Why Superheroes Have Secret Identities

So why do superheroes have secret identities?

Because no good deed goes unpunished.

You’d think, that in this time of deep recession, social strife, and political infighting leaving the American people largely bereft of inspiration and leadership, that those brave few willing to stand up to the worst elements of our society would be recognized as such as rewarded for their efforts, right?

Like Jim Nicholson, the Seattle bank teller who, at the end of July of this year, responded to a bank robber by lunging at him, demanding the robber produce a weapon if he had one, and then chasing the unarmed would-be robber out of the bank and restraining him until police arrived.  He helped apprehend a bank robber who could have committed more crimes had he not been stopped, and saved the money of hard-working bank customers, right?*  Of course he did, and as it turned out, the vagrant robber had a long history of theft and burglary charges; he could have used the ill-gotten loot to buy himself a gun and become really dangerous!

As a reward for his heroism, Nicholson received the coveted You Don’t Work Here Anymore Pink Slip Award.

Key Bank declined to comment on the firing.  However, Seattle police and an FBI special agent agreed that the proper course would have been to simply give the robber what he wanted and be a “good witness.”   That’s the safe way to do it, and that, as I understand, is the bank’s policy as well.  But did Nicholson deserve to lose his job for standing up to a robber?

Before you answer that, let’s look at the case of Josh Rutner, an Ocala (Florida) “loss prevention officer” (or “asset protection officer;” the article call him both titles and, really, they both mean “dude what stops shit from gettin’ stole”) at the local Wal-Mart.  Since it’s his job to stop unpaid-for merchandise from leaving the store, he says (and I agree) that he was “just doing his job” when he restrained a shoplifter.  But then things got serious: the shoplifter pulled a knife, slashed at Rutner’s face, and ran away.

Now, most of us would have our self-preservation instincts kick in at this point, and we’d just let the guy run his happy ass away and become someone else’s problem.  Not Josh Rutner.  Josh Rutner gave chase, thinking, as he says, that the man was a danger to the public and the city that needed to be stopped right then and there.  With the aid of a customer, Rutner apprehended and restrained the shoplifter until the police arrived.

The next day, Rutner was fired.  In addition, the customer was banned from ever shopping at any Wal-Mart in the US ever again.  Okay, I’m kidding about the second part.  But seriously, Rutner did get his ass canned the very next day.

The same reasons were given as Mr. Nicholson above:  it’s not policy to give chase or interfere.  Despite Rutner’s job specifically being preventing losses, his attempts to do that very thing got him fired. . .because he gave chase to an armed suspect, which store policy prohibits.  Never mind that he kept an armed person with no fear of, and a demonstrated armed resistance to, law enforcement from reaching the streets and maybe harming someone else somewhere else.  If this had been a comic book, he wouldn’t have stopped the guy; instead, he would have let the guy go and the guy would later kill Rutner’s kindly old Uncle Ben, resulting in Rutner becoming the hero known as the Amazing Rutner-Man.  I should really stop writing these when I’m sleepy.

So why do superheroes have secret identities?

Because no good deed goes unpunished.

Clark Kent wants to keep his job.  Bruce Wayne, God rest his soul, didn’t want to get kicked out of the Wayne Foundation by cowardly, superstitious shareholders.  Peter Parker wants to keep taking pictures for a living (or keep teaching science, whatever the hell he’s doing nowadays).  I could go on, but really, the majority of you wouldn’t know who I was talking about anyway, so I’ll put my geekiness away now.

Point is, in a society in which criminals do not fear the law and depend on no one else standing up to them, we’ve put in place “policies” and “corporate rules” to make sure that no one does.

Maybe criminals, like politicians, need to remember to fear the people. . .

VS – 11.8.09

P.S.  I am not by any means saying that I want people to go out and become vigilantes, or take stupid chances fighting off criminals.  I am saying that those of us who do stand up to crooks of all collar colours should be rewarded, not punished.  So if you become Captain Long-johns and go fight crime in Hoboken, whatever happens to you is totally not my fault.

A Great Voice From The Greatest Generation

For those of you that don’t know, a battle has erupted in Maine.  The state legalized gay marriage earlier this year, and immediately, one of those reactionary, backwards, right-wing organizations of insecure people who somehow feel their rights are threatened when other people are given the same rights started a ballot initiative to overturn the legalization of gay marriage in Maine.  This has turned into a huge campaign, with the same backers as the people that supported Proposition 8 last year in California. Hell, they didn’t even bother to change commercial scripts. (Why pay the writers twice for the same message?  It makes financial sense, at least.)

