Truth is the First Casualty of Politics

That’s a paraphrase of an old saying of indeterminate origin about truth and war.

We’ll soon have an opportunity to observe the paraphrased adage in action. John McCain has established a Truth Squad in reaction to  comments by retired four-star general and Obama advocate, Wesley Clark. Below is one comment Clark made on an interview on Face the Nation yesterday. You can listen to the full interview on Youtube here. 

“I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”

Although awkwardly stated, Clark is correct, of course. No single act of an individual, whether a veteran or not, in and of itself, is a qualification for the Office of the President of the United States. I know some fine pilots, but I wouldn’t vote for them for president simply because they have the ability to fly an airplane.

But in the world of politics, accusations cannot remain unanswered. In an effort to counter Clark’s comments, John McCain has decided to operate on another old adage–the truth shall set ye free.

He has recruited Sen. John Warner, Col. Bud Day and Lt. Col. Orson Swindle for some truth telling. There may be more individuals in the squad, but I stopped reading when my eyes hit Orson Swindle.

I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Orson Swindle for about ten minutes in the privacy of my office before we walked next door where he spoke to a class in political science.

He was an affable and friendly guy and told me about growing up in Georgia under the tutelage of an aunt. Despite my moderate political opinions and his somewhat right of center conservative leanings, we had many points in common.

We were both veterans and both products of Southern culture. Moreover, he had a long history with the federal government in various appointed capacities. I was a low-level apparatchik, a pencil pusher in the Southern dialect of my own straight talking aunt. Both of us knew the system.

I was actually surprised when he accepted my invitation to speak. This was at the height of the lunacy about liberals ruining our colleges and destroying our youth, which I thought was oddly overstated, since almost every instructor of my acquaintance was moderate or conservative. The extreme liberals were confined to the the social sciences.

Still, the atmosphere of accusation and innuendo was so bad that the public relations apparatchik of one admiral went ballistic at my audacity when I asked if the admiral would speak on campus.

He (not the admiral who probably never saw my request) fired off a three page e-mail about how “he” wasn’t going to permit “his” admiral to appear on this pinko campus, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I should have retained the e-mail. It was a wonderful combination of the dead language of bureaucrats mixed with the colorful and earthy language of real people.

Anyway, Orson walked into my office on the appointed morning, accompanied by a bodyguard because he was running for political office as a Republican in a state where Republicans were as scarce as hen’s teeth on a Petaluma chicken ranch.

His first question was, “Where’s the men’s room?”

Well, after I led him to it, I returned to my office and chatted with his body guard for a minute or two, which was also an enjoyable experience because he was a boxing fan and so was I.

The upshot of Orson’s appearance before my class of ravenous, slobbering 19-year old radicals was a resounding success. The students were polite and attentive and Orson presented a well-reasoned case for his policies.

For balance, we had other candidates of other political persuasions on different days. Most also had good rapport with the students. The libertarian candidate, however, took an immediate dislike to me the moment she walked into my office and sat down for a pre-class chat. God knows why. Humans seem possessed of an underlying revulsion for some things. I was hers.

Mine? Well, it’s the swift-boating of reputations. Let’s see if John McCain and Orson Swindle permit themselves to swiftboat Obama. I hope not. Orson was too nice a guy for that sort of politics.

Technorati Tags: Wesley Clark,John McCain,Orson Swindle,Truth Squad

Bay Area Best Place to Raise a Family

I’ve always been a lover of lists, stuff like The 100 Sexiest Jobs in Elko NV, Top Five Hunks in the History of Human Civilization, and The 100 Best Places to Raise a Family.

The latter is a real list put together by the Today Show’s Best Life editors from a plethora of sources such as the U.S. Census Bureau, the FBI, and the National Center for Educational Statistics among others.

Using these data and more, the editors ranked and rated the desirability of cities based on the congeniality of a city toward the safety, health, and education of its youth.

The thing that strikes me positively about this particular list is the large number of California cities on it.

Based on my unofficial and hopefully accurate summary, Cal had 22, or 22% of the nationwide total. No other state came close to that proportion.

Moreover, 11 of the 22 are located in the Bay Area, a number still higher than the number for any other single state. If that isn’t commendable, I don’t know what is.

However, I have serious reservations about the inclusion of some of them.

