08.11.10
Posted in Teaching in prison at 11:34 am by Administrator
My students range from unmotivated to driven, from third- or fourth-grade academic level to college level, at least in reading. Most of my students have maturity levels significantly below their ages, which is a product both of what got them into this concrete-block world in the first place and of the institution itself. Imprisonment does not foster emotional growth, but that’s another story.
A prison teacher has to find a balance between strict adherence to rules, along with recognition that staff and inmates are natural enemies, and building enough friendly trust to give non-threatening guidance. I lean toward the latter.
Younger inmates cannot be seen working in class, except under my harassment, because they have to look tough. I had the same experience with my high school students last year. Part of being tough is to seem savvy enough to need only street smarts. It’s hard to convince them that the guys who tell them what to do have gained my kind of knowledge, whether from school or just through native intelligence, as well as the street’s lessons.
It’s almost magical what a few years, and, I think, a little restriction in the flow of testosterone, does to these guys. Older students, by and large, start thinking beyond the needs of a narrowly dictatorial peer group, aka, a gang. They tend to be serious, or, at least, less disruptive students. I have a couple of exceptions to that rule, but even in these guys, I’m seeing evolution toward introspection. Both have earned the respect of the younger inmates and enjoy their new status as thought leaders. They’re getting more confidence in their own judgment as a result.
With younger students, you teach the “why” as well as the “how.” With adults, you teach the “how” and let the “why” develop on its own.
My greatest satisfaction comes when an inmate with some brains and drive begins to recognize that he has a mind and that the mind is worth feeding. That’s when they accept fish and when, I hope, I can start to teach them to fish.
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07.29.10
Posted in Teaching in prison at 9:43 am by Administrator
Lockdown is a miserable time for inmates, because they’re stuck in their cells for most of it. They don’t even come out for meals. The only benefit is that they get to catch up on sleep, which they don’t get to do much on most days.
A few times a year, the lockdown is accompanied by a shakedown. In a shakedown, prisoners are called out in small groups to the prison gymnasium, clad only in underwear and carrying all their personal belongings in a plastic bag or a laundry cart. In the gym, they are searched thoroughly and then they wait.
When they are called, they stand, looking pale, muscular (usually) and dully tattooed in the greenish glare of mercury lamps, before two or three individuals, usually female, who pick through and inventory their worldly goods. The search is item-by-item and the inventory crew targets items that violate prison rules. Staff attitudes range from officious to apologetic. Many try to keep spirits up, though. Bad jokes abound on both sides.
Most of the inmates seem to acquire too much of some things and some items they’re not supposed to have at all. Like too many pencils and pens, tracing paper that can be used for tattoos, too many prison-blue pants and shirts, overstuffed pillows and contraband. That’s any item that they’re not supposed to have in the first place or that has been altered for other than its intended use. Findings of improper possession are almost always met with protests. Some items can be sent back home and some are confiscated outright.
For the staff, it’s a change in routine, welcome or not. Teachers and counselors do laundry and warehouse work when the paperwork is caught up. Security personnel help on the loading docks. Everyone does things outside of their regular job description. It’s just expected in this environment.
But for the inmates, it’s just one more way in which prison life drags along in a slow chain of boredoms and dreads.
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06.13.10
Posted in Teaching in prison at 8:19 pm by Administrator
Prison food goes by on trays that look like battered hard-shell briefcases turned on their sides. I see the leftovers go by after lunch. Because this is New Mexico, a lot of the leftovers are lumpy masses of overcooked pinto beans. There is often a smattering of canned vegetables and shredded lettuce in the tray compartments that the prisoners ignore.
Yesterday in the library, the inmates had a “taco pie” that looked like a pink sauce with meat chunks in it. There was some yellow stuff in another compartment and gray stuff in another. “If you think of it as food,” my chief worker says, “you’d never eat again.”
“I would think of it as functional nourishment,” I said.