I am, in fact, a supporter of gay marriage.  I could make an impassioned plea on behalf of gay friends and relatives about justice and equality.  Instead, I’ll let Philip Spooner, a decorated World War II veteran and lifelong Republican, make a better case than I ever could.

I salute you, Mr. Spooner.

VS – 10/22/09

P.S.  An interesting aside:  over the weekend, I overheard a Mormon friend explaining how her babysitter quit because of the church’s support of Proposition 8.  Her defense?  “The Mormon Church wasn’t the biggest supporter, nor did it put in the most money.”  She either didn’t hear me or ignored me when I said “But it was a supporter.”  To me, her argument was like saying, “Well, I wasn’t the highest-ranking klansman, I wasn’t the most muscular klansman, and I wasn’t the richest klansman. . .but I helped keep minorities down anyway.”  Then again, she had already offended me not ten minutes earlier, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by anything else ignorant coming from her. . .not that I’ll hear it, because that friendship is pretty much over.

Quick Shots

Some insight into my blog-writing process:  every day, I read the Huffington Post, New York Times, and various other internet news sources looking for interesting things to write about.  Once I find something, I bookmark it in a folder called “blog ideas,” to look into later or do more research about – or totally ignore.  Of the things that I find, maybe 20% of them actually do get written about here; for others, I lose interest, the moment’s urgency passes, I just don’t have enough to say on the topic to justify a full entry, or I just never get around to the actual writing part. (I do have a life, and it sometimes gets in the way.)  Sometimes I just don’t know what to say.

Now that my list has grown way too bloody long, I’ve decided to share some of the things I didn’t write about before.  However, since there are so many, I’ll have to limit my comments on each item to just one or two lines and let you read the links.

Basically, this is my bookmark clearing-house.  Ready, set. . .go!

1. Missouri coffee drinkers share the hot, steaming cup of love!

2. Smarter than the average bear?  Maybe.  Smarter than a top-of-the-line bear-proof canister? Definitely!

3. When this guy says he’s “gotta see a man about a horse,” call the police.

4. You know the real estate market is rough when people get violent over Monopoly properties. . .

5. It’s not just Alaska’s problem:  rape victims in many places often have to foot the bill for examinations and rape kits.

6. Something to keep in mind next time you call someone a slut. . .or are called one yourself.

7. When you’re tripping balls, every bush is on fire and can talk – so was Moses just high?

8. Conservative think-tank (they can think?) Heritage Foundation calls a bill pushing for harsher child-rape penalties “overcriminalization.” People, I beg you, do not trust Republicans around your children.

9.  Yes, Dear Canada, America is, in fact, on crack.

10. The Chinese have better political sensibilities than we do; they trust sex workers more than politicians.

11. Proof that God has a sense of humour: A British actor in a swine flu prevention commercial came down with – wait for it – swine flu.

12. What you’ve always suspected is true:  your brain really is working against you. As is the CIA.

13. If you only click one of these links, for the love of all that’s good and holy, make it this one about how and why conservative are always wrong. . .with historical evidence to back it up.  Brilliant!

14. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – and the Photoshop of the photo editor.

15. I don’t know how to fix the obesity problem in this country, but I’m pretty sure that this is the wrong tactic.

16. Looks like freedom of speech only goes so far. . .

17. Why is John McCain the only Republican willing to stand up to conservative nutjobs? There’s gotta be more somewhere. . .

18. When a machete- and gun-wielding convicted killer gets better health care than his surviving victim, something is well and truly fucked up in this country.

19. Who’s really out to kill Grandma? It ain’t who you’d think.

20. “In recognition of your service to this country, we’re going to take away your child custody rights. Thank you!”

21. Welcome to Tennessee, where you can carry guns in bars, parks, and – wait a second, maybe not so much the parks.

22. “‘Round these here parts, you start wavin’ a picture of  Obama with a Hitler ’stache, you can ’spect a asswhuppin from an old Armenian man, and that’s how it should be.”

23. If you’re in a POW camp, Monopoly is a great, fun way to pass the time – or, you know, help you break out.

24. So, that high-tech phone you’ve got?  Chances are, if it gets stolen, its makers would rather force you to buy a new one than help you get it back.  The bastards.

