On the basis of Race or breed

Recently I leapt out of bed with a brilliant flash of insight. It followed months of rumination about letters to the editor we had gotten. They were letters prompted by stories Real Change had run featuring non-White People. The letters’ writers said they wouldn’t buy the paper anymore, because we were always putting down the White Race.

Reading those letters through the tears of laughter it occurred to me that hidden deep beneath the expressed froths of the letter writers there may be this sediment of truth: We have NOT been glorifying White People in the manner to which they have been accustomed, during, oh, recorded Western history, or so.

But then, last Wednesday morning, it hit me: we ALSO haven’t glorified heterosexuals, or the breeding they do for all of us.

I mean I know you don’t have to be heterosexual to breed. We’ve all heard of the occasional gay guy who steels up his courage, closes his eyes, charges into the breach, and does one for the Pope. But heteros (like me!) do it (not sex, we’re talking about procreation here) with a grace and style that can come only from native-born talent.

Anyway, so I had that brilliant flash of insight Wednesday morning, and then I read the news. And there was Washington Supreme Court Assistant Associate Chief Jester Barbara Madsen stating that the Washington Defense of Marriage Act “is constitutional because the legislature was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation essential to survival of the human race,” blah blah, blah, “furthers the well-being of children,” BS, blah, BS, blah, “biological parents,” harumph, harumph, BS, blah.

Madsen’s words finally got through to me. What a huge disservice we have done, not only to the heterosexual community, but also to the entire human race, which depends so essentially, as she says, on that community for our vicarious continued existence on this planet (through descendants of that community, who shall represent those lessers of us who never step up to the procreative plate.)

Here’s what I see Chief Breeder Steward Madsen really saying: She’s saying human breeders are like pandas. Pandas are cute and sexy, to each other, sure, but skittish. Zoo keepers spend years, decades, coaxing nervous, sensitive, pandas into the sack, using imported Chinese bamboo leaves, playing imported soft flute music, and above all, insuring that there are no distractions.

Think of Genghis Khan, perhaps the greatest heterosexual breeder of all time. Genghis Khan’s people respected his needs. They provided him with plenty of women, quiet tents, and pillows. Had they not, there might not be a Mongolia today. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I wouldn’t want to live in a world without a Mongolia.

Look. When there’s all this hoopla and raucous going on of gays same-sex marrying here and civil-unioning there (have you seen those people dance at their weddings?) our beautiful, valuable, but emotionally fragile breeders can’t mate to the degree that the survival of our species requires. “I’m sorry dear, two men just married in Skamania; I can’t focus tonight.”

Real Change has made matters so much worse by never once helping the delicate breeders of Washington State feel good about their selves so that they could settle down in the warm glow of constant emotional strokes, and get it on for Humankind.

So, belatedly, I want to say what great people heterosexuals are, and to tell you all that we at Real Change promise in the future to glorify our state’s prized heterosexual breeders the way we should have been doing all along. The same way, in fact, that we should have been extolling the greatness of White People all along.

Therefore, beginning next week and each week after look for our new Real Change Pro-Creator feature, replacing the current Real Change Agent stories on Page 3.

With all of us, including Real Change, working in solidarity with the breeding community, our great state may yet be the Mongolia of the fourth millennium!

Nuke Daddy Was Jerk

Last week Edward Teller died, and I was reminded what a truly monumentally shallow guy I am.

You should all know who Edward Teller was. In case you've forgotten, he was the so-called father of the H-bomb who may also end up being called the father of the forthcoming anti-missile system. Either of those two facts would make him an extremely important figure in modern history, but what do I think about him? I'll tell you what I think about him. I think he didn't have good manners. That's what I think about him.

It's all because I'm so incredibly shallow and the fact that I only care about what happens to me.

OK, that's not entirely true. I am interested in the events in Liberia, even though I have never been there and have no personal connection to the place. But, on the other hand, would I be so interested if the new president there wasn't named President Blah? I think not. So that example only proves again how shallow I am.

I am so shallow, I am more interested in how shallow I am than I am in whether Seattle gets an espresso tax or not, or whether the police will make marijuana use a higher or lower priority than unlicensed flag pole sitting, for example.

I am so shallow that yesterday when I was talking to someone about Issaquah I got wrapped up in trying to guess what people from Issaquah should call themselves and it ended up being the high point of my day. You know, if you're from Seattle you're a Seattleite, if you're from New York you're a New Yorker, if you're from San Francisco you're a San Franciscan, if you're from North Bend, you're a Bender. What are you if you're from Issaquah? An Issaquant? An Issaquator? I didn't really want to know, I just wanted to make up answers for an hour or two, but the guy I was talking to got annoyed and shut me up after a minute.

