, and this important, it first remains a fact that immigration from Mexico was much higher in the 1990s, starting post-NAFTA in 1993.  The NAFTA let American agribusiness continue getting US government subsidies to flood the Mexican markets, which drove many subsistence Mexican farmers off their land, and causing them to head "El Norte."  Hence, as some have posted on social media, some of the disgusting remarks from the odious Dianne Feinstein (D--what a joke--CA) just as the NAFTA was being passed, and of course Feinstein was a big booster of the NAFTA and knew this immigration was coming. How this woman has survived all these years, including this year, with her Republican mindset, is part of the problem the Democratic Party continues to face. 

Bill Clinton, as president, pushed through the Reagan-Bush negotiated NAFTA with more Republican support and conservative Democratic Party support in 1993. Bill Clinton also knew the immigration was going to start up again--but damn the immigration torpedoes, full speed ahead, he and his corporate oriented allies cried. So he gave in to right wing demands to do "something" about increased migrations from Mexico and parts South in 1995, by starting to beef up border security, and signing laws and executive orders that form the basis of where we are today.  Bush II, ironically, let up a bit as Mexican immigration began to go down, but missed the other blowback from American foreign policy, i.e. the rise in immigration from Central America, where gangs had become the norm following the significant number of government ordered killings of those in civil societies (teachers, union leaders, nurses, doctors, and clergy, yes, clergy) by US back military dictatorships starting in the 1970s and especially in the 1980s (see Penny Lernoux's "Cry of the People" about Carter era priest killings and going into overdrive under Reagan starting in 1981).  These immigrants included both those who were victims of gangs as well as gang members themselves, who established in various U.S. cities Northern branches of those gangs.  Obama came in and cracked down on those gangs, and ironically, with the Great Recession of 2008, the number of immigrants from even those nations began to decline significantly.  But then, people in Central America, who were victimized by gang crime and corporate-military domination in those nations, started sending their children alone out of desperation, which is where the centers really got going...

Let's therefore be clear: What Trump and Sessions are doing is using the rhetoric of their right wing allies that led to laws and executive orders that Republican dominated Congresses, and, Clinton and Obama, under their political pressure, put into place.  Trump and Sessions are, substantively, twisting those previously enacted laws and are taking advantage of those laws, under vastly different circumstance of much less migration, in ways in which neither Obama and Clinton intended, so that it is not a matter of simply "following 'Democrat' law...." Also, such language again lets Republican Congresses and right wing pundits on television and radio off the hook, which is part of the cynical game behind enactment of the cruel policies that right wingers want.  For right wingers and let's call out our white Baby Boomers here, particularly those who call themselves "religious," it is almost always about punishment and cruelty, sprinkled with an extra unhealthy dose of racism.

However, unlike the time of Joseph McCarthy, there is no behinds-the-scene president to stop some of the worst aspects of the policies being followed.  Sadly, we've elected, via the Electoral College, Joseph R. McCarthy as president.  As with McCarthy, Trump is a reckless, mean-spirited, ignorant, racist demagogue, with henchmen such as Jefferson Davis Sessions, who sees the world through Jim Crow and other racist tropes.  And as this saga of caged children unfolds, we see the majority of white Baby Boomers finding all sorts of ways to justify this, whether through outright applause from those who style themselves most "Christian," listening to lies from the likes of Baby Boomer Red Baiter Ann Coulter ("child actors"), or, from the left wing side of the political ledger, focusing on Obama's and Clinton's failures in a way that tends to numb us from what is happening NOW.

And, with this national dialogue failure, my wife and mother continue to wonder why I wrote "Boomerang"....As I said to my wife last night, I just don't know if the nation can survive white Baby Boomers at this point.  Millennials and Digital Kids  who are of all races and ethnicities, and minority voters in Baby Boomer age, will need to step up their voting this fall to turn Congress Democratic.  The Democrats elected this time will not be the same overall as previous Democrats of recent vintage, and may be more like New Dealers who are not racist or sexist.  Not all of them.  Not by a long shot.  But it will be much, much better for the Commonweal than what we currently have.  And hopefully Special Prosecutor and former FBI head, Robert Mueller, may finally start by September some indictments of Trump administration and campaign officials, and maybe Trump himself, for obstruction of justice and the like.  What is most ironic about the McCarthy loyalty oath analogy of course is that Trump himself can be seen as an agent for a foreign power, the same one McCarthy was railing against in the 1950s.  One may quote Karl Marx again and talk about History repeating itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.  Perhaps on that level of "Traitor Trump," as I mischievously like to style him, but with the children in cages, this is definitely a tragedy combined with cruelty.  Yes, yes, I know all about the genocide of Native Americans, slavery, Jim Crow, Japanese internment, and US policy in Central America that concentrated on killing priests and raping and killing priests and nuns.  But, can we just say right now that this is cruel and needs to stop?

