Paula Deen Is Getting Railroaded

Make no mistake, my spirited defense of Paula Deen has nothing to do with accepting racial or ethnic or sexual pejoratives as appropriate. They obviously are not. Period. My problem is with the questions she was asked and the knee-jerk responses her probably honest replies have generated.

Last month, when questioned under oath by an attorney she was asked if she had used the N-word. “Yes, of course,” Deen replied, and then added, “It's been a very long time.”

Her answer should have been, “Hell, yes!” Could any white or black person over age sixty deny saying the word, nigger? Get real. While in elementary school every one of the kids I knew recited the very same counting rhyme to choose a person to be "it" for games. Please note that the rhyme below is 100 percent accurate.

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
Catch a nigger by the toe.
If he hollers, make him pay
Fifty dollars every day.
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

In high school we were required to read Mark Twain’s, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and were also required to discuss in class his use of the term “nigger Jim” and his liberal use of that heavily freighted word throughout the book. In college English Lit we were required to read Joseph Conrad's, The Nigger of the 'Narcissus': A Tale of the Sea. Think none of us in that class ever said “nigger” aloud during those discussions? And what about reciting your favorite rap lyrics while driving alone in your car? Think the nigger word never appears in those lyrics? Or maybe you've never listened to and discussed with your friends Richard Prior's great records, like That Nigger's Crazy and Bicentennial Nigger, or his stand-up routines in which he used the nigger word countless times. And what about the famous hip-hop, gansta rappers NWA? Don't tell me white persons never said their name: Niggaz Wit Attitudes. Please, please, please don't bullshit a bullshitter.

Deen should have told the lawyer she could not respond to such an obvious and open-ended trap without clarification or without being able to provide context in her answer. How was the word used and when it was used could be of tremendous importance. When she said that it had been “a very long time” did she mean five years or fifty-five years? Context in her case is critical. But not to the attorney who asked the question or to people calling for her head.

I personally do not know if Deen is a closet racist, overt racist, repentant racist, recovering racist, or never was a racist in the first place. And if she is of the repentant variety why is she being persecuted for past sins? Who out there can cast the first stone? Step forward, please. What I do know is she has been shamelessly railroaded.

What most white people have to come to grips with is we all, almost without exception, have been adversely affected by racism. Whether we fell under its pernicious influence or struggled against it throughout our lives is a critical question. It's also a question Deen was never asked and thus was never able to answer.

As an old white guy, I have said the word, nigger, many times in 70 plus years of life in a great many contexts. But never once did I use it to disparage a black person. Never once in my presence have I tolerated its use as a pejorative. I actively detest racial pejoratives in ordinary conversation. But, if I had been asked the same questions as Deen, I might have responded the same way even though the contexts in which the usage occurred were innocent. Should I be condemned for my use of the word?

Paula Deen has been.

Seeing the Future vs. Living with Uncertainty

Many people imagine they would give almost anything to see what the future holds. For some that means knowing what would happen to them and to those they love. For others it means learning what would happen to the world, the U.S., or places in which they have lived. And a lot of people fantasize about the potential to make a fortune by using knowledge of the future to reap financial windfalls.

I happen to believe we are wonderfully blessed not to have that facility.

For certain, most people’s futures aren't the stuff of Hollywood films. We won’t be discovered by a famous movie director or become the next Lady Gaga or Michael Phelps. Neither will we win the mega-lottery and live a life of luxury. Nor will we make billions by inventing a miracle drug to cure cancer or a robot that walks and talks like a real person and plays better chess than Bobby Fisher.

The truth is many of us have lives that are ordinary and maybe even a little boring. But it is the uncertainty of the future that has driven us to become what we were not at a certain point in our lives. To paraphrase a famous saying, “Uncertainty is the mother of invention.” The problem of knowing the details of our personal future is that if we possessed that knowledge few of us would put out the effort needed to make that future reality.

In the case of my family, our mother never finished high school but our father graduated with a degree in accounting and business from St. Louis University in the heart of the Great Depression. The uncertainty of the future that they had faced became a force in the lives of their children, all three of whom attended college, graduating with bachelors’ and masters’ degrees. In addition, my older brother and I earned PhDs and became university professors and were successful in both public and private sectors. The uncertain future that we lived with as children made us all the more determined to succeed.

For most people, seeing the future would be a curse. It would rob their present of hope, spontaneity, promise, and choice. It would stifle determination and the drive for self-improvement. If we knew the future we would have nothing to dream about, nothing to strive for, and, in a critical way, nothing to live for.

