Short of specifics these early recommendations may not have phased you. After all, you had Black Friday to worry about.

I only know about it because, if implemented it will affect me directly: with part of the proposed plan being to cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program (PTFP) by 2015.  “The current CPB funding level is the highest it has ever been,” the draft says, and cutting it would save nearly $500 million in 2015.

Great huh? Well, no. On average, CPB and its ilk are responsible for 15 percent of funding for the more than 1,100 public radio and television stations around the country. A flat-lining of CPB funding means death to many a public television and public radio station, and would seriously impact the services of UNC-TV and WUNC radio, which, it’s important to emphasize time and time again, are not the same thing. This means more than job. It even means more than the possibility of making it difficult to see Sesame Street or listen to Diane Rehm in our area. It really means zeroing out a yearly investment of $1.35/American that provides more than 150 million folks weekly in communities throughout the country with almost free, universally available, non-commercial, high-quality programming and services.

But forget about me, or the children, or the rabid Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me weekend warriors. You too should know about the commission recs because it will also affect you directly—pub media employer/consumer or not.

Here’s how the Institute for Southern Studies breaks it down for you (complete with facts, figures, and lowlights):

INSTITUTE FOR SOUTHERN STUDIES INDEX
The deficit commission’s curious plan to help those who need it least

Date on which President Obama’s deficit commission will meet to consider adopting a plan drawn up by its co-chairs, former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Erskine Bowles, former Clinton chief of staff and current University of North Carolina president: 12/3/2010

Age to which the plan would raise Social Security retirement by 2050 while decreasing cost-of-living adjustments: 68

Age to which the plan would raise Social Security retirement by 2075: 69

Percentage points by which the commission would lower tax rates for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, while putting an end to taxing profits that U.S.-based multinational corporations earn abroad: 7

Year in which the plan would have Americans begin paying taxes on employer-provided health benefits: 2038

Under the proposal, the projected size of the U.S. deficit in 2015: $421 billion

Amount by which the plan’s proposed tax cuts would reduce federal revenue: roughly 20 percent

Number of U.S. jobs that the plan would kill over three years, according to one analysis: 4 million

Date on which Simpson likened Social Security to a “milk cow with 310 million tits”: 8/24/2010

Average amount a Social Security beneficiary receives annually: $13,900

Amount that Erskine Bowles earns annually as a director for Morgan Stanley, the global financial firm: $335,000

Amount Bowles’ wife, Crandall, earns as a director at financial firm JP Morgan: $255,000

Approximate value of the JP Morgan stock owned by Crandall Bowles: $1.5 million

Month that the International Monetary Fund called for substantial increases in taxes on the financial industry: 6/2010

Number of taxes the deficit commission’s plan proposes for the financial industry: 0

Number of the 18 panel members who would have to approve the plan for a possible Senate vote in the current lame-duck session: 14

Number of members who have announced their support for the plan so far: 9

Number who have said they will vote against it: 2

(Click on figure to go to source. To comment on this index, click here.)

While this particularly “bold” plan – three-quarters spending cuts, one-quarter tax adjustments – may well win the support of a majority of the 18-member commission, it’s unlikely to gain the required supermajority of 14 votes needed to formally send the entire plan to Congress for consideration.

The back-up plan would then likely be for lawmakers, and Mr. Obama, to push forward the more palatable pieces of the old plan, based almost certainly on partisan party priorities.

So, which piece can you live with? Sacrificing Sesame Street forever or Social Security for a few years.

I thought so. [Sigh.]

Figures compiled by Facing South. Facing South is your weekly source for in-depth coverage and fresh perspectives on the South, published by the Institute for Southern Studies. Visit here to join or donate.

As a 15 year-old who felt the undeniable pleasure of watching the tour’s adult action on HBO, it was, for me, polished pop culture gold. Madonna’s self-revelatory set list hit close to home: to see her embrace her merry band of dancing queens was like a warm hug in a brand new decade, offering a much-needed key to my closet. Invited into the comforts of her red silk bed, I wasn’t alone. To this day, when the orchestral sounds of “Oh Father” rise up on Pandora, my heart bursts with absolute appreciation. “Oh Father. You never wanted to live that way. You never wanted to hurt me. Why am I running away?….You can’t hurt me now.”

Fast (and fashion) forward to Sept. 19, 2010. Exactly twenty years after Madonna unlocked the door, Lady Gaga toured North Carolina with the same merry band, for an audience dressed for what seemed an Immaculate Collection; but this time the pointy bra was rigged with flammables, and this generation’s answer to M’s “bedtime stories,” came armed to blow the doors off everyone’s bedroom closet…demanding for this era’s homos what Madonna could only embrace in her own sweet time.

Seeing lady Gaga live is like a warm, latex hug capped with an affectionate kick in the nuts. She yelled “Fuck” so many times amid telling me how much she loved me (along with 20,000 or so other “little monsters”) I thought for a minute that we might be dating. She spoke a lot: a lot about causes; a lot about gays; a lot about being born this way. So much talking and attempts at accessibility, in fact, that what to that point had been endearing was a little off-putting. Where were the subtle hints that gay sex was just one chapter in a larger coffee table book? Where was the pop princess who merely invited you into her bed, not chained you to it? Why isn’t there just a bit more Vogue-ing?

But one need only glance around the arena to see the true Gaga effect. Matures and tweens, hand-in-hand, all caught in a Bad Romance. She isn’t really selling sex; we’re just buying it. And in the process, Gaga gets us: if you can’t help but sing and dance to these songs, if her albums sweep the airwaves like contagion, she might as well control the message. And if “born this way,” were a drinking game, we’d all have been hammered by 10 PM.

