Reappearing act

So, it seems I've neglected this Web space the past two or three weeks.

As you probably know, I spent a week in Western Pennsylvania, visiting Colleen for her birthday and helping her get ready to go back to school.

Then a little more than a week ago we drove back to Chicago. I helped Colleen move in and clean up the mess left by her summer subletters in her apartment. The following day we moved my stuff into my apartment in Wrigleyville, by which I mean we dumped boxes in the living room and went back to Evanston.

By and large, last week passed without much excitement. We had our cable Internet installed, and I spent the better part of the next 24 hours bitterly cursing Comcast for making a lousy self-installation CD and offering nothing in the way of technical support, until I finally coerced enough information from three different service reps to at last configure my settings so as to access the outside world. Wednesday afternoon I had my Fulbright interview, which went fairly well. I wasn't expecting to get grilled on political philosophy, principally mine, but was fortunate in that, like most history professors, this one is sympathetic to my leftward leanings.

The big news of the past week has been on the job front. As in, I have one. Well, sort of.

Through the end of October, I'm working as a writer for The HistoryMakers, a non-profit African-American oral history project. It's a good mission, and certainly one of value for future historians. Of course, I should make it known privately that this isn't as impressive an assignment as it would seem. I'm not exactly gaining a lot of valuable experience that will translate well to my future career as a professional historian, even one with an interest in oral history. In the words of the organization's executive director, I'm working in a "bio-writing factory."

I'll run you through my typical day:

7 a.m. Wake up. Curse alarm.

7:05 a.m. Slice up banana to add to my bowl of cold cereal. Wolf down my breakfast and locate something preppish to wear to the office.

7:20 a.m. Take over bathroom from Joe. Wash face, put in contacts, brush teeth, shave, shower.

7:40 a.m. Frantically towel off and dress hurriedly.

7:43 a.m. Race out door. Remark on the good fortune to live a block from the El.

7:46 a.m. Race up the stairs and just catch the Brown Line.

7:49 a.m. Disembark at Belmont and ponder how long it will take for a Red Line train to show up.

7:51 a.m. Another Brown Line train arrives. No sign of Red Line.

7:56 a.m. Miracle of miracles! The Red Line deigns to show up today. Pile in car and pray for a vacant seat.

7:57 a.m. Pick a small portion of the aisle to stand in for the duration of the ride. Curse the Fates.

8:06 a.m. Train delayed in subway without evident reason.

8:12 a.m. Train delayed in subway without evident reason. This is going to cost me. Cannot believe the Chicago Transit Authority is this bad. And seems to be getting worse. Public transportation in Egypt was more efficient than this. Cleaner, too.

8:15 a.m. Arrive at Roosevelt. Race out of the station and briskly walk toward Michigan Avenue to catch bus and avoid walking nine-tenths of a mile to work and arriving late.

8:19 a.m. Catch red light. Chances of making the bus slim to none.

8:20 a.m. Watch helplessly as my bus speeds past with no hope of catching it. Contemplate turning around and going back to bed. Decide better of it. Looks like I'll get plenty of exercise.

8:24 a.m. Second bus passes me on my stroll down Michigan Avenue. I could've spared myself the long walk.

8:28 a.m. Third bus drops off in front of the office while I'm a block away. I'll really have to remember to wait for these buses tomorrow.

8:31 a.m. Call the intercom to gain access to the office.

8:32 a.m. At work. Sign in for 8:30 a.m. No one will be the wiser.

8:34 a.m. Smack head on doorway as I walk down the steps out of the kitchen. Hard. This is going to sting.

8:35 a.m. Settle down at my desk. I don't have an actual cubicle, only a meager partition that prevents me from seeing my co-worker Edward. Unless I bother to lean back in my chair.

8:36 a.m. Decide to ease into the day's work. Less than half the office has showed up so far, including my boss. No reason I can't check my personal e-mail and troll the Web a bit.

8:58 a.m. Finish browsing. Minor throbbing sensation in heads persists. Look through the files for the first bio of the day. Rearrange papers repeatedly to give the illusion of work.

