Diva Takes a Dive

Beyonce, say it ain't so - say you did not lip-sync our national anthem at President Obama's 2nd inauguration. Then again, don't bother. We wouldn't believe you anyway.

While watching Beyonce sing at the inauguration, I imagined someone taking her picture and sending it in a time capsule beyond the moon. That way, any aliens passing by could look in and know what a woman looks like.

That is the beauty of Beyonce. No wonder people in entertainment are coming to her defense. Why wouldn't they? Besides being the face of their industry, she mirrored moments when they, too, have lip-synced; or will do so in the future. But not one of them has ever done it at a presidential inauguration - wouldn't dare! Isn't it interesting that it took a black woman - at the only black president's inauguration - to do such a thing. Had it been a white person faking it thus, imagine the outcry at such lack of respect.

One insider said Beyonce "did not have time to rehearse with the Marine Corps band, so she decided to use a recording." Didn't have time? Whose fault is that? I tell my children, when someone tells you they don't have time, what they are saying is, "that is not important enough to me." When something matters, we make time.

Then, it could be a matter of courage. It takes courage to sing a song, especially when that song will mark a preeminent moment in a nation's history. Singing a song is not like reciting a poem, or delivering a speech. Songs have a breadth and depth to them that commands time and space. A song can get away from a singer, or refuse to come at all. Beyonce was anxious. I imagine Kelly Clarkson, who also performed at the inauguration, was anxious, too. But courage is not the absence of fear; courage is acting despite that fear. It is as though Beyonce decided, "Since I cannot be sure of a flawless performance, I will fake a flawless performance." That's not courage, Beyonce; that is vanity.

Beyonce did not just cheat the president at his inaugural, and all of the people in attendance, besides; she cheated herself. It is the difficult moments in our lives - and how we face them - that define who we are. When people rise to the occasion, special things happen. Beyonce may have flubbed the anthem had she tried to sing it - many have in the past. Or, she may have belted out the greatest performance of her life - it could have been one for the ages. Instead, her moment on stage has become a vacuum wherein historic disappointments shall be stored.

This is not simply a matter of lip-syncing; it is a matter of trust. Baseball is riddled with distrust - who used steroids, who did not; cycling is prostrate. Now, Beyonce has wakened the ghost of Milli Vinilli. We question anew Whitney Houston's performance of the national anthem at the '91 Super Bowl. We wonder about Marvin Gaye at that NBA All-star game. And that angelic-voiced child at the college basketball game - did she, or didn't she? Next, we will even question Ray Charles' rendition of "America the Beautiful." Then we will have hit a new low. We are becoming afraid to trust.

People do not go to the ballpark to see film of their favorite player hitting home runs. They go so see if he can do it in real time. Beyonce was presented with one of the history's great moments, and she responded with a recording of herself. Some are beginning to wonder if her performance of "At Last" at Obama's 1st inaugural (ball) was not lip-synced. She shall forever be suspect now - for past, and for future performances; so, too, will here fellow entertainers.

Beyonce has no excuse _ Kelly Clarkson removed all excuses when she stood in the breach and belted out "My Country Tis of Thee." I may not put Kelly's picture in that time capsule alongside Beyonce's. But, when the heat is on, I want Kelly beside me in the trenches; she has more heart.

We Can Live With a Nuclear Iran (whether we want to or not)

America seems determined to make Iran its enemy. We present Iran as the enemy based largely upon their refusal to disavow their nascent nuclear ambitions. Our own nuclear ambitions, by contrast, are as lofty as they come. One facet of those ambitions is our desire to pose as the adult in the room and oversee which nations can, and which nations cannot, entertain those same ambitions.  

For Iran to want the same weapons America has is not grounds for enemy-hood. Pursuing those weapons despite our protests does not make Iran the enemy. It simply means they are not our child.  

With new Secretaries of State and Defense soon to be in place, brace for this familiar refrain: "We cannot live with a nuclear Iran." America's politicians are fond of that lie. They imagine it makes them sound resolute. Mostly, they come off sounding rigid, and unfit for the realities of a rapidly-changing world. 

Once we thought we could not live with a nuclear Russia. Then, the Russians got "the bomb" in 1949, and we have lived with a nuclear Russia ever since. We thought we could not live with a nuclear Red China. We have lived with the nuclear-armed Chinese since 1964 - a move that the Mao-led Chinese made to deprive superpowers (Russia and the U.S.) of their "blackmail potential." We have even learned to live with a nuclear-armed Hindu nation (India) and a nuclear-armed Muslin nation (Pakistan) since 1998. Rhetoric aside, the proof of what we can live with is found "in the eating of the pudding." We can live with a nuclear Iran just as surely as we have lived with those insufferable others. 

