[Update…] Apparently initial autopsy results were inconclusive. But…look at this from Raw Story…
The actor’s personal strife was accompanied by professional anxiety.
Ledger said in an interview in November that "Dark Knight" and last year’s "I’m Not There," took a heavy toll. He said he "stressed out a little too much" during the Dylan film, and had trouble sleeping while portraying the Joker, whom he called a "psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy."
"Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night," Ledger told The New York Times. "I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going." He said he took two Ambien pills, which only worked for an hour.
Holy Crap! I had a prescription of Ambien once and just one of those things would slam me down flat all night and halfway into the next morning. And those things are horribly addictive (it took me a month and a half of slowly cutting the pills down smaller and smaller every night to ween myself off the stuff) and I swore afterward that I’d never touch the stuff again. And he was downing two at a time and they weren’t doing anything for him??? Wow. Just… Wow.
I don’t think most of us who only watch their performances up on the silver screen really appreciate how incredibly stressful that life is. They make it look easy and it isn’t.
Stuttgart – Jan 17, 2008 — Stuttgart – The Mercedes-Benz C-Class has emerged the winner of Germany’s largest vote for the most popular car by a wide margin. Accordingly the motoring organisation ADAC has presented its sought-after "Yellow Angel 2008" award to this Stuttgart-made public favourite.
The "Yellow Angel" awards, which the ADAC presents annually for outstanding performance, are named after the nickname given to the ADAC’s friendly breakdown service personnel and are among Europe’s most sought-after motoring awards. Consumers find them a valuable decision-making guide, as criteria such as price/performance ratio, practicality, economy, safety and environmental compatibility also play a part in the selection process.
The vote was between 36 vehicles which newly entered the market in 2007. Around 340,000 people cast their votes and awarded first place to the Mercedes-Benz C-Class by a wide margin over the runner-up. Europe’s largest motoring association – it has around 16 million members – rewarded this clear-cut result with the "Yellow Angel 2008" award for Germany’s favourite car.
…
Germany’s favourite car is also very much a bestseller. With 261,500 examples sold in 2007, unit sales of the saloon increased by 57 percent.
The C-Class has already collected several awards for its exceptional status in the mid-range segment. The readers of AUTO BILD voted it the most attractive saloon, the motoring magazine "auto, motor und sport" declared it the most appealing medium-sized car and 350,000 participants in Europe’s largest internet survey voted it Europe’s favourite car with the 2007 "Carolina" Internet Auto Award.
I’ll say this…as soon as I sat down in one at the Mercedes dealership in Hunt Valley back in September, I just knew deep down inside that this is the One. But it’s great to know they’re enthusiastic about this new Mercedes back in Germany because I think it means the company really does have its grove back now. Mine was made at a factory just outside of Stuttgart.
I’ve put about 7500 miles on Traveler since I took delivery back in October, drove it down to Disneyworld and Key West last month, and I haven’t had problem one. It’s been absolutely reliable and solid in the way that I’d always admired Mercedes-Benz autos for, back when I was a kid. And…it’s a beautiful car…in that straightforward, understated Mercedes-Benz way because when you’re engineered like that you don’t have to shout. You just Are.
This isn’t bragging…I’m obviously still in new car love. Your mileage will of course, vary. Some folks want the Corvette. Some just gotta have that big truck or SUV. Some want the Mini Cooper. Some would rather have the Harley. This car is me. Absolutely me.
…plans to “decide in about a month” on another third-party run at the White House. In addition to having done enough damage to our country already, Ralph is 74 years old—three years older than ancient ol’ John McCain—and really ought to be thinking about retirement.
C’mon, Ralph. Don’t you want to enjoy your golden years? Kick back—you’ve earned it. Don’t you wanna travel a bit, see the country…
Tell you what, Ralph, if you don’t run for president I’ll head up a fundraising drive to purchase you a nice car—perhaps a bitchin’ vintage ‘62 Corvair—for you to tour the country in. Whatdaya say, Ralph?
Same-sex couples are just as committed in their romantic relationships as heterosexual couples, according to a report.
The finding disputes the stereotype that couples in same-sex relationships are not as committed as their heterosexual counterparts and therefore not as psychologically healthy.
The study examined whether committed same-sex couples differed from engaged and married opposite-sex couples in how well they interacted and how satisfied they were with their partners.
Researchers from the University of Illinois compared 30 committed gay male and 30 committed lesbian couples with 50 engaged heterosexual couples and 40 older married heterosexual couples, as well as with dating heterosexual couples.