Three years ago, I was introduced to one Stefani Joanne Angelina “Lady Gaga” Germanotta via PerezHilton.com, in a matter-of-fact video post featuring a mysterious singer in a subtitled short film called “The Fame.” In it, she appears to be living a French existential life amid remixed versions of songs from what was (and would be) her first album. It took about 20 seconds of her hooks and I was. I hadn’t seen this type of thing in a while….about two decades, actually. Something so familiar paired with a new take on the times. Nonetheless, no matter what they say, the ultimate flattery in pop is the inevitable sampling of style and song. As such, somewhere Madonna is smiling down on Gaga from her taut English cloud and telling Gwyneth Paltrow how she did it all better.

And she would be half right.

Surely, lucky be a Lady Gaga for having Madonna Louise Ciccone as her foremother, blazing a tabloid trail in a man’s world for bubble-gum gambles on religion, sex, social issues, (and, not to mention a few rubber ensembles). There would be no “Alejandro” without “La Isla Bonita;” no “Paparazzi” without “Vogue;” no “Bad Romance” without Sean Penn.

Yet, what gives Gaga an edge, and I argue here she has one, is not her marketability or manner or even her moxie—all of which Madonna could arguably have put a capital “M” in years ago.  But at 24-years-old (born the year Madonna released “Like a Virgin”), Lady Gaga has already been dubbed one of the most influential people in the world (Time, Forbes), and is hard at work finishing her first arena tour, her third album, and her work to single-handedly repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Admittedly insecure and fragile, with a sometimes quiet voice that could be easily confused with that of a Disney deer, Gaga pairs her Madonna-esque music videos with YouTube confessionals pleading for awareness of LGBT issues and political action for a shared civil right. And while equally humane in their art, Gaga bests Madonna by exuding her fair share of full-fledged haute humanity, revealing pain and weakness that might allow anyone to walk in her, albeit 10-inch Alexander McQueen stiletto, shoes.  She’s a nerd, an outcast, a freak: all of which Madonna could have been had we only been let in.

And while Madonna is undoubtedly a gay icon, Gaga is now the cause’s primary crusader, taking to the mic to “Milk” the masses with allusions to all—gay and straight—“little monsters” within. With her, Paris is always burning and with every play of her cunningly commercial new classics you find yourself closer to the flame….a [close your eyes, give me your hand] eternal flame that I hope will stand the test of time. As she alluded to last night, “I’m always working in the future…I’m not actually here, you’re listening to me in a stadium 10 years from now.” And between us, [just like that] she is beyond us.

I love Madonna. Yet, it’s hard to deny, Gaga. If only because we all know a little blond ambition can go a long way.

Yet, none have touched me more than watching the death of a woman suffering from the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s in HBO’s new Jack Kevorkian biopic “You Don’t Know Jack.” As you can imagine by the subject matter, this woman’s death was neither unexpected nor especially painful.

“Tell me when to flip the switch,” the woman says determinedly to Dr. Kevorkian from a VW van in a woodland setting amid the tubes and solutions of the good doctor’s suicide machine. “Whenever you’re rea…” and before Kevorkian can finish she pulls the plug on the life-ending cocktail. “Thank-you,” she replies softly. And then there is nothing.

It is quick. It is sad. But, for me, it is elegant.

The film is nothing, if not timely. While conservative ideologues talk of the costs of health care, for too long many have ignored the financial and emotional costs of dying in this country.

It won’t surprise you that 100 percent of all Americans will eventually expire, yet the amount of money being spent to keep us alive towards the end should. In 2008, Medicare paid $50 billion just for doctor and hospital bills during the last two months of patients’ lives—a figure that’s more than the budget of the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Education. Of that, its estimated 20 to 30 percent of these medical payouts had no meaningful impact. And yet, for all of the public’s lobbying to cut costs and deficits, most of these bills are paid for with few or no questions asked.

Even though a vast majority of Americans say they want to die at home, 75 percent die in a hospital or a nursing home. In some cases, it costs up to $10,000 a day to maintain someone in the intensive care unit. Some patients exist in this condition for weeks or even months. Many times they have to be sedated so they don’t reflexively pull out a tube or other IV; sometimes they’re even restrained. Surely not the way most of us would want to spend our final days.

While you would think the president’s recent health reform legislation would rein in these types of expenditures, it is obvious now to anyone who watched the news during the health reform process, with its talk of death panels and reforms allowing too much choice, that for those who face their constituents in elections, either in 2010 or 2012, the issue is too politically explosive to touch–even when it threatens to bankrupt the country. And again, we must take matters into our own hands.

“You Don’t Know Jack,” touches on the beginnings of this partisan issue du jour, opening as a then 61-year old former pathologist Jack Kevorkian launches his crusade to bring what he believes is a humane and dignified option for the terminally-ill: assisted suicide. Set two decades ago, the film brings these topics back to life, and front and center, for an American public who may have forgotten the story of Terri Schiavo but are more enmeshed than ever in the polarized political and moral environment her end-of-life case aroused. Images of average Americans, just like you and me, facing the symptoms of neurological disorders, degenerative illness, and severe pain, interviewing with the man known as “Dr. Death,” all wanting the same thing: a choice.

I know people may disagree on their time.  Death is a tough thing to talk about.

So don’t.

I’ll be putting my wishes in writing tonight. Or, at least, as much as the law will allow me them.

For the first year plus of this less-progressive-than-advertised presidency, I’ve watched attempts at bipartisanship met only with rhetoric, tail-chasing, and the embarrassing losses of American hearts and minds to a blindingly vitriolic and vapid conservative white-out.

Even recent attempts at conciliation, like those with the Republican House Causus, were met at every turn by a conservative scorched earth campaign, removing everything useful at the table to render any attempt at progress, much less compromise, null and void.

But tonight was this administration’s wake-up call.