When we say "We cannot live with…", what we are saying is "We can't bear the thought of…" It is like when you a buy a new car, and a week later, your neighbor buys one, too. As long as you had the only new car in sight, that neighbor was fine. Now, with a new buggy of his own, he has become a bore. 

Whether we can or cannot live with something is an existential matter; what we can bear is not. Iran exists in Central Asia, the toughest neighborhood on Earth. They are surrounded by nuclear powers, and by nations occupied by nuclear powers. They have immense national treasures, and a responsibility to protect those treasures. Having your own nuclear weapon in Central Asia is like having a sign in your window that says, "BEWARE OF DOG." 

Iran talk of a "nuclear-armed Iran" is an existential matter. When America talks of a "nuclear-armed Iran", we are accessing a room wherein is kept - not our existential fears, but our pride and our vanity. Open that door, and the question becomes, "Can we bear the prospect of a nuclear Iran?" The answer, of course, is: "Yes, we can."

"The Cliff, The Cliff…"

"…the bounded waters shall lift up its bosom higher than the shores and make a sop of all this solid earth…" (from Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, "Ulysses Speech on Degree"

The "cliff" is a metaphor for when we have gone too far. There is much talk of "cliffs" these days, and whether we can be saved from imminent disaster. What we are not hearing is that we have already gone over the cliff - the fiscal cliff, the climate cliff, the sex cliff ' and there is no saving us from that. Our girth and momentum is such that we are like a heavenly body that appears to move in slow motion. We entertain the illusion of being able to stop when we have no chance.

When I hear President Obama and Speaker Boehner talk of the "fiscal cliff," my eyes glaze over. We have cleared that cliff, fellas. What do you think a 14 trillion dollar debt is but a boulder in free fall? We began over that cliff with the first debt ceiling raising. Countless "raisings" later, we do it with the ease with which we raise our morning shades. Importantly, there will be no sincere effort to cut spending; spending less is hard work. Our "leaders" gave that up long ago, (if they ever began at all).

And then, there is global warming, or the "climate cliff." The liberal left talk of "greenhouse emissions," while the far right blindly talk of no "warming" at all. Of course, there is warming. And talk of "emissions" as though we could stop is ludicrous. If we stopped driving completely, and shut down all of our smoke-belching factories, the CO2 that has precipitated this discussion would remain.

CO2 goes up and stays in the atmosphere. The CO2 the earth struggles with today went up generations ago. What we are emitting today will effect Earth for the next 100 years. That is how far we have gone over that cliff. (Seven billion hot humans living on this planet does not help.) Add to that:  We assault Earth's delicate balance by cutting its rain forests, strip-mining, and draining its vital wetlands. We must know our dilemma is well-earned.

Global warming, no matter how it came about, is a runaway train. It will not stop until such time as a natural cooling ensues, perhaps brought about by an asteroid hit, or by a volcanic eruption of epic proportion - something that throws such debris into the air that it blocks out the sun for years, allowing the ice caps to return with a vengeance. Only then will the sun's rays be continually reflected back into space long for the Earth to cool by degrees.

Finally, sex cliff: Viagra! Viagra! Everything is penis extensions, and breast and butt enlargements - anything to increase the sexuality and sexual pleasures of adults. You cannot watch a program in prime time these days without being subjected to a Cialis commercial, or to the inanities of Ted and Sue who are having the best sex of their lives now that they both have joined the Hair Club.

We have become obsessed with sex - not just with satisfaction, but with satiation. We want it coming out of our pores. we seem bent on a trajectory where sex shall utterly define us, similar to how it defines prostitutes, pimps, and gigolos.

Now comes Tefina, a nasal spray for the 11 to 41% of women who have trouble achieving orgasms. A woman need only squirt Tefina up her nose two hours before sex, and it will enhance her sexual enjoyment for the next four hours!

The active ingredient in Tefina is testosterone - up the nose, straight to the brain. Is this how women in today's American want it - over the cliff in not so sweet surrender?

"Oh, when degree is shaked, which is the ladder of all high design, the enterprise is sick." Those are  the words of Shakespeare, famously echoed by Ulysses on the battlefields of Troy. Written over 500 years ago, that speech is a treatise on Greece's inability to function with that model that holds each part in "authentic place." Shakespeare could have been talking about America, whose appetite threatens to devour the very structures that hold our worlds intact, driving us singly, and as a nation, over the cliff.

We follow the antics of "Basketball Wives" and "Jersey Shore" when we should be studying the characters of "Troilus and Cressida." Shakespeare's words are more prophetic than the Mayans, and far more instructive than the cooings of "Honey Boo Boo."

Ockham's Razor, and the Search for Answers in the Connecticut Shootings

Isn't it amazing how quickly we call outsiders "terrorists"? Then, when one of our own commits the same unspeakable acts, we look around and ask "Why?" Why? Because "our own" are terrorists, too.