I am convinced that we are much better people as a result of that particular type of blindness. It is because we can’t see the future that ordinary people are driven to become the world’s great success stories. Like Joanne Rowling, who as a single-parent on welfare was diagnosed with clinical depression and contemplated suicide in the months before her manuscript for the first Harry Potter book was finally accepted after being rejected by a dozen publishers. Or William Morris, a college drop-out truck driver who became Dale Chihuly's chief assistant and then a world famous glass artist due to his own tremendous talent. Or Paul Crutzen, who did so poorly on his college entrance exam (due to high fever and illness on exam day) that he was forced to attend a three-year technical institute instead of a four-year university but became a renown atmospheric scientist and was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Or Wilma Rudolph, who as a child was afflicted with polio and told by her doctor she would never walk normally and became one of America’s great sprinters, winning three Olympic Gold Medals. Not to mention the countless unsung heroes who struggled against daunting odds to become the successful teachers, firefighters, journalists, nurses, lawyers, electricians, accountants, and engineers among the many others who play essential roles in our lives.

In a critical way, we create a world of enormous possibility because we cannot see the future. And for that blindness we should be thankful.

Why I Disliked Margaret Thatcher

Perhaps a good place to start is Thatcher’s labeling Nelson Mandela a “terrorist” and calling Mandela’s party, the African National Congress, “a typical terrorist organization.” Hard to believe, but true. Add to that tidbit, Thatcher refused to join the worldwide crusade against the racist apartheid regime that ruled the Republic of South Africa with an iron white fist. Those two items should be enough to deflate the bloated balloon that is the current Thatcher mania. Even worse, though, was her support for the Khmer Rouge, a political movement of monsters who murdered somewhere between one and two million Cambodians.

But not all the bad press Thatcher garnered over her lifetime was associated with her role as Prime Minister. When she was Education Secretary she eliminated the school milk program for elementary school children aged seven to eleven and was awarded her first nickname, “Thatcher the Milk Snatcher.” Needless to say, the milk program was intended to improve the nutritional condition of poor children.

Thatcher also instituted what was widely known in England as the poll tax—a tax to fund local government—that resulted in shifting the tax burden from the upper-income toward lower-income Brits  Also among her most unpopular measures was when she was instrumental in cutting the highest individual income tax rate from 83 to 60 percent while raising the lowest rate from 25 to 30 percent. To pay for those cuts, Thatcher nearly doubled the value-added tax, raising it from eight percent to 15 percent, a move that even British conservatives disliked intensely.

Here are two things you should never forget about Thatcher. She was kicked out of office by her own Conservative Party because her policies were unpalatable and unsupportable, even for conservatives. And after Thatcher was booted out of office, she became a paid consultant to Philip Morris, the tobacco company, earning $250,000 per year topped by an annual contribution from Philip Morris of $250,000 to her foundation. A fitting end to her career.

President Hugo Chavez

I lived in Venezuela from October 1997 through the end of November 1998. It was the year of Hugo Chavez’s first election campaign for President. As hard as it is to admit now, I was very enthusiastic about his candidacy and election. You might wonder how an American who loves democracy and hates repression in all forms could be in such a position.

It would help if Americans knew more about Venezuela but, in short, prior to Chavez the country was a poorly run kleptocracy where billions disappeared annually from the National Treasury and found their way into the pockets of the ruling elite. From 1984 to 1994 about $36 billion was stolen via currency manipulation by very highly placed government officials. According to the Cato Institute, in 1997 the Caracas-based non-governmental organization, Pro Calidad de Vida, estimated that about $100 billion in oil income had been wasted or stolen since the early 1970s. Huge sums of money were regularly diverted from government contracts to build schools, hospitals, roads, dams, sanitary sewage facilities. The larger the project, the quicker officials would figure out a way to loot the funds.

Poorly constructed and partially built and abandoned public works facilities were everywhere. Zoning regulations and building construction codes were ignored to allow projects by developers who had greased the most palms. Public officials were on the take at every level. It was corruption on a massive scale.
Chavez promised to put an end to that national-scale banditry and to address the country’s incredible poverty, which amounted to nearly 70 percent of the population. Yes, that number is hard to believe but numbing poverty is the reality of life for the average Venezuelan.