This night, and in the weeks leading up to it, the President, this Democratic Party, was not about giving up to the conservative Eraserheads, but rather about the realization that there is no common ground left with this era’s Republican and that the only hope for reform is moving forward with the complex and thankless task of ending the human tragedy that is our nation’s current health care system.

It wasn’t just politics as usual. It was progressive politics at its best: a Black President and a Female Speaker of the House greasing the wheels to pass the most comprehensive reform the country has seen in more than half a century.

It, at most, insures millions of uninsured; It, at least, provides Rush Limbaugh with a lot of explaining to do when he refuses to leave the country as promised.

Squarely in the middle (if not a little to the Left), this passage signals something even more important: how the willingness of our President to fight the good fight, no matter what it costs in 2012, sounds the call for the rest of us to do the same.

Like a celluloid boxer beaten within an inch of his life, Obama and the Dems were down. He looks like a goner. But he gets up, he shakes it off, because it’s fight or die, ladies and gentleman. And you cheer. You cheer your ass off. Because it shows you what’s possible in politics. It shows you that, in your lifetime, Glenn Beck can walk this earth alongside a Congressional version of empathy, passion, and bravery. Not just a legislative extension in unemployment benefits, or tax benefits, or even marriage benefits; but for some, an extension of life. Yes. You. Can. Live. This bill says so. And we have the Democratic signatures to prove it.

Now it’s our turn. Wake up sleeping progressives.  If Obama doesn’t stop working once he has his legacy-making reform, neither should we. This is our chance to look those Tea Party bigots squarely in their wee beady eyes and scream back, “Oh, I’m wrong? Well, you’re a goddamned sonofabitch!”*

*Thank-you, Sarah Andrews.

We didn’t know we’d get to go to the library.

The 32-inch television was set up on a cart at the edge of the library’s book check-out counter in front of our overcrowded class of 26, and the room was all a buzz. We were never out of class. Not before lunch. And we were certainly never allowed to watch TV at school.

But today was special. Today a teacher was going into space.

Our own teacher, Ms. Bowden, was beside herself. And for this particular teacher, it marked another academic irregularity. To describe Ms. Bowden, it would be a misleading to begin with her hair, which was dyed blond and shaped in a perfect 80s bob: severe bangs with the ends of her hair curving right under her chin like two, cheery smiles.

And yet, there were few, if any, actual positive emotions that could normally be translated from Ms. Bowden’s face: a largish, square ruddy countenance that held within its trappings a voice ineffective in a classroom setting, both monotone and baritone, like those normally reserved for DMV employees. But, most striking about Ms. Bowden, beyond her relative unstrikingness, was her gait—boxy and mannish—made all the more awkward by her tendency to wear long, tight khaki skirts. With her pink and blue oxford shirts rolled up above her forearm, her comfortable loafers, her penguin shuffle with purpose, that looked more football player than feminine, one might suspect, some 24 years later, that Ms. Bowden was a lesbian.

At 10, I didn’t really think about her sexuality. That was a job for 11 year-olds. She just made me uncomfortable in her discomfort. Squirmy at her visible and visceral repression: how nothing seemed to fit her, look right on her, sound right from her, move her.

That is, until Christa McAuliffe, once an American teacher, now a household name as the first participant in the Teacher in Space Project, climbed aboard a NASA orbiter. A real, live teacher aboard a real, working, space shuttle. It seemed no coincidence that the vehicle to take her up was called Challenger. As a woman, an unappreciated public school educator, now exalted to the best (and highest) seat in the house, she seemed to challenge all that was possible. Especially, it seemed, for women like Ms. Bowden. Our teacher paced the space in front of the television as the countdown began in minutes.

The date was January 28, 1986. My dad was coming. And I feared with him coming I was going to miss it.

Even younger than 10, I had always loved to fly; but more significantly, I loved the concept of flight. My dad was a union man and on several trips to conferences to discuss what might, in this day and age, be considered Socialist propaganda, he’d bring along my mom and I. I’d sit as close as I could to the window of the plane, inspecting the wing and all of its bolts and flaps for all of the ways a heavy metal thing could lift a heavier metal thing 30,000 feet into the air. On many of the flights, I, like a lot of kids my age, would be allowed to visit the cockpit, before or sometimes during the flight. In the minutes I had up front, I would scan all of the lights, buttons and switches on the control column. The big birds never seem flyable. “Too complicated,” I thought. And I’d leave wondering if my brain would ever be as big as the pilot’s.

To commemorate each experience I received plastic wings to pin to my t-shirts, normally emblazoned with the airline’s logo: “Delta,” “Pan Am,” “American.” I treasured each one like they were attached to my back. Golden tickets giving me reason to fly again.

After the trips, I’d pull out my books on World War II bombers, full of my favorite aeronautic stories, and get lost in their wartime successes as much as I’d also revel in learning about nautical disasters like those of the Titantic, Britannic, and Andrea Doria. Post war stories that the shuttle crew might have enjoyed.

At the time, for me, space travel was no different than those trips on a 747: magical and yet real. It was our generation’s dinosaur. And I wondered what Challenger’s control panel looked like as the countdown narrowed to seconds; if Christa (Ms. Bowden and her 5th grade class had been on a first name basis with the New Hampshire teacher for weeks now) was looking out on her wing, thinking about how they would work.

Unlike most folks, my 5th grade class saw the Challenger launch live. The flight occurred during the early years of cable news, and with the exception of CNN’s coverage, all major broadcast stations had cut away after the shuttle cleared its dock. Yet, with Christa set to be the first teacher in space, NASA had arranged a satellite broadcast of the full mission into television sets in many schools, but the general public did not have access to this unless they were one of the then-few people with satellite dishes. What most people recall as a “live broadcast” was actually the taped replay broadcast soon after the event.