Results of a questionnaire and a laboratory task showed that same-sex relationships were similar to those of opposite-sex couples in many ways.
All had positive views of their relationships but those in the more committed relationships (gay and straight) resolved conflict better than the heterosexual dating couples.
The notion that committed same-sex relationships are "atypical, psychologically immature, or malevolent contexts of development was not supported by our findings," said lead author Glenn I. Roisman.
"Compared with married individuals, committed gay males and lesbians were not less satisfied with their relationships."
And he added: "Gay males and lesbians in this study were generally not different from their committed heterosexual counterparts on how well they interacted with one another, although some evidence emerged the lesbian couples were especially effective at resolving conflict."
Yeah…male ego… But still. It’s possible. It can happen. To us too. That’s what they never wanted us to know…
The study features in the January issue of Developmental Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association.
Via Slashdot…one poor lonely heterosexual geek is looking for love…
"Craiglist offers an interesting approach to finding a life partner , summmary: "There is a sad truth to the world today. I am part of a dying breed of people known as "shell users." … Because there are fewer and fewer of us, I must help keep our lineage alive. I am looking for someone to help me do this. I need a woman (obviously) who is willing to raise a child with me in the method of Unix."."
Oh that poor kid…
Look…I’ve been a computer geek since microcomputers first started appearing on the shelves. I earn my living coding, and designing somewhat complex software systems. I didn’t start out in Unix, but DOS, and I spent many years before Windows wielding a command prompt, thinking nothing of jamming complex dos commands together in order to do something I needed doing. These days with Linux I can #!/bin/sh to my heart’s content. but trust me, you just plain don’t want to know what I know about DOS batch file programming. And I really don’t think I need more geekiness in my life, thank you. Two of us under the same roof would be too much.
I’m not looking for a Luddite by any means. But a boyfriend who knows there is life somewhere offline too, and who would rather spend his time there, would be helpful. In friendship you want your reflection. In love you want your complement.
Looks like the new ‘E’ class is going to look a bit like the new ‘C’ class…
Look familiar? I did a double-take when I saw this and thought for a moment that the image had been mislabeled an ‘E’ when it should have been labeled a ‘C’. Then I looked closer. From the back it looks different enough though…
The trunk curves in a nicer way then my ‘C’, although I think the rear end look of my ‘C’ is pretty nice too. But it looks to my eye like the rear passenger doors on this new ‘E’ slope down a bit too much at the back. But if it’s got a longer wheelbase then the ‘C’ then that slope probably isn’t as bad as it looks. The tailpipes could have come right off my ‘C’. And for that matter, so could the front grille. Here’s what the new interior looks like…
The door panels are almost identical to my ‘C’. They have the seat adjustment buttons on them and mine has them on the side of the seat, but that’s a fluke of the U.S. ‘C’ version only. Note the trapdoor for the nav system video display above the center air vents…just like in my ‘C’ class, only a tad wider. The controls on the console below it are almost identical to my ‘C’, except for their color scheme. It looks like there is an extra button next to the seat warmer buttons and that’s all. The instrument cluster is arranged a bit differently, and it looks like they’re all digital displays, whereas mine are real gauges, with a digital display in the center of the speedometer gauge. The steering wheel is identical to mine, again except for the color scheme. There’s more wood on the dash, but less on the center console. I’ll assume some center console wood can be added optionally. Otherwise, this new ‘E’ is only about as sumptuous on the inside as my ‘C’ and that can’t be right.
By the way…I really Like the fact that my video display can be tucked away while I’m driving. It’s distracting otherwise. When I need to see a detailed map or something it’s nice to bring it out. But once I have what I need off of it I like being able to tuck it back away.
It’s nine degrees at BWI airport as I write this. You can really tell how poorly insulated a 1950s brick house is when it gets this cold. The two exterior walls here at Casa del Garrett, front and back, are just radiating coldness. It’s days like this I don’t mind that I didn’t buy an end-of-group unit.
Ironically enough, the previous owners installed really nice double-pane glass windows. The concrete block and brick veneer exterior walls probably loose way more heat then the windows in them do.
Via Pam’s House Blend… This from The Opine Editorials…which bills itself as "Defending marriage on the firm ground of reason and respect for human dignity".
I was reading an article on National Review Online recently and ran across an inspirational passage that made me realize the tremendous contributions of so many of our fellow defenders of the institution of marriage.