There is a principle called "Ockham's Razor", attributed to the 14th-century philosopher, William of Ockham. It basically states that the simplest explanation tends to be the right one.

As I listened to the coverage of the Connecticut shootings this past weekend, I was puzzled by how delicately this nation danced around so serious a topic as terrorism. President Obama, in his memorial speech to the victims on Sunday, refused to utter the word "terrorism", as though that word would conflate this massacre with something that only ungodly foreigners do, and thereby taint the American nature of the moment.

The first thing Americans must do about these senseless attacks is look them in the face, and call them what they are:  terrorist acts. Until we can call a duck a duck, how can we honestly address this endless catastrophe? When we rush to call the killers of four "innocent" Americans in Benghazi "terrorists," and then go dumb when 20 six-year-olds are slaughtered in Connecticut, we forfeit our claim of seeking real answers. We are just pretending.

After 9-11, America declared a war on terrorism - said it would be a "different kind of war." they did not let on, however, that their declaration was phony - designed as it was to create a super boogey-man at our door. )it is an ages-old tactic used to manipulate nationalistic fervor.) It is time to either apply the "terrorist" label to all senseless acts of random violence, at home and abroad, or stop using it altogether.

America's war on terrorism is here, not in Yemen and Afghanistan; it has been here for years. We experience terrorist acts by home-grown terrorists year after year, from coast to coast. America has thousands of these people; perhaps millions. Not all of them will blossom into their completely hateful selves, but we must be ever conscious of that prospect. We must be prepared to duck, and fight back.

Then, there is the matter of motive. Police have searched high and low this weekend for a motive in the Connecticut shootings. (As of this writing three days later, they claim "a motive still has not emerged.")

I think we know what the motive  was:  It was revenge. You say, "…but the children did nothing to Adam Lanza." Lanza did not kill the children for the children's sake. He did it for the sake of the community that he felt had mistreated him. The 9-11 attackers did not knock down the Twin Towers for the Tower's sake. Those towers did no more to the 9-11 attackers than the children of newtown did to Lanza. They knocked down the Towers because those towers represented the heart of America's pride and vanity. Lanza killed the children because they represented the heart of the Newtown community. The 9-11 attackers sought to cripple a nation. Adam Lanza sought to drive a stake through the heart of a community. Lanza wanted revenge against the community that had hurt his feelings.

This weekend, the psychoanalysts waxed eloquent about what causes young men to do evil things. Nowhere did nay of these "experts" speak of the American psyche that nourishes this pathology of vengeance. We, as a nation, seek revenge regularly, and we will satisfy that thirst with abandon. George Bush admitted he wanted Saddam Hussein because "Saddam tried to kill my daddy."

This country is proud of its revenge motives. "Remember the Alamo!" and "Remember Pearl Harbor!" are iconic cries of American patriotism. We killed over 100,00 Iraqis and Afghans to avenge the 2,974 Americans killed on 9-11. when our answer to madness is more madness, then madness is what we shall beget.

Here's how we stop the shootings, American:  Stop hurting one another. Start treating one another better. And for those whose pride is hurt, nonetheless: Stop seeking revenge.

Seeing the Best of Us in the Worst of Places

In the wake of the most recent fight between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the experts have declared winners: "Obama won. Hilary won. Israel won…" No, only the Palestinians won.

Obama did not win because, as the "leader of the free world,' he may be one of the worst "honest brokers" of all time. He promises one side (Israel) the most advanced weapons on Earth, while promising to deny the other side (Hamas of Gaza) any weapons at all.

Hilary did not win because, while posing as a peace broker, she refused to talk to Hamas, one of the two warring factions. (Impossible!) Apparently, Hamas offends her sensibilities.

Israel did not win because it launched over 1500 air strikes into one of the most densely-populated communities on Earth. ('Nuff said.)

Since 2007, Israel has imposed a land, sea, and air blockade of the Gaza Strip. For all intents and purposes, these people of Gaza exist in a 21st century concentration camp - what Rule Jebreal, Newsweek correspondent, calls an "open-air prison." When the bombs start falling, the Gazans cannot retreat to refugee camps across the border, as many civilian populations do in times of war. They are trapped in a fish bowl, and must hunker down, and hope.

In an eight-day span, Israel killed 168 Palestinians - "mostly women and children," according to Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. For the Israelis, it was like shooting fish in a bowl.

And then it was over, and the Palestinian people, unbowed, defiantly celebrated in the streets of Gaza City. Talk about the "indomitable human spirit," and then we see it in real time.