Live. We saw Christa live. And then we didn’t. The shuttle disintegrated a little over 70 seconds after the launch, dropping its occupants, still in their crew cabin, to the Atlantic below. As children of the 80s, we had seen many shuttle launches in our little lives–space was still important then–and every kid in the room knew something was wrong when the exhaust field split into two.

We were quickly ushered back to our class. We sat quietly with no teacher in the room.

After what seemed like a long time, Ms. Bowden emerged. Her face, painfully red. Redder than usual. Beyond ruddy, rather, ablaze. She had been crying. And your teacher crying, Ms. Bowden or not, makes you uncomfortable. No one spoke nor even breathed as Ms. Bowden searched for the words to tell 10 year olds that someone who was like her, and six other of the smartest people on the planet, had just perished as they tried to leave it.

“There’s been an accident,” she choked. There wasn’t much talking after that.

Mercifully, my dad arrived. I don’t remember the ride home. I don’t remember the rest of that day. All I remember is, in the days and weeks to follow, watching continuous replays of what was then being considered an “explosion.” Only months later would the word “O-ring” become a part of household vernacular. The blame and finger-pointing before that.

As new footage of this national tragedy is unearthed nearly a quarter-century later (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/04/challenger-disaster-new-f_n_449263.html), I am transported back to that school library. Before 9/11 and after Kennedy, there was Challenger.

I don’t love to fly anymore. I lost that in 2000 on the way to Boston when I had a panic attack out of nowhere looking out at the same wings I used to admire. And the larger the plane, the worse it is. Big birds are unflyable. “Too complicated,” I know.

Like the nautical disasters of old,I am obsessed with plane crashes now, unable to tear myself away from on-air coverage of the shores of Long Island after the TWA 800 disaster, the Everglades following Valujet 592, the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in search of John John, the World Trade Center, the Hudson, and so on and so on. But I still love flight. And in my fear, cast the pilots, the frequent flyers, the astronauts, as braver, stronger, with more mettle than me. Their brains must still be bigger. With gumption to match.

As I think of me now versus then, I can’t help but also think back to the other kids in that room. And what Christa, ever the educator, taught us that day. What that experience must have grafted onto us. What we were supposed to learn from all of it.

And, in the end, all I do know for sure, is that we were nicer to Ms. Bowden after that.

Butterbear, in happier times, with one of 22 toys.

These are the things you think about.

On Friday morning when I leave for work, I tell him I love him, [“Butterbear”]. I don’t find him and pat him like usual before I make my way—a decision that will haunt me—rather I just yell out and hope he understands. He does.

I don’t think of him much during the day; instead I stress about the small stuff, small stuff in retrospect, especially small now that I know at some point during that day while I was thinking only about the little things he loses the feeling in his little back legs and is unable to move without dragging himself along the floor.

I think of him most when I reach the banister where he normally greets me. At the edge of the stairs the big, white furry preciousness that, like clockwork, appears from behind the banister bars, moving right along, toward me as I climb.

It’s 6 PM. He’s not there. For hours his legs likely could not have propelled him.

Surely he will be on the bed. He is not. And yet, with the litter box top knocked off, a painting that had been on the floor toppled over, something more than that isn’t right.

“We’ve been robbed,” I think. He’s hiding, I manage. I replace the lid. The painting. Frantic.

“Haaaarry.”

From under the bed, I hear a yowl. Not a meow. A meow is what cats make. A yowl is for wounded, distressed animals that would rather hide and deal with their pain without you than be pulled from underneath the only thing they see as safe.

I move the bed and pull him out from underneath the safe thing. His back legs limp and flat. No longer seemingly a part of the rotund feline I had fallen in love with nine years before. I pick him up and take him to the next room. No bed to hide under. Face me. Tell me what the hell is going on. Were we robbed? Did they hurt you?

I put him down on the rug. Back legs don’t seem to work for either of us now. I lay down beside him. He reaches out his front paws to my wool sweater as if to grab it, pull me to him, so he can tell me with those green eyes, “Look at me. Something is wrong. We were not robbed this time. I was.”

I call Brooke. “I need an emergency vet’s number.” I call the vet. “I’m coming.” I call Becky. “I won’t be making that movie.” I call Brooke. “Get over here.” I never leave his gaze.

I leave his gaze. I go downstairs to unlock the door and by the time I make it back to him he is dragging himself across the litter box. The top is off. He explains everything.

As Brooke drives us, Harry sits in a big plastic box on my lap. He’s not making much noise. I’m not making much noise. All the noise is Brooke and the sound of my car moving fast. “Maybe he broke a leg; Maybe something’s twisted. Maybe he jumped and hit something and broke something or twisted something.”

Harry and I know better. No one jumped today.

When the vet comes in she looks younger than me. Shorter. Smaller. Soft-spoken. I am glad. Sharing bad news is not for the bombastic. Only the earnest. She does a good job. I weep in front of her. I am embarrassed. She is so small. Maybe I should be the brave one.

I need a minute.

I walk outside. I call Becky. She is on her way. I call Julianne for a second opinion. I call Jessica to let her know it’s me this time. I call my mom to hear her say that I will make the right decision.

I do.

I sign and date the papers. January 15, 2010. It is almost 8 PM. He is wrapped in a blanket. “He looks like Jesus,” I say. “But better,” Becky says. I hold my boy as they inject the pink stuff. First the saline; then the pink stuff; and his head falls slowly into the crook of my right arm. Five seconds. I could not meet his gaze.

Becky, Brooke and I cry. They have saved me and they don’t even know. My mouth is open. I make sounds only a vet could understand. And for a long time we pet my beautiful butterbear. His tail is sticking out of the blanket. I am mumbling something about abandoning my boy. I sound nothing like Daniel Plainview. Is it even 9 o’clock?