25. Last but certainly not least, some sexual assault prevention tips that are guaranteed to work!

Whew!

VS – 09.22.09

On Racism

I have been thinking, for the past few days, about racism.

“Racism” is being launched into the airwaves fairly often nowadays.  While conventional left and middle wisdom do not blame racism solely for the. . .vociferousness of protests against health care  reform and President Obama, the pundits certainly do seem to believe that racism is a significant factor in the protests.

And they’re right.

You hear President Obama being called a fascist, a socialist, a Marxist, a Kenyan, a communist, and more by people who, when confronted, seem hard-pressed to define any of the labels that they’re throwing at him (except Kenyan, and honestly, I doubt that many of them could even find Kenya’s general location on a map or, as much as they claim to love and want to preserve the Constitution, seem to remember that as long Obama’s mother was an American citizen, he is an American citizen, no matter where he was born).  The man can’t even continue the tradition of giving a Presidential address to schoolchildren without right-wing parents getting up in arms about it, for fuck’s sake!  (For the record, I am proud to say that my daughter’s school didn’t send anything home or call any parents about the speech and showed it at the scheduled time without fanfare or fallout.)  If you take a good, hard look at the people protesting, and the ludicrous claims and scare tactics coming from a very vocal minority of this country, I promise that you too will be left with the strong impression is that what these people are really angry about is the black man in the White House.

Racism.  There’s that word again.

Racism, I believe, has a basis in primal human nature.  It is natural to fear what is different from one’s self, from one’s own experience.  It is also a natural human reaction to be fearful of change.  The loss of what is familiar, what is comfortable, what is known, can be a very frightening thing, and that is a natural reaction, to be afraid of the unknown.  However, fear of difference and fear of the unknown can and often do turn into dislike, disdain, prejudice, hatred. . .racism.  What we’re seeing in these protests is the result of fear not only left unchecked, but, in many cases, fed and nurtured and used by leaders, elected or otherwise, on the political right until it either mutated into racism or merged with already-held prejudices and became an even bigger monster (but not a monster dumb enough to forget to cloak its true nature by tossing out a “social-Marxist-fascist” smokescreen).

And the left shares the blame.

Yeah, I said it.  The political left is partly to blame for these protests.

How so?  By trying to enact reform beneficial to all Americans?  By winning new congressional majorities in the last two elections? By daring to put a black man in the White House?

No.

By demonizing people who were just afraid.

Remember what I said about it being an intrinsic part of primal human nature to fear change, to fear the unknown, to fear what is different from oneself?  It is.  And instead of talking to these people and trying to understand why they were afraid and calm their fears, the left instead labeled them “racists” and “rednecks”  and “ignorant” and ostracized them, shunned them, tried to make them ashamed of merely being human, being afraid. . .and drove them right into the open arms of the people on the right that were willing to use them for ratings, for money, for political power.  A lot of these people were just scared of a strange face, a face unlike their own, and when they turned on their TV to look for answers, they saw, instead of reports emphasizing the commonalities of all people and how the President is just a man like any other, they saw emphasis of difference and division: the first black President, the relevance of the black vote, the Latino vote, the Asian vote, the white vote, and the people who looked like them, who were largely white and older, being labeled as “racists” and “opponents” of change.  I’m not saying that some of those labels weren’t correctly applied; far from it.  I’m saying that the labels got overused and, in their overuse, succeeded more in alienating a section of the population than in actually hurting their intended targets. . .leading to those feeling alienated and disenfranchised right now, holding up signs of Obama with a Hitler mustache and parroting the words of the people who gave them ways to channel their fear into a cause instead of making them feel ashamed for being afraid.

For being human.

Don’t get me wrong;  I’m not defending racism at all.  I’m saying that the left blew a chance to win over many of the hearts and minds that they drove to the side of the extreme right-wing demagogues.

It’s not too late to correct the mistake.  It takes understanding, compassion, and most of all, calm, reasonable, logical debate.  Understand that these are not necessarily bad people on the other side of the debate.  Have the compassion to listen, and in debate, give them the knowledge, of human commonalities, that can defeat a fear of the unknown, of another people.  Remind them, hell, show them that most African-Americans are not gangsta rappers, most Asians are not martial arts experts, most Muslims are not terrorists, and most Latinos don’t even know who Carlos Mencia is.  Knowledge is really the only way to defeat the media-promulgated stereotypes and show everybody (because there are minority racists, too) that we are, as our President said, far more alike than we are different.