The article’s author is David French, a soldier in America’s Army Reserve fighting in Iraq, as well as a soldier in the war to protect traditional marriage!
“As a bit of background, I’m a mobilized reservist (in my civilian life, I’m a senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund and regularly contribute to NRO’s “Phi Beta Cons” blog) supporting 2nd (Sabre) Squadron, 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, one of the Army’s most storied units. I serve as the squadron’s judge advocate (lawyer), and I’ve been pushed forward as part of “Operation Raider Harvest.””
Alliance Defense Fund is on the forefront of the battle against same-sex “marriage”.
I found the specter of a man who spends half his time fighting America’s enemies within & the other half fighting Americas enemies abroad to be truly inspirational!
"Freedom of Speech" carries the obligation to speak THE Truth, with the implication that righteous Americans also have a right to freedom from from untruths.
There are no such words in the constitution as "Freedom of Thought". Righteous Americans, however, do have the right to be free from having untruths shoved in their face and down their throats, and they do have the right to protect innocents’ freedom from exposure to these untruths.
"Making a case for change" is not the same thing as petitioning for a redress of grievances. "Grievances" connotes that there is something that is immoral that must be corrected in order to bring this country closer to the ideal of the moral straight, true and narrow. "Change" can be whatever you like even if it is immoral. There is no ‘freedom’ to make a case for allowing paedophelia, but a freedom FROM such immorality.
America is built on the metaphor of ‘Family’. Thus, that which mocks the moral wholesomeness of the family which is the bedrock of America’s moral superiority is an EMEMY of America.
Dig it. According to this true blue American patriot, there is no such thing as freedom of thought, let alone freedom of speech. And he was promptly followed up by this…
Anyone pushing such an agenda acts against the family and the dignity of the human being, and as such is not merely an enemy of America but an enemy of humanity itself, because the acts that he/she wants society to affirm and condone are clearly “acts of grave depravity.”
Human dignity anyone? There is no freedom of thought. Homosexuals are the enemy within. Homosexuals are the enemies of America. Homosexuals are the enemies of humanity. Some days I wonder if this was how it felt to be a Jew in Europe during the late 1920s. Oh…don’t worry about them…they’re just a bunch of fringe lunatics. Crazies. Nobody takes them seriously…
[Update…] Another commenter adds:
It appears to me that the vast majority of LGBT folks have a selfish and single-minded "what’s in it for me" attitude towards the +/- 5% of LGBT folks who are actiist and actively working to undermine the family, religion, and the institution of marriage.
So long as they are promised their "special rights", the vast majority is perfectly willing to let the nihilists run the larger agenda of evil.
…so in addition to all of the above, homosexuals are also part of a larger agenda of evil.
Fourteen cigar boxes full of the loose change I’d taken out of my pockets every night as I undressed for bed for the past fifteen years, came to just under three-thousand dollars the other day. You should have seen the looks I got from the folks waiting for a teller in my bank as I wheeled all those cigar boxes in.
My bank, let it be said, was very cool about it. I asked ahead of time, and they didn’t demand I wrap up all those coins, and they didn’t charge me for counting them. The branch customer service manager cheerfully took the cart I’d loaded with all those cigar boxes around behind the teller windows to the coin counting machine and then gave me a deposit slip afterward with the yield amount on it. She was all smiles, and so was the young teller who ran it all through the machine. I guess I made their day.
Of course the drawback to all of this is that if I’d bought savings bonds with that money it would have been earning interest all this time. I have a little wooden box on my dresser that resembles an old pirate treasure chest and that’s where I toss my loose change at the end of my day. Whenever it filled up I’d transfer some of it to a cigar box and put it away. I think from now on I’ll go buy a savings bond with it instead.
I can only smile ruefully when I consider how prepared I was for the adventure that awaited me. I was not prepared at all. I had no skills in boxing or jujitsu, not to mention smuggling, crossing boarders illegally, using secret codes, and so on: skills that would have stood me in good stead in the coming years. My spiritual preparation for what was ahead was almost equally inadequate. Is it not said in peacetime the chiefs of staff always prepare their armies as well as possible – for the previous war? I cannot judge the truth of that, but it is certainly true that conscientious parents always educate their sons for the era that is just over.
Via Elizabeth Warren: William F. Buckley discovers the virtues of regulation and calls for government intervention to help fix the mortgage crisis.