UPDATE June 20, 2018:  More cynicism with more cruelty to come from Traitor Trump.

Murray Bookchin, my kind of libertarian

This article from the NYRB is about Murray Bookchin and the Kurdish revolutionaries who are leading the struggle for Kurdish independence.

Bookchin is the type of libertarian I have always admired, before the term was hijacked into its modern  business (read: right wing) nostrums that end up supporting corporatism in practice.* 

My fundamental disagreement with Bookchin is he essentially if not literally ignores the rise of corporations and corporate ideologies in American life, and how corporate ideologies have driven American imperialist drives of the past 120 years.  It did not have to be that way, of course, and, further, again, of course, American imperialist efforts across the continent were initially driven by mercantile and Romanesque rhetoric also grounded in what we moderns call racism.

Bookchin believed radicalism in cities can defeat both Big Government and Big Corporations (I put them in initial capital letters consistent with the type of theorizing Bookchin would recognize).  However, we see the challenges in applying his ideas in the United States most immediately and most recently in Seattle, where the leftist city council rejected a tax on Amazon and Boeing and other major businesses, that worked out to $275 a year (yes, a year) for each person employed at the major businesses, with the funds raised to be used to alleviate homelessness.  There were threats from Amazon that it would leave, affecting 40,000 employees at Amazon in the area, which trickled down to shouts at the city council meeting from local business libertarian types and their small, shopkeeper allies.  It is not fair to attack Bookchin for that failure, which is not my intent at all.  I think the City Council should have held firm.  Confrontation with corporatism is the main issue of our time.

Too bad most libertarians would rather attack Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, and whatever else our federal and state governments may do to help those without economic means.  If they want to be our allies in the larger Struggle (yes, let's capitalize that term for old times' sake), then Bookchin may be a place to start, and see if we find common ground--besides the usual cannabis legalization and opposition to the PATRIOT Act.  As an old Communist Party friend (he had long since left the Communist Party when I met him, but he remained an ardent leftist from his days as an organizer for the United Electrical workers' union) used to say, one can agree with 70% of the libertarians' platform, but the remaining 30% is a "head shot."  Meaning, one is shot in the head and one dies.  If only that remaining 30% was a leg shot....

But if we can get together and overthrow economic royalty in major cities, well, that would be interesting....

* Boochkin is sometimes confused with Murray Rothbard, who is a more modern type of libertarian, who truly believes there is something called "money."  Rothbard has earned my award for Dumbest Smart Man over the decades.  His books are worth a perusal, and, his most scholarly work, A History of Money and Banking in the United States, is great reading. The book provides great information regarding the financial history of the nation.  However, his belief in the totem known as precious metals, and his assumption that only gold or even silver have value, such that paper money is "fiat money," is one of the great Dumb Ideas that permeate modern American "conservative" and libertarian thought.  Poor Rothbard.  He fails to understand what David Graeber definitely understands, which is that money is a social construct, whether it is expressed in precious metals, paper, or otherwise.

Thoughts about being a Dad on Father's Day

I am not sure if this was the subject of a post in the original MF Blog, but I suppose I should post this topic at MF Blog, The Sequel.

This article from Slate online magazine is not about a father who was bad.  It is about a father who was on the road reading his poetry, and how his son felt that loss of time with his poet father.  I recall when the LA Times came to visit our home to interview me in 2003 as my novel was recently released (here is the subsequent interview article).  My son was nearing ten years old, and he drew something on a piece of paper to hand to the reporter:  At the top of the paper was written, in crayon, "Dad, Get Off!" And it had the international symbol for "No"--the circle with a diagonal line through it--for a telephone and a computer. Then, there was another circle with what was obviously a stick man and stick boy holding hands, but with no line through it.  He drew it in less than two minutes and it was straight from his heart.