Meals are carefully planned to have a certain number of calories. If inmates ate just that food, all of them would be trim. They have the commissary, though, and much of their meager pay for jobs in the prison goes for food items available there. They can get nutritious fare along with the junk food. As a result, even though prisoners, by and large, are fitter than the population they come from, there are still plenty of paunches. On the other hand, everybody works out. Those who have been in several times say they come out of prison strong and fit, but that goes away soon after they leave.
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I had a conversation with a lifer the other day on the subject of drugs. Even though some can be smuggled in, inmates get clean in prison.
Nevertheless, I’ve heard inmates converse longingly about how much they’re looking forward to their first high–the shot they’re going to take, the first rock of crack or the first fat doobie they’ll smoke, the first cigarette, the first 12-pack.
In prison, you can’t get enough drugs to satisfy an addiction, so why does a drug addict who has been clean while in prison usually go right back to the drugs upon release? Why, when millions of people have struggled to quit smoking, do inmates go right back to smoking when they leave, even though they can’t smoke in prison?
The lifer tells me it’s the difference between deciding to quit and having it taken from you. When you have it taken from you, the addiction hangs in the closet with your civilian clothes, ready to be put on with the rest of the outfit when you leave.
The drug-centered life is reinforced by conversations like the ones I’ve heard. There are active anti-addiction programs in prison, but they don’t seem to work for very many inmates. Prisoners will choose the “Therapeutic Community” only because they get a few more privileges there.
The lifer tells me that most of the addiction programs are operated by people who have never known a deep psychological craving for a drug, despite their other credentials. Without that knowledge, he believes, it’s hard to attain empathy with a drug user who is clean only because the supply has been cut off. The programs available try to replace drug cravings with spiritual strength and finding purpose in one’s life. I’ll talk to the counselor to get some success stories.
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05.28.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:49 am by Administrator
Inmates in another teacher’s class often picked up the little basket of potpourri on her desk just to sniff it. They talk about colognes and after-shaves like undergraduate college students do. Today in the library, one inmate expressed disappointment that the “scratch and sniff” ad had been taken out of a men’s magazine. It has taken me a while to notice and identify the musk that hits you in the center of the prison, before you get to the long hall in which I teach, which adjoins the hallways to housing. It gets stronger when you enter the “pods,” in housing, lined with cells that the inmates call “home.” The privilege of smelling something pleasant comes at a premium.
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“I used to take $6,000, buy two cartons of cigarettes and leave them in my car, then go the the casino,” one of the inmates tells me. “I’d play it till it was gone. It would take 36 hours. Then I’d go to my buddy’s house and say ‘We gotta cook up more dope.’”
Another inmate participating in this conversation says, “We’ve got a whole different way of looking at money than you do,” meaning me.
“We don’t plan nothin’,” the first inmate says.
“It doesn’t mean anything to be here,” the second one says, meaning prison. “It’s just a part of your life.”
He affirms Ruby Payne, who notes that to people living in “generational poverty,” in which poverty has been ingrained for several generations, prison terms are built in to your life. To that observation I add that, in fact, to younger inmates, it’s a place of passage into what passes for manhood in U.S. ghettos, barrios and in declining rural communities.
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“You think you run things in this prison,” the second inmate tells me. “You’d be surprised at how little control you have. You got to remember, we do all the paperwork.”
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One guy used to be a gourmet chef, working 10-hour days. The hardest part, he says, was Hollandaise sauce, because all the temperatures had to be just right. He would also cut mahi-mahis into fish steak and chop parsley, lots of it. You had to chop it real fine, he says, then you put it in a cloth napkin to squeeze the water out.
He’s currently trying to get the high school he graduated from to find, then release the record of his graduation to the New Mexico prison system, so he can bounce out of GED class and go to barber school. He’s been in prison since he was about 27. Now he’s 40.
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“What’s happening to sex offenders is going to start happening to everybody,” one inmate warns. “They start with the sex offenders. Next will be the violent offenders. It’s not going to end. Everybody’s going to get the chip put inside of them. There will be no privacy.”
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Is This Funny? Are You in Prison?