That sort of thing happens a lot when you're as shallow as I am.

One time in college I was required to take a physics lab course. They gave me things like Bunsen burners and oscilloscopes and expected me to perform serious physics experiments with them and prove that I could be the next Edward Teller. Instead I set fire to stuff and tried to make cool designs on the oscilloscope screens. Later they let me at an air table, one of those tables where you can slide things around almost without friction. I took the hockey pucks they provided and crashed them repeatedly into each other. It was great until one of them flew off the table and nearly beaned the lab instructor. Boy, what a snoot he turned out to be. You'd think I had nuked a city or something.

Speaking of nuking cities, did I mention that Edward Teller also had a hand in getting Roosevelt to set up the Manhattan Project? So he wasn't just the H-bomb daddy, but he was also kind of at least a godparent to the regular A-bomb. Talk about your weapons of mass destruction.

But I'm so shallow I won't even try to judge Teller for that. Nor would I try to judge him for any of his other well-known traits, such as that he was a good piano player, or that he kicked ass at table tennis, or that he was a great teacher.

One night years ago, at a time when Teller was in Seattle promoting his anti-missile ideas, I was homeless and happened to be walking dejectedly along a path on the UW campus when a group of five or six men in suits came charging straight toward me shoulder to shoulder. I was in danger of being run over. I had no time to get out of the way. But the guy in the middle of the pack, the one with the bushy eyebrows, looked me right in the eye and yelled, "GET OUT OF MY WAY!!"

It was Teller. Fortunately the reporter following next to him separated from Teller at the last minute so they could pass around me.

Now, finally, Teller himself is stepping aside for all the rest of us, too late.

Syria's Friends Are Layabouts?

Periodically I encounter young people. And one of the things young people like to ask me is, "Why did you hippies screw up America back in the sixties?" "Ha, ha," I respond, "I wasn't a hippy, you ignorant child," but later I feel bad because I sense that I could have provided some insight to someone who was sincerely seeking answers. Then still later I watch the Simpsons and fall asleep.

Put another way, the question that arises is, what were all those long-hairs rebelling against back then? Well, now it can be known. Consider the following quote from Donald Rumsfeld.

"The (Syrian) government's making a lot of bad mistakes, a lot of bad judgment calls, in my view, and they're associating with the wrong people."

That, my friends, is a sixties dad. "That kid (alternately: my son, or that minority person, or that rock singer, or that protestor) is making a lot of bad mistakes, blah, blah, in my view, AND they're associating with the wrong people." Pure sixties dad.

Now multiply that by how ever many millions of sixties dads there were and count in the fact that most sixties moms were backing up this kind of clenched-teeth belligerence from the sidelines, and you can see what all the fuss was about. The long-hairs were rebelling against a zillion petty Donald Rumsfelds in various pants and skirts. (Women always wore skirts in those days. Or else.)

The one non-sixties-dad like thing about Donald Rumsfeld is that he writes poetry. However, when Donald Rumsfeld writes poetry, it is very recognizably the sort of poetry a sixties dad would write if he broke the stereotype and wrote poetry. So the stereotype doesn't really break.

In view of some recent events in the Middle East, some of Rumsfeld's poetry from the past starts to look like warnings of things to come. For example the 2001 "Situation" ends with the lines, " There will be some things that people will see. / There will be some things that people won’t see. / And life goes on."

Take the celebration in Baghdad when the statue near the Palestine Hotel was brought down by the tank. People saw the cheering Iraqis. But they did not see the limits of the crowd. Wide-angle photos that showed that the crowd consisted of fewer than two hundred people were available on the internet but not discussed in the major US media -- things unseen. Also unseen was evidence that the Iraqi participants in the celebration were primarily Iraqi freedom fighters brought into Baghdad by our military.

Credit has to go to our Army and Marines for doing such a fine job of propaganda. This is what we pay them the big bucks to do. It is of course desirable to convince your enemy that you have won the support of the people as soon as possible, so that they will give up the fight. It is unfortunate that in the process you also end up lying to everyone else in the world, including the people you are supposedly saving from future terrorism. But hey, life goes on, right?

Well, for some of us anyway. Not for Rachel Corrie and Tom Handoll.