If conservative principles are abandoned so easily in the face of a bad economic situation, what was the whole thing about in the first place?
Oh. You thought they really believed all that crap did you? (Well..of course Krugman doesn’t…) This from Warren:
I’m willing to go with Big Bill on his basic idea. Let’s all admit that consumer credit markets need basic safety regulations in place all the time. Without those regulations, we are ALL put at risk, the reckless and the prudent alike. If this economy melts down, it will take us all, and that means we have a collective interest in sensible credit regulation.
Just so. This is the problem with deregulation theology. The titans of business aren’t any less likely to get suckered into some stupid get rich quick scheme then you or I. The problem is when they do it they’re playing with other people’s money…their investors. And more then likely, their investors are also playing with other people’s money. And where does all that money ultimately come from? Banks…bonds…securities…pension and retirement funds…municipal funds… You and I, in other words.
And…hahahaha…weren’t they talking about opening up the social security trust fund to the Wall Street boys just a few years ago…as a way to save it from bankruptcy…?
Microsoft is developing Big Brother-style software capable of remotely monitoring a worker’s productivity, physical wellbeing and competence.
The Times has seen a patent application filed by the company for a computer system that links workers to their computers via wireless sensors that measure their metabolism. The system would allow managers to monitor employees’ performance by measuring their heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure. Unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on the basis of a computer’s assessment of their physiological state.
Technology allowing constant monitoring of workers was previously limited to pilots, firefighters and Nasa astronauts. This is believed to be the first time a company has proposed developing such software for mainstream workplaces.
Microsoft submitted a patent application in the US for a “unique monitoring system” that could link workers to their computers. Wireless sensors could read “heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement facial movements, facial expressions and blood pressure”, the application states.
The system could also “automatically detect frustration or stress in the user” and “offer and provide assistance accordingly”. Physical changes to an employee would be matched to an individual psychological profile based on a worker’s weight, age and health. If the system picked up an increase in heart rate or facial expressions suggestive of stress or frustration, it would tell management that he needed help.
Can’t you just see how Microsoft is going to market this? Oh…we’re just trying to Help make your office experience more enjoyable…
The saving grace of it is that any technology capable of producing tiny devices to monitor your every breath with is also capable of producing tiny devices to fuck with the monitoring devices. But still…this is beyond sad. It’s disgusting. Next time Bill, or anyone in the Microsoft boardroom is testifying before congress about something, someone should ask them if they plan to sell this technology to totalitarian states. Because of course, if a U.S. company doesn’t sell police state technology to police states, someone else will and that’s money out of our pockets isn’t it?
I sure hope nobody asks me to work on the software for crap like this. I’ll work on it alright…
I was raised a Baptist. And in my family’s particular strain of the faith, I was pretty much constantly taught that the human race is no damn good. My maternal grandmother was the most sour person you could imagine growing up with. As long as I knew her, I never once saw her smile, unless it was at someone else’s misfortune. But make no mistake, her pleasure did not arise from the sight of someone being brought down. To her it was always more a matter of misfortune reminding us that we were all no good in the eyes of the Lord. The instant you find yourself enjoying life, it could only have been because you were doing something wrong, and you needed to repent. So…obviously my memories of her aren’t exactly joyful. But one memory sticks in my mind as a time when I actually saw myself, very reluctantly, admiring her.
We were waiting in a train station for my mom to come back from some trip…I forget what it was for. It was sometime in the late 1950s and I was a very young child, holding on to grandma’s hand as we sat waiting for mom. In those days there was still legalized and enforced race segregation and the station had separate areas for "whites" and "coloreds." But grandma was tired that day, and had decided to take us to the first seats she saw available…in the colored section.
A kindly station manager came over and politely told grandma she had to move, she was in the wrong part of the station. I forget now what exactly he said to her, only that it provoked one of grandma’s stock in trade fire and brimstone sermons. How dare he, she thundered, set himself above anyone for the color of their skin! How dare he tell people where they could sit because of the color of their skin! I suppose if we were both black the police would have been promptly called and we’d have both gone off to jail. But this guy just shook his head and walked away with grandma still sniping at him as he left. The station was mostly empty anyway.
It was years later before I finally realized what it was that had so deeply offended grandma. She wasn’t angry that this guy thought that black people were inferior. What had pissed her off was that he thought because he was white, he wasn’t.
I’m telling you this, because of an amazing book of history I’m reading now. And like all truly amazing history books, this one is a personal account, told by an average everyday person who actually lived it, who saw it with his own eyes.