Here’s a paraphrase of a convict’s story:
I did an armed robbery for a Brillo pad. We had been up for three days straight doing meth and other things. We decided we wanted some meth for the trip home and I needed some Brillo for the pipe. Went to an Albertson’s. It was about 2 in the morning. I had $900 from selling. I went in and found some Brillo pads, put one in my pocket, then went to buy the Brillo and some bread. I waited at the counter. I wait and I wait, then I say, this is bullshit, and start to walk out.
The manager confronts me. “You’ve gotta pay for this,” he says. I keep walking. He gets in front of me again and says, “You gotta pay for this.” So I try to walk away, and he gets in front of me again, I try to walk past him and he gets me in a bear hug. I try to go for my nine-millimeter,which I’m carrying in a shoulder holster. I can’t get the snap open. Finally, he gets me down on the ground, and by this time there’s a big crowd.
I pull out the gun. Everybody goes down. “He’s got a gun!” they’re saying and they’re all lying down. I run out of the store and my girlfriend runs away. I get in the car and go back to our motel. I put a cover over the car, and go inside. I’m watchin’ through the window and zoom, zoom, zoom. Five cop cars go by on the way to Albertson’s. I got away with it, but I couldn’t believe I did an armed robbery for a Brillo.
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05.16.10
Posted in Teaching in prison at 9:30 am by Administrator
They spend their waking lives in navy blue sweats, unless they’re in “Seg,” or segregation—what they used to call solitary, where they wear clean, white jumpsuits that say “SEGREGATION” across the back and spend 23 hours a day in their cells. They buy their own jogging, walking or basketball shoes with the small change they earn on their jobs, from the commissary. They can’t even take good shoes as gifts from home.
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Everyone is an artist in prison. You have the time. You have very little but time. You might have a job and you might have school. But mostly, you have time. If you want to be an artist, you have the time to become very good at it.
If you have a lot of talent and the time to find ingenious ways to make ink from stolen pens, markers, paint, etc., you go into the tattoo business, sharing your talent and Hep C viruses from previous customers through needles that can be made from paper clips or any thin, round piece of metal. You are compensated with money or favors for depictions of gang loyalty, pretty faces or fear-inducing imagery that you etch into arms from shoulder to fingertip, legs, all parts of shaved heads, chests and abdomens. A young inmate with a long sentence inevitably emerges as a tattoo gallery, complete with a case of incurable Hep C, which is a mark of manhood.
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If you have between three and 10 years on your sentence and you don’t have a GED you have to go to school, which is a great irony. One of the reasons you’re here is because you always hated school—a daily six-hour eternity where they barked lots of words at you that you didn’t really understand and had no reason to make the effort to figure out. Now it’s three hours of eternity, especially if your attitude toward school never changed, and the teacher is still the enemy.
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The young guys still come in with something to prove and many still try to prove whatever it is until the day they walk out. You soon learn that the loud ones are seldom the ones who take action. They talk about it a lot. They make punching gestures and go “Boom” as they imitate the motion they say they made, or watched someone else make in a major fight—and they’re all major. It’s almost as much of an achievement to watch one as to win one. The loud ones get into mouth trouble, smarting off to a guard who smarts off back to them. After the exchange of threats, the guard writes them up, which costs them “good time”—days taken off their sentences.
You watch the quiet ones whose eyes smolder as their lips stay shut, though. One day, if you’re a teacher, you look at your class roster and see them listed in seg. That’s where they go when they get caught fighting, often after some time in medical to get wounds treated.
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03.20.10
Posted in Fiction at 10:26 pm by Administrator
“Yeah,” Ronnie Smith says. “I’m an American. What of it!”
There’s a short wait for the interviewer’s translation machine to read it back in Chinese. Then the retort.
Ronnie’s machine reads it back, with proper inflection. “You have much pride for one from such a backward culture. Wake up, Yankee, it’s 2110! Chinese has been the language of business now for at least 50 years, and you haven’t bothered to learn it. Why should I hire you even to do my laundry?”
