What Would Jack Do

Babies are about to get some stiff competition for worst thing to be seated next to on a long flight. Virgin Atlantic announced yesterday that passengers flying from London to NYC and vice versa aboard their Airbus A330-300 can now make cell phone calls while up in the air.

It’s official; there is NOWHERE one can escape technology, nowhere one can, for even a few brief hours, exist in untethered and unconnected bliss.

I suppose this was bound to happen eventually. First, WiFi became a profit center for airlines…and then an expectation from passenges, similar to what happened earlier for hotels. Then WiFi became a selling point for airlines, so now on many airlines, a flight to Eau Claire or Beaumont or East Nowhere will have an accompaniment of the clacking of laptop keyboards. It will only get worse, as WiFi moves from being a convenience/luxury to being a necessity of human existence.

Now cell phones are beginning to inevitably and inexorably become part of the fabric of the flying experience. Sure, there are significant limitations, and the per-minute cost is ridiculous ($1.20), but this is how the process begins; peace and serenity will gradually be whittled down to an unrecognizable nub. First a ltiny crack in the door…and before you know it, the Type A salesperson seated next to you in Cattle Car Coach will be conducting business at full volume while you learn more about their business than you could ever have wanted.

How about you just shoot me now??

Thomas Whalen, a Boston University political science professor, put it this way: “To know Mitt Romney is to dislike him. That is the moral of the story.”

I’ve been around the block a time or two, but even I have difficulty recalling a Presidential campaign in which one of the candidates was as almost-universally reviled (even by supporters) as Mitt Romney. If you think I’m being the partisan Liberal that I am, allow me to offer something in my defense. In Massachusetts, where Romney was a one-term Governor, President Obama leads Romney by 18.5%. Yeah, I get the whole “a prophet is honored everywhere but in his hometown” thing, but there’s more to it than that.

The voters of Massachusetts, having seen evidence of Romney’s leadership first-hand, know all too well that he’s possessed of neither honesty nor integrity. How bad is Romney’s relationship with the truth? He even lies about being a man of integrity. Whether it’s out of an epic lack of self-knowledge or being completely divorced from the truth (and conventional morality), the end result is a politician who defines the term, “flip flop.” Loathe though I may to quote Ronald Reagan, “He was for it before he was against it.”

Mitt Romney isn’t stupid. Far from it, but I believe he’s operating under the assumption that voters are stupid…and in that assessment he may not be far wrong. When you assume that voters are stupid, they become less people than obstacles to be negotiated and manipulated for your own self-aggrandizement. Propaganda becomes the primary reality, and the truth becomes whatever you need voters to believe. This is what “talking points” were invented for.

Romney’s biggest obstacle is self-created; he has a serious “weasel problem.”

We have literally stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi. Three blocks from the Capitol sits the only abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi. A bill was drafted. It said, if you would perform an abortion in the state of Mississippi, you must be a certified OB/GYN and you must have admitting privileges to a hospital. Anybody here in the medical field knows how hard it is to get admitting privileges to a hospital…. “It’s going to be challenged, of course, in the Supreme Court and all — but literally, we stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi, legally, without having to— Roe vs. Wade…. [I]f course, there you have the other side. They’re like, ‘Well, the poor pitiful women that can’t afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger.’ That’s what we’ve heard over and over and over…. “But hey, you have to have moral values. You have to start somewhere, and that’s what we’ve decided to do.

One of the things I’ve struggled to understand is why so many are so willing to force their narrow religiosity upon those who happen not to think along the same lines. Instead of the very simple “live and let live,” America today is infected with a virulent strain of “If you don’t believe as I do, you’re evil and therefore deserving only of destruction.” Mississippi State Rep. Bubba Carpenter (and I’ll spare you the “Bubba” jokes) is undeniably proud of making abortion- a legal right guaranteed by the Supreme Court- virtually inaccessible. Conservative zealots have worked hard to circumvent Roe v. Wade; it seems they care only for achieving their goal: abolishing abortion, the Supreme Court or the rule of law be damned.

Then there are those, many of whom also think like Carpenter, who have worked zealously to outlaw same-sex marriage. Arguing that same-sex marriage is somehow a threat to their own marriage, they with increasing success have worked to ensure that the GLBT community is legally defined as second-class, less deserving of the rights and benefits that accrue to “normal” people.

How is threatening the health and well-being of women indicative of “moral values?” How does enshrining hatred, discrimination, and exclusivity into a state’s constitution prove that said state is morally superior to those (Iowa, Massachusetts) who allow the LGBT community the same rights and benefits that heterosexuals enjoy? We’re not talking “special rights;” it’s really just about human rights. Then again, I suppose if you view a minority class of people as subhuman, then you’re just doing what needs to be done, right?

Hey, if they didn’t want to be discriminated against, they should have chosen to be straight, knowhutimean??

In the end, I suppose it’s easier to oppress those we don’t or can’t be bothered to understand than it is to take a look inward and determine what it is that has so blackened our collective heart and stripped us of our compassion.

Two parent chaperones at a Colorado high school prom sprayed Lysol on students engaged in “dirty dancing” and called several teenage girls “sluts and whores” for making it appear “they were advertising butt sex,” according to cops. he bizarre incident last month at the Manitou Springs High School resulted in harassment charges being filed against Jennifer Farmer and Hannah Rockey, both 42-year-old mothers who allegedly dispersed the disinfectant in a bid to pry apart underage revelers…. [T]he chaperones—who were dressed in combat boots, military fatigues, and military undershirt—noted that “some of the kids were becoming disruptive and were being explicit while dancing.”

Conflict between generations has been around as long as there have been parents and children. It’s a natural part of the human equation, I suppose; my father and I used to have knock-down, drag-out fights over haircuts. He insisted that I get a crewcut, and I wanted to grow my hair down to my shoulders. Many was the time I’d lock myself in my room…only to remember that eventually I’d need to eat and/or use the bathroom. So much for my deeply principled protests….

I’m no fan of “dirty dancing,” but sometimes you just have to allow kids to be kids. As adults, you or I might not engage in something so crass, but most kids live to piss off adults. It’s as true today as it was during my schoolboy days. ‘Course, I don’t recall parents showing up in fatigues and wielding cans of Lysol.

The two mothers in question (who, I would argue, have little business even being parents) really need to take a step back and take a good long look at their own intolerance. It’s one thing to raise their own children to be intolerant and inflexible, but I can’t help but wonder what they think gives them the right to impose their views on the children of others? More to the point, what gives them the right to spray the children of others with Lysol in an effort to impose their self-righteous, intolerant “morality?”

Perhaps the two mothers could benefit by honestly examining their own motives and prejudices; why are they so frightened of something they clearly don’t understand? Again, it’s not something you or I might engage in, but in the end who’s being harmed by “dirty dancing”…or any other form of teenage expression? Remember, it wasn’t all that long ago that we were doing much the same things to our own parents.

Lighten up…and the next time you decide to referee a high-school dance, how about leaving the fatigues and the Lysol at home? You can thank me later.

(via Gingersnaps in the Morning)