You probably know Rachel Corrie was murdered by Israeli army bulldozer a while back, when she could have simply been handcuffed and arrested. You may not know that Tom Handoll, a British activist, was murdered a few days ago by means of a shot to the head, fired at him while he was trying to herd Palestinian children away from Israeli soldiers. When he could have simply been handcuffed and arrested. (They could have charged him with "giving a damn for Palestinian children," apparently a capital offense in Israel now. At least he would have had a trial.)

Shades of the sixties. I remember it now so well.

To Israel: Please find another way.

To the reader: Please support House Concurrent Resolution 111, AKA the Rachel Corrie Resolution, which calls for an investigation into her death.

By the way, I know this column hasn't been very humorous. But as Anitra puts it, "They're giving you hell to work with."

Acceptable Solutions For Our Time

We here at Real Change are very sensitive to the charge that all we ever do is whine about homelessness. Instead of proposing practical solutions that our city and county governments would find acceptable, all we ever do is write an occasional editorial calling for affordable housing, blah, blah, blah, treating people with dignity, blah, blah, providing services that cost money, blah, blah, blah.

So I’ve decided to rectify this situation, medically speaking. I’ve decided to set forth a number of proposals for solving homelessness, that are all calculated to be acceptable to our hard working local government officialdom and their deserving, fully paid-up, allies. Please feel free to refer back to that last sentence, frequently, as my brilliant ideas become confusing to you below, as they surely will.

My first proposal addresses the very heart of the homeless problem. And it won’t cost a dime. We declare homelessness to be a personal disorder. We get the Feds to go along. OK, that part might cost some lawyers’ fees, but you were spending money on lawyers anyway. This way they’ll be doing something productive.

Here’s the beauty of it: once homelessness is a disorder, everything we do about homelessness can be put down as therapy or rehabilitation. For example, you can put homeless people to work on contracted work-crews, and not have to pay them minimum wage! Because it would be therapy! The government gets the contract money, and gets to keep it, “to pay for other needed services.”

Have I got your attention, Heidi Wills? This kind of thinking is just your speed!

My second proposal deals directly with the chief complaint of all homeless people. They have no places to sleep. My solution is so effective that you will be able to present it as proof of your compassion. Hey, if they don’t need to sleep, they don’t need a place to do it, right?

So when a homeless person asks for shelter, instead we should give them methamphetamines. We can cure them of their need to sleep. OK, meth isn’t 100% effective, so we’ll still have to give them shelter every four or five days, but (do the math) that would allow us to get rid of half our existing shelter space!

Moreover, it would not be necessary to dump meth-crazed homeless people on the general public. As part of the meth-treatment, we could require the recipient to work on one of those work-crews I was talking about, until they come down. Then we could repeat the therapy as needed. I think you can see that the public benefits could be enormous.

Like all great solutions, the trick is making the problem solve itself. Of course all that meth will have to come from somewhere. Perhaps an arrangement can be made with the city’s police. Something like the popular gun-buy-back program. We could offer donuts to our cops for their hoards of meth. Hey, don’t tell me you don’t know what happens to unreported drug confiscations. Cops work long hours around the clock. Think about it. 2+2=4.

But eventually a city-owned meth lab could cheaply produce more than enough for all of our homeless, and also replace our cops’ stashes.

Once we have done so much to eradicate the problems of homelessness in Seattle, we will generate a new problem. We will make Seattle a magnet for homeless people all around the country, and the world. Therefore it would be irresponsible of me to make the proposals above, without also offering the means to prevent a massive influx of homeless immigrants.

My proposal is inspired by the great work of Mark Sidran. I could not have thought of the brilliant idea that I am about to explain, were it not for that giant of civic and social engineering. If I have been able to see further than he, it is only because I have been able to stand upon his towering head.

Sidran’s great genius was to realize that if life in Seattle were made miserable for homeless people, they would go away. I know, that sounds simple-minded, but it works! They did go away! They went to Los Angeles!

Trouble was, Los Angeles was worse! So they came back!

So you see, Sidran was right, but we must go further. We must out-Los Angeles Los Angeles. We must make Seattle a living hell for everyone who has to be outside.

Los Angeles has lousy air. We can top that. We can scrap Metro. We can have poisonous air and poisonous water in just a year. People living outdoors will start to drop like flies. Not that that will be the intent of the program. No, the intent of the program will be merely to encourage homeless elements to look elsewhere for comfort.

We already don’t let them sit down. Let’s not let them breathe. That should finally do it.