“Because, Cheng Tao,” Ronnie responds, “I’m very good at what I do. I have invented a device that turns waste deuterium oxide back into water and weighs half as much as current nuclear de-conversion systems. As a result, your fuel cell/nuclear mag-lev trains will comply with environmental standards with great improvements in hydrogen fuel efficiency, and cut travel time between Beijing and Shanghai by 5 percent. And how does speaking a language as ridiculously complex as Chinese leave any room in your brain for engineering?”
There is a wait, then another response comes through Ronnie’s machine. “ Your arrogance, Yankee, astounds me. You hold to your discredited democracy while it keeps your nation stagnant and wallowing in mediocrity. The world allows your culture to survive as a museum piece—a crumbling model of ineffective governance. And yet, Ronnie Smith, you interest me due to your apparent ability to rise above highly primitive surroundings. Your resume seems to show that you have mastered modularity. Chinese should be easy for you to learn. Why haven’t you bothered?”
Ronnie laughs sardonically. No need to translate that. “I haven’t learned Chinese because I have been able to choose not to. Call it an act of defiance, which may be a foreign concept to you, my conformist friend, but we primitive Americans take enormous pride and place enormous value on our right to be defiant. That, by the way, is why I have been able to develop breakthrough technologies. The magic for me is telling me it can’t be done. I will then find a way to do it.”
After the translation wait, there is a long pause as Cheng stares. Finally, a response. Ronnie’s machine then reads back the translation. “Yes, I remember reading about the myth of the Yankee ‘can-do’ spirit. For many years, it allowed you to believe your democracy was the best way, and during those years, perhaps it was. Democracy made you fat and the fat caused complacency, which is now completely unjustified. I must admit it is refreshing to see that the defiance that makes your democracy inefficient and ineffective has produced a useful anachronism, such as yourself.”
Cheng’s gaze attempts to pierce Ronnie’s rocky stare. Ronnie doesn’t blink. “Anachonism,” he parries, “or a future you refuse to face? How long do you think Singaporeanism will continue to offer the illusion of universal happiness? Because of our continued freedom of expression, we can read about Singaporeanism evolving into old-fashioned despotism. We already see that happening. Each day you find more of your pretense of personal freedom eroding. Your endless polling indicates more and more people want fewer other people to enjoy the rights they enjoy, because their interests compete. Day-to-day opinions change like the wind. And thank you for your backhanded compliment. I like to think I am useful. I would like you to think the same of me.”
Ronnie sees Cheng smile as the translation machine reads back Ronnie’s statement. The interviewer speaks and the machine translates: “ Our governing system is the envy of the world. Our ability to solicit majority opinions at a moment’s notice and apply responsive policy, as you know, makes your rusty system of periodic elections and changing regimes appear as a defective chain of disparate tyrannies. We have achieved true rule by the people. What has made you seek employment with enlightened people, rather than with the relics you seem to cherish?”
Ronnie responds: “Singaporeanism began as the world’s only truly benevolent despotism, as you know. In a century, it has evolved not into democracy, but into a lampoon of it. Real rule by the people recognizes individuality, another concept that is foreign to conformists, such as you.
“Sometimes you have to let the bad-guy minorities win. We’re the only country in the world that allows Islam, as you know, even after the wars. Most of us don’t like it, but we tolerate it, and I think we’re better for that.
“I do not seek the company of conformists as much as I want the opportunity to work with large-scale fuel cell de-conversion systems. An unfortunate result of our focus on individuality is that in all this time, we have not developed workable land-based long-distance mass transit systems. I must grudgingly admit that your country is to be commended for your land transit network. Most Americans don’t travel more than 100 miles from home, because they will not give up personal transportation, even at prohibitive cost. They settle for holographic visits. And, Americans are superstitious about nuclear anything. Like you, if our majority insists on being foolish, we have to let them stay that way.”
Sooner than Ronnie expects it, his translator is sounding: “I once advocated a minority opinion and fought for it at the cost of much damage to myself and my family. My children were sent to correctional camps and my wife shared my five years of ultimate demotion as an accomplice to my mistake.