I come home after a day. Becky and Trae have moved the stuff. The litter box with that trick lid. The bag of Purina. The new cat bed and 22 jingly toys Brooke put in his stocking this Christmas. The catnip spider with the furry leopard skin that neither Harry nor I could explain the goodness of. “It just is,” we’d say to each other in our own way.

They all saved me and they don’t even know. But it’s so hard to get white hair out of a rust room. That’s what they say. Who says? Nobody. Nobody ever felt this way. Thank god this weekend is over. This week has just begun.

There are now two rolls of toilet paper left. It makes great Kleenex.

When I bought that pack of Charmin, Harry was alive. And I was a different person.

I didn’t enjoy Inglourious Basterds. As much as I’m a fan of most of Taratino’s derivative salutes to reckless celluloid abandon, I also, for better or for worse, hold a great deal of deference for the sights, sounds and stories of the World War II era. As such, for me, the caricatured depictions of Nazi-occupied France didn’t simply bring to bombastic life our polarized post 9/11 views of how we should treat enemy-occupied anything, it also illustrated the perils of t

Despite spaghetti western smatterings of cinematic genius in every tense conversation between Austrian actor Christoph Waltz’s hammy “Jew Hunter” and his prey, at its best, Inglourious Basterds is largely a comedy without a cause: Basterd’s Hitler is more insecure boob from a Mel Brooks fever dream than diabolical dictator deserving of Swastika-carved shenanigans from Brad Pitt’s hillbilly-turned henchman and his largely-absent Dirty Dozen.

In short, unlike Kill Bill, this Tarantino revenge epic’s lack of any moral seriousness makes it incongruous with any semblance of solemnity deserved for the time and place it depicts.

I’m no Pollyanna. I understand Basterds wasn’t meant to be Band of Brothers.

And I get the joke. I just don’t think it’s funny.

I was reminded of these same impressions when I heard the story of Henry Gasparian.

Henry Gasparian

As a child in Armenia, Gasparian witnessed firsthand the horrors of Nazi Germany. Two uncles were killed, his father wounded and a brother starved to death during the German invasion and occupation of the Soviet Union.

So, when Gasparian, 70, saw a poster of President Obama with a Hitler mustache near the entrance to a Washington state farmers market on September 5, he admitted that his reaction was “personal and emotional.”

As The Seattle Times reported this week: Gasparian tried to grab the fliers being passed out by supporters of Lyndon LaRouche, a perennial presidential candidate who has likened Obama’s health-care proposals to the Nazi extermination of Jews and other “undesirables.” Two young LaRouche supporters told police that Gasparian repeatedly pushed them and grabbed one of their arms. Gasparian said it was they who first pushed him. Now, Gasparian is charged with two counts of fourth-degree assault in Edmonds Municipal Court for what he describes as an attempt by “an old man to say you cannot insult the president with this outrageous campaign.”

This incident echoed similar ones across the country over the past few months. LaRouche supporters and others have disrupted town-hall meetings on health care, including most famously, the young woman who asked U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), (a Jew as in ‘Anne’), in August why he supported a “Nazi health care plan.” Frank replied, “On what planet do you spend most of your time?”

The answer to Rep. Frank’s question about how someone, anyone, can equate health insurance reform to Nazism may lie squarely in the same disconnect that led Tarantino’s camera to linger long and hard on the murder and mutilation of Nazi and Ally alike, and, in turn, explains why some, in this country, don’t support health care for all: we sometimes appear detached from the suffering of others.

To my mind, reform meant to cover millions of uninsured people is far less equivalent to Hitler’s “final solution” than the purported preexisting conditions clauses insurance companies use to deny seriously ill Americans of proper treatment. Especially when, based on an article in today’s Washington Post, these same companies cite acne, pregnancy, and even the intention to adopt, as justifications to deny or cease coverage. This only adds insult to injury (pun intended) with discoveries that one big insurer was found to have refused to issue individual policies to police officers and firefighters, along with people in other hazardous occupations. Can we imagine Americans being in line with this latest policy in insurance co. status quo on September 12, 2001?

And while it’s a stretch to compare Big Insurance to the Third Reich, we do know that not having insurance kills: nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year — one every 12 minutes — in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday. Keep in mind, too, that Americans didn’t begin dying from lack of insurance last year. So, when you count up a decade or so’s worth of uninsured years, the current American health system, as is, looks a bit more like a holocaust.

And yet, this argument is less about negative depictions of Obama, a fate that also fell upon his predecessor (albeit for different reasons), but rather, what, in us, thinks it’s acceptable to compare changes in the way we care for our people to the systematic extermination of millions? What now makes Hitler’s face so easy to throw around and graft on our own leadership in a time of relative prosperity and peace? Could it be tied to similar reasons an angry man is willing to destroy an image of civil rights icon Rosa Parks at a town hall event? The same motivation for Americans, not satisfied with the incendiary messages of their protest signs, to now openly bring guns to Presidential appearances? The same McCarthy-era justifications that have us silencing our public servants during local Q&As, calling each other liars, and aiming guns at our leaders, rather than simply taking this opportunity to improve, and sometimes, save, the lives of our fellow citizens? And with it, the sad fact that rioting, toting pistols in public meetings, and heaving images of Hitler are now no more than today’s measure of passive resistance?

To shed light on this phenomenon, The Seattle Times found David Domke, a UW professor who specializes in political communication, [who] said that while people have been saying terrible things about politicians since the country’s beginnings, “the intensity and depth of feeling today seems to be at a dangerous point. We have conversations now in the same way we go to war. We have to demonize the other person.”

But don’t we already have enough demons to contend with? Just ask Henry Gasparian.