Richmond, for example, came in at Number 73, high but still on the list. I’m familiar with the city and the surrounding area, which causes me to wonder about the family friendliness of a city that has become a gang and murder center fully worth the extra gas it takes to circle the town when heading to Tahoe.

Oakland at Number 84 is another city I would think seriously about if I were raising children. The murder rate in Oakland is astronomical and the schools leave much to be desired. There may be pockets of tranquility within the city limits, but even that is problematic as a gauge of family togetherness.

One other city, San Francisco at Number 67, made my seriously doubt list. SF is a great place for fun and games, but is it a commendable spot to raise kids in? There are many good neighborhoods, but the question in my mind relates to proximity. Can a parent in one of SF’s garden spots rest comfortably knowing that their adolescent darlings can jump on a bus and ride to the center of the action the minute they’re out of parental sight.

The remainder of the Bay Area cities on the cut include some that seem quite nice. Santa Rosa at Number 10 would be my personal choice. And I always considered Number 64 Concord a real nice spot.

The balance includes the South Bay Area 22, Fremont 38, Berkeley 40, Fairfield 50, Antioch 51, and Hayward 93.

Worth mentioning, not a single California city made the list of the 10 Worst Places to Raise a Family (find this list below the Top 100).

I’m surprised that Davis didn’t make the California state-wide cut. It was Number 3 on the 5 Friendliest Cities in America.

Technorati Tags: Bay Area,Oakland,Richmond,San Francisco,Berkeley,Santa Rosa,Concord

Sex in the Civil War

A few nights ago I watched Sex in the Civil War on the History Channel. I was kind of surprised because I didn’t know people actually engaged in sex in the 1860s. I thought it originated with the Hippies in the 1960s. In my mind, birth was kind of like spontaneous combustion. It just happened. Or, a woman swallowed a watermelon seed.

Now that I think about the matter, I suppose those old folks with their Burnside whiskers and hoop skirts could have figured out a way to overcome these obstacles. The human mind and genitalia are quite innovative.

Back then a person in search of sex had to be persistent. Although traveling brothels and freelancers hung around the edges of Army camps and battlefields, displaying their fully-clothed wares and awaiting eager customers who apparently were driven into a frenzy by the imagined pleasures that lay below seven layers of crinoline, the task of actually reaching El Dorado wasn’t as quick and easy as ducking into a booth in a classy speakeasy for a quickie.

Or as simple as booking a call girl on a business trip to D.C. Even so, Eliot Spitzer wasn’t the first high muck-a-muck to take up with a prostitute. A couple of Union generals used the same consort at various times. In fact, prostitutes were so numerous and Union army soldiers so hungry for feminine companionship that 40 percent of the Union army occupying Nashville contracted VD (venereal disease then, STD now).

A whole euphemistic code language evolved around the sex business. For example, “Please pass the butter,” was code for let’s play around a little. These interesting linguistic twists gave rise to a philosophical concept called hermeneutics, the study of hidden meanings. It all started when a curious supply clerk asked a mess sergeant one day if he needed more butter because the soldiers were always hollering “Pass the butter.”

One thing I noticed about the women of the 1860s. They were coyote ugly, what with their yellow skin and cellulite thighs clearly visible through their polka dot stockings. The sales of Tennessee sipping whiskey skyrocketed around Army camps, as soldiers needed to be drunker than skunks before entering Paradise. That’s the way people talked back then.

Today, modernity has altered the sexual landscape. Neither men nor women wear a lot of clothes. In fact, on a good day on the beach, you’ll be lucky to spot even a teensy weensy yellow polka dot bikini unless it’s been tattooed on. And only fools pay for sex.

And only exceptionally foolish fools pay with a credit card.

 

Technorati Tags: Civil War,History Channel,Prostitution

English is a Pain in the Arstermeister

…let’s call it Americanish…

I have a young Japanese friend in Tokyo who teaches English in a public elementary school. She has two classes of second and third graders, and she teaches alongside a male counterpart.

She often asks me questions by e-mail about the English manner of speaking while she is in class, and I do my best to respond quickly so she can pass along the words of an authentic speaker of American English to her students in real time.

She’s been studying English since she was a child, so her writing and reading skills are quite good, better than mine, actually, but in her classically low-keyed Japanese manner, she pretends to defer to me.