Not doing this, not fighting back with knowledge, will only lead to more of the same thing thing you’ve seen this summer: more loud voices covering fear with nationalism or patriotism, more walls of anger with fear hiding behind them, until finally people stop yelling and start acting. When that happens, then, if nothing else, we’ll know for sure one commonality:  everybody’s blood is red.

VS – 09.17.09

Victimization Is A Pre-Existing Condition?

I had originally planned to post today about the large numbers of articles, essays, and such that I have bookmarked and had intended to write about, but just never got around to it.  That idea went out the window when I saw this headline at the Huffington Post:

When Getting Beaten By Your Husband Is A Pre-Existing Condition

And I thought, are they f***ing serious? Go ahead, read the article.  I’ll wait.

Done?  Good.

So, yeah, they’re f***ing serious.

You can be denied medical insurance coverage (if you live in one of the eight states that go unnamed in the article or DC) if you’ve ever been the victim of a domestic assault.  Seriously.

You know, we have more than enough of a problem in this country with domestic violence going unreported.  As if the social stigmas and legal quagmires of actually seeing your attackers punished weren’t bad enough, now the women who have the courage to stand up and fight also run the risk of losing or not being able to attain medical coverage if they do stand up and say “no more.”  It’s like being punished for being a victim, yet again.

This is so incredibly outrageous that I can’t even wrap my head around it.

There are people out there who read this article and think, “Well, it’s their own fault for being in and/or staying in an abusive relationship.” (Really, there are; read the comments.)  As someone who has spoken with several women who had been or were in abusive relationships, I can honestly say this: you don’t know someone’s abusive until they start up the abuse.  Yes, there can be red flags that, from an outside perspective, would indicate such, but an outside perspective lacks emotional investment and can have a bias that makes interpretation of the signals invariably subjective, and easily dismissed from either side.  Besides, flags are only indicators of possibility; they are not ironclad guarantees of an abusive personality.  The really smart abusers would make sure they didn’t give off such flags, anyway.  Also, no abuser beats a woman on the first date. . .or the second, or third, or, in most of the cases I have known, not until marriage.  When meeting someone new or entering a new relationship with possibilities, everybody (and I do mean everybody) puts their best foot forward, puts up their best sides and doesn’t show the true whole of themselves.  Men and women both do it, abusers and non-abusers, and not everyone does it with any sort of malign intent.  Some fear rejection needlessly, some rightfully fear rejection, others are just nervous or shy; there’s a million why people do it, and I’m not arguing for or against any of them, only acknowledging that they exist.  My point is that it can take a long time to really know someone, to really know all sides of their personality, no matter how much one already loves what one has seen of another person. . .and even then, it’s possible to hide certain sides until it’s too late.  (I’m speaking from personal experiences on that one.)

All that just to say that it’s complete B.S. to blame the victim of domestic violence for being a victim of someone else’s sickness, and morally and ethically wrong to punish them again by denying or canceling medical insurance for them.

And if that’s not enough to give you some outrage about how the insurance industry treats women, go ahead and click here to read about how difficult and costly it is for women to get pregnancy care, how women in some markets pay up to 140% more in premiums than men of the same age for the same amount of coverage, and how women can be denied coverage simply for having had a caesarian section.

What utter crap.

VS – 09.14.09

Guest Columnist: Hamburglar

(Vagabond Saint is out sick this week.  Filling in today is nationally syndicated columnist and former McDonald’s Spokesperson Hamburglar, with a special edition of his Ask The Hamburglar advice column.)

Ask The Hamburglar!

Today's Guest Columnist

Q: Dear Hamburglar,

I have been married to a wonderful man for 8 years now.  Our marriage is fine, but I can not stand his mother!  Every time she comes over, she nitpicks about the tiniest things, like a little dust on the counters and a little laundry here and there! We both work full time and are raising 5 children and don’t always have time to take care of the little details.  How can I get her to get off my back?