9:28 a.m. Settle in to begin actual work. I get to write a bio of a dentist in Harlem. Exciting stuff.

10:22 a.m. Finish first bio. Not record pace, but it usually takes me a while to get settled in. Onward to Bio No. 2.

11:08 a.m. Bio No. 2 complete. Decide to try calling woman whose file only contains the consent form. No answer. Move on to Bio No. 3.

11:52 a.m. Another one bites the dust. Not a lot of information for this one, but then those are the easier one to write. Try calling woman again. No answer. It'd be nice if she had an answering machine so I wouldn't have to keep calling her hourly.

12:37 p.m. Finished with the gospel musician. Call woman again. Still no answer.

1:03 p.m. Write up bio on Atlanta businessman. These are really formulaic. Makes my job easy, but doesn't make it interesting.

1:04 p.m. Someone finally picks up the phone. Success! It's a 95-year-old woman in Maryland. I conduct a quick interview to obtain the information that should've been provided to me already.

1:17 p.m. She's overly modest, so I call another contact to get more information. This person then calls up the woman and sets up three-way calling, so I am once again speaking with her. Not much in the way of new information.

1:22 p.m. I could take my lunch right now, but I want to wait so that I'll get a chance to call Colleen after she gets out of class. Plus, I should write up the bio for the woman I phoned while I still roughly remember what she said and don't have to rely solely on my disjointed notes.

1:43 p.m. Lunch time. Surf the Web a bit to decompress.

1:45 p.m. Sign out for lunch. Nuke my lunch. Still don't have a microwave at the apartment, so have to take leftovers to work to heat them up and eat them. Dinner-sized portion of turkey, stuffing and biscuits. Barely managed to finish off the second biscuit.

2:08 p.m. Call Colleen. No answer. Decide to wash her Tupperware.

2:15 p.m. Back to work. I don't want to be back, and figure that I should be entitled to a long lunch, given that I'm stuck here for nine and a half hours, but no one else seems to take an actual lunch. Edward signs out for all of 10 minutes. Ayana eats her salad at her desk. Wouldn't look good for the new guy to dare to take a full hour to eat. This schedule sucks.

2:17 p.m. Back to the archive room to start another set. These bios are starting to blur together.

3:37 p.m. The boss comes in and tells us to invoice her by Thursday. I ask Edward if he knows how to do that. Like me he is clueless.

4:38 p.m. The boss leaves the office for the day. Time to unwind a bit.

4:47 p.m. A most welcome diversion. Colleen calls me. Sadly she can't talk for long.

5:17 p.m. The boss keeps calling people in the office. So much for letting the mice play.

5:32 p.m. Against my better judgment, I opt to write another bio, my 11th of the day. It's an über-Chicagoan: by day he's a pediatric oncologist, by night a pentacostal bishop. Good grief.

5:51 p.m. Time to e-mail my daily report. Still don't have my own e-mail account. Crystal tells me just to use whatever one comes up when I open Outlook on my computer. Have no idea whose address I'm using. Spend the better part of 10 minutes attaching two bios apiece for 21 people that I've done my first two days.

6:00 p.m. Trying to get out the door. Crystal mutters something about setting up my e-mail.

6:02 p.m. Relieved to hear that Crystal will set up my e-mail after I leave. Pack it up for the day and sign out.

6:03 p.m. Begin the long walk north. Look over my shoulder to see if any buses are going my way. None in sight. Start walking with Edward.

6:12 p.m. Get all the way down Michigan Avenue without seeing a single bus in my direction. Same thing happened yesterday. Passed six(!) southbound buses, but nary a northbound one. I'll be in great shape by the time I finish working here.

6:20 p.m. Reach the subway just in time to see the Red Line leaving the station. Either it's early or very, very late. Wager on the latter.

6:28 p.m. Catch a train. Mercifully there are plenty of open seats. Overcrowding doesn't start until we hit the Loop.

6:51 p.m. Disembark at Belmont. Wonder when the Brown Line will deign to show up.

6:56 p.m. A second Red Line train shows up. I think I see a Brown Line in the distance.

6:57 p.m. I was wrong. It's the Purple Line. I could've walked to Southport by now.