Gasparian immigrated from Armenia in 1993, the same year both his parents died. A classically trained musician with degrees in English and journalism, he settled in the Seattle area and found jobs in sales until health concerns forced him to retire. “I saw Hitler’s soldiers. I saw swastikas every day. To call Obama stupid, even criminal — OK, that’s politics. But Hitler? It’s hurting to anyone no matter who is president,” he said.

And so, I would argue, we all need to chill, take deep breath, and, ironically, pull a lesson from the classic Tarantino playbook. Cuz, you happened to pull this shit while I’m in a transitional period.

So be cool. Chill. It’s going to be alright, honeybunny.

What you get when you Google "liberal assholes."

Dearest Liberals,

For a while now, I’ve been relatively quiet about the “choose your own adventure” topic of health care and/or health insurance reform.

Quiet, in the sense that I’ve embargoed any personal blogging during a period in which it (a) was tough to hear myself think over the vitriolic and incendiary propaganda being hurled about by Rosa Parks poster-ripping town hallers and tea baggers alike; and (2) was therefore difficult to believe that Americans were actually thinking. Period.

As a result, because I was so sick (pun intended) of the so-called health-tear dialogue of partisan demagogues, I just didn’t believe anybody would want to read about anyone else’s personal health care biases, no matter how well-supported by facts, figures, and research. If anything, this debate has shed light on the fact that the media’s majority, or, at the very least, an actual vocal minority, wants absolutely nothing to do with any of the three.

In short, I thought if a sitting President could be accused of lying [by an Old Yeller from Mouth Carolina] while he addressed Congress, citing virtually word-for-word truths from his health care plan, who would believe me?

Then I realized, it doesn’t really matter if you believe me—with the “you” being the same vocal minority that loves their healthcare the way it is (I have to think because you’ve never used it), is willing to somehow compare Obama to Hitler as a result, and likely also believes that Glenn Beck is a really masterful artist, that death panels are composed of chupacabra or that Sarah Palin cares about people.

Truth is, I, like our President, need only heed the advice of none other than television’s own equal-opportunity “Real Time” roaster: Bill Maher. On Friday night, Maher closed his show with some sharp words for the Obama administration with regards to how they have responded to criticism from figures such as Beck and Palin. He called the White House “cowards” for allowing green-jobs czar Van Jones to resign following a series of right-wing attacks and for capitulating to those who complained about the nature of Obama’s benign back-to-school speech.

“The Democrats just never learn. Americans don’t really care which side of an issue you’re on as long as you don’t act like pussies,” Maher said. Maher then criticized Obama for trying to win over those who vehemently disagree with him, insisting that the president should instead “stand up for the 70 percent of Americans who aren’t crazy.”

With this blog, I had hoped that some, more conservative visitors would show up, read, and, in the process, possibly learn something about other vocal minorities, albeit the truly subjugated ones, and would feel willing to join a healthy online debate about issues of the day. Since I have been told on more than one occasion via this blog that I am not only “wrong,” but also [more subtlety] that “I will burn in hell,” I think I may have succeeded in, at a minimum, the “debate” part.

But, today, I’ve finally heard enough from the other side. And given the dismal state of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.)’s long-awaited health care reform bill, I’m no longer willing to listen to anyone from my own party who doesn’t stand for true health care reform, single-payer’s current stand-in: the public option.

While I joined the President in waiting for Americans to come to their senses, fortunately, to my mind, two real health reform heroes have emerged of late for the wingnut-deprived 70%: Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and former insurance villain, Wendell Potter.

Rep. Weiner, who belies his unfortunate surname with his unflappable non-stop appearances on the

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY)

24/7 news show circuit, provides honest, open, and well-articulated reasons for why the public option is the only option—all from one of the few true single-payer spokespeople who, of late, is likely stabbing himself under the proverbial political table with the “couldawouldashoulda” fork of universal reforms lost.

A fan of the plan, but not always the plan’s man, Weiner offers full-tilt, no-holds-barred progressive views on health care reform, and I encourage you to hear him out as much as possible.

Wendell Potter, a former Cigna exec, in turn, slept with the enemy and is now kissing and telling for the benefit of a confused Congress—redeeming himself by fighting hard for reform and the public option. Speaking today before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, the former health insurance industry insider-turned-whistleblower warned that if Congress “fails to create a public insurance option to compete with private insurers, the bill it sends to the president might as well be called the Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act.”

Wendell Potter, Former Insurance Executive

“A public option must be created to provide true choice to consumers or reform will fail to fix the root of the severe problems that have been caused in large part by the greedy demands of Wall Street. By creating a strong public option and restricting the insurance companies’ ability to enrich executives and investors at the expense of taxpayers and consumers, HR 3200 [the House health bill] will truly benefit Americans,” Potter said in his opening statement.

“The Baucus plan, on the other hand, would create a government subsidized monopoly for the purchase of bare bones high deductible policies that would truly benefit big insurance. In other words, insurers would win, your constituents would lose.”

Having peddled it for years, the man knows his shit.

And finally, I’d be remiss in reaching out to led-astray-liberals if I didn’t re-post a video from

Robert Reichs that features the former Labor Secretary and all-around great guy explaining the public option…in only 70 seconds. If you are confused, or haven’t given up on schooling others in the ways of truth, justice, and the American right to health care, Reichs’ clear and succinct health care Cliffs Notes are all you need to sound well-spoken at your next charity dinner for another person you know who got sick without health care:

Maher was right, Mr. President. We don’t need civility right now. We need an asshole. Mr. President, please, be that asshole. And until then, I’ll be happy to join with other vocal progressives who show up and stand in.

Apologies for being gone for so long.

Many people in my life have pointed out that I drink too much and don’t have enough gay friends.