How I came to find it: In comments to my post a few days ago on Why American News Sucks In A Nutshell, Peterson Toscano linked to this article on AlterNet, Creeping Fascism: From Nazi Germany to Post 9/11 America. That article by Ray McGovern begins thusly:
Americans today are seeing the same sheepish submissiveness that characterized Germany after the burning of the Reichstag.
"There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theater … Perhaps the only comparably odd thing is the way that now, years later …"
These are the words of Sebastian Haffner (pen name for Raimund Pretzel), who as a young lawyer in Berlin during the 1930s experienced the Nazi takeover and wrote a firsthand account. His children found the manuscript when he died in 1999 and published it the following year as "Geschichte eines Deutschen" (The Story of a German). The book became an immediate bestseller and has been translated into 20 languages — in English as "Defying Hitler."
I recently learned from his daughter Sarah, an artist in Berlin, that yesterday was the 100th anniversary of Haffner’s birth. She had seen an earlier article in which I quoted her father and emailed to ask me to "write some more about the book and the comparison to Bush’s America … this is almost unbelievable."
At the end of the article, which mostly recounts the passivity of the press and congressional democrats to the Bush republicans in-your-face violations of constitutional law in order to spy on American citizens, McGovern turns finally to Haffner’s book and the parallels to what Haffner saw as the Nazis rose to power become scary…
In his journal Sebastian Haffner decries what he calls the "sheepish submissiveness" with which the German people reacted to a 9/11-like event, the burning of the German parliament building (Reichstag) on Feb. 27, 1933. Haffner finds it quite telling that none of his acquaintances "saw anything out of the ordinary in the fact that, from then on, one’s telephone would be tapped, one’s letters opened and one’s desk might be broken into."
But it is for the cowardly politicians that Haffner reserves his most vehement condemnation. Do you see any contemporary parallels here?
In the elections of March 4, 1933, shortly after the Reichstag fire, the Nazi party garnered only 44 percent of the vote. Only the "cowardly treachery" of the Social Democrats and other parties to whom 56 percent of the German people had entrusted their votes made it possible for the Nazis to seize full power. Haffner adds:
"It is in the final analysis only that betrayal that explains the almost inexplicable fact that a great nation, which cannot have consisted entirely of cowards, fell into ignominy without a fight."
The Social Democratic leaders betrayed their followers — "for the most part decent, unimportant individuals." In May they sang the Nazi anthem; in June the Social Democratic party was dissolved.
The middle-class Catholic party Zentrum folded in less than a month and in the end supplied the votes necessary for the two-thirds majority that "legalized" Hitler’s dictatorship.
As for the right-wing conservatives and German nationalists: "Oh God," writes Haffner, "what an infinitely dishonorable and cowardly spectacle their leaders made in 1933 and continued to make afterward. … They went along with everything: the terror, the persecution of Jews. … They were not even bothered when their own party was banned and their own members arrested." In sum:
"There was not a single example of energetic defense, of courage or principle. There was only panic, flight, and desertion. In March 1933 millions were ready to fight the Nazis. Overnight they found themselves without leaders. … At the moment of truth, when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans collectively and limply collapsed. They yielded and capitulated, and suffered a nervous breakdown. … The result is today the nightmare of the rest of the world."
This is what can happen when virtually all are intimidated.
Our founding fathers were not oblivious to this; thus, James Madison wrote:
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. … The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
Haffner’s words spoke to me…they grabbed me by the collar…
"There was not a single example of energetic defense, of courage or principle. There was only panic, flight, and desertion…millions were ready to fight the Nazis. Overnight they found themselves without leaders. … At the moment of truth, when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans collectively and limply collapsed. They yielded and capitulated, and suffered a nervous breakdown. … The result is today the nightmare of the rest of the world."
…and I had to get a copy of his book. I’m reading it now. I’m only into the opening chapters, where he relates his experiences growing up during the first world war, as a necessary background to understanding what came later. But it is already an absorbing, disturbing read. I find myself devouring it.