I did not understand at the time why he felt this way.  I had taken him to Cub Scout meetings and Little League practices and games.  I had spent much time, I thought, with him.  But it took me years to realize the book was another sibling in the house he did not want.  Our daughter was only five when the book was released, and was too young to notice, but he noticed my time, which was set for writing and editing after 10 p.m., and before dawn, lasting until time for work.  And of course weekends where I did further research and analysis, and revising.

I had a second novel I wanted to write, but I realized I would have been relegated to another small publisher, who continually fail to promote one's books.  Plus, I needed to get back to litigation, having been a corporation counsel when writing the novel, and having much more time to think outside of work than in litigation, where cases roll over and over and over in one's mind, and where one must prepare for depositions, court appearances and trials, which undermine extensive creative thought necessary for novel writing--at least for me.  Ultimately, family came first.  It is perhaps why this film with Nicholas Cage and Tia Leoni means so much to me.  Yes, we moved, too, but because we had to move in order to prepare for retirement years, and still hold a home. Our horribly high medical bills over the years, as this early MF Blog, The Sequel post explained, simply took its toll on us.  The film I linked to is about a guy who begins to realize what he lost when pursuing and succeeding at living a life of power and big money, and is trying, at the end, to figure out how to get it all--when the viewer knows it is not going to be the same for him, that those two children we see will never exist in his time line, and if he does pursue power and big money, he may not have the type of relationship he has been shown with his wife and children.  It is not that it is true for all, and I happen to know someone who does have it all, but it is super rare.  What I realized, however, is, if on the off chance I "made it" as a big-time writer, I may lose the family.  It is what finally propelled me to forego the second novel.  I never forgot "Dad, Get Off!"  Plus, with my medical condition at the time, it was simply too much of an economic risk, especially if I had another heart "flare-up" as I called them.

When reading the Slate article which began my thinking and posting this, I also got a kick out of the fact that the poet's son never read his father's poetry. So, too, my children and wife have never read my novel.  As my wife says, she and my children lived it.  And that also speaks to what the article is saying, too.

I am largely against what I call "Hallmark" holidays, whether Mother's, Father's, Grandparents' Days, or even birthdays.  My wife feels the same way, and our children have ingested much of this, too. My failure as a writer, my relative failure as a lawyer, and our inability to stay in California largely due to medical bills, as I was unable to earn a wage that could keep us in California, often obscures the fact that we have been, and continue to be, a loving family.  Our children speak with my wife and me every day, and we live each day where we think of each other if we somehow miss a day to speak.  It is the same for our family with presents or gifts. We are not about giving each other birthday gifts or winter holiday gifts.  If my wife or the children need something or want something, we consult the bank account and if it is affordable at the moment, it is bought (often with Amazon points we accumulate, I have to admit).  If it is not affordable at the time, we say it soon will be, and we have been right  most of the time.  There are no questions asked as we know why our son wanted a video game or our daughter a book or DVD, or if they need new clothes, or whatever.  This way, winter holidays are about what to give to or do for others, not something self-centered.  And birthdays are more about going to a restaurant or just spending time with us or with friends.  My wife and I, for an anniversary, simply go away for a night or enjoy a dinner alone together at a nice restaurant. We do not spend time worrying about what gift to get each other.  

I was so glad the Slate article was not about an artist who abused his children while creating loving art about his children.  Instead, it was about something more profound, which is that creating art is itself a selfish act. When the art is good, it is a creation of something profound for the community at large.  Spouses and children who live with artists, however, often have a hard time adjusting, and they don't need to read or enjoy the art created as they live with the creator and feel the work created.  If the family relationships are bad, however, the art has, for the family, the air of hypocrisy and perhaps even evil.  For the community, the art will stand on its own over time, and the public is rightly unconcerned about how the creator's family feels about the art.  If, however, the creator's family relationships are good, the art remains, for that family, something out there...something continually luring the artist away from the family.

So, no, not Happy Father's Day.  That is just Hallmark corporate talk.  It is the day to day relationships that count for our spouse and our children, not some holiday hijacked or invented by a marketing department.