Agreed.

And maybe that all goes hand in hand (sometimes the breeders’ harps about the hardships of life only make sense to me after approximately three beers). But, for the most part, I have few regrets in my waking, intoxicated hetero-centered life because I realize that it is by the light of the neon Bud Light sign, bar jukebox and karaoke stand at the straightest bars in my small Southern town, where I have met some of the people who have gone on to not only change the course of my life, but to make it a life that surpasses expectation (not to mention, as I learned this spring, that only straights seem to appreciate my oft-used “to clits, tits, and softball mitts, may your hand always be on one” toast).

It is in precisely this type of toast-friendly setting where I met Elizabeth “Red Liz” Stultz and Adam Tucker: at once separately and, over time, together—like so many other couples who have paired off whilst enjoying a Thursday night “Big Boy” either on a stool eying Danny Green’s latest dance moves, moments before Aaron Cecil spins the night’s crooner-friendly playlist, or participating in a not-so-quiet game of 25Flip—defying the bar copulation-cum-cohabitation odds with the simple pledge to love each other in and out of the dark.

Like so many others, Red Liz and Adam embraced the gay notch in their Bible Belt midst, even dropping my “lesbian friend” moniker over time to embrace me as just “JenJones,” (always one word), and like so many straights before them, shared me with friends, siblings, and even parents, making me feel like just another part of their surprisingly straight-but-not-narrow family.

While some would argue, and while I would often agree, that in this day and age, this type of acceptance should be seen not as an aberration, but rather an expectation, from the height of a second-story bar one block from our beloved Carolina, where, only fifteen years ago I was the only out gay person I knew, much less anyone else, it still means more than I can say.  The bonds formed between these people and myself are forged from something Southern shared, despite something sexuality adhered. We drink beers, we watch basketball, we quote Steel Magnolias and Talladega Nights; and while it makes me sad that I feel certain sometimes I am  not owned outside of their presence, that “fag” is still used liberally among many of the men I have grown to love in all the wrong places, and that many traits of liberalism and/or political correctness are lost on them as it seems to be as biologically inherited or not as the gayness under my skin, progressions towards progressiveness are all I can ask, and all I’ve seen, in these people over the years.

Dylan was right. The times, they are, a’changin.’

Fast forward to June 19, 2009: the night before the Stultz-Tucker wedding, at the rehearsal where the presiding pastor went out of his way to offer, “we are so glad you could be here,” a line not-so-subtlety tinged with genuine disbelief that I didn’t burst into flames as soon as I walked through the church doors.  While there, I stood among Red and Tucker’s families and friends, all of whom seemed to know, with various degrees of comfort, about my carpetmunching proclivities either from my newly-shorn haircut (thanks Greg!), choppy gait or an endless supply of lesbian-laden stories passed down over the years from Red’s mouth to God’s ears. There, I too met Annadell, Red’s cousin and the height-disadvantaged bridesmaid who would have the unfortunate task of walking arm-in-arm with me down the aisle in front of 250 or so God-fearing Christians.

Amid the meet and greets, I noticed my old high school choral music teacher taking pictures from every angle of the church—the same man who twenty years before, had patiently endured while my voice deepened from alto to tenor and who forced me to wear gum on my nose throughout a day’s worth of class when I innocently forgot his golden rule against chewing and singing.  I would come to find out that not only was Mr. Stultz Red’s grandfather, but that her dad, Lee Jr., had grown up a couple of miles from me, regaling stories of mutual family friends and decades-old experiences in the heart of Warren County. It filled the room with the sense that not only were these people trying to accept me, but that, well, these were my people, and I settled in at the end of the groom’s party line, waiting for what sat in store at a rehearsal dinner, not-so-coincidentally kegged with light beer and anchored by Aaron’s karaoke magic.

Upon our arrival at the rehearsal dinner, we all acquired name tags assigning our proverbial “place at the [wedding] table” during which Adam’s father, a congenial fellow closer to my height than either of his tallish offspring, explained that he and Adam’s brother had toiled over what to call me, finally settling on “groomsperson;” moments later Adam’s ever-kind mother stumbled over what to call,  in an apparent concession of terms,  my “guest,” following what seemed to be a lengthy internal struggle on whether girlfriend/partner/magical companion et. al, was most politically-correct.

Shortly thereafter, Jager, our wedding party’s acquired “shot of choice” (thanks to bad decisions in the first five minutes of the bachelor party) began to flow freely from a pewter stag shooter in a series of toasts to bride and groom alike from the comfort of the dinner table. Thereby all thoughts of political correctness evaporated, along with much of our bodies’ levels of hydration, as we joined together to shag with people twice our age and enjoy soothing renditions of “Living on a Prayer,” “Bust a Move,” and, my personal favorite, “Shoop,” the former dedicated to the choral music teachings of one Mr. Lee Stultz, Sr.

From there, flowery dresses and pleated slacks were ditched for swimming trunks at the Stultz homeplace, and the remainder of the night was spent poolside, all floating together in the metaphorical tour de force of the evening, whereby “diving in head first” became less afterthought than mantra. The next morning, hours from the wedding, Red made breakfast for 27, (there were ten of us), and more tales of the night, and all the nights, were told and resold, bonding the boys and girls of the Stultz-Tucker shenanigans, including me forever to Red’s mother, who will live in legend for handily taking me down in arm wrestling the evening prior. (Rematch shown):

Hours later I paced with Adam and Aaron in the church parlor, waiting for the ceremony to begin when my girlfriend showed up—in my day’s biggest “WOW” moment—wearing a stunning black dress that any and all groomsmen, gay or straight, could appreciate. And, whether it was the tux, or the dress, or the tenor of the weekend, I forgot myself in front of God and everyone, kissing her without reservation in the hallway of the Leaksville United Methodist Church. Like straight people do: without thinking much about it.