As usual, when reading a firsthand account of a period of history that you thought you knew from the books and grainy black and white newsreel footage, you discover quickly that what you thought you knew was only a small slice of the whole, and that you were missing things, many things, especially those little commonplace day-to-day things that fade with time and memory, allowing you to keep history’s terrible events at a safe distance from the present. Oh…that could Never happen nowadays. Already just a few chapters into his book, Haffner has obliterated that distance for me, and his past becomes all too real, all too immediate…
I need to show you this, from the third chapter of his book. Here, Haffner is describing how the first world war affected him, and his childhood companions…
For a schoolboy in Berlin, the war was something very unreal; it was like a game. There were no air raids and no bombs. There were the wounded, but you saw them only at a distance. One had relatives at the front, of course, and now and then one heard of a death. But being a child, one quickly got used to their absence, and the fact that this absence sometimes became irrevocable did not seem to matter. As to the real hardships and privations, they were of small account. Naturally the food was poor. Later there was too little food, and our shoes had clattering wooden soles, our suits were turned, there were school collections for bones and cherry pits and surprisingly frequent illnesses. I must admit, all that made little impression. Not that I bore it all "like a little hero". It’s just that there was nothing very special to bear. I thought as little about food as a soccer enthusiast at a cup final. The army bulletins interested me far more then the menu.
The analogy with the soccer fan can be carried further. In those childhood days, I was a war fan just as one is a soccer fan. I would be making myself out worse then I was if I were to claim that I was caught up in the hate propaganda that, from 1915 to 1918, sought to whip up the flagging enthusiasm of the first few months of the war. I hated the French, the English and the Russians as little as the Portsmouth supporters detest Wolverhampton fans. Of course, I prayed for their defeat and humiliation, but only because those were the necessary counterparts of my side’s victory and triumph.
What counted was the fascination with the game of war, in which, according to certain mysterious rules, the number of prisoners taken, miles advanced, fortifications seized, and ships sunk played almost the same as goals in soccer and points in boxing. I never wearied of keeping internal scorecards. I was a zealous reader of the army bulletins, which I would proceed to recalculate in my own fashion, according to my own mysterious, irrational rules: thus, for instance, ten Russian prisoners were equivalent to one English or French prisoner, and fifty airplanes to one cruiser. If there had been statistics of those killed, I would certainly not have hesitated to "recalculate" the dead. I would not have stopped to think what the objects of my arithmetic looked like in reality. It was a dark, mysterious game and it’s never-ending, wicked lure eclipsed everything else, making daily life seem trite. It was addictive, like roulette and opium. My friends and I played it all through the war: four long years unpunished and undisturbed. It is this game, and not the harmless battle games we organized in the streets and playgrounds nearby, that has left its dangerous mark on all of us.
Sound familiar? Haffner goes on to say later, that the Nazi base came mostly from his middle class generation, untouched by war except as a series of army bulletins, seeing it only in the abstract, somewhat like a soccer game.
From 1914 to 1918 a generation of German schoolboys daily experienced war as a great, thrilling, enthralling game between nations, which provided far more excitement and emotional satisfaction then anything peace could offer; and that has now become the underlying vision of Nazism. That is where it draws its allure from: its simplicity, its appeal to the imagination, and its zest for action; but also its intolerance and its cruelty toward internal opponents. Anyone who does not join in is a spoilsport. Ultimately that is the source of Nazism’s belligerent attitude toward neighboring states. Other countries are not regarded as neighbors but must be opponents, whether they like it or not. Otherwise the match would have to be called off!
Many things later bolstered Nazism and modified its character, but its roots lie here: in the experience of war – not by German soldiers, but by German schoolboys at home. Indeed, the front line generation has produced relatively few genuine Nazis, and is better known for its critics and carpers. That is easy to understand. Men who have experienced the reality of war tend to view it differently. Granted there are exceptions: the eternal warriors, who found their vocation in war, with all its terrors and continue to do so; and the eternal failures, who welcome its horrors and its destruction as a revenge on a life that has proved too much for them. Göring perhaps belongs to the former type; Hitler certainly to the latter. The truly Nazi generation was formed by those born in the decade from 1900 to 1910, who experienced war as a great game and were untouched by its realities.
Sound Familiar?
All my grade school life, and for decades after, I’ve been told that Hitler rose to power because of a character flaw of the German people, something specific to the German soul that the rest of humanity somehow naturally rose above. I’ve never believed it. Never. Thanks I’m certain, to that Baptist upbringing I had, and my church’s constant drumming into my head that the human race was a pretty sad, sorry, good-for-nothing thing that no amount of fixing could improve, and the best we could do was beg God for forgiveness. I’ve never believed that either I’m pleased to say, but at least I seem to have absorbed the lesson that, for good or ill, we’re all pretty much the same deep down inside. The irrational passions that move your neighbors one day, might just as easily grab you by the collar the next if you’re not careful. We are not fallen angels, but risen apes. Our line is legitimate, and thoroughly anchored to the natural world, and to that ancient past from which we emerged so many millions of years ago. Old…very old…tides pull and tug at our consciousness. We are capable of great things, but also terrible things. All of us. What happened to the German people could just as easily happen to us. Maybe it already is.