I have the impression that she doesn’t read my e-mails but tells the class what she knows already, using my name as an authority figure. Even today, in the 21st Century, Japanese people have a great deal of respect for authority. George Bush would make a great president of Japan.

My young Japanese friend also speaks excellent English with her easily understood accent. We’ve talked many times in person, on the phone, or on Skype. I think she has trouble with my mixed Okie-California-Northwest-East Coast accent.

Her facility in the English language often leads to tensions between her and the other English teachers, most of whom speak with a pronounced accent that would be incomprehensible if spoken in America.

The problem stems from the Japanese method of teaching pronunciation. The Japanese language has about 52 sounds and English words are pronounced according to these sounds. If a Japanese speaker of English can’t articulate a sound understandable to our ears, he or she will substitute a Japanese sound. The result is admittedly difficult for the average American ear to comprehend.

But in our characteristically American state of absolute arrogance, the thought never dawns on us that our facility in the Japanese language, or almost any language you care to name, including English, hovers around absolute zero. Everyone in the world is supposed to kiss our collective ass. If they don’t understand Hillbilly, just holler a little louder. Volume enhances understandability.

I’ve spoken and listened to many people from foreign countries, including Japan, China, Korea, Samoa, Tahiti, the Philippines, Spain, Germany, Mexico, Portugal, France, and a few others.

I’ve even listened to and conversed with people from the British Isles and, By George, those chaps are alright. They speak English almost as well we we do.

Maybe I should layout a spreadsheet like good American males are prone to do when they want to rate the quality of their liaisons, but I’ve decided to wing it when rating the understandability of the accents I’ve heard.

The people from the Philippines top my list. They are the easiest to understand, probably because the country was a possession of the U.S. for about 50 years and English was a required subject in the schools.

The Chinese also seem to speak English fairly easily. As I understand Chinese linguistics (as written in English), the Chinese dialects are comprised of sounds almost like musical tones, making it more adaptable to hearing and reproducing the various languages.

Samoans also speak English well. American Samoa has been a territory of the U.S. since 1898, and there’s a good deal of travel between Samoa and the West Coast.

I have more to report on, but an e-mail just arrived from my friend in Japan. She wants to know about “politically correct” words like police woman versus policeman and fireman versus fire women.

I’m certain she actually doesn’t need my help in this area. She knows more than I do about Americanish, the American government, and politics.

It’s a damned shame that Americans of her age can’t speak intelligently about our political system.

Technorati Tags: Japan,English Language

Don’t Fence Me In

Mt. Diablo High School in Concord wants to build a fence around its campus to keep hookey players in and outsiders out. The City Council is prepared to spend $43,000 on the project.

The story struck a spark in me because I was once a professional hookey player. My career began in the 10th grade when I attended Richmond Union High School.

In those days, nothing deterred me from leaving the school grounds when the mood struck, which was frequent.

I first fell into my evil habit by simply walking off of the school grounds at lunch. Apparently I was lucky the first three or four times. But one day a monitor stopped me at my favorite exit point and escorted me to a detention room.

The following day, I tried another convenient walk-away spot and figured I’d made it when a completely different monitor stepped from behind some shrubs about a block north of the school on 23rd Street.

After that, I cooled it and spent several days walking around the campus, alert for other potential exits as well as for patterns of behavior by the monitors.

A couple of things caught my attention. The monitors were actually teachers. As such, they were required to be in their classrooms when classes began again at 1 p.m. They’d usually leave their posts 10 to 15 minutes beforehand, providing an ample window of opportunity for me to escape.

However, a smart assed teacher figured it out and nailed me by feigning a return to his class but actually stepping behind a tree on my accustomed route and laying in wait.

Still, my developing brain continued its never ending search for a method of avoiding the monitors.

One day as I wandered along the perimeter of the school grounds, I stumbled across an old path that led behind the industrial arts building and through a wall of thick, overgrown bushes bordering the school’s South boundary.

Once through the hedges, I was completely out of sight of the school, which enabled me to walk a circuitous route to my favorite hookey hangout, a library in San Pablo where I’d disappear in a corner and read mystery novels.

For the balance of my time at RUHS, I escaped whenever I wanted, although the thrill of it soon waned and I looked for other exciting pursuits like working algebra word problems.