Chavez was a man of the common folk. He didn’t look or talk or act like an upper-class member of the power elite. He was a committed socialist, a man who knew their struggle personally and promised to change their lives for the better by ending corruption and spending the nation’s huge oil income on projects that benefited the poor. Of course he won the election and won big. Why wouldn’t he?

It didn’t take long for the tiger to show his stripes and begin a long and successful campaign against the country’s democratic institutions. And that’s when he lost me and the far greater majority of my Venezuelan friends. The sad truth is under Chavez more public funds have either been misused or are unaccounted for than is the case for presidential administrations over the previous 35 years.

Today, little evidence can be seen in Venezuela of expenditures of public funds on projects that benefit the common people. Corruption is still the sport of choice in many if not most state and local governments. The oil business is in the toilet because Chavez fired most of the competent managers and nearly all the scientists. Things look grim.

I hope that situation will change over the next few years but don’t have much confidence in that happening. The ghost of Chavez hangs over Venezuela like smog over Los Angeles with little prospect of a strong democratic wind blowing it away.

This material was first published in the Suburban Journals on 3-27-13

What in the World Are Cardinals?

Everyone knows the Catholic Church gives world-class pageantry and ritual. Just take a gander at all those old guys in scarlet dresses and beanies parading into the Sistine Chapel to elect a new pope. Especially when the Swiss Guard slams the huge wood doors shut and locks them in. Ritual majesty in all its splendor. Like it or not, it’s pretty impressive stuff even if you suspect at least some of them are harboring secret thoughts of downy cheeked altar boys. Makes you understand in part what irritated Martin Luther so much he hammered an enormous splinter under the Catholic Church’s thumbnail, where it remains throbbing today.

So, why are all those guys called Cardinals? Is it because they dress up in bright red thing-a-me-bobs so they look like the well-known male birds? No, it’s all about history. Here’s a very short version.

If we go way back in time to the early Roman Church right after Peter was martyred, for ecclesiastical and organizational purposes the city was divided into seven regions, each of which was administered by a deacon. Their job was to assist the Bishop of Rome in various liturgical functions. It wasn’t long that the term cardinal-deacons was applied to those seven deacons as well as to twenty-eight principal priests who formed the immediate papal entourage in church functions. They became his trusted advisors and ecclesiastical assistants and were thus “incardinated” to the pope.

That strange word, incardinate, indicates a situation where a member of the clergy is placed under the jurisdiction of his ecclesiastical superior, in this case, the pope. The word cardinal is derived from the Latin root, cardo (meaning pivot, socket, or hinge), as their episcopal lives pivoted around or were hinged to the pope. But that’s not anywhere near the end of the story.

By the late Middle Ages, the title cardinal was also bestowed by the pope on the principal priests of Europe’s key churches (today we would call them parishes) outside of Rome in places like Paris, London, Madrid, Trier, Milan, etc. Note that they typically were not the bishops of those dioceses. They were known as cardinal-priests and functioned as the pope’s posse of elders, so to speak.

Over time and as the popes became more involved in the religious and material world around Rome, the volume of activities increased greatly in that part of Rome we now call the Vatican. As a result, the popes needed more spiritual troops to represent them at episcopal functions and to counsel them. So, they looked around and picked seven bishops in the immediate vicinity to be cardinal-bishops. Those cardinal bishops are titular bishops of one of the seven main dioceses around Rome. Historical Note: It was seven and then became six and now it’s back to seven though only six cardinal-bishops ever exist at any one time — don’t ask, it’s complicated. They all are highly placed administrators in the Roman Curia, or the Catholic Church’s administrative organization (or central government) residing in the Vatican that assists the pope in governing the faithful. The term, Curia, incidentally, is derived from the Latin word for tribe.

From the early Church in Rome cardinals were the popes’ key assistants in religious and administrative functions. But their role as electors of a new pope after the Chair of Peter had been vacated evolved over time and became fixed by a decree issued by Pope Alexander III at the third Lateran Council (1179).

Cardinals used to sport a broad-brimmed scarlet hat known as a galero, which was sometimes adorned with dancing tassels. Sadly, that quaint custom has bitten the dust and today only the scarlet biretta (a strange looking four cornered hat with three “horns” topped by a fuzz ball) and zucchetto (beanie) are worn by cardinals.

Interestingly for non-Catholics, other than electing the pope, cardinals possess no automatic or special powers of governance unless so appointed by the pope. In terms of rank, a bishop and a cardinal have the same powers.