I’ll probably be posting more about Haffner’s book as I continue reading it. But you should go buy it. Sit down with it and read it. Let it transport you back to a time and place you only think you know about. Then lift your eyes from its pages, and look around.
My Friend Jon Larimore, who himself was once the sysop of the Gay and Lesbian Information Bureau BBS System, informed me the other day that the Internet filters at Panera Bread are still calling this web site pornographic. I admit to feeling a small twinge of pride when Jon and I were sitting down to eat at Panera some months ago, and I first saw that message blocking access to my web site, with the notice that it had been deemed pornographic. I was also given a helpful address where I could appeal their decision if I felt that it was unwarranted. Of course I have no intention of doing that because I know damn well what the problem is. It isn’t that there’s actually anything pornographic anywhere here. At most this site might occasionally get an ‘R’ rating…but most of the time it would only merit a ‘PG’ and that for my tendency to curse a lot when I get angry.
Oh no…the problem is that I am a gay man, writing about my life openly and honestly and I don’t give a flying fuck if any of that bothers the bigots. Remember this: A militant homosexual is a homosexual who doesn’t think there is anything wrong with being a homosexual. A militant homosexual activist is a homosexual acting like they don’t think there is anything wrong with being a homosexual. You don’t have to march in any Pride Day parade. You don’t have to walk a protest line. You don’t have to wave your rainbow flag. All you need to be labeled a Militant Homosexual is believe you have the same right to exist as anyone else. Then you are a militant. And if you push back when you are pushed around by bigotry, then you are a militant activist.
I’m especially proud that this little notice from Jon that I’m still being blocked just coincidentally happened to come near the anniversary of a major milestone in gay history…the day we won the right to send and receive publications written by and for gay folks through the mail.
ONE, Inc. was founded by several members of the Los Angeles Mattachine Society who felt that a strong nationwide voice for education and advocacy was desperately needed. According to ONE, Inc.’s articles of incorporation, “…the specific and primary purposes … are to publish and disseminate a magazine dealing primarily with homosexuality from the scientific, historical and critical point of view, and to aid in the social integration and rehabilitation of the sexual variant.” But this wasn’t going to be just any magazine. Under the inaugural editorial leadership of Martin Block, Dale Jennings, Don Slater and Donald Webster Cory, ONE magazine was to be a first class product, a dramatic departure from the typewritten and mimeographed sheets which were more common at the time.
This Internet you are reading now, with the vast freedom of information and personal knowledge it makes possible, is an amazing, glorious thing to some of us who remember what the world was like once upon a time, when the censors could decide for us what we could and could not read…what we could and could not know…
ONE filled a very critical role for gays and lesbians during a very dark time. ONE’s debut coincided with a major push to rid the U.S. civil service of homosexuals. President Dwight D. Eisenhower would sign Executive Order 10450 in April of that year, which barred gays and lesbians from federal employment with its “sexual perversion” clause. This followed a highly-publicized purge of more than 400 gays and lesbians from the civil service some three years earlier. Homosexuality was criminalized in most states, and it was stigmatized as a mental illness by the psychiatric profession. Gays were not only denounced as security risks, but risks to the very moral fiber of the nation. Homosexuals were treated as subversives, on par with the “Communist menace” on which leading politicians were staking their career. The FBI had launched a major crackdown on homosexuality across the U.S., with many gays and lesbians losing their jobs for merely receiving homophile publications in the mail. And vice squads everywhere were setting up entrapment stings in bars and other meeting places, where a simple proposition or touch could lead to arrest and public exposure.
So when ONE caught the eye of the FBI, they immediately launched an investigation to try to shut it down. They went so far as to write to the employers of ONE’s editors and writers (they all depended on their day jobs for income), saying that their employees were “deviants” and “security risks.” Fortunately, no one lost their jobs, the FBI decided it wasn’t worth their time, and ONE continued publishing.