That Glaring Divide

In the wake of President Obama's re-election victory over Mitt Romney, opponents are saying, "America is divided as ever." No, it is not. It was divided as ever on the eve of the Civil War. It is that division that has haunted this country ever since. If you want someone to blame, start with the British and the Portuguese for introducing slavery into the Americas over 500 years ago. That is where our troubles began, long before there was an "America." It began on this continent 100 years later when the nascent colony at Jamestown imported African slaves fro the Caribbean to work its tobacco farms. No one could have known at the time that that one act - born of greed and ignorance - would foster a divide that has lasted the entire life of Europeans on this continent.

People think the Confederacy lasted only four years. The military defense of the Confederacy lasted four years, from 1861 - 1865. The Confederacy itself began to consolidate before the Revolutionary War,. At the time, tensions between slaveholders and abolitionists took a back seat to the animus the colonists held for the British. By the time of the Civil War, the lines were starkly drawn. It was the Mason Dixon line that separated America down the middle, not anything Lincoln said or did. The South seceded when Lincoln was elected in 1860 - not because of anything Lincoln did, but because of what the South was doing (to African-Americans), and their fear of what Lincoln would do to them.

The Confederacy, comprising the slave states of America, once stretched from Texas in the West to the Carolinas in the East. That same Confederacy still exists - not in the name, of course, but in spirit - having remained politically homogeneous throughout the centuries.

The Daily Show's John Stewart, in his mock coverage of the 2012 elections, declared, "This just in: We project a win for Obama in Pennsylvania." A moment later, he said, "Good news for Romney: We project he will win most of the Confederacy." And so Romney did. The Republican Party almost always wins the entire Confederacy. It is the foundation of the Republican hopes in election after election.

With such an unabashed connection to the most sordid element of America's past, how can the Republican party hope to convince ta 21st century electorate - ever more comprised of African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians - that it is looking out for their interests? Yet, they do not address that association Rather, they look outward and blame Obama, similar to how the antebellum South blamed its problems on Lincoln.
 
Meanwhile, people the world over are celebrating Obama's victory, while Republicans in 20 states talk of seceding (once more.) Obama is driving them crazy. It is deja vu all over again.

If the Republican Party has not the guts to shake it dependence on America's Confederate past, then it should embrace that past fully, since it must represent the soul for their hopes. Become what you are, even if that means breaking away from the RINDS (Republicans In Name Only) and forming a third party. You can call yourselves "The Confederate Party of America". That shoe fits.

It is time the Confederacy came to an end once and for all. Time to dismantle the granite carvings of Confederate icons such as the one at Georgia's Stone Mountain of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. These men defended the despicable institution of slavery - not America - with their lives, calling it "the honorable thing to do." (Talk about a "divide" - Fie! With heroes like that, America, you are the divide.) Monuments to such a sadistic past is no different than if the Germans placed sculptures of Hitler, Goebbels, and Goering at the Brandenburg Gate.

Until this country confronts the many vestiges of slavery that haunt us still - until it decries all organizations (such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy, UDC) that insists on celebrating men and events of that brutal past; until the Stars and Bars, banner of the Confederacy, is lowered forever, and cast among that discredited lost that includes the Nazi swastika - we will forever glare across that great divide.

Obama on the Ropes

If President Obama loses this election, it will be for one reason: He did not heed my advice

Three years ago, I wrote a five page speech and sent it, along with a cover letter, by certified mail to the president at Pennsylvania Ave. In a nutshell, I told him to step out of his comfort zone - the urban areas, the college campuses - and go small town. The speech was entitled "Small-town, USA." It detailed a rural strategy that would weave this nation closer together and ensure his re-election in one fell swoop.

I went on to say:  "You have already won the cities and universities. They will not leave your side. Now go where the people do not know you; go where they do not expect you to come. And when you get there, give them the words they long to hear. Tell them:  "This nation needs you." For each small town you visit, a hundred will be touched.

He did not do it. Instead, President Obama consistently went for the cities, the campuses, and the fancy talk shows - The View, David Letterman, The Daily Show. If not there, you were likely to find him in New York or San Francisco at some swanky fundraiser. Why? Because it was easier for him in those places. They are like "Cheers." (Everybody knows his name.) Once there, all he needed to do was give them that smile, and "strut his stuff."

One person made aware of my speech said, "No president does the small towns anymore." All the more reason for Obama to have done it. Whether he promised it or not, this country - this electorate - imagined Obama to be a transcendent figure, one who would stand above the stale models that have stifled our enthusiasm for politics and left half of us too jaded to vote.

Add to that:  Mr. Obama has counted on the specter of fear to be his surrogate campaigner, to do the heavy lifting - to hover above the Hispanic and African-American communities, to haunt the gays, the unions, and female voters. He figured the thought of Romney and the Republicans would spur them in droves to storm the voting booths. All Obama would have to do is "look good", and his re-election would be assured. "Looking good" is easy. "Being good," is harder; it takes more work.

If Obama loses this election, he will have failed - not because he was a bad president; he was not - but because he did not try hard enough to be his best.