6:59 p.m. At last a Brown Line. I keep questioning the wisdom of waiting 10 minutes for a train when I could walk to my apartment in about 12. But it's 12 minutes of walking I'd rather not do.

7:06 p.m. Reach the Jewel on Southport. Buy fruits and lunch food. The self-checkout is inefficient. I hate things like this that take away good jobs and create greater inconvenience for the consumer.

7:27 p.m. Home sweet home. Drop the groceries on the floor and collapse on the couch. Attempt to summon the courage to fix dinner.

7:52 p.m. Decide to eat. It taKes forever to peel a carrot, even with a peeler. I finish eating most of them by the time I get around to making a sandwich.

7:58 p.m. Sit on the couch to eat. Nothing I like more than eating dinner about three hours before bedtime. Note to self: Find a job with more sensible hours tomorrow.

New adventures in stupidity

Lest any of ye forget, I hail from behind the Orange Curtain, Orange County, Calif., birthplace of Richard "I'm not a Tricky Dick" Nixon, fertile ground for the John Birch Society ("Making the world safe for John Asscroft since 1958") and political launchpad for "B-1 Bob" Dornan.

This is a world where Fox News passes for journalism, Bill "Welfare Killer" Clinton is denigrated for constructing?! a socialist state, and George W. Bush is regarded as a visionary and great leader on par with Norman Schwarzkopf (gag), Winston Churchill (puke) and Ronald Reagan (violent upchucking sound).

I "highlight" these predominant traits of this crazy place where I grew up from time to time mainly because I'm proud of how far I've come, how I've managed to escape from behind the Orange Curtain, and because I feel a moral obligation to warn the world of this decadent, political and cultural black hole called Orange County.

No better way to give you a pulse on the vapidity of this scene than to share with you some of the "wisdom" being dished out on the opinion pages of the local rag, the Orange County Register. Bear in mind that in the Register's guidelines for submissions, its first tip for getting published is to write "Columns that share the values of our editorial page, especially a commitment to individual liberties and limited government." So much for the opinion page being a forum for open discussion among O.C. residents. Nope, we'd rather give lie to the notion that there's any diversity of opinion, except for those needle-brained leftist-socialist-Commie-tree-hugging-liberals coming to get our guns and pollute our children with ideas of "tolerance." It's eerily reminiscent of The Onion's policy on letters to the editor, namely that it won't accept them and intends for the newspaper to serve solely as a one-way conduit of information.

But I digress . . . .

It's not unusual for me to read something in the Register that strikes me as exceedingly stupid or just downright offensive, whether it be a claim that massive tax cuts for the rich will solve all the world's economic woes or a column trying to hijack the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. by claiming he'd be appalled to see how affirmative action has perverted his original dream. Whenever I want to get my blood pumping full bore in the morning, I trust the Register to print something that will offend my sense of righteous indignation. But this morning I saw something that took the cake.

Syndicated conservative pundit Walter Williams wrote an entire column attacking the U.S. government for enforcing mandatory seat belt laws because it violates our individual free-dumb to not wear a seat belt if we so desire. Williams finds it an injustice that cops can issue a $50 ticket for not buckling up, because it's not the government's place to protect us from being so stupid. Unbelievable. I thought you should know.

Saving the world, one 12-year-old girl at a time

Kudos to the RIAA, for reprising the Spanish Inquisition, Digital Millennium-style.

You've all heard about those subpoenas the Record Industry has blackmailed -- er, subpoenaed -- 261 people for sharing songs on the Internet. This High and Mighty Crusade against the evil file swappers has been perceived largely as a Just Struggle against meaningless college students (the Commie bastards) and the like. Except that one of those nailed by the RIAA for egregious violations of monopolistic capitalism turns out to be a 12-year-old girl. Oops.

Great move, RIAA. Guilt trip some innocent girl into recanting, strongarm her mother into forking over two grand (instead of the potentially $150,000 a song they can legally extort) to keep you from suing a 12-year-old(!) and brainwash her into saying "I love music and don't want to hurt the artists I love." Not that I think there's anything wrong with not paying for Madonna and Paula Abdul tunes, as little Brianna LaHara did.