“I will not be so foolish again, and we live well and enjoy our lives. My children are excelling. It is common among our young to commit similar acts of foolishness, as I understand it is in your country. Your allowing such rebellion to go unpunished, however, is responsible for your current poverty as a nation, as you well know.
“Our company needs your breakthrough discovery to become the standard bearer in our industry. We have a colony of Americans near our headquarters, and you would be allowed to continue your unfathomable lifestyle among them, but I must warn you, our people go there occasionally as one would visit a zoo.”
“There will come a time, and soon,” Ronnie says, “when your people will be envious when leave the zoo. I’d like to be around when that happens, and if I come here, my hobby will be encouraging progress in that direction. That’s my warning.”
“We have a saying here that if it’s easy, it’s probably not worth doing,” Cheng responds through the translator.
“At one time, we did too,” Ronnie responds. “I wish we still did.”
“Working with you will not be easy,” the interviewer says, “but if you come here, it will be worthwhile to all of us. I would welcome the challenge.”
“We both want to win,” Ronnie says, “and in that, we share a drive that goes back to Ramses in ancient Egypt. That will keep us together, even though we will clash on everything else. I think I hear you saying through your persistence that like me, you believe that’s part of the fun. I believe you have enjoyed this interview as much as I have, and I believe I will accept your offer. Hell, I might even learn Chinese.”
“Ronnie Smith, that is good to hear,” Cheng responds through the machine. “My opinion meter is showing that it is becoming less favorable to hire Americans, and I must hurry to get your papers through. Welcome to our company, Ronnie Smith. I look forward to reaping the benefits of our mutual disdain.”
They laugh, shake hands and bow.
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01.26.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:56 am by Administrator
I am a Democrat when it comes to health care reform. The reason is, simply, that if a working family’s future is threatened by an appendectomy, this nation is in trouble.
Too many working families cannot afford health care, pure, plain and simple. Just look at the statistics: Nearly one in three Americans is without health insurance (see www.familiesusa.org/assets/pdfs/americans-at-risk.pdf). Why? The costs are excessive and rising at an excessive rate.
There isn’t really any one entity to blame. Doctors aren’t earning like they used to, and many are now earning salaries, reasonable ones at that, by working for health plans. Those in private practice are almost totally dependent on what insurance plans will pay them.
Hospitals? They treat everyone and charge those who can pay for the costs of treating those who can’t.
Insurors? To me, they come the closest to being blamable, but let’s face it, they have to profit while insuring an aging population that is not getting healthier. On the other hand, they can’t reduce their margins because they are ultimately responsible to shareholders whose decisions are based on “What have you done for me in the past three months?”
Drug and med tech companies? Same situation. There is supreme irony in the fact that we have developed miraculous medical advances that everyone, de facto, is entitled to, but at prices unaffordable to all but the richest of us.
My conclusion: the fault is not with the players but with the system.
If the system is at fault, the system should be changed. Today’s system is based on the market, and Americans have great faith in markets. The government could beat the market, as it has when markets have failed in the past (during the Depression and recent bailouts of auto companies and banks when markets have spun out of control), or it could join the market to reshape it.
The “public option” does that. The government enters the market as a competitor with a system that is fair where markets are not, and thus forces fairness onto a market system that could destroy our economy first, then our health, if it does not make better health coverage available to greater numbers of people at a lower price.
Markets are based on supply and demand. Demand has begun to outweigh supply. Baby boomers are still the rat passing through the snake over time, and we’re getting older and less healthy. It’s inevitable, even though, as a group, the baby-boomers have more means at their disposable to slow aging and fading health than any previous generation has. That, however, will only prolong and increase the baby boomers’ impact on health care cost and thus, health care’s drag on our economy. To maintain a “pure” market under these circumstances has already proven to be counter to the interests of the economy.
Notwithstanding the conservatives’ strident alarm bells aimed at the adequately insured, most of us should favor the government’s entry into the game. The government’s product will most likely cause a lot of crossover from unfair insurance plans to the government’s model, not to mention making insurance available to the currently uninsured, and this will force a change in the business model of health insurers. It won’t eliminate profit margins, but it will reduce them. Will this eliminate competition? No, and that’s the point. Insurance companies will have to accept smaller margins.