Later, as I stood in my suit and tie, looking up at the beautiful bride and her adoring groom, and then back at my gorgeous “guest” in her church pew, I could not help but feel a little sad knowing that, in my state, a state where I found couples like Red and Adam, Taylor and Dave, Lizzie Lou and Chase, Randall Elmo and Kevin Bacon (don’t ask), I could not have them stand in my own legal ceremony, as I pledged the same vows of love, honesty, care, trust, and compromise.

It is in the latter sentiment where I, as a gay woman swimming in straights, have stood to lose and learn the most.  Everyday I have had to compromise as people struggle to understand the nature, value, and depth of my relationships. In every setting where I am the minority, I unwittingly compromise conviction for the slow and steady lessons in “more than mere tolerance” that I hope my presence can provide. Every time I am your “lesbian friend,” I am placed in a category that excludes me from the closest place in your heart, a home only friends and family [proper] and “proper” can reside. When it is a suit and tie that give me the courage to kiss my girlfriend in her own dressy costume, solidifying arbitrary roles to make it easier for us (and everyone else) to understand, I lose.  And whether I am closer to Chaz than Chastity, this weekend, I was just a girl kissing another one. And I liked it. And it’s always there, in the back of my mind, that others don’t.

Yet, as the actress Patricia Clarkson so eloquently put it this weekend, “all across this country, regular Americans who were born and bred in towns where a gay couple wouldn’t dare walk down a street–all over these American Main Streets–something is changing.”

This was never clearer than in Eden. The compromise both pays off and ceases to become one, when surrounded by people like the Stultz-Tucker wedding party and people like them.

More signs of progress became clear at the reception, where many an older attendee came up to the woman sitting next to me to introduce themselves and to say how happy they were that we could make it (unfortunately, my actual girlfriend was seated a few chairs down);  A mere two men total propositioned my girlfriend and I for a threesome, (and had she not been wearing that dress, I presume the number would have been much lower); and I was only mistaken for a man once (that I am aware of).

Yet, in a remarkable stroke of luck, my groomsman gift was an engraved flask, and the night drunkenly continued from reception back to the hotel, without homophobic incident, where I capped the evening feeling luckier than ever with my girlfriend and 20 of the best people I know [straight or gay] packed in Room 203.

It was draped across one of the double beds where several guys even asked if I’d be in their own wedding parties.

Perhaps in some strange way, the Stultz-Tucker wedding experiment created some sort of progressive cache for gay gals as groomspeople, and in the future, all traditional Southern weddings will include at least one dyke willing to test her strength on the bride’s mother and the bounds of tuxedo tailoring.

Until then, I will gladly save their spot with the boys on the side.  Waiting impatiently for my place up front.

The protests were sparked by the death of pro-market, pro-democracy and anti-corruption official, Hu Yaobang, whom protesters wanted to mourn. By the eve of Hu’s funeral, 100,000 people had gathered on the Tiananmen square. While the protests lacked a unified cause or leadership, participants were generally against the government’s authoritarianism and voiced calls for economic change and democratic reform within the structure of the government. The demonstrations centered on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, but large-scale protests also occurred in cities throughout China, including Shanghai, which stayed peaceful throughout the protests.

During the protests, several photographs were taken of a man who came to be known as “Tank Man” or the “Unknown Rebel,” who stood in front of a column of Chinese Type 59 tanks, preventing their advance. One of the most widely reproduced versions of the photograph was taken by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press from the sixth floor of the Beijing Hotel (see right), about half a mile (800 meters) away from the scene, through a 400-millimeter lens.

The still and motion photography of the man standing alone before a line of tanks reached international audiences practically overnight.

The photo and others (see left), headlined hundreds of major newspapers and news magazines and was the lead story on countless news broadcasts around the world.

In April 1998, Time magazine included the “Unknown Rebel” in its feature entitled Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century.*

On Tuesday, the California Supreme Court upheld the state’s Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage in a 6-1 decision; the ruling left intact the union of over 18,000 same-sex couples who married before Prop 8 passed in November. The night of the ruling, gay marriage advocates took to the streets across California and in major cities throughout the country.

The court’s ruling marked the next phase in the battle over marriage, with gay rights activists vowing to take the fight to “win marriage back” to California voters in 2010. Like the ones in Tiananmen Square, protests lasted through the night. Unlike the Chinese version, the Prop 8 protests quickly changed to early morning parties. Organizers said the festivities were proof that the movement has not been deterred.

During one such rebellion-turned-revelry (in Hollywood, no less), Prop 8 protesters appeared to have adopted their own version of Tank Man**, a brave soul I chose to dub “Cop Car Connie.”

You’ve just gotta love the gays.

Photo by Mathieu Young.

Despite the fact that Connie likely faced no clear and present danger other than the heightened odds of chipping her acrylics on a protest sign or running dangerously low on baby powder mid parade, much less a stampeding by PLA tanks, let it be known that I would like to nonetheless nominate her for one of The Most Important People of the [NEW] Century.

At the very least, Connie, myself, and people like us, do face the danger of losing our equal rights in a state that had always represented a living, breathing sanctuary for not only the gay movement, but for human inclusivity in general. Now we must go back to our happily married gay lives in places like Iowa? Connecticut? and Maine? And Nepal?…left wondering why the future was California.

Yet, California’s “Cop Car Connie,” stands, nay drag steps, for the proposition that public deliberation and democratic action are not only needed, but demanded, to move forward human rights. And with popular adoption of gay marriage on the rise, it is ballotry like Prop 8, and not Connie, that is tanking.

*As always, special thanks to Wikipedia, for making plagarism quick and easy.

**Lori Petty was unavailable for comment.