Let's recall why it is people steal music? Could it have anything to do with exorbitant CD prices? It's pretty sad that Universal Records is slashing album prices by up to one third (as low as $12.98), which is still, oh, three bucks an album more than it costs to download legally from the iTunes Music Store. So, for starters, we're looking at a really flawed and outdated distribution model that makes it not very cost effective to expect people to continue going to record stores and paying through the nose for albums. Not to mention that pay-per-download services allow users to pay only for the songs they want, which is great for the consumer, though horrible for the one-hit wonder.

In light of that, can you really fault anyone for just going on Kazaa or Napster or any of the multitude of peer-to-peer networks, finding the songs they want, getting them for a much lower (OK, free) price from the comfort of their own homes. Hmm, that sounds like a good deal.

And if it's illegal, it's hard to argue that downloading files is immoral. After all, file swappers, contrary to Miss LaHara's perception, doesn't hurt the artists we love that much. Most artists derive relatively little income from album sales. For every $13 or $15 or $18 CD you buy at your neighborhood record store, the artist takes home about a buck of it in royalties. That's right, a buck. Or, somewhere less than 10 percent. And if it's a three-, four- or five-person band, it gets split three, four or five ways. You aren't exactly getting rich off that as an artist. Even if you produce a platinum-selling (more than 1 million copies) album, the average band member's take is in the neighborhood of $20,000-25,000. Pathetic, no? There's a good reason bands tour extensively. That's where most of their income is derived. That and merchandise sales. So if you're really concerned about hurting your favorite artist by downloading their songs, just buy a ticket to see them when they come to town, and maybe pick up a $30 t-shirt when you're there. (Yeah, that's ridiculously overpriced as well, but at least it's going mostly to the artists.)

So really what we're looking at is a scenario where the people getting "hurt" by file swapping are the middlemen, the record companies who contribute little value and provide a service (namely distribution and promotion) that can now be done through new, high-tech means. And maybe it's immoral to just steal music, but that's why I'm really excited about services like the iTunes Music Store, that offer a much fairer, more reasonable method of placating both listener and artist.

Plus, you have to admit, there's a certain justice to it all, a bit of reckoning being done. After all, the music companies getting bitten by file swapping are the same ones responsible in large part for the deterioration of modern music. These are the folks who try to cram "artists" down our throats whose primary merits are the ability to wear no clothes and act sexy while lip synching someone else's songs on stage. I think it fitting to give Tom Petty the last word on this subject, with a verse from "Joe", off his band's outstanding album dealing with this theme, The Last DJ:

Or bring me a girl
They're always the best
You put 'em on stage
And you have 'em undress
Some angel whore
Who can learn a guitar lick
Hey, now that's what I call
Music

Happy Birthday Colleen!

Wishing a very special and merry 21st birthday to the lovely and wonderful Colleen. :)

11 September 2003

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the overthrow of the democratically elected regime of Salvador Allende in Chile. Allende had been a self-avowed Marxist, which meant his reign was unacceptable to the Cold Warriors ruling Washington, Henry Kissinger in particular. Thus the administration and CIA authorized considerable aid to a junta of Chilean generals led by Augusto Pinochet and charged them with removing loyal generals and the democratic regime of Allende. On 11 September 1973, the military leaders backed by Washington launched an all-out assault on the government and stormed the presidential palace where Allende, along with Chilean democracy, died.

In its stead came the military dictatorship of Pinochet. During the junta's 17 years in power, a campaign of systematic terror and torture targeted Chileans for their past associations with the socialist era of Allende, or those who had the courage to speak out against the dictatorship's human rights abuses. More than 3,000 people were killed simply for their allegiance to democratic socialism or their dissidence against the junta's atrocities.

All this occurred with the active complicity of Washington. As early as October 1970, the CIA began plotting Allende's ouster. The U.S. intelligence community proposed a campaign of terrorism that included bombings to shock the Chilean population into welcoming military rule (sort of like how the Reichstag fire in 1933 spared the Nazi regime from staging a similar incident to create the climate of emergency that enabled Hitler to assume unchecked dictatorial power). Political opponents of Allende and the Chilean left wing received heavy funding. Small arms went to the government's internal foes. And if that weren't enough, the CIA helped organize the entire coup.