The battle, then, will be for market share. And, as in all healthy markets, even ones in which the rules have changed, the winners will be the ones who can find the best fair ways to cut costs and increase their customer base. That’s what competition is all about.
The public option, to me, is a far more acceptable way to increase the fairness of health care distribution in the market-loving U.S. than the “single payer” model of socialized medicine, which, by the way, I no longer consider an obscene concept, but that’s another story.
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07.31.09
Posted in Dyspeptic Dystopia--Satire at 10:28 am by Administrator
Sen-sen, check.
Lighter, check
Fake ID, check.
After school today, Johnny and his friends are gathering under the railroad trestle at 41st and Smithfield. Johnny’s in charge of the main event. He didn’t shave this morning, which his parents no longer find unusual, and he looks 21, so he’s the one who will dare buy the goods. He’ll tack on a loaf of bread, some mustard and an onion, as well as a couple of liter bottles of Coke, and see if they’ll let him through.
Jimmy, the resourceful one, knows where to get sticks and wood, and a sharp knife. Joey will act as lookout. It’s his turn. He’ll complain, but they will buy him off with a couple of cigarettes, which are easier to buy. And besides, he’ll get his share; it just won’t be as fresh.
The bell rings. Johnny takes his backpack and walks toward the market. He drops his backpack off and combs his hair a little, just enough to make it look like he’s coming home from a hard day at work. He rolls up his sleeves, too, then shuffles into the store.
He browses the aisles. There’s the bread, there’s some mustard and there are onions in produce, of course, then the soft drinks. He takes a deep breath and resolves to remain calm, and just as casual as you please he walks over to the shelf he’s been trying not to eyeball and picks up an eight-pack.
Just as casual as you please, he walks the merchandise to the counter. The checkout girl sees the eight-pack and asks to see an ID. Johnny pulls out his fake. The girl glances at it and the girl calls to an older clerk. The older clerk walks over to the register and gives Johnny the once-over. Asks again to see the ID. Johnny shows it to the older clerk. The older clerk glowers at Johnny as he hands the fake back to him and Johnny breathes a mental sigh of relief. The older clerk presses the button making the sale of the eight-pack final.
The older clerk walks away, shaking his head. “I wish they wouldn’t do that in front of you,” he tells the young girl.
Johnny is ecstatic as he walks out of the store. He fairly jogs with the groceries and the ill-gotten contraband to the trestle. Jimmy and Joey are already there. Johnny gives them the high sign. They cheer.
Jimmy gathers the wood he’s found into a pile and lights it. He hands a stick to both Joey and Johnny, then pulls the knife.
“OK,” Jimmy says. “Hand me the eight-pack.”
Johnny does as he’s told. Jimmy cuts the eight pack open with the knife, right over the warning label. They smell great, each of the boys skewers a couple of contraband hot dogs on his stick, and as the fire grows they cook the cancer-causing booty over the flames while they pass around the Cokes. Joey hands Johnny his stick with the hot dogs attached and reluctantly heads to his lookout post.
Jimmy pulls out the knife again.
“Now,” he says. “Hand me that onion.”
And so, as the city goes about its business, another furtive group of youths takes a wanton, crazy chance with their lives with yet another weenie roast.
Will it ever end?
News flash: Anti-meat group sues for warning labels on hot dogs.
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07.23.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:30 am by Administrator
California is redefining the iconic “smoke-filled room” of political history. Such rooms in the past have altered policy, but never before have they altered consciousness at the same time. California is seriously considering the impact of “medical” marijuana sales on relieving the state’s financial crisis, and the city of Oakland has approved a hefty tax on the sales of “medical” marijuana.
I put “medical” in quotes. At medical marijuana shops—oops, pharmacies—the products carry names like AK-47, Granddaddy Purple, Pot Tarts, Puff-a-Mint Pattie and Train Wreck. You would expect names like “Cannibatrol,” “Sativatrin,” or “Tetra-Hydrazyne.”