Woman On The Edge
A: Yeah, I know I’ve not been around for a while.  You might have noticed me missing from McDonald’s commercials for the past decade or so.  That’s because they shit-canned me.  With an extra helping of shit, to be honest.  That’s right, McDonald’s, leading employer of 30-year-olds without high school diplomas and #1 provider of childhood obesity, canned me.  Why?  They said I was a bad role model!  ME!  Yeah, I steal hamburgers.  So what?  I’m hungry, and that’s just how we roll back in Robbulstan.  Besides, every time I stole some burgers, I always got my ass humiliated and sent to prison in the 1930s, from the look of my goddamn uniform.  You’d think that would be great for kids, ’cause it teaches them not to steal shit. But nooooooooooo, I’m the one that’s a bad role model, out of all those freaks and bizarro people I worked with there.

Let me tell you something about Birdie:  we didn’t call her “Birdie” because she could fly and had a pilot’s license.  We called her “Birdie” because she was higher than the fucking stratosphere all the goddamn time.  (While we’re on the bird theme, we could have called her “Cockatiel,” if you know what I mean.)  If she had hollow bones like a real bird does, they were most likely stuffed with coke at any given moment.  If you could snort it, inject it, smoke it, or drink it, Birdie had it in large fucking supply.  Why do you think she was always walking in circles, making airplane noises?  She wasn’t just being cute, she was higher than Amy Winehouse in a three-way with Keith Richards and another equally-high Keith Richards.  And I’m the bad role model.

Q: Dear Hamburglar,

I’m in my junior year of college and, for the first time in my life, I’ve found a woman that I’ve fallen in love with.  The problem is, I’m a virgin.  I don’t even know all that much about sex, and I don’t know how to break it to her that I’m really inexperienced.  I’ve heard that’s a big turnoff for women.  Is that true?  Should I tell her or should I just buy some porn and learn about it on my own first?

Inexperienced In Illinois

A: For all that I could say about Birdie (and there’s a lot), at least she’s from this planet.  Grimace is a fucking illegal alien, and when I say “alien,” understand I am not fucking around, alright?  That guy’s from outer space somewhere, I swear.  We never could get a clear answer out of that clown.  He’d just play stupid whenever we tried asking for his green card and cry whenever he saw a picture of Pluto.  On top of being in this country, never mind on this planet, illegally, he’s gay too.  That’s right, Grimace is a big ol’ Purple Penis Eater.  You might be wondering how a vaguely-conical alien blob that never wears clothes could even have sexual organs.  Trust me.  They’re there.  And if he gets drunk, there’s a 98% chance he’ll show them to you, and then you can have haunted goddamn nightmares, too.  Don’t ever go drinking with that fucker and pass out near him, is what I’m saying.

Q: Dear Hamburglar,

I need help!  One of my old buddies from school wants me to be the best man at his wedding and his fiance is great, but it turns out that the woman I’ve been a “friends with benefit” with for years is her mother, and the woman who joined in for three-ways sometimes is her aunt!  What do I do?

Scared Of Exposure

A: Ronald McDonald?  Oh, don’t get me started on that asshat.  Of all the freaks there were in that group, he was the motherfucking King, bar none.  First of all, that’s not makeup.  That’s what that jackass really looks like.  It’s like someone gave the fucking Joker a perm and a goddamn horrible dye job.  On top of that, the guy just couldn’t keep it in his pants.  Many times we had to sneak out of town because he got caught groping a kid, an employee, a manager, or a manager’s spouse.  It was just a goddamn shame.  You know what they say about guys who wear big shoes?  Well there’s a lot of disappointment comin’ for women who like guys with big floppy shoes, and let me put the emphasis on “floppy.”  It’s like he couldn’t get it up, so he tried to attack everything in sight to make up for it and popped pills of all colours like a madman.  It was fucking tragic.

I remember one time we went into a McDonald’s in Laredo, just putting in an appearance for all these kids and their parents that had shown up, and Ronald just fucking walks in, whips his shit out, yells out “You want fries with this, bitches?” and starts laughing maniacally.  6 billion served with hush money, that fuckin’ day.  And I’m the bad role model that got fired.

Fucking bastards.

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Hamburglar’s nationally-syndicated column, “Ask The Hamburglar,” appears in over 250 newspapers nationwide.

This Just In. . .

This just in. . .

Next week, President Barack Obama will give a special address to America’s children.

On a side note, he will also give a speech to America’s students.

VS – 09.03.09

The Good, The Bad, and The F***ing Bizarre #3: A Frank, A Flora, A Phallic Fallacy

The Good:  Barney Speaks Frankly

You know how elected officials always have to be respectful and gentle with their constituents, no matter what level of insanity or inanity is currently issuing from said constituent’s mouth like a tidal wave of crazy?  Well, that behaviour has been tested quite a bit in the recent town hall meetings on the healthcare debate.  No one wants to be seen as making light of their constituent’s concerns, no matter how baseless, derogatory, or outright ludicrous those concerns are, right?