Once in power, the junta continued to receive U.S. support to prop up its dictatorship. Even when the rest of the world became aware of the extent of the torture and executions perpetrated by the Pinochet regime, the U.S. government continued to ingratiate the junta with international business circles.

Today will be remembered in this country, and most of the world outside Latin America, as the second anniversary of the hijackings of four U.S. airliners on the East Coast and the devastation they wrought. 11 September 2001 pierced the sanctity and violated the innocence of a nation. So we thought. But few Americans are cognizant of the effects 11 September 1973 had on another nation. They wondered aloud, "Why us?" without grasping the reasons that seem so obvious to observers in the so-called Third World. What happened in Chile was part of the pattern of U.S. foreign policy in the past 200 years. It was a cornerstone of U.S. policy in Latin America in the 20th century. It's why, when 11 September 2001 occurred, one of the leading figures of Argentina's Mothers of the Disappeared took a sort of morbid glee, because America had reaped the fruits of its own terror.

I don't mean to diminish the human toll of 11 September 2001. But while you remember the lives lost in New York, Washington, D.C., and Western Pennsylvania two years ago, take a moment to remember what happened in the Chilean capital 30 years before. 11 September 2001 will become an even greater tragedy if America fails to gain the perspective from to understand that terrorism doesn't occur because the terrorists hate us for our freedom; it occurs because we deny people the world over of those much-ballyhooed freedoms.

AMC = American Movie Crap

This week's sign the apocalypse is upon us, or just that AMC has fallen really far:

I happened to be channel surfing quite late tonight (roughly the 3 to 5 a.m. ET slot) and noticed on the program guide that AMC was showing "Slums of Beverly Hills". I'm serious. This is just terrible for many reasons.

I mean, I know (thanks to Colleen) that AMC has gone downhill since Turner Classic Movies came on the old flick scene and snatched up exclusive rights to most of the good films of bygone eras. Clearly things weren't looking good over at AMC when they started showing films like the two-hour Batman movie adapted from the campy TV series of the sixties.

But to pull this "Slums of Beverly Hills" crap?!? At least Batman could be construed as a classic in a convoluted sense. It's quite old, and also a really hilarious snapshot of cultural sensitivities (read: homophobia) from an earlier era. Not many series can pack that much unintentional humor into a half-hour show (or two-hour movie). We're talking about a series where the writers grew concerned that their audience would make untoward inferences about the sexuality of millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne and his youthful ward Dick Grayson, given that they lived alone, with only the kindly old butler Albert sharing the roof of the posh Wayne estate. Lest anyone think Bruce and Dick preferred the company of men to women, they got the brilliant idea to have elderly Aunt Harriet move in and serve as a chaperone for all those men. Because this ancient, matronly figure in the house just makes all the men get hot and bothered by women. And they meant this seriously!!!! But I digress.

No, showing "Slums of Beverly Hills" just proves that AMC has gone heels over head into the toilet. I mean, the movie is all of five years old and not exactly filled with memorable performances or brilliant writing. It's the sort of movie that looked awful when it was released, so no one bothered seeing and everyone just sort of forgot it was out there. Until AMC paid perfectly good movie for the rights to air it! They should've just aired Billy Mays' greatest hits (everyone loves the Ding King, right?) on loop in that time slot and spared themselves the dough. Or screened dead air. I think you could make a stronger claim that either of those is more qualified to be billed as an "American Movie Classic" than friggin' "Slums of Beverly Hills".

And for the record, I did not watch this movie when it was on. I tried, sort of, but when I flipped the channel it was showing a really long commercial for some kind of pharmaceutical product I should ask my doctor about, so I simply turned off the television and gained 14,000 brain cells for doing it.

All good soldiers crack like boulders

Apparently some folks in the U.S. Army are just a bit too humane.

Envious, it seems, of the Marines, the Army plans to inculcate a "warrior ethos" throughout the ranks.