The Concord City Council and the Mt. Diablo High School are going to learn some interesting lessons after their fence is constructed.

There never was a monitor or a fence that could contain the restless minds of adolescent.

Off Topic. I used to have hair like Aaron Peskin’s. Everyone accused me of wearing a hairpiece. I also had a salt and pepper beard like his and black, bushy eyebrows. To top it off, I wore the same kind of glasses.

Technorati Tags: Playing Hookey,Concord,Richmond,Mt. Diablo High School

College, anyone?

The Contra Costa Times is running a series of in-depth examinations of community colleges. Today’s second part of a four-part series is headed Unready soon quit college.

The article opened with the following comment:

Community colleges nationwide labor under the weight of ill-prepared students. Some colleges estimate that nearly every student is unprepared in math, reading or writing — or all three.

The author, Matt Krupnick, supported his argument with a series of statistics:

• About 30 to 40 percent of the students in one pre-algebra class will fail to pass the course.
• Nationwide, nearly every student is unprepared in math, reading, or writing, and in many case, deficient in all three.
• In California alone, about 670,000 students were enrolled in basic English and math.
• Roughly three-fourths of students who take placement tests require remedial math.

For about twenty years, I taught in several 4-year and community colleges. Over that time, I accumulated enough anecdotal examples which, when added to the experiences of colleagues, solidly support Krupnick’s report.

To his list of the normal run of student shortcomintgs illustrated above–reading, writing, and math–we also include the academic buzzwords, “critical thinking.”

Given that students can hardly read or write, it follows naturally that they are totally unable to analyze material and communicate their opinions in a coherent, understandable form.

We also note that virtually none of our students possessed a basic knowledge about the world around them. Geography is a prime example. Out of a class of 35 students, one might be able to locate Iraq on a map. And more than you might imagine, couldn’t find the United States.

In my own fields, government, political science, and American studies, none of my students understood the basic structure of the United States government as taught in 8th grade civics classes. So many basic facts were missing from their minds that I found myself spending a half a semester or more teaching them these missing facts. For example, no one had ever read the First Ten Amendments to the Constitution, commonly known as the Bill of Rights, even though they were constantly claiming “constitutional rights” that did not exist.

When it came to history, almost no one had any sense of the timeline of important political events. It wasn’t unusual for a student to believe that the Civil War was fought in 1941 against Germany, or that the 50th state was admitted to the union in 1898.

One student illustrates a lack of historical sense combined with a dearth of information about current events. This very bright student insisted strongly that the state of Maryland still prohibited inter-racial marriages. Rather than argue, I contacted the office of a Maryland Assemblywoman and asked for a copy of the current Maryland law on the matter, which I received a few days later. I presented the law to the student, who silently read the brief text. The ban on inter-racial marriages in Maryland had been eliminated in 1968. I felt sorry for having embarrassed her, but she eventually became my best student and a friend.

While many argue that minor facts like these aren’t necessary to the process of critical thinking, they forget that facts are essential to support a reasoned argument. Otherwise, discussions become irrational shouting matches and name calling exercises, roughly equivalent to our modern political campaigns.

We also need to factor student attitudes into the discussion. A friend once jokingly remarked, “The major impediment to learning is testosterone.” He referred to the tendency of male students to spend their time in class avoiding any serious attempts to learn. They arrived late, left early, slept, and spent a great deal of time on their cells. In general, they displayed the classic posturing behavior of male peacocks attempting to attract a mate. To these kinds of individuals, college was not a learning environment but a place of encounter.

Although we could add many more elements to the discussion, let’s end with a couple of all too common phenomena regarding teachers rather than students. Too many teachers bring a show-biz approach to the classroom. They confuse teaching with acting and spend their class time emoting rather than engaging their students. One of my cohorts once observed that teaching is the next best thing to show business. He had a point.

And more instructors than we might be aware of want to be liked. In fact, they want to be liked so badly that they adopt the dress, hair styles, jargon, musical tastes, and even the manner of walking of young people. These teachers are usually highly popular, not because of their clumsy attempts to meld with the youth culture, attempts ridiculed by the students, but because their wanting to be liked leads them to assign high grades irrespective of effort and learning.