Right!

For everyone except Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank.

For those of us that have been wishing our elected representatives would stand up to the whackos showing up and town hall meetings and loudly displaying their ignorance, Barney Frank’s recent town hall was a godsend.  Check out how he handles a woman who calls the health care reform bills “a Nazi policy” (because the Nazis were all about making sure everyone had affordable health care).

Thank you, Barney Frank!  We need people to stand up to these ridiculous claims and assertions coming from the right, someone willing to call a spade a spade and show how baseless and inane these scare tactics are!

Barney Frank is my hero right now.

The Bad: Giant Rat-Eating Plant Discovered

You read that correctly:  a plant big enough to eat rats has been discovered.  Even more frightening, it’s been named after David Attenborough!

This is bad in several ways.

One, if plants have gotten big enough to eat rodents, how long do we have before they get big enough to eat people?  Clearly the plants are on a mission to stop killing humans through allergies and pretty-looking poisonous plants and just go for outright eating us!  The plants must be stopped, now, before it’s too late!

Stop the plants before anyone other than Rick Moranis suffers!

The second thing that is really scary about this is that the plant was named after Sir David Attenborough.  While those of us who know who Attenborough is know him as the soft-voiced narrator of a bajillion nature shows and a harmless, endlessly curious naturalist, the decision to name a carnivorous plant after him makes me wonder: what do the botanists know about Attenborough that the rest of us don’t? Clearly there’s some rodent-sized skeletons in his closet!  The world needs to know the truth about Sir David Attenborough!  Is he on the side of the carnivorous plants?  Is he even now preparing England for their invasion?  Has he been seduced to the green side by Poison Ivy?

Sometimes treason is completely understandable.

Whatever Attenborough’s hiding, we need to know!

The F***ing Bizarre: Professional Dick Fears For His Own

I’ve read this article several times, looking for the punchline.  Either I haven’t found it or the humour is just so subtle that I can’t see it.

Rush Limbaugh and Jay-Z having a “beef”?  President Obama is coming to cut your penis?  Rush Limbaugh being on anyone’s balls without crushing them beyond repair?

It’s just. . .I can’t make jokes about this.  It makes too many jokes about itself.  Just read the article, seriously.

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Thanks for the reading this installment!  Be here next time when things get even stranger!

VS – 8.26.09

Heads Up, In Smoke

So, I was informed today by a smoke shop owner that the rumours are true:  clove cigarettes have been banned in the US, and after September 17th, no more will be imported.

I have issues with this.  On my fucking birthday, no less.

The argument was made that flavoured cigarettes are more attractive to kids.  I don’t want kids to smoke, certainly.  I am completely against that.  However, it’s already illegal for people under 18 to buy cigarettes.  What good is banning the flavoured kinds when all cigarettes are already illegal for minors?

An argument, against this law, was made that the law banning clove cigarettes is unfairly discriminatory.  How could it be called so?  Because only one country in the world makes clove cigarettes:  Indonesia.  It’s a mammoth industry there, and this law just cost them one of the biggest markets for, well, everything in the entire world.  It’s also where Barack Obama spent a fair amount of time as a youth.  Way to completely screw over one of the countries that raised you, you fucking ingrate.

Notice above you there that I said that cloves are made in Indonesia.  That’s right, there isn’t a single brand of clove cigarette that is produced in America.  Not one.  So not only does this law screw Indonesian cigarette makers, it gives their etiquette-mandated complimentary reach-around to American tobacco companies instead.  It knocks off one of their major competitors.

Don’t think this law favours American companies enough yet?

It bans cigarette flavours like cloves, vanilla, cherry, grape, bacon (you knew somebody somewhere was working on a bacon-flavoured cigarette), orange, banana, any and all soprts of sweet cigarette flavours (even though cloves aren’t really sweet).  Except one flavour.

Menthols.

Made right here in the good old U.S. of fucking overzealous nanny-state A., by good old American tobacco companies.  In a law banning every conceivable flavour of cigarette other than plain tobacco, somehow menthols are still legal.