Here’s another freebie for non-Catholics unrelated to cardinals. The term "Holy See" comes from the Latin word for seat, sedes, which refers to the pope’s throne or chair (cathedra in Latin). So, the term refers to the episcopal function of the Roman Catholic Church but is not the same entity as the Vatican. When international diplomats are granted credentials representing their country to the Roman Catholic Church, those documents are not issued to the Vatican City State (which has only been in existence since 1929) but to the Holy See, which has been in existence since Peter was the first pope.

A quiz on this material is scheduled for next week.

Latest Good News/Bad News about Energy Production

In a recent statement, Robert Dudley, British Petroleum’s chief executive officer, tried to put to rest fears about peak oil, which he characterized as “increasingly groundless.” Dudley based his remarks on a BP study that predicted global oil production will increase substantially between now and 2030, largely as a result of increased output from previously unconventional sources like shale oil and gas in the U.S. and Canada. That means the U.S. should be self-sufficient in energy production by 2030, with a scant one percent derived from imports.

So, the good news is all you people out there who have been worrying about oil production hitting a peak and then rapidly declining can take a deep breath and relax. Doesn’t look like that’s going to happen in the foreseeable future.

But not so fast. The bad news Dudley delivered in practically the same breath is that increasing demand in India, China, and other developing nations for energy from all sources will cause carbon dioxide emissions to rise by more than 25 percent by 2030, pushing CO2 levels close to 500 ppm. According to most climate scientists, that situation would be an unmitigated disaster, especially since current scientific studies suggest that if CO2 emissions do not peak within three to five years we’re headed for serious problems.

Dudley and BP’s analysts see our future as one of continued addiction to high energy consumption. Their glinty-eyed predictions are based on existing trends and existing technologies, not on cross-your-fingers-and-hope-things-change-for-the-better scenarios so beloved by environmentalists, bright-eyed optimists, and people named Pollyanna.

Let’s, for a moment at least, engage in hard-headed realism. What does anyone see in the near-term future that would cause people in developing nations, especially China and India, to turn their backs on better, healthier, more comfortable, and more satisfying lives that will result from increased energy and material consumption? For that matter, what does anyone see that would cause Americans to stop consuming energy in the amounts to which we have become accustomed? Get real. Ain’t gonna happen.

So that means we will almost certainly get to experience the full-blown effects of global warming. I’m in my 70th year and basically will miss the worst. That’s my good news.

Arguments against Creationism/Intelligent Design

For a lighthearted but spirited refutation of creationist misconceptions of Earth history, call your local library (or check out their catalog on the internet) and see if they have Creation/Evolution Satiricon: Creationism Bashed. It’s written by the well-known marine geologist/geomorphologist Robert S. Dietz and illustrated by John C. Holden. Stephen G. Brush, a historian of science, examines scientific theories for dating the age of the Earth, particularly radiometric dating in Transmuted Past: The Age of the Earth and the Evolutions of the Elements from Lyell to Patterson; Volume 2 in the series, A History of Modern Planetary Physics. Cambridge University Press, 1996. For a shorter but hardly less lucid critique of claims by creationists that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, coupled with an exposition of radiometric dating methods, see Stephen G. Brush, “Finding the Age of the Earth by Physics or by Faith,” Journal of Geological Education, vol. 30, pp. 34-58, 1982.

In a challenging book intended for the lay audience, G. Brent Dalrymple reviews scientific evidence for the age of the Earth, Moon, and Solar system in such well documented and critical manner that it leaves no room for uncertainty or doubt: The Age of the Earth, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1991. The book’s greatest virtue is its detailed analysis of radiometric dating methods. The many, many examples and the exhaustive chronology that are presented reveal how imaginative but sometimes wrong researchers have been in the past. But then he shows how tirelessly other researchers have checked their work, finding the errors and developing more reliable methods. It is also clear that the results of proven techniques have been checked rigorously against the results of other methods, until there can be little scientific doubt about the final conclusions. One cannot read that book with an open mind and continue believing a few warped scientists conspired to conjure up a patently false system and that hundreds of later scientists simply fell into line and confirmed their bizarre fantasies. Philip Kitcher, a philosopher of science at the University of Vermont, has written a marvelously lucid summary of the evidence for evolution and the overwhelming case against its opponents in a thoughtful and witty attack on 'scientific' creationism, Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Updated March 2001; go online and read the excerpt, “Creationist’s Blind Dates” at: http://chem.tufts.edu/science/Geology/KitcherBlindDates.htm. Kitcher, who as a philosopher is concerned with the way science operates, is particularly adept at showing how creationists distort Karl Popper’s views on scientific method and how they misuse such books as Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Of course, readers interested in the geoscience side of the argument over creationism should read Arthur N. Strahler’s marvelously written and well-reasoned, Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy, 2nd ed., Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1999. Strahler was professor of geomorphology in the Department of Geology at Columbia University and author of numerous textbooks in geoscience. His book is a comprehensive treatment of the ongoing conflict between scientists who accept the theory of evolution and creationists. He reviews the philosophy, methods, and sociology of empirical science from astronomy to zoology, contrasting those with the belief systems of religion and pseudoscience. In one very interesting section he establishes sound criteria for distinguishing science from pseudoscience and demonstrates with devastating logic that creation science fails to meet the criteria of scientific enterprise.