My own method of teaching was systematic and business-like, a thoroughly unpopular approach. I operated on a simple principle: complete the assigned work, get the grade. Fail to complete the assigned work, don’t get the grade. Students had a difficult time with this method, but eventually as word got around, they knew what to expect and completed the work to the best of their ability. In a few minds, I was, to coin an oft-despised phrase, fair and balanced, and to those with a sincere desire to learn, I was always eager to talk about politics. I loved discussing the subject one on one or in groups. That part of the job was worth all of the minor irritations.

At this point in time, solutions to a lack of preparation and poor learning attitudes seem almost beyond reach. How do we change a culture that has evolved over a long period of time? If placing blame is a topic on the table, who are we to blame? There’s enough to go around.

In the end, however, blame is counterproductive. The answers lie in sustained hard work. There are no magic bullets.

Technorati Tags: Community Colleges,Quality of Education

The East Bay is nice…

…and will suffice…

But that doesn’t mean I don’t like San Francisco or the North Bay or the Peninsula. All of these spots have their attractions and charms. What’s not to like?

For starters, the price of homes in SF is sky high. But then again, homes are expensive almost everywhere in California. For example, I would give a right arm to turn back the clock. I coulda been a millionaire (almost) if I’d held on to that spacious 3-br, 2 ba, encl gar, cent ht, cent AC, frplc in Tracy that we picked up for $15,000, $150 a month, a few years ago. Today, homes in that area are worth around $400,000.

And then there’s the sky-high murder rate in Oakland. How does society condone violence on such a scale? And in Richmond, too, the city now has more murders in a year than it did in all of the years we lived there.

Yes, there is much to dislike about all of the “Bays,” East, North, South, and Whatever. But good things exist, too. Here’s some positive stuff about the East Bay.

For starters, if you want to get away, you don’t have to cross one of those doggoned gridlocked bridges and get lost in the Maze or wind up somewhere in Modesto. If you’re driving to, say, Tahoe, you can avoid the main I’s out of the Bay Area by using a plethora of surface roads and state highways. Or you can head for the Oakland Airport and catch a flight with less hassle than you’ll encounter at SFO. My sister regularly drives from El Sobrante to Pleasanton on the back roads, a very enjoyable and pastoral trip.

And the views from the Oakland and Berkeley hills are spectacular, magnificent panoramas of the San Francisco skyline, day or night, as well as up-close and personal scenes of Marin County on clear days.

But the Berkeley and Oakland hills aren’t the only scenic viewing spots. From the hills around other communities, the sights are impressive, too. One little-known viewing spot is at the top of the hills around El Sobrante. You may have to search for it on hazy days, but San Francisco is clearly visible when the skies are clear. You can also find the Marin Hills and San Quentin even from some of the lower elevations. And while you’re at it, you can hike some of the trails that meander through a small park.

Despite over development, the East Bay still has it’s neighborhoods that remind us of less-harried lives. Orinda, for example, still has the old Orinda Theater sign clearly visible, and jumping South all the way to Alameda, the old town of Alameda is still suitably neighborhood-ish. Not to forget a drive through the old Alameda Naval Air Station where, if you’re lucky, you might catch the crew busily filming MythBusters. The show, by the way, also operates out of 1268 Missouri Street, San Francisco, and on Mare Island, Vallejo.

Back on the other side, the East Bay is also home to UC and the Marines. Why the Marine Corps decided to establish a recruiting station in Berkeley is beyond me. Do they expect to recruit imminent nuclear scientists, doctors of philosophy, and professors sick and tired of sassy students? I have a hunch they’d have more walk-in traffic in Richmond or Oakland. But, the reasoning of bureaucracies can be foggy sometimes.

But leaving the Marines aside for the moment, the campus is beautiful and worth a walk through. I’ve spent some time there not as a student but visiting a couple of friends. The campus still exudes an old-college atmosphere in spots. Hmmm. I wonder if the Marines would object if UC established an off-campus center in the Pentagon.

How do we continue to wander off-topic? Maybe it’s time to wrap this one up and have something to snack on at Denny’s on San Pablo Avenue, in El Cerrito. Denny’s isn’t the classiest cholesterol chain around, ranking right alongside the old Doggie Diners, but it’s our favorite breakfast spot, and it works well all day, too, as a quick coffee stop.