Political fuckery at its absolute finest here, people.  And the media has been completely ignoring the blatant use of legislation to eliminate competition for American companies, possibly because, in this current political climate, smokers and homosexuals are still completely okay to demonize and legislate against.

I’m still not going to buy American-made cigarettes.  It takes me a but a few weeks to get a passport, and Canada is only three hours away.  I’ll spend those few weeks buying every pack of clove cigarettes that I can, to hold me until I have the passport.

In case I haven’t made it clear, this law really, really fucking pisses me off.

More later.

VS – 08.20.09

My Letter To Barack Obama

I have just sent this letter to President Obama, using whitehouse.gov.  This missive was prompted by the news that the Administration may be willing to drop the public option in order to get health care reform passed.

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Dear Mr. President,

I am very very concerned about the health care debate in this country and am planning to attend a MoveOn.org event tomorrow on the topic.  I am extremely alarmed at the notion that you are willing to compromise the public option in order to achieve some sort of reform.

Mr. President, as a citizen of the United States, as a taxpayer, as someone that voted for you, I am begging you: do not relent on the public option.  We want it, we need it, it must be a part of any real reform.

My brother was hospitalized, and nearly died, earlier this year for complications resulting from diabetes.  Four years ago, he was in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit and spent a week in the Superdome, where he suffered from many infections, malnutrition, and some trauma, for which he received counseling.  He is unemployed and has no health insurance.  My mother, who has been supporting him, is a schoolteacher and facing rising medical costs of her own due to advancing age.  He was unable to afford the medication for his diabetes and so ended up hospitalized, something else that they cannot afford unless my mother is somehow able to persuade her insurance company to cover him as a dependent.

I myself am currently unemployed and have no health insurance.  I am lucky in that my mother’s daughter has a great job and excellent health insurance, so my daughter is covered.

But we, and millions of people like us across the country, need a public option and the attendant subsidies proposed .

I know it might seem like a losing battle.  Every time one turns on the TV and watches the news, there are people screaming about how this health care reform should not be passed, how it is socialistic, anti-American, will create “Death Panels,” and is evil.  There is so much coverage of the screaming, yelling people and naysaying Congresspeople that I can see how one could easily be swayed into believing that health care reform is not what the majority of Americans want.

But you must remember two things.

The first is something that you yourself said (and I am paraphrasing here): TV loves a good ruckus.  They do.  In its current sad state, our news media, the “fourth estate” that is supposed to bring us truth and counter spin in service to the people is now almost completely in service to the twin masters of their corporate owners and ratings-gathering sensationalism.  The conflicts taking place in town hall meetings make for far better TV for those masters than do the calmer, more rational, more genuine debates, and so they do not get coverage.  It is said that the conflict must be selling because we are watching it, but in fact, we are watching it because, in our desperate search for truth, there is nothing else.  Save for the oases of The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and The Rachel Maddow Show, there are almost no places on TV in which one can get glimpses of actual truth and counters to the spins and falsehoods propagated by those who would harm America for their own gain.

The second thing to remember is this:  the people yelling and screaming so loudly are a minority in this country.  By and large, they are ill-informed and betrayed for personal gain by those they want to trust.  They are afraid of changes to the status quo, even if those changes benefit them.  America is changing, it is becoming a better country, and while for some there may be racist undertones to that fear for some, the bottom line remains unchanged: they scream, and rant, and yell because they are afraid.  It’s hard to fight fear with logic and truth, but if we as a country and you as our elected representatives give in to their fear or manipulate for political gain, we will all suffer.  It’s a difficult fight, true, but not only is it a battle that must be fought, it is a battle that must be won.  Here. Now. Lives depend on this and we cannot falter.

While I understand your desire to compromise and achieve bipartisanship and consensus, I must tell you:  it’s time to give it up.  Time and time again you have offered your open hand to your opposition; in response, they have spit upon it and slapped it away.  The Republicans have no interest in bipartisanship, save that of not doing it so as to score political points with people who are afraid of change, with people who would rather put their fingers in their ears and yell into the wind than acknowledge the approaching thunder of change.

Do not give up the public option, Mr. President.

I plan on posting this letter in its entirety on my blog at http://vagabondsaint.wordpress.com .  Please do drop by for a visit, won’t you?

Sincerely,

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See?  I can write a really long letter and not use the “f” word.

Feel free to go to whitehouse.gov and copy and paste this letter for your own use, though I would advise coming up with your own anecdotal evidence first.

VS – 8.16.09