Evidently the Army has "too many soldiers who have lost touch with their inner warrior." While I'd ordinarily approve of displays of sensitivity in such a bellicose field, I'm not sure this is really what's needed.

The real problem is too much specialization. Members of the Army think of themselves first and foremost as a mechanic, cook, officer, etc., instead of the one correct answer: soldier. So, to remedy this obvious shortcoming, the Army has come up with the brilliant solution of having these support people get more marksmanship practice.

Not that it's necessarily unwise, but I don't quite get the idea of trying to make every last medic, technician and bugle boy into Rambo. Whatever happened to that brilliant "Army of One" notion? Guess that's been blown to hell.

Budget deficit

Life is so cruel.

Not cruel in the country song (losing your wife, kids, job, dog, truck, favorite NASCAR driver, etc.) sort of way. Cruel in the "I'm going to place heaven right in front of your face so I can sucker punch you in the gut while you're not looking" way. Cruel of the "go ahead and smell the sweetly fragrant roses so you won't notice the 18-wheeler about to make a hood ornament of you" way. It builds you up, buttercup, only to tear you down.

To wit: this morning, when I get up, I notice an e-mail from one of the few mailing lists where I actually read the messages. It seems that one of my favorite bands, Scottish rockers Travis are slated to finally release their fourth album, "12 Memories", and are kicking off a small U.S. tour in support of it that includes a gig at Chicago's fabulous Riviera Theater after I get to town. Score!

As I mentioned, Travis is one of my favorite bands, and the most fun live act I've ever seen. So good are they that I've seen them four separate times: once at the Chicago Theatre, opening for Oasis, then headlining that summer at the Wiltern in Hollywood, followed a few months later with Remy Zero at the Riv, and then another year later, again with Remy Zero, again at the Riv. Needless to say, I don't pass up an opportunity to see Travis.

Except that the tickets to this latest show require, well, money. Somewhere in the vicinity of $35 a pop (damned Ticketbastard with their fictitious "convenience" charges), plus shipping and handling. Now I have money, that's true. Plenty of money, in fact. Money enough to purchase one, two, many Vietnams, er, tickets.

Problem is, the money I do have doesn't quite qualify as "discretionary income". No, it's more like my "anti-starvation and -homelessness" fund. Thus, while I could technically afford a ticket to this concert, I can really only afford it in the sense that it will expedite my journey to becoming hungry and transient, a trip I'd like to postpone as long as possible.

And speaking of trips, here's where life decided to be doubly cruel to me this morning. My mother likes to sign up for commercial mailing lists offering "deals" and the like. Ordinarily I'd say this is a waste of bandwidth, but today one of the mass mailings she received had an offer of particular interest to me, namely a bargain travel package to my beloved Prague. We're talking a weeklong trip, including four nights in a hotel and round-trip airfare from Chicago on Lufthansa for $449! That's an insane price, especially considering that the airfare alone could easily run you twice as much or more. It's the kind of offer I would undoubtedly jump on were I still in school, with a little frugality allowing me to save enough funds from my summer and work-study jobs to buy myself a nice little Czech vacation. But, alas, if I can't afford a measly 35 bucks on a concert ticket, there's no way in the eighth circle of hell I can blow more than 10 times that amount on foreign travel.

Oh to have actual spending money.

What's sad is that I can't say there has been anything else in particular that I've really wanted to buy lately. That is to say, beyond highly practical, utilitarian items, like a bed, or groceries. I've done a damn fine job of scrounging money and pinching my pennies, but my income since June has been limited to the dime I found while walking my dog one afternoon last week.

Look, I really don't want to work. I believe in the Divine Gospel of Office Space and thing there is also much wisdom to be gleaned from Dilbert. But I grudgingly accept the necessary evil that is employment. At least employment of the variety I'm going to have for the next couple of years (or until I'm out on parole). I need money so I can have a place to live other than my parents' house, drink the occasional beer, save a little for grad school and maybe, just maybe, do some fun things like travel to Europe again or see a rock concert. Really, those are the things that give some spice to life, like paprika to some delicious Hungarian goulash, and puncture the monotony of life as a working stiff. What's that old song about it being a five o'clock world?

The O.C.