A more recent and delightful work based on sound science and leavened with literary grace and elegance is also well worth reading, no matter what your evolutionary point of view, but only if you have an open mind, which by my personal experience is something almost entirely lacking in creationists: Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. For a very well written and tightly reasoned point of view of a Christian geophysicist, see: Roger C. Wiens, PhD, Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective, material originally written in 1994 and revised in 2002: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html.

And don’t forget the early and remarkable essay by the evolutionary biologist and devout Russian Orthodox Christian Theodosius Dobzhansky that criticized Young Earth creationism and espoused what he called evolutionary creationism: “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution,” American Biology Teacher, vol. 35 125-129, 1973. Note that that article may have been inspired by the work of Jesuit physical anthropologist and philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whom Dobzhansky much admired.

Everyone interested in the cultural war between the adherents of evolution and creationists (in this camp I squarely place those who believe in intelligent design) should read two recent books. The first, by the physical anthropologist Eugenie C. Scott, is Evolution vs. Creationism, Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2005. It is both a history of the debate and a collection of essays written by partisans from both sides. Its main attribute is its clear explanation of the scientific method and the astronomical, biological, chemical, and geological bases of evolutionary theory. As good as that book is, even better is Michael Ruse’s The Evolution-Creation Struggle, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University, 2005. As a philosopher of science, Ruse (self-described as an ardent Darwinian) has testified against the inclusion of creationism in public school science curricula  He cautions all of us on the use of the word “evolution,” especially since it has two meanings: the science of evolution and something he terms evolutionism, which is the part of evolutionary ideas that reaches beyond testable science. In other words, Ruse interprets the struggle between science and theology as a war between two rival metaphysical worlds.

Matt Young (PhD physics-optics) and Paul Strode (PhD biology-ecology) provide a series of clear, concise, and lively discussions for everyday people in their excellent book, Why Evolution Works (and Creationism Fails). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009. Their narrative is a well-written and highly readable response to creationists’ objections to evolution. Their science-based work takes pains to demonstrate that creationists profoundly misunderstand the very nature and structure of science and avow positions that are contradictory and inconsistent.

One positive indication, though no one should put much “faith” in it, is that courts at various levels repeatedly have held that public schools must be religiously neutral and must not advocate religious views. In that vein, in 1987 the Supreme Court ruled that teaching creationism in the public schools was unconstitutional.

And finally, I wonder if it ever occurred to our creation science and Young Earth friends to explain with scientific rigor the fossilized marine sedimentary rocks (from the Ordovician) forming the summit of Mount Everest, known locally as Chomolungma, Goddess Mother of the World, and explain how those marine sediments were pushed and shoved to an elevation of nearly 30,000 feet. For the latest and slickest version of neo-creationism that has many rich, powerful, and right-wing political backers, interested readers should consult published articles that discuss the implications of the late-2005 decision of a federal judge against the Dover (Pennsylvania) School District in what may have been a critical test case that ruled intelligent design and creationism are one and the same and have no place in a biological science curriculum.

Certainly many arguments can be and have been made that demonstrate the fallacy of creationism/young earth/intelligent design (see above). One that I personally hold dear is practical in nature. To believe in creationism etc., etc., one must reject not only biology and geology but also basic principles in astronomy-astrophysics, physics, geophysics, and geochemistry. How people are prepared to do that I simply can not imagine, even when it is explained to me by those who have faith in creationism. It's a puzzle that can only be explained by Julius Caesar's famous dictum: Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt. Men willingly believe what they want.

HAPPY 2013 TO ONE AND ALL from SOB