Millions of Californians in the past few years have contracted glaucoma, chronic pain and even ADHD, and now require treatment by bong. Some red-eyed doctors are laughing all the way to the bank and many have to be driven.
Let’s skip the irony of people who carefully buy organic foods and wouldn’t touch tobacco, but who gladly inhale weed smoke deeply and hold it with no better idea of where it came from or what’s in it than they have for, say, a Pop-Tart.
Legalizing marijuana, which is not addictive and wears off in three hours if you quit after the first “high,” may not be a bad idea–no less a bad idea than 30-packs of Bud. It would just mean there are two ways to obtain cheap, legal temporary escapes from our daily drudgeries.
People could achieve their escapes cheaply, as long as they don’t drive, and tax coffers would start to fill with money cheerfully contributed by the escapees. What better politics could there be? Kids? They can get it now, but don’t they have parents? Parents will still have to set the example and maintain vigilance, as they’re supposed to now.
Legalizing cocaine and some of its derivatives is much more debatable, because they’re addictive. Legalizing them, however, would make them cheap enough to weaken our domestic urban gangs and Mexican drug mobsters, who survive only because of vast, illegal profits. Making coca derivatives legal and using the tax funds to treat the addicted could simultaneously reduce the crush in our prisons while shrinking the market for these undeniably harmful drugs. And think, someone would make a killing by importing chewable coca leaves for people who don’t like coffee.
(For the record, the writer gave up marijuana many years ago, because, frankly, he got bored with it.)
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07.13.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:29 am by Administrator
Victor Navasky, writing in the New York Times, urges newly elected Sen. Al Franken not to lose his sense of humor when he joins the Senate after a long, hard, struggle to claim the seat due to a very close, vigorously challenged election.
According to Navasky, Franken has said his first job is to demonstrate that he’s no longer a comedian. I have to agree with Navasky, though. Washington politics would be much more palatable if there was more humor in the Hallowed Halls. Political humor, unfortunately, is left to the likes of Leno, Letterman and smug conservative pundits.
Whatever happened to taking the job seriously but not yourself? Where are the Adlai Stevensons and the Everett Dirksens who could make you laugh in the face of crisis and adversity? Why can’t U.S. Congressional debates be as raucous and witty as debate in Parliament? Those are rhetorical questions that I will not attempt to answer.
Political humor from politicians today is rare and often unintentional. Rod Blagojevich. Larry Craig. Sarah Palin. Need I say more? The best political humor from a politician I saw in the past couple years was Dennis Kucinich’s move to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. He was going after Cheney, he said, because the idea of going after Bush and leaving the presidency to Cheney was unthinkable.
That was a wonderful piece of political humor, and Kucinich, I believe, meant it to be funny. And, as with all good political humor, the intent was serious. There are many, including me, who believed that if Bill Clinton was impeached over an inconsequential fling with an intern, Bush should have been tried for lying to the American public to justify an attack on Iraq, costing thousands of U.S. lives, when our sworn enemies (you know, the 9-11 guys?) were in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, with an equally hostile, state-supported cadre in Iran.
If Kucinich’s sense of humor remains keen, imagine what he and another wit as genuine as Al Franken’s could do to wipe the smugness from the faces of Anne Coulter and Rush Limbaugh and their robotic zealot army? Imagine what some legislative wit from the left could do to the sanctimonious GOP Right Wing.
On the other hand, you have to imagine what some genuine Conservative wit could do to a stuffed blouse like Nancy Pelosi. The conservatives would be wise to find a seat that Christopher Buckley could seek next fall. I would also like to see someone recruit Stanley Bing of Fortune Magazine to run for office. These two are genuine Conservative wits, unlike Limbaugh and Coulter who are only funny if you hate their enemies.
While the Franken wit will be placed in a blind trust (remember Doonesbury and George HW Bush’s manhood?) in the new senator’s public pronouncements for a while, you can bet that it will cause gales of laughter in the reception rooms of Georgetown. Wish we could all be there for the show.
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