The job of shutting down ONE then fell to the U.S. Post Office. Since its inception, Los Angeles postal authorities vetted each issue before deciding whether it was legal to ship under the Post Office’s stringent anti-obscenity standards. And since homosexuality was illegal in most states, ONE had the added problem of possibly being guilty of promoting criminal activity…
In those days, the only voices allowed to publicly speak about homosexuals and homosexuality, were the voices of those who hated us. If we ourselves spoke up, if we published our stories in any form, we risked arrest, exposure, the loss of our jobs, our homes, and jail. This is how censorship and the sodomy laws together maintained the status-quo, by silencing dissent. And back then homosexuals were so universally despised that even the ACLU would not take this case…in fact, it defended the existence of the sodomy laws.
Two things changed all that, and made possible the world we now live in today: a scrappy little gay publication named One, and the supreme court of Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Warren court is almost universally hated today by the American right. From its striking down of the laws allowing race segregation to its striking down of the laws restricting the rights of Americans to freedom of speech and freedom of the press…even extending those rights to a hated minority, there is almost nothing the Warren court did, that the republicans have not vowed to overturn, should they get their chance to stack the court with like-minded right wingers.
So far Bush has given them two more justices. They only need one more.
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — For many who lived through Vermont’s not-so-civil debate over civil unions, the memories remain painfully fresh: hate mail, threatening telephone messages, tense public meetings.
This time around, as the state weighs whether to legalize gay marriage, the debate is noticeably tamer with little of the vitriol and recrimination that surrounded its groundbreaking 2000 decision to legally recognize gay and lesbian couples.
…
Although that absence of an impending vote may be what’s keeping things civil, people involved in the debate have noticed a change in atmosphere.
"It’s a very different tenor," said Beth Robinson, chairwoman of the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force, which supports gay marriage. "People have had an opportunity to come to terms. Vermonters have had eight years to see the two guys next door, or the two women down the street who have a legally recognized relationship under the civil unions law."
Ah yes… Now that they’ve had a chance to see how it works for themselves, and that the sky didn’t fall when same sex couples were allowed to have the same rights as opposite sex couples…tensions have eased, and people are more use to the idea….
"It was a time unlike anything since the Vietnam War era, when you had the sense that the whole world around you was divided," said David Moats, author of "Civil Wars: A Battle For Gay Marriage," a book about Vermont’s civil unions controversy.
…
Last summer, the Legislature appointed an 11-member Vermont Commission on Family Recognition and Protection to explore the idea of gay marriage and hear how Vermonters feel about it. The panel, which opponents say is stacked with gay marriage supporters and have boycotted, has held seven hearings and has three more scheduled.
The hearings have generated plenty of input, but no name-calling or personal attacks.
James LaPierre, who has a civil union partner and two children, saw the contrast firsthand. He went to a 2000 meeting on civil unions intending to get up and speak, but he was intimidated by the atmosphere and kept quiet.
"People would stand up and go to the microphone and there was jeering and catcalling," said LaPierre, 43, a nurse from Burlington. "It was hateful, and scary."
Last month, LaPierre went to a hearing by the Commission on Family Recognition. This time, the gathering was "supportive" and he got up and spoke. But it had fewer people — about 100, by his count, compared with about 500 at the 2000 event.
"Instead of a hateful, unruly, mob-like meeting, it was civil and organized. There was representation of the other side, but only two or three people," he said.
Now…you see how that works? When people can see for themselves that gay folks aren’t monsters out to destroy America and Family Life and Moral Values things get a lot calmer.
Oh…wait…
Opponents believe the change in tone may have more to do with their boycott — and the lack of impending action — than acceptance of gay marriage.
There’s the reason things are more civil today in Vermont then they were in 2000. It’s the boycott. The bigots figured they were going to loose…probably even worse this time then in 2000 because their vitriolic hate looks so ugly in retrospect…and so they called a boycott of the town meetings. And so…surprise, surprise…things are a lot calmer now.
This isn’t so much an indication of progress, as a reminder that things would have been a lot calmer back then too, were it not for the hate mongers. Nobody’s really moved on this issue; the majority of Vermonters didn’t object to same sex marriage or they’d have thrown out of office all the politicians who supported it and that wasn’t what happened. Only the bigots care, and of course they still care as much now as they ever did. If you could teach a bigot something they wouldn’t be bigots. The only thing that’s changed in Vermont is that this time the bigots aren’t going to those town meetings to whip everyone into a frenzy of hate. So things are calmer. How…unsurprising.
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