You see, people? You see what I have to put up with?

Roll around the world

While I've always wanted to try my hand at circumnavigation, I can't say I'm particularly keen to try it by bike. But then, I'm not a man on a mission. (A mission from God, no doubt.) Not like Alastair Humphreys, who's trekking some 70,000 miles across 50 countries on five continents, alone on a bicycle.

My only question: Do you think he's been listening to the excellent, cycling-obsessed, reclusive German pioneers of electronic music, Kraftwerk? One can only hope.

Manipulating Grandma

In the past month or so, since the California recall circus rolled into town with Ah-nold "the lion tamer" Schwarzen..., etc. in the center ring, I've been kicking around a moral question: Is it wrong to mislead someone into doing something that's right?

My fascination with this ethical quandary has been prompted first by the entry of Conan into the gubernatorial race and second by my 80-year-old grandmother's off-the-cuff remark one dinner that she might vote for him. Shortly thereafter I heard about Ah-nold's father having been an ex-Nazi. Now, in fairness, I can't say that I've heard any evidence to suggest National Socialism runs in the Schwarzenegger clan; apparently Ah-nold himself outed his father when he pressed some Jewish organization to investigate Dad's muddled past, which turned up the story. I'm reasonably certain Ah-nold's not an anti-Semite, and he doesn't seem particularly fond of the Nazi past, but neither of which really qualify him as an exceptional human being

That said, is it wrong for me to make a big deal to my grandmother that Arnie's dad was a Nazi? Knowing Grandma and her worldview still stuck in W-W-2 (she continues to lovingly refer to the people of Japan as "Japs"), divulging this info about Arnie's dad is enough in her eyes to paint Arnie himself with the brush of Nazism. And that in turn should pretty well discourage her from voting Schwarzenegger. Unfortunately, being fairly conservative, she's likely to still vote Republican, my guess would be for Tom McClintock ("The choice of those who think young -- like the youth wing of the John Birch Society!"), but that would still help split the Republican vote and get Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante elected to succeed Gov. Gray Davis. Admittedly, it's still not so good as if Green candidate Peter Camejo won and instituted an honest-to-goodness progressive tax schedule for the state, but the sitting lieutenant governor has been dubbed "Cruz Tax Boostamante" by fiscal conservatives, and getting a bee in their bonnet still counts for something in my book.

But still, is it wrong to do such a thing? I suppose this is just another incarnation of the eternal "ends justifying the means" debate. Except that it adds a new dimension to it. Is it fair to say the ends justify the means when we aren't speaking in terms of mass murder or terror? Obviously I wouldn't say killing thousands of Iraqi civilians and hundreds of U.S. soldiers justifies paying higher gas prices, but then it takes some pretty funny logic to devise such a calculus.

I think it's a reasonable assumption that no human lives will be lost if I get Grandma to think Ah-nold's a Nazi so she won't vote for him. A reasonable assumption. The only really deleterious effects of such a means would be misinforming my poor, elderly grandmother and having her vote for someone even more repugnant. But the ends this is likely to promote would be sparing my home state from a new regime hellbent on implementing sweeping tax cuts -- particularly for the rich -- as an answer to a state budget deficit. (I hesitate to deem it a "crisis" as the $38 billion figure that keeps getting batted around seems predicated on some really questionable math when the projected deficit is more in the ballpark of $8 billion.)

Sure, they'll still try to balance the budget. But we know who'll foot the bill for it. That's right, John Q. and Jane X. Taxpayer. And since rich people do their damnedest, abetted nicely by most Republican legislators, to avoid paying taxes, most of the burden will fall squarely on the shoulders of middle- and lower-class Californians. Who, incidentally, will also see drastic cuts the level of state-provided services on which they depend heavily for their current survival.

So, there you have it. A pretty clear-cut, logical, reasonable case for saying the ends justify the means. Nicely wrapped with ribbon and a bow and everything.

Except that I'm not sure it's so simple. My conscience still tells me I can't manipulate Grandma for political gain, which probably places me on a higher moral ground than most politicians. And so I'm left to ask you, my loyal readers (both of you), whether you